Turncoat (9 page)

“He said—rather mysteriously, I thought—that he was through with all that frivolousness. I know he'd missed a few meetings of late, and he seemed to be growin' a bit weary of their whist games and political chatter, but I was still surprised when he suggested that we plan our own celebration. Anyway, he sent the servant back with a polite refusal, and we started to get ready for some mulled wine and a few treats Father'd brought us from Cobourg.”

“Did he seem upset or agitated?”

“No. I could see he was sad, of course, as I was, but we were both tryin' very hard not to be. Mary Huggan and her sisters were due to come over at seven. Father'd even hauled his violin out of the trunk.”

“What happened, then, to call him so suddenly away from all this?”

“I can't say for sure. Just before seven, he went out to check on the animals for the night.”

“A regular routine?”

“Yes. Once in a blue moon Elijah gets into the liquor and so Father always checked the barn with him, or on his own, before comin' in for the evenin'.”

“As he did that night.”

“I can only assume so. Father was gone a little longer than usual, I think, but the girls had arrived at the front door gigglin' and carryin' on, so I can't say for sure. But when he did come in, he was a changed man.”

“Describe him, please, as precisely as you can.”

“As I told the magistrate, he was excited. Not pretendin' to be happy as he'd been before. ‘I've got to go out, Beth, dear,' he said. ‘Just for half an hour or so.' When I looked amazed, he smiled and told me there was nothin' to worry about …”

Despising himself, and beginning to feel more than a little resentment at the predicament in which Sir John had so cavalierly placed him, Marc forced himself to ask, “Did he have a note or letter or paper of any kind in his hand or on his person?”

“No. But he said he'd gotten a message, an important one that could change all our lives for the better.”

“Those were his exact words?”

“Yes,” she said. “I've been unable to forget them.”

Marc pressed on lest his nerve fail him utterly. “But you saw no letter, and he never said or hinted who had sent this message to him?”

“I told the inquest that I heard what could've been paper rustlin'
inside his coat. But he'd been doin' the year-end accounts earlier in the day and so there was nothing surprising about that.”

“The surgeon says no papers of any kind were found on him.”

“I know. I could've been wrong. I was so shocked to hear him say he was headin' out into that awful weather and just abandonin' his guests, I wasn't thinkin' too straight.” She sipped at her tea, found it unconsoling, and said, “But he seemed genuinely excited. Happy, even. I heard him ride out on Belgium twenty minutes later.”

“If there was a note, with instructions about a rendezvous and some bait to lure him to Bass Cove, could anyone else here have read it?”

Beth Smallman peered up at Marc with a look of puzzlement, pity, and the beginnings of anger. “I'm pleased you are takin' such an interest in Father, and I would like some questions about that night to have better answers, but my husband's father was an honest and well-loved gentleman. If somebody deliberately killed him, then you'll have to come up with something less fanciful than notions about secret notes and mysterious footprints in the snow. You've got to hate or fear somebody with a passion before you can kill them. If there was a note, I was the only person here that night capable of readin' it. Unless you suspect Emma Durfee.”

Marc got up and made a stiff bow. Beth's features softened, and in other circumstances he was confident she
would have smiled. “I have inconvenienced you long enough and imposed unconscionably on your hospitality,” he said, wrestling his way into his greatcoat.

Beth took an elbow and helped him complete the task.

At the door she said, “You will let me know what you find?”

“I can do no less, ma'am.”

“Call me Beth, please.”

He touched the peak of his cap and left.

M
ARC WAS GRATEFUL FOR THE SLOW
walk back to the mill, one that didn't include a further encounter with the misanthropic Elijah. He needed a few quiet moments to mull over what he had learned before rehashing it with Erastus Hatch.

He was convinced that a note had been delivered. Joshua's decision to leave the house had been made sometime in the half hour or so in which he was checking out the barn. Most likely as he was returning to the house, someone gave it to him—a servant or stableboy on foot or someone who had ridden in from farther afield specifically for the purpose. The need for detailed directions and some elaborate “hook” strongly suggested written instructions, but a personally delivered oral message, though riskier, was not out of the question.

At some point he realized he was going to have to interrogate Elijah about when he had left for the Child estate
and whether he had seen his master beforehand. But deep down he was certain that, until some motive became clear, little beyond informed speculation was possible. Nevertheless, he was still in possession of a salient fact known only to him: Joshua Smallman was an informer for Sir John. No one in the region, not even a friend like Hatch, was aware of this. But had someone discovered or guessed at the truth? Some rabid annexationist or firebrand among the apostles of the rabble-rousing Mackenzie? Even so, the area was thick with Tories and loyalists, any one of whom could be (and likely was) viewed as a spy with a direct link to the powerful Family Compact in Toronto or the government itself. You'd have to arrange for the deaths of a lot of locals to assuage that particular fever, Marc thought. At the moment, the most plausible premise was that Smallman had discovered some critical information, the revelation of which presented a real danger to a particular individual or cause. Such information may have been revealed already (Sir John would not be above withholding “politically sensitive” material from his investigating officer), prompting a revenge killing.

It was far too early to tell anyone what he knew about Joshua's relationship with Sir John. That he must, at some time, tell Beth Smallman that particular news filled him with dread: she obviously worshipped the father-in-law who in less than a year had become “Father.” Any suggestion that he might have been leading a secret life and had perhaps used her political activities to gather information on her
associates might prove devastating. Then again, Beth Smallman did not appear to be a woman easily devastated.

AT THE MILL
, T
HOMAS
G
OODALL INFORMED
Marc that Constable Hatch had been summoned to Durfee's inn to settle a dispute between two patrons over a bar debt. At the house he found no one in the parlour or dining area. Hearing voices from the summer kitchen, he walked down the hall and peered through the barely opened door.

Mary Huggan and Winnifred Hatch were bent over a washboard, their faces as steamed as a Christmas pudding. Winnifred's attire was more serviceable than it had been yesterday, a shirtwaist and voluminous skirt, but still she looked more like a lady-in-waiting who has discovered she must do her own laundry and has decided simply to get down to it without complaint. On a clothes horse set up beside an iron stove throbbing with heat, Marc saw the linens and stockings he had abandoned on his bed—now scrubbed white. Just beyond it, where a curtain had been pulled back and fastened, he noticed that the quilts on what had to be Thomas Goodall's bed were rumpled from recent sleep and other nocturnal activity.

Edging backwards, Marc eased the door shut.

The evening being clear, cold, and still, Marc and Erastus Hatch decided to walk the quarter mile to Deer Park, the estate of Magistrate Philander Child. They could have taken the route south along the Miller Sideroad to the highway, then east past Durfee's inn and Dr. Barnaby's house to the stone gates Marc had observed from horseback the previous day. However, since no snow had fallen to blur the “gossip trail,” as Hatch called it, they ambled along its meandering, well-travelled way through a pleasant winter wood, most of which, Marc learned, was the property of the wealthiest man in the township. As they walked, and
between puffs on their pipes, they found ample opportunity to exchange the news of the day.

Marc summarized his interview with Beth Smallman, omitting only his subsequent speculations. Then he recounted his successful subterfuge of the afternoon when, to establish his cover story, he had ridden east along the second concession to the farm of Jonas Robertson, a loyal Tory whose grandfather had once represented a rotten borough in Shropshire before the family's fortunes had declined. Ensign Edwards had gone through the motions of examining the surplus bags of the finest maize in the county and confirming their producer's own assessment. During this exchange of mutually flattering pleasantries (even now, Marc marvelled at his guile and the ease with which he had been able to prevaricate), Robertson had disembowelled the reputations of several “republican” farmers along the Farley Sideroad, whose seditious behaviours apparently threatened the political stability of the province and even the health of the local grains. Marc had begun to realize why Sir John had placed so much trust in level-headed men of goodwill like Joshua Smallman. Could such qualities, as valuable as they were rare, provide motive for murder in and of themselves?

Hatch had spent the afternoon in Cobourg, where he had given Sheriff MacLachlan the names and description of the Yankee peddlers. As agreed beforehand, he had mentioned Marc's presence without revealing the real purpose of his visit, as, after all, the sheriff had supported the magistrate's
finding of death by misadventure. Hatch told Marc that no one had admitted seeing the Irishmen since the autumn. Hatch himself, on his way home, had stopped at several of the taverns that Connors was known to frequent on his sojourns in the district and had learned nothing of importance.

“I think it's safe to say that your assumption about Connors and O'Hurley hightailing it across the nearest ice to the home state was the right one,” Hatch said as they swung a little to the south towards several columns of smoke visible above the treetops. Marc had raised a chuckle earlier when he'd described the pot-rattling donkey skittering up the Kingston Road towards Toronto. “That pair of weasels won't linger a minute longer on the King's ground than they have to,” Hatch continued. “The roll of banknotes, though—that may be of real interest to Sir John or his successor. I don't like the smell of foreign money.”

“At the moment I consider it merely a distraction,” Marc said. “It's hard to make any connection between a couple of scoundrels like that and Smallman's misadventure.”

When Marc finally felt constrained to mention his standoff with Elijah, Hatch found the episode more amusing than suspicious.

“Don't worry,” he said, “you won't have to put the screws to him. I questioned him very carefully myself, and MacLachlan had a run at him as well. After a lot of coaxing and a little threatening, he admitted that he had not been with
his employer to do the rounds that evening, nor had he seen him since supper at six, because right after he'd eaten he'd beetled off to raise a glass with Ruby Marsden, the squire's cook. Ruby backs him up. And, of course, everybody in the township knows the old codger slips up there every chance he can get. Why do you think this path is so easy on the feet?”

“So Smallman was out of the house and alone for at least half an hour before he came back in with the news that he had been called out, as it were?”

“I'm afraid so, with no way for anyone to find out who he might've seen or talked to.”

“None of the guests coming to the New Year's gathering saw or heard anything?”

“We questioned them all before the inquest. Nothing. And Emma Durfee didn't arrive until well after he'd ridden off.”

“Well, we know for certain he got a message from someone,” Marc said, with an effort to hide his disappointment.

Hatch stopped. He placed an avuncular hand on Marc's shoulder. “You have to remember, lad, we've only got Beth's word on that.”

M
ARC HAD SEEN NOTHING IN UPPER
Canada to match the opulence of Deer Park—not at Government House, nor even in his illicit glimpses, from anterooms and vestibules,
of Family Compact residences in Toronto like Beverley House, Osgoode Hall, or the Grange. Dozens of trees had been hacked down to allow those entering the estate by carriage to appreciate the Georgian proportions and Italianate façade of the manor house itself. Even now, in midwinter, the terraced gardens and housebroken shrubberies undulated elegantly beneath the snowdrifts. In the foyer, lit by an ornate candelabrum, Marc thought, for a sinking moment, that he was back in the entrance hall of Hartfield Downs in Kent, or that he had merely dreamed his secondment to North America and was just now waking up. When a pretty parlour maid took his hat and curtsied, another, more stabbing memory intruded. He quickly suppressed it.