Unholy Alliance (17 page)

“How could I? I was asleep by ten-fifteen. I
am a sound sleeper.”

“You had no cause to leave your room in the
night? To visit the water-closet, for example?”

“Or commit a murder? And if I did so, I
certainly wouldn’t confess the crime to you, would I?”

“I repeat, sir, that you are not a suspect,”
Marc lied. “I am asking you the question because I’ve been told
someone on your floor did leave his room around midnight. That
person may have seen or heard something he didn’t consider
important at the time but in hindsight might be critical to this
investigation.”

“I fell asleep. Period.” Tremblay set his
chin on his chest and dared Marc to continue.

“I do have one final query. Did you bring any
wine or spirits with you or see such anywhere in the house that did
not come from Macaulay’s cellar?”

Almost resigned to these apparent
non-sequiturs, Tremblay sighed: “No and no.”

Marc smiled and sat back. “You are not happy
with the accord we are going to ratify later today, are you?”

“Why should I be?” Tremblay snapped. “But I’m
not foolish enough to poison my host’s butler just to throw a
spanner into the works. If this is an example of your prowess as an
investigator of crimes, we have no hope of catching the actual
killer.”

“I was asking merely because I heard you were
planning to stand for the new parliament – as a Nationalist, as a
Rouge.
”

Tremblay looked daggers at Marc, but did not
reply.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Marc said,
and turned his back to the man.

***

Louis LaFontaine was in every way a contrast to his
young colleague. He was mannerly, cooperative, appreciative of the
delicate situation Marc had been put in, and acutely aware of the
importance of the investigation. He asked after Beth’s health, and
sat with perfect calm as Marc took him through the sequence of key
questions he had asked the others. LaFontaine answered promptly but
always without elaboration. He was a man who husbanded his words
and kept his feelings intensely private.

When asked about the bathroom and the
laudanum removed from it, he said, “I did not use our host’s bath,
though I was tempted to. The room appeared to be unoccupied when I
passed it on my way upstairs shortly before ten.”

Marc mentioned the sherry and his desire to
know where it might have originated. “Hincks wrote me that Macaulay
had an excellent cellar,” LaFontaine said, “so, as far as I know,
none of us brought along anything to drink.”

“I’ve been told that someone was heard
leaving their bedchamber upstairs about midnight. Did you happen to
hear anyone in the hall at that time – while you were working on
the French draft of our agreement, perhaps?”

LaFontaine’s lips moved in the slight flinch
that stood for a smile among his few gestures. “Not unless I was
listening to myself.”

It was Marc’s turn to flinch. “Are you saying
it was you, sir, who walked down the hall towards the stairs at
midnight?”

“It was. And I walked
down
the stairs
and made my way through the shadows towards the parlour, where I
wished to observe the fully risen moon shine upon the snow outside
the French doors.”

Marc’s heart skipped a beat. At last, a
possible witness to what happened in the little office next to the
parlour. Perhaps LaFontaine had seen the light in there or even
noticed who the mysterious visitor might have been.

“Was Graves Chilton in his office, sir, when
you approached the parlour?”

“Of course he was. He hailed me like a long
lost friend, and invited me in for a chat and a drink. Naturally I
accepted.”

Marc’s heart damn near stopped.

LaFontaine leaned across the table towards Marc with
a look of concern on his face. “It was just a drink and a brief
exchange of pleasantries, with execrable English on my part – no
more than ten minutes in all.” Then he added wryly, “I did not
poison the fellow.”

Marc was abashed, at his extreme reaction and
at the traitorous thought that had prompted it. He recovered as
best he could, grateful again for LaFontaine’s unshakeable aplomb.
“Would you mind telling me, sir,” he said at last, “precisely what
occurred?”

“Certainly. Mr. Chilton was in the doorway of
his bureau, having heard me shuffling down the dark hallway, and he
begged me to join him in a celebratory drink. I asked him what he
was celebrating, and he said the conclusion of his first week at
Elmgrove and his success in his new position. I thought, why not? I
was too excited to sleep, and I too had something to
celebrate.”

Marc was pleased to hear that this man, who
might well lead their unified party to future glories and who
seemed so aloof at times, could be too excited to sleep. “So you
entered the office?” he prompted.

“I did. Mr. Chilton waved me to a chair
opposite him. On the desk lay a silver flask, and I realized, too
late, that the fellow had been celebrating from it for some time.
Near it sat an uncorked bottle of sherry.”

“Were there any glasses?”

“No. I was afraid he was going to bid me
share his flask, but he smiled and asked me to drink a toast with
the sherry. It was, he said, a gift, and he did not wish to open it
and drink alone. Relieved, I acquiesced, and he immediately excused
himself and returned a minute later with two small crystal
goblets.”

“From the dining-room,” Marc suggested. “Did
he happen to say who gave him the gift?”

“No. I assumed it was from his employer,
either Mr. Macaulay or his former one in England. But he never said
one way or the other.”

“So he uncorked the sherry and poured out two
glasses?”

“Yes. I took only a single finger in my
glass. He filled his to the brim. We toasted his success. I was
about to leave when he started to talk about the trials and
tribulations of being a butler, and it was then I realized it was
not my poor grasp of rapidly spoken English but his inebriation
that was causing my failure to understand what he was going on
about. Very politely I disengaged, and as I was leaving, I pleaded
with him not to drink any more, but to go straight to bed.”

“And you did not notice anything odd about
the sherry?”

LaFontaine smiled. “I take it that I should
have, as it was probably laced with laudanum?”

“It might have been, though someone else
could have joined Chilton after you left, and doctored it
surreptitiously. That’s why I’m asking.”

LaFontaine paused to think about the matter.
“To be honest, whenever I drink sherry, it’s invariably sweet, so I
have no reference point for dry sherry like Amontillado. But, yes,
it definitely seemed ‘off’ in some way. I recall making a face at
the time, but I did not wish to be discourteous by suggesting his
valued gift might be tainted. And I did go back to my room and fall
into the deepest sleep I’ve had since leaving Montreal.”

“I’m grateful that you didn’t consume any
more than a thimbleful, sir. It sounds very much like the sherry
was doctored before it was given to the butler – the cork being
removed and then replaced after the drug was poured in.”

“I see. So you will be looking for the person
who gave Mr. Chilton the sherry?”

“It would seem so,” Marc said, then
remembered to ask, “By the way, were there indications that Chilton
had been working at his accounts?”

“There was a big ledger on the desk, but it
wasn’t open, and I didn’t notice any pens lying about loose. I’d
have to say that he had either finished his work or had got
drinking and never begun.”

“Well, sir, I do wish to thank you. You’ve
been
very
helpful.”

“I just wish the fellow had taken my
advice.”

Marc got up, and the two men shook hands.

“I look forward to our session with Robert
later today,” LaFontaine said.

So did Marc, though he was painfully aware
that it might be an abortive meeting if he and Cobb could not
locate the cold-blooded murderer amongst them.

As soon as LaFontaine left, Marc began the
laborious but necessary process of making detailed notes on each
interview, including the content and his own thoughts about its
pertinence to the case. Cobb would do the same, and they would not
only compare notes in a subsequent, freewheeling discussion but
take time alone to peruse each other’s written comments. It was a
procedure that had paid dividends in their past investigations, and
he hoped it would do so in this one.

Regarding the laudanum: he knew now that it
had been safely on the bathroom shelf at nine-thirty or so when
Bergeron completed his bath. It may have been there when Tremblay
took his bath a few minutes later or, indeed, Tremblay himself may
have taken it with him. If not, then anyone, guest or servant,
could have slipped across the rotunda to the unlocked bathroom
after the house had settled into sleep at ten o’clock, and spirited
it away. To do what? Doctor a bottle of sherry. That doctored
bottle was on Chilton’s desk at midnight when LaFontaine drank a
toast from it. So, sometime between, say, ten-fifteen and midnight,
the killer slipped out of one or another of the north wings, padded
up the hall to Chilton’s office, and offered him a deadly gift. In
theory any of the guests could have brought the Amontillado with
him in his luggage and kept it out of sight. While the servants
would not normally be in possession of such a treasure, if they had
a motive to kill Chilton, they could have obtained it or, more
likely, have already had it squirreled away for some rainy-day
celebration. Marc knew from his youth on his uncle’s estate in
England that servants had access to wine and spirits, not only from
their master’s stores but from those of neighbouring houses where
they were often loaned out. Also, he had to remember that the
sherry could still have been doctored
after
LaFontaine’s
visit, though that possibility was now remote.

The thought that LaFontaine’s account seemed
to point suspicion towards one of the distinguished guests was
disquieting, to say the least. He hoped Cobb would be able to come
up with a viable suspect or two downstairs. Meanwhile, he needed to
think about Tremblay. The fellow had had opportunity and means to
steal the laudanum and present Chilton with the poisoned sherry
sometime before midnight. And he also had a motive: to bring the
negotiations he feared to a grinding halt.

There was still the puzzling business of the
ledger and the three pages ripped out and missing. Did Tremblay
possibly conclude that the newly arrived Chilton was a spy for the
English Tories or the Governor? Did he rip out and destroy
something on those pages that he thought might be exposed,
something that would jeopardize his standing back home, where he
had ambitious plans to run for parliament?

Marc stopped thinking. At some point it
became counter-productive. He would wait for Cobb, who could
navigate nimbly among the wiles and dodges of the
servant-class.

***

Cobb knew that if you wished to find the servant who
would know just about everything that was going on below the salt,
so to speak, and was the
de facto
governor of the house, you
sought out the cook. That was his thought as he descended the four
steps towards the kitchen of Elmgrove. But when he entered it, he
was disappointed, and surprised, to find the big L-shaped room
occupied by a single soul – a painfully thin, plain young woman.
She was standing beside a hefty wooden table, like a butcher’s
block, slicing thick pieces of cold ham and licking her fingers
whenever the opportunity arose. At Cobb’s entrance she jumped
backwards and dropped her knife. Her large eyes were filled with
fear, and her shrivelled chin quivered.

“We ain’t done nothin’ wrong down here,
constable!” she cried in a spare, high-pitched voice.

“I’m sure you haven’t, miss,” Cobb said,
smiling. He had left his helmet upstairs and with his coat
unbuttoned and his tie askew, he felt he would be presenting a
casual, even friendly, face to those he planned to grill. “I just
need to talk to you an’ yer fellow servants about last night. In
fact, I was hopin’ to start with Mrs. Blodgett.”

“Well, I ain’t her, constable. I’m Hetty, one
of her helpers,” Hetty Janes said, keeping the table between her
and Cobb.

“Glad ta meet ya, Hetty. I’m Cobb.” He bent
over, picked up the knife and laid it beside the plate of sliced
ham. “Now if you’ll be kind enough to tell Mrs. Blodgett I’m here
an’ would like to – ”

“She can’t talk to ya,” Hetty said, still
quivering but showing signs of pluck. “She can’t talk to
nobody.”

“Is she not in, then?”

“She’s in her bed, back there in her rooms.
Got her arthritis somethin’ awful. Tillie, that’s my sister, she’s
in there nursin’ her.”

“How long has she been under the
weather?”

“Took to her bed about nine o’clock last
night, right after the supper meal. Worn out, she was, from cookin’
fer half a dozen swells who don’t even speak the King’s English!
Ain’t her fault she’s been laid low!”

“I don’t suppose it is,” Cobb said
sympathetically. “An’ she’s been in bed since then?”

“Didn’t wake up till eight o’clock, if ya c’n
believe it! Tillie had to tell her about the dreadful thing that
happened upstairs, of course, which upset her all over again.
Still, she done her duty an’ give Tillie an’ me our instructions
about gettin’ food ready fer Mr. Macaulay an’ the swells.” This
series of complaints seemed to have a calming effect on Hetty’s
fears. She had backed up against a sink on the far wall, and was
now comfortable enough to sit awkwardly on its rim. “But she’s gone
back to sleep again, an’ we ain’t supposed to disturb her.”

“Well, lass, I’ll just wait till later in the
day to talk to her. Meantime I can start with the others. I been
told there’s Mr. Bragg, Miss Finch, yer Tillie, an’ yerself who
make up the Elmgrove staff.”