Unholy Alliance (33 page)

So, at long last, they had a name for the man
whose body they had found stiffening in that cramped little office
at Elmdale.

“But Flett was in Cobourg,” Marc said, “and
Chilton was due at Elmdale as early as the next Tuesday.”

“That’s right. I hadn’t much time. I told
Harkness to leave his boarding-house, move in here, and await
further instructions. Then I rode to Cobourg and, late that
Saturday evening, I broached my bold scheme to Flett at my
brother’s house. I offered him a ridiculous sum of money, which he
accepted greedily, but it was really the potential for excitement
and danger that prompted him to join forces with me – that and the
fact that he’s been an ardent Tory and monarchist all his
life.”

“So yer brother was in on this, too?” Cobb
said.

Winthrop glowered at the constable. “No, no,
not at all,” he said to Marc. “You mustn’t involve Ethan. All he
knew was that I wished to borrow Flett for a few weeks, and was
happy to accommodate me.”

“So you persuaded Flett to pose as Chilton,”
Marc said, “but there was still the real butler to deal with.”

“Yes. I knew a lot about Bessie Jiggins. She
was infamous in Northumberland County and the subject of many
conversations between Ethan and me over the years. I also knew that
she was in desperate straits financially.”

“How could you know that?” Cobb snarled.

Still looking at Marc, Winthrop said, “I have
friends in the Bank of Upper Canada. Several weeks ago one of them
sent me a note indicating that Mrs. Jiggins had missed yet another
payment on her mortgage and that the bank was going to foreclose
and seize the property if the debt were not settled by the end of
February. My friend wanted to know if I would be interested in
purchasing the inn at a good price.”

It was Cobb’s turn to glare at Winthrop, but
before he could comment on such a flagrant violation of business
ethics, Marc said, “So you already had the letter you needed to
intimidate the woman into kidnapping a man she did not know and had
no quarrel with?”

“There was no intimidation. She had herself
been fearful of a foreclosure, and naturally jumped at the chance
to earn enough money to forestall the bank’s intentions. Nor was it
kidnapping. From Harkness, I knew that Macaulay had been warned
about Chilton’s weakness for drink and the fair sex. I mentioned
this as a possible means of her effecting a delay in his journey.
How she managed it was up to her.”

“That ain’t what she told me,” Cobb said,
intensifying his glare and letting the wart on his nose quiver
menacingly.

“We know much of the rest,” Marc said. “Her
assistant, Brutus Glatt, was sent into Cobourg on the Tuesday
evening to alert Flett that Chilton had been successfully ambushed.
Flett arrived the following evening and the switch of identities
was effected.”

Winthrop managed a grim smile. “Yes. The only
risk, once Chilton was out of the way, was that on the Thursday
morning when Flett got on the stage at Cobourg, there would be a
local passenger or two who might recognize him.”

“But he was feigning illness, wasn’t he?”
Marc said, “and had bundled himself up?”

“Just as we had planned it. He never spoke a
word between Cobourg and Elmdale. And, according to the note he
smuggled to me via Harkness, he arrived there with Chilton’s
baggage, Chilton’s clothes and Chilton’s papers. He was unknown in
Toronto, so there was no way anyone at Macaulay’s would not accept
him as the legitimate English butler, especially Macaulay, who is
notoriously feckless and trusting.”

“All that remained, then, was for you and
Flett to set up a means of transferring the purloined information
from the negotiations to this house?”

“Harkness knew exactly how to do that, and to
advise Flett on the best way to eavesdrop. Flett’s knowing French
was a bonus. His mother was born in Calais. I could have waited
until the meetings were over and had Flett simply do a bunk with
his accumulated notes, but I wanted progress reports. The business
might have gone on for days, and I was also hoping that something
might turn up to allow me to disrupt the negotiations themselves,
something dramatic that would further ingratiate me with the
powers-that-be here in Toronto.”

Marc leaned forward and said, “But I am
puzzled as to why a successful businessman like yourself would risk
going to prison for fraud and conspiracy to kidnap merely to
ingratiate himself with his Tory cronies? Or was it the nobler, if
misguided, notion that you were saving the province from
democracy?”

“But you don’t really understand, do you? I
have invested most of my fortune in the new order, as it were.
Using insider information, one of the benefits of being on the
fringe of the Family Compact, I have been purchasing a dozen
seemingly worthless properties along the main streets of Kingston.
Lately, as others have been trying the same moves, however, the
prices have been rising and I have had to mortgage my business here
and even this house to continue buying. I even borrowed heavily
from Ethan.”

“You knew for certain that Governor Poulett
Thomson had decided to make Kingston the capital of the united
provinces?”

“I did. Lord Sydenham, as he is soon to be
called, made that determination some time ago, though he has not
yet announced it publicly. But I wanted more than the wealth that
might accrue from my efforts in Kingston.” He gave Marc a solemn,
almost pitiable, look as he added, “I have contributed more than
enough to the life of Upper Canada to be named a member of the new
Legislative Council.”

Cobb snorted: “So you wanted to be filthy
rich and a lifetime member of the bigwigs’ private
pre-serve
to boot?”

“Walking these documents over to the Palace
would not have hurt your chances any, would it?” Marc said,
glancing at the charred pages Cobb had set beside him. “And as a
member of the appointed council for life, you could ensure your
Kingston properties would continue to be offered every
advantage?”

“The risks seemed justified – at the time,”
Winthrop said with obvious regret but, as yet, little remorse. “I’m
a childless widower,” he added as if that helped to explain his
folly.

“So, thus far, everything had gone according
to plan. By last Thursday evening you had three reports from
Elmdale, and you knew an agreement was imminent. Why on earth,
then, would you jeopardize all you’d gained by putting a lethal
dose of laudanum in a bottle of Amontillado from your stores and
having Harkness deliver it when he went back to the hay-barn at
five o’clock on Thursday afternoon? It makes no sense
whatsoever.”

“Flett turned out to be a worse blackguard
than Harkness,” Winthrop said bitterly. “When Harkness arrived here
about four o’clock with a summary of the morning session, there was
an extra note from Flett. He demanded double the amount of money I
had offered. I believe he had grown weary of the butler
business.”

Marc nodded. “I see. And you assumed this
would not be the last demand he would make?”

“I was certain of it. Even though I doubted
he would risk implicating himself, he knew I had a lot more to
lose. He could inform on me and scuttle off to the States or even
England. I couldn’t let the bastard blackmail me for the rest of my
life!”

“So you decided then and there to poison him
– knowing his fondness for drink?”

“Yes. And don’t let that weasel Harkness tell
you he wasn’t in on it. He stood right here and watched me empty
out several ounces of the sherry, pour in a vial of laudanum and
recork the bottle. He was more eager than I to do in the man he
assumed was Chilton and the usurper of his brother’s place.”

“So Harkness did think it was Chilton all
along?”

“There was no reason to let him in on the
scheme out at The Pine Knot. But even though the man had an offer
to be part of a horse-raising farm near Burford, and I agreed to
help him buy a stake in it, he was obsessed with his brother’s
death and his future role at Elmdale. Alfred had been the only
father he ever knew. He foolishly thought that somehow, with
Chilton out of the way, he himself would magically turn into
Elmdale’s butler. He took the sherry out there all right, and Flett
accepted it as his due.”

“But why kill the blackmailer
out
there
? With a scheme that might not work, with the potential to
harm others?” Marc said. “You’d have plenty of time and opportunity
to get rid of him later and with much less risk.”

“But there was a more compelling reason to do
it out there, and do it quickly. I wanted the negotiations to be
thrown into chaos. What surer way to do that than to have a servant
murdered under mysterious circumstances? There was, you see,
something else in that report of the Thursday-morning session.”

Even as Winthrop was speaking, Marc knew what
had precipitated the callous murder of Marcel Flett. “You read the
butler’s notation about the last item added to the coalition’s
platform, didn’t you?”

“I damn near fainted, right in front of
Harkness.”

“What’re ya talkin’ about?” Cobb said,
completely at sea.

“Daniel Bérubé, a merchant and businessman
like Mr. Winthrop here, asked that the unholy alliance go on record
as favouring the immediate removal of the capital from Kingston to
Montreal.”

“And if that happened,” Winthrop sighed, “I
would be a bankrupt, my Kingston properties devalued or worthless.
Even if I were made a Legislative Councillor, I might be helpless
to stop it. So, you see, the decision to do away with Flett was
easy. I would eliminate a blackmailer and bring the negotiations to
a halt.”

“You assumed that being treated as suspects
in a murder inquiry would be enough to destroy any sense of trust
between English and French, and send the Quebecers scurrying back
to the safety of their own bailiwick?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“But how’d you know the butler would guzzle
the sherry down on Thursday night?” Cobb said. He was intrigued by
the twisted intricacies of Winthrop’s scheming, but nothing rich
folks did ever really surprised him.

“That was the weakness of my plan, wasn’t it?
If Flett shared it with others, no-one would die, but they would
still be sick or befuddled, and the seeds of suspicion would be
sown. But then I’d have to deal with Flett afterwards, wouldn’t I?
Yet I was pretty certain he would keep the special sherry for
himself or use a bit of it to weaken the knees of the nearest maid
– his other character flaw, I’m afraid. He was a selfish, vain,
ambitious fellow, who would interpret my gift as a signal of my
acquiescence to his new demands. I couldn’t see him not celebrating
his fortune and success that very night.”

“But you weren’t sure, were you?” Marc said.
“Or else you wouldn’t have risked sending Harkness back out there
at five o’clock on Friday, Saturday and again today.”

“That bumbling idiot was supposed to leave
the hay-barn and find a way to discover what was going on in the
manor-house. Flett didn’t show up Friday or Saturday. Was he dead?
Was he merely disabled? Had the meetings broken up? I was near
frantic with not knowing. Nobody seemed to be leaving the place
until Saturday when Baldwin and Hincks were seen about town,
looking perfectly normal. None of the Frenchmen had left, at least
not by the back route they used to arrive there. I approached Angus
Withers on the street, but was unable to get anything from him
without giving myself away. On Saturday I
ordered
Harkness
to approach Struthers, a friend of his, and get some hard news,
anything to relieve my anxiety and let me get some sleep. But the
bastard cowered in the barn and refused to budge. This afternoon, I
told him to stay at Elmdale until he had the information I needed
or I would turn him into the police and put all the blame on him.
Surely he could slip up to one of the girls out gathering eggs or
feeding the hens or emptying the slop-buckets.”

“He never left his sanctuary,” Marc said. “He
mistook me for Chilton, and I had him red-handed. He seemed
genuinely astonished when I told him Chilton wasn’t Chilton and
that he’d been dead almost three days.”

“Serves him right,” Winthrop muttered.

“Even so,” Marc carried on, determined to get
the whole truth out while he had the chance, “you were still left
with the real butler, who was bound to show up sooner or later.
What if he had arrived in the middle of our negotiations? Would not
Flett have been exposed as an impostor, and would he not have
implicated you to save his own skin?”

“Flett was instructed to take to the woods
the second he spotted the real Chilton,” Winthrop replied, not
unimpressed, even now, with the care with which he had planned his
deception, despite its having gone wrong. “He was an expert on
snowshoes. He was to go to the trapper’s cabin, then make his way
back here.”

“But even if Chilton didn’t show up until
after you’d poisoned Flett, would there not then have been an
effort to determine who the poisoned man was? And surely your
brother would soon come to you wondering why his Mr. Flett had not
returned from your care?”

Winthrop put his head in his hands. “I
figured no-one would believe Chilton’s fantastic story . . . and
Mrs. Jiggins would never give herself away, would she? She didn’t
even know my name.” He glanced up at Cobb, who had cleared his
throat.

“So you figured,” Cobb said with some
satisfaction.

“And your brother?” Marc asked Winthrop.

“I – I intended to tell him about the spy
business and swear him to secrecy. He is after all a Tory loyalist,
and would applaud my effort to discredit and dismay the Reformers.
But no-one, certainly not my brother, would suspect me of killing
my own agent, would they? And that fool Harkness should have been
miles away in Burford by now!”