Authors: Don Gutteridge
Vital Secrets
OTHER MARC EDWARDS MYSTERIES BY DON GUTTERIDGE
Turncoat
Solemn Vows
Touchstone
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2007, 2011 by Don Gutteridge
Originally published in 2007 in Canada by Trinity Enterprise Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
This Touchstone export edition July 2011
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ISBN 978-1-4391-6371-9
ISBN 978-1-4391-7268-1 (ebook)
For George Martell, with thanks
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my agent, Beverley Slopen, for her constant support and wise counsel. Thanks, too, to my editor for this edition, Jan Walter. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Alison Clarke and Kevin Hanson of Simon & Schuster for their unflagging confidence in the Marc Edwards mysteries.
Vital Secrets
is wholly a work of fiction, but I have endeavoured to convey in it the spirit of the period and the political tensions that led to the Rebellion of 1837. Actions and characterizations attributed to actual historical personages, like Sir Francis Bond Head and William Lyon Mackenzie, are fictitious. All other characters are the invention of the author, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
There were theatres, amateur acting groups, and touring companies from New York and elsewhere in Upper Canada during the late 1820s and throughout the 1830s. While details are sketchy, the first permanent playhouse is reputed to have been the Theatre Royale, located on the upper floor of Frank's Hotel in Toronto. The Regency Theatre described herein is a much more elaborate one than actually existedâthough establishments like it were flourishing by the 1840sâand my Mr. Frank is fictitious. For details see Murray D. Edwards,
A Stage in Our Past
. Information on the theatres in New York City during the period may be found in Mary C. Henderson's
The
City and the Theatre: New York Playhouses from Bowling Green to Times Square.
Finally, by 1835 the new city of Toronto boasted the first municipal police force in North America, a five-man constabulary headed by a chief constable and modelled on the London “peelers.”
I
t is March 1837, and Upper Canada is as restive as ever. There had been high hopes when Lieutenant-Governor Sir Francis Bond Head engineered victory for the Tories in the election of June 1836. It was expected that a period of stability would be ushered in, and that the many grievances of the farmers and their representatives in the Reform Party would soon be addressed. It was not to be. Head proceeded to enact repressive legislation and thwart the efforts of the Reformers in the Legislature. Drought had gripped the province, and the banks, safe in the hands of the Family Compact, refused to grant credit. Moreover, the clergy-reserves question still rankled. One-seventh of all the usable land was set aside for the established Anglican Church and was being held uncleared
until land prices improved. More grating was the deadlock in the provincial parliament, where the unelected legislative councillors vetoed legislation put forward by the elected Reformers that might favour the suffering population.
As a result of Head's machinations, unrest had become increasingly widespread. A more radical wing of the Reform Party evolved under the strident direction of newspaper editor and politician William Lyon Mackenzie, who had lost his parliamentary seat in the 1836 election. Secret meetings and rallies took place throughout the countryside, and rumours of impending civil strife and the smuggling of arms from the United States were rampant. In a few months a new queen, Victoria, would be crowned, but she would bring no peace to the troubled colony.
MARCH 1837
ONE
F
or the second time since his arrival in the New World, Lieutenant Marc Edwards was setting out on a winter expedition to Cobourg and, this time, to places eastward to Kingston. On this occasion he was not alone, for at his side, cantering contentedly on a sleek, bay gelding and puffing coils of pipe-smoke into the air along with his frozen breath, was Major Owen Jenkin, quartermaster of His Majesty's 24th Regiment of Foot. The newly risen sun floated above the horizon-line of the forest ahead of them like a disk of burnished brass, as the duo swung up the long curve of King Street towards Scaddings Bridge and the Kingston Road. Behind them, the capital city of the province lay rumpled and quiescent in its coverlet of snow.
“By Christ, but it's good to be on the road again, eh, Marc?” Jenkin said without taking his teeth off the stem of his pipe.
And it was. Ever since he had resigned his post at Government Houseâon a matter of principleâand returned to the spartan barracks at Fort York after his second investigation, Marc had suffered the boredom of peacetime military routine. He didn't regret his decision, but he had jumped at the chance to go foraging with Owen Jenkin.
“It was kind of you to invite me along, sir. I'm sure you could have managed quite well without me.”
Jenkin emitted a rumbling sort of laugh, one that began in his substantial belly and rose up through the smoky realms of his throat till it met the clamped jaws and had to wheeze its way past. The older man had the face of a fallen cherub, with rubicund cheeks so bulging they pinched against his thick eyebrows and made the dancing orbs of his eyes all the more prominent for having to operate in such a confined sphere. The lips, had they been visible beneath the flourishing and unfashionably grizzled beard, would have shown themselves fleshy and sensuous. Evidently the quartermaster was a man who had feasted upon the fruits of life and found them satisfactory.
“Since you've had the impertinence to question why I brought you along, lad, I'll tell you. I'm told that when you came this way last winter on special assignment for the former governor, you passed yourself off as an agent for the
quartermaster searching out reliable suppliers of pork and grain.”
