Turncoat (19 page)

So they wheeled east onto the Kingston Road, galloping apace, and retraced the route they had taken an hour after Marc's arrival in Crawford's Corners on Tuesday. Twenty minutes' hard riding found them on the Indian trail that wound its way up to the scene of the murder and the cave beyond. With no new snow to fill in their previous footprints, they were able to urge their mounts past the deadfall trap before abandoning them and surging ahead without the aid of their snowshoes.

“Christ, he's in the cave!” Hatch cried.

Marc looked up to see the snout and ears of the donkey poking above the rim of the ridge where the cave was
situated. Ferris O'Hurley was floundering towards it, apparently spooked by their approach. An unexpectedly deep drift slowed Hatch and Marc just long enough for the jackass and its master to scamper down the far slope and hit the ice of the cove. They were in full flight west.

“Don't worry,” Hatch puffed when they had struggled to the top of the ridge. “I've got James watching the sideroad north. If the bugger tries to get back into the Corners he may end up with a buttful of Durfee birdshot.”

“My hunch is he's heading back towards Toronto and Lewiston.”

“Then why come east to the cove?”

“The cave, you mean.”

They went to have a look.

O'Hurley had indeed been making for the cave, for the evident purpose of collecting or destroying materials left there earlier. Ashes from a fire more recent than Tuesday were clearly visible, and papers had been torn and burned in it. Several bottles that had once held what appeared to be contraband spirits or wine had been smashed and scattered, their labels singed.

“They must've been here yesterday,” Hatch said ruefully. “Somebody who should know better has told them we've become interested in this place, so the skinny one beetled out here to obliterate whatever they'd left in the vicinity—before picking up his partner in the bush farther down and lighting out for the States.”

Marc sighed.

“What's wrong?” Hatch said cheerfully. “We've put the fear of Jehovah into them. They won't be back here for a while.”

“Don't you see?” Marc said, sifting idly through the debris. “These fellows are likely advance men for smugglers. They've been using this cave as a hideout, a drop point, and a storage bin for a long time.”

“And?”

“And that means that the snowshoe print and broken pipe stem we found on Tuesday could have been left here by one of these peddlers or by any one of a dozen possible confederates.”

“And therefore not likely left by the killer of Joshua Smallman?”

“Right.”

“But that pipe stem hadn't been here long,” Hatch said. “That break on the stem looked fresh, and the thing wasn't completely covered with snow. Even though the ledge here is sheltered, a fair amount of snow would have drifted over it.”

Marc nodded. But he was thinking of his conversation with Beth. “What connection, I wonder, could a man like Joshua Smallman have had with vagabonds like O'Hurley and Connors?”

“Maybe that money you found had nothing to do with rum or French wine.”

“Perhaps,” Marc said, “but have a look at this.” In his hand was a strip of paper about twelve inches long whose
right half was completely scorched. “See these names down the left side here?”

“Yes,” Hatch said. “They're names of various types of whisky and such. Squire Child and I have come across these tally sheets before. Even the writing looks familiar.”

“And below each,” Marc said with a little more enthusiasm, “is the name of some bay or point along this shoreline, I'd wager.”

“And you'd win,” Hatch said. “The figures here are dates and times for the drop-offs. All that's missing are the smugglers' names—they've been burned to a crisp.”

“Well, we know who Connors and O'Hurley are.”

“True,” Hatch said. “And you can be sure the alarm will be raised from Kingston to Buffalo. I'll pass this paper on to Sheriff MacLachlan anyway. I may even get promoted,” he chuckled.

Marc was still rummaging about the debris, but he found nothing more of any value.

Riding slowly homeward, the two men kept their own counsel for some time. Then Hatch said, “We've got to face the fact that any connection between those sewer rats and Joshua's death is highly improbable. And that means that the cave itself may not have been his destination that night. Maybe the blizzard did confuse him, and he died in a senseless accident.”

But Marc said, “I have good reason to believe that Jesse Smallman may have been desperate enough to try to raise
money to save his farm by acting as an agent for those freebooters.”

Hatch paused before responding. “Have you mentioned this to Beth?”

“Obliquely. But it's a topic she will not talk further to me about. That much I do know.”

“Hard to blame her.”

“Don't you see, though, it's possible that Jesse had garnered vital information about the rum-running trade and that, somehow—in going through Jesse's effects, for example—Joshua discovered this information. Being an upright man, he might have confronted someone more dangerous than he realized. Or he might have doubted its implications and set out to clear his son's name. In the least, I can't believe he would not attempt to find out more about why his son hanged himself.”

“Well now, that makes rough sense, lad. But we're still left with the question of who.”

“One thing I did learn yesterday was that most of the farmers out in Buffaloville have been hit hard in the last couple of years. They're desperate for cash, offering me underfed pigs and mildewed grain. They're prime suspects for participants in a lucrative smuggling operation. And with Mad Annie's menagerie half a mile away and deep in a part of the bush nobody visits, I'd say the answer to your question lies out there. She's long been suspected of being the biggest bootlegger in the district.”

“If there is a connection of some kind—and we don't know what, remember—then this cave is very likely where Joshua was heading the night he was killed.”

“Exactly.”

“And if the threatened person suspected that Joshua was more likely to be an informer than a convert, Joshua's possession of any incriminating evidence would be all the more dangerous. The chance of it being conveyed directly to the lieutenant-governor and, more important, being believed there without question, would be very high.”

“Perhaps bribery was attempted,” Marc elaborated, “and when that didn't work, murder was the only option remaining. Joshua Smallman knew too much and had to be stopped.”

They rode on in silence. Since Hatch had raised the issue again, Marc felt the time had come to tell him—and him alone—the truth about Joshua Smallman's role as Sir John's official and trusted agent.

“Well, I'll be damned,” was Hatch's initial comment on hearing Marc's account. Then he said, “You know what this means, though? If you're going to learn anything at all from Beth about Joshua's motives and behaviour last fall, you'll have to break the news to her as well, and admit that he managed to deceive everyone—except perhaps his murderer. And remember, when she is told the truth, she may be able to interpret past events and words in a far different light.”

“I can't tell her,” Marc said. “It's too soon.”

Hatch was puzzled but held his peace.

As they sighted James Durfee, seated and alone on a snowbank in front of his inn, Hatch said, “Well, at least when you go out to beard the Stebbins couple this afternoon, you'll be scouting evidence of the rum trade: that's a sight more solid than a lot of free-floating political nonsense about secret societies and Hunters' Lodges.”

Durfee was waving his musket at them like a bosun's semaphore.

“You're right,” Marc said, “but I haven't given up on the political angle. It's in the mix somewhere.”

As it turned out, Marc did not get the opportunity to test either of his hypotheses regarding the motive for Joshua's murder—political treachery or a falling out amongst thieves—on expatriate Azel Stebbins until late in the afternoon of that Friday.

First, he and Erastus stopped to talk to James Durfee outside the inn, where they were informed by the scarlet-cheeked postmaster that he had just discharged his weapon in defence of the realm. “Missed the bugger by a mile, but that mule of his sure got the message!” After a stiff whisky at his own bar (which did little to steady his heart rate),
Durfee assured Constable Hatch that when the noon mail coach arrived, he would forward the news of O'Hurley's flight westward on the ice, and further assured him that if the blackguard were to put so much as his snout ashore he would be taken without mercy. The official alarm would be rung all the way from here to Hamilton and Newark.

After commending Durfee's valour and dispatch, Hatch took his leave, and he and Marc headed for their midday meal at the mill.

“I must remember to tell the sheriff tomorrow about the peddlers' loot Durfee is keeping for me,” Marc said as they dismounted and let Thomas see to the horses.

“And you're gonna show him Sir John's warrant and his instructions to you?” Hatch said tactfully.

Marc smiled. “I did agree to do so, but I was hoping then to have a lot more to tell him than I do now. On the other hand, he may be able to interpret some of my observations in ways you and I have not thought of.”

“I wouldn't be overly hopeful on that score. Hamish MacLachlan's a fine fellow and a loyal servant, but he got the job because he's a cousin of the attorney general.”

After lunch, just as Marc was about to set out for the Stebbins place, a boy sent over from the inn brought a message for the ensign to come there immediately. Marc pulled the boy up in front of him on the saddle and galloped him gleefully down the Miller Sideroad.

Durfee had summoned Marc because, among the
post-luncheon crowd at the inn, there were several notorious supporters of the Reform party, men who were not resident aliens and lived nowhere near the Americans in Buffaloville. “I'll just get 'em talkin' and you can sit up here nursin' a toddy with both ears open.”

In the two hours that followed, Marc learned about elections, the evils of the Family Compact, the toils of farming, and much else irrelevant and otherwise—but none of it incriminating or pointing in that direction. Everyone had known Jesse Smallman and was saddened by his senseless death. Little feeling of any kind attended the occasional mention of Joshua's name (adroitly dropped by Durfee at intervals). Only the bizarre manner of his death seemed of any lasting moment. The most telling consequence of the entire afternoon was that Ensign Edwards was seen weaving his way towards the double-image of Colonel Margison's horse.

A brisk north wind and a steady canter up the Pringle Sideroad, across the second concession, and up the Farley Sideroad into Buffaloville soon sobered Marc for the encounter ahead. Or so he told himself. The Stebbins farm lay just above the concession line and across the sideroad from the McMaster place he had visited the previous afternoon, following the drama of Agnes Pringle's rescue and return. From Hatch's briefing Marc had learned that Azel Stebbins was by far the youngest of the suspected extremists and the most recently arrived (from New York State). At thirty, and with less than ten years in the province, young Stebbins had
established a reputation for himself as a hotheaded republican and an ardent supporter of Willy Mackenzie's oft-stated view that only by annexing itself to the United States could Upper Canada ever be free and prosperous. His wife was reputed to be much younger than he, a child bride brought back like a trophy on his saddle from Buffalo, where he used to go on a monthly bender to the stews and dives of that pseudo-egalitarian Gomorrah.

When Marc arrived, Azel Stebbins was walking towards his barn with a bit and bridle in one hand. When he saw the ensign ride up and dismount, he stopped, took him in with a searching stare, then grinned and shot his hand out to the visitor.

“Hello, there,” he boomed from a barrel chest. “I'm Azel Stebbins.”

“Good day to you, sir. I am—”

“Ensign Marc Edwards, come to have a gander at the tons of wheat I got lyin' surplus all over the farm.” His laugh invited Marc to join in on the joke.

As Marc smiled, he did a quick appraisal of the man he expected to be his prime suspect. Stebbins looked like a quintessential Yankee: tall and ruggedly handsome with blue eyes and hair the colour of bleached hay, big-boned and muscular (features even his coat and leggings couldn't hide), and sporting a hair-trigger grin offset by a calculating tilt of brow and chin, from which drooped a blondish goatee.

“The quartermaster at York has been authorized to
purchase extra supplies in the coming months, grains and pork in particular,” Marc said, glancing towards the barn and the coop, smokehouse, and corncrib behind it.