Governing Passion Page 11

  “But I’m trying to find out who really did it,” Marc said. “I’ve talked to Jacques LeMieux and I believe him when he says he is innocent.”

  “I see. Then I hope you’re successful, because to the French people in town – and there are a lot of them in the capital for the work that’s going on everywhere – it will look like a case of racial bias.”

  “That’s why LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin have put me on the case. They are in the middle of negotiations with possible supporters of our cause and any racial conflict locally will not make them any easier.”

  “Well, Michel and Denis are nice boys. You can safely look elsewhere.”

  Marc stood up. “Thank you for your frankness, ma’am. I’ll convey your thoughts on the union to Mr. LaFontaine.”

  Marc said goodbye at the door and left. While he sincerely hoped that Michel Jardin did not kill Dunham, he still could not rule him out. Even his brother Denis was a possibility, though only Jardin, Manson and Leroy knew that Dunham was going to be on guard duty that night. Unless, of course, Michel mentioned it to Denis. Marc turned back and surprised Madame Poulin at the door.

  “Sorry to bother you again, Madame, but I forgot to ask about Denis Jardin. Was he here last night?”

  “He was here all evening with my son and me, playing cards. I saw him off to bed.”

  Marc thanked her again and left, quite satisfied with his visit.

  ***

  Gregory Manson’s boarding-house was only a block from the Clarendon Hotel, on Queen Street, so Marc returned the horse and cutter to the livery stable and walked to the place, a one-storey clapboard cottage. He was shown in by the landlady, a Mrs. Brownwell, who was as thin as a stork with a nose that would have made that bird proud.

  “I’ve come to ask you about the whereabouts of Mr. Manson last night,” Marc said when they were seated in a small, comfortable-looking parlour.

  “This is about the murder?” she shuddered. “I just heard about it a little while ago. Horrible business. A body ain’t safe on the streets no more.”

  “I think the streets are safe, ma’am. The murder took place way out at the hospital, which is being turned into Parliament.”

  “Yes, ain’t it excitin’ that Kingston is to be the new capital. We’re plannin’ on buildin’ a splendid city hall, and there’s ever so much construction goin’ on everywhere. The only sad thing is that there are so many Frenchies comin’ in here to work on the projects. After what they did in the rebellion, they should all be in prison.”

  Marc winced, though this was a common enough sentiment among many Upper Canadians. While Louis was concerned with being seen to traffic with the enemy, Robert and the Reformers had a similar problem with many of the people who would normally support them. But an alliance was the only way forward, if a dangerous one.

  “I’d like to know if you heard Mr. Manson come in last night shortly after midnight?”

  “Oh, gracious no. I was sound asleep. He let himself in, but he told me at breakfast it was about twelve-thirty.”

  If true, Marc thought, that would give him just time to walk home from Bernie’s. But there was no corroboration, so Manson did not really have an alibi. He could have gone straight to the site and struck Dunham, out of jealousy at not being made foreman. With Dunham dead, as he now was, Manson had got the job, at least temporarily.

  Marc thanked Mrs. Brownwell. At the door she said, “I’d look to them Frenchies if I was you.”

  ***

  As Mrs. Brownwell had suggested, Kingston was a boom town. There was construction everywhere as residences for the eighty-four members of the Legislative Assembly and the other councillors and cabinet members had to be built from scratch. Many of the limestone warehouses were being converted into hotels and boarding places comfortable enough for gentlemen, and in some cases, their ladies. New businesses to serve such an elite clientele were springing up daily. All of this at Toronto’s expense, which added spice to the enterprise.

  Marvin Leroy’s boarding-house was just another block away on Queen Street. There Marc found the landlord, James Muir, at home but not very helpful. He had been away from home last night, and his wife, who had been there, had just now gone off for a visit to her sister and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow at the earliest. Marc said he would call back.

  He wasn’t overly concerned because, of the three co-workers, only Leroy did not have a strong personal motive for murder. He may not have liked Dunham, but he hadn’t been singled out like the Quebecers and didn’t fancy the foreman’s job. But Marc would come back and check all the same. He was positive one of the three was the killer. He just had to find a way to discover which one.

  ***

  First thing in the morning Marc drove out to the building site. He wanted to confront Manson and Leroy about their mutual lie. Bert Campion, the architect, met him at the doorway to the Legislative Council chamber. The workmen were up on the scaffolding.

  “I’d like to talk to Manson and Leroy,” Mark said.

  “I’ll fetch Manson down for you,” Campion said, moving into the room under reconstruction. “But first I’ve got something to show you.”

  He held out his hand, opened it palm up, and revealed a tin button.

  “What’s this?” Marc said, curious but puzzled.

  “I found this after you left yesterday, over there near where the body was.”

  Marc cursed himself silently for having missed it himself when he had examined the crime scene. “Is it important?” he said.

  “Yes, I believe so. You see, we haven’t been working on that side of the room so far, and so there’s no reason for a button – an overalls button – to have fallen off in that area.”

  “I see. You think it might have been ripped off, perhaps by Dunham himself?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Any idea whose it might be?”

  “Yes, I do. I noticed that Gregory Manson had the bib of his overalls tied up with a piece of string. I asked him if he had lost a button. And he had to say yes, didn’t he?”

  ”Well, then, I’d better speak to him first, eh?”

  “I’ll get him.”

  Campion called to Manson to come down from the scaffolding. Manson obeyed, and gave Marc a sharp look.

  “Mr. Edwards wishes to talk to you again, Manson. I want you to cooperate fully.”

  Manson muttered agreement, and Marc took him to one side.

  “You and Marvin Leroy did not walk home from Bernie’s on the night of the murder, did you?”

  “Of course we did. We always did.”

  “Perhaps. But not that night. Leroy stayed to finish his dice game, didn’t he?”

  Manson looked down. “He may have. It’s hard to remember because we’re in that dive every night practically.”

  “Bernie swears he did. And you, sir, did not go straight home, did you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mr. Campion found this button – your overalls button – over there near the body. It fell off of you when you confronted Earl Dunham sometime after midnight. Is that not so?”

  Manson looked down and then up, defiance on his face. “What if I did? That doesn’t mean I killed him, does it?”

  “What were you doing out here at that hour?”

  “All right, all right, I’ll tell you. I had one too many to drink at Bernie’s. I started to feel sorry for myself, not being made foreman. But I was angry at Dunham more because of the way he fired Denis Jardin. Denis, even though he was a Frenchie, was the best lath-man we had. We’re runnin’ way behind on this construction, and we need Denis. So I went out there. I knew Dunham would be on guard-duty, he was always suckin’ up to Campion. I went there to try and persuade him to rehire Denis.”

  “And you had a confrontation?”

  “I couldn’t make him see reason. We were over on the other side of the room, near the piles of laths where he was hidin’, and he just kept shoutin’ at me to mind my own business. Then he grab
bed me – that’s when the button must’ve popped off – and pushed me away. I stormed out.. I was mad as a hatter, but Dunham was certainly alive when I left him. Alive and cursin’ me.”

  “You didn’t, in your anger, pick up a hammer and strike him?”

  “I did not! Besides, there were no tools lyin’ about over there.”

  Dunham had been struck on the back of the head, according to the coroner’s report, whose contents had been summarized for Marc by the magistrate. That meant someone had sneaked up behind the victim and caught him unawares. Mason could hardly have raced over to where the tools were, picked up a hammer, and then raced back to strike Dunham on the back of the head. But, of course, he could have waited and returned later to do the job by stealth.

  “I’ll have to inform the magistrate of these findings,” Marc said. But the magistrate already had his man, Jacques LeMieux, who had a powerful motive, had been heard making a threat against the victim, who had no alibi, and whose tool had been the murder weapon. The best Marc could hope for would be to use Manson’s actions in court as pointing to an alternative scenario. “That’ll be all for now,” Marc said, dismissing Manson.

  Leroy quickly admitted he had not left the dive with Manson. “I was winnin’ too much at dice to leave.”

  “How long after did you leave Bernie’s?”

  “Could have been an hour. Have you checked with my landlady? She always hears me come in.”

  “She’s away at the moment. But I shall check, don’t worry.”

  “I went straight home from Bernie’s.”

  “But if you don’t know what time you left, what difference will her testimony make? You could have left after half an hour and had plenty of time to murder Dunham and get home, say, by one-thirty.”

  “But I didn’t. I went straight home.”

  Marc let Leroy go back to his work. Without a strong motive, it was hard to see that he – in a good mood after winning at dice – would have gone out to the site and committed murder. But he was still on the list, especially if his landlady didn’t hear him come in.

  Marc thanked Campion and drove back to Kingston, straight to the magistrate.

  ***

  In the foyer of the hotel Marc was met by Robert Baldwin, who looked excited.

  “What is it?” Marc said.

  “We’ve just received a letter from Henri Thériault, in response to Christopher Pettigrew’s letter. Come on into the meeting room. Everybody’s there.”

  Marc followed Robert into the nearby room, where, seated around the table were Hincks, LaFontaine, Gilles Gagnon and young Pettigrew.

  “You’re just in time, Marc,” Hincks said. “I’ve got a letter here. It’s in French, so why don’t you read and translate it for us?”

  Marc nodded to the others and sat down. There was an air of expectancy in the room, for the cohesion of LaFontaine’s nationalist group might well be tied up in this response. Certainly the fact that Thériault, isolated on his family’s farm in Chateauguay, had replied at all was a positive sign. Marc took the letter and read one sentence at a time, translating as he went.

  Dear Christopher:

  It was good to hear from you again after such a long absence, and to know that you are well and proposing to marry. May I offer my congratulations. I know also, from our conversations during the time I spent hiding out in your Montreal home almost four years ago, that you were a passionate believer in the Reform cause in your province. I have of course heard, and heard much, about your champion, Robert Baldwin, and I have been kept informed of the attempts by Louis LaFontaine to forge an alliance of the left with him. While I admire Mr. LaFontaine, I, like many of my contemporaries, are puzzled by his consistent denunciation of the terms of the union and his readiness to embrace the British parliamentary form of government. Was it not this very form of colonial rule that prompted even the English farmers of Upper Canada to take up arms?

  However, your patient and detailed explanation of Baldwin’s hopes for a responsible form of government wherein the executive would be beholden to the Assembly and the Assembly beholden to the electorate was intriguing, to say the least. However, interesting though the possibilities be, there is no more than a hope and a desire on the part of the Reformers that the governor will accede to their pressures, even if they become the dominant voice in the Assembly, representing both races.

  What you are asking me to do is to betray the trust that so many of my countrymen have placed in me over the past three and half years – to collaborate with those who have burnt our barns and destroyed our churches – on the faint hope of a political breakthrough in Kingston this Spring. Let me say that I am now convinced that responsible government could work in favour of both races, but am not sufficiently certain of its attainment to join LaFontaine’s alliance. Your eloquence has, however, convinced me that I should stay where I am and not respond to the overtures of John Neilson and his ultra-nationalists. For while there would be satisfaction personally for me to do so, I think an obstructionist and xenophobic approach at this point in our history is not the way forward.

  So I will sit tight, and do nothing but wish you and your Reformers the best of luck in pursuing your goals. Please feel free to write me again. I want to hear about your new bride and would like news of that twin sister of yours, of whom you spoke so often and so highly.

  Until then,

  I remain

  Your friend

  Henri Thériault

  “Well,” Robert said into the absolute silence, “you’ve caught his attention. I congratulate you, Christopher, and Marc here for composing a letter persuasive enough to elicit this response.”

  “At least we’ve convinced him there’s another route than Neilson’s ultra-nationalists,” Louis said.

  “We came so close, though,” Hincks said.

  “Is it worth writing him again?” Gilles Gagnon said.

  “I don’t know what we could add that we didn’t put in the first letter,” Marc said.

  “I could keep the next letter personal,” Pettigrew said. “He obviously remembers our time together and what I did for him.”

  “It’s worth the effort,” Robert said. “I suspect Neilson will keep sending agents to work on him. We need to keep reminding him, through Christopher, that we English are not all demons.”

  “I’d be happy to do that,” Pettigrew said. “He’s given me an opening with that last sentence, hasn’t he?”

  “Perhaps he’s wavering more than he’s letting on,” Louis said.

  “Why don’t you invite him to meet you?” Marc said, and was surprised at the sudden silence in the room.

  “I mean, Christopher could suggest that he’d like to meet on a personal basis, say, at a place somewhere neutral between here and Chateauguay,” Marc added.

  “Splendid idea,” Hincks enthused. “How about Cornwall?”

  “There’s a little inn just the other side of Cornwall,” Marc said. “They could arrange to meet there. If we get a letter off immediately, he should have it in two days. Christopher could suggest that he intends to be there on business anyway, and will simply wait to see if he shows up. They could be together, if all goes well, in four days.”

  “What have we got to lose?” Robert said.

  “As long as our friend can take this time away from his bride,” Louis said with a wry smile.

  “I’m sure she’ll understand,” Pettigrew said.

  “And we’ll send you along, Marc, to help with the persuasion. If Thériault objects, you can just step aside quietly.”

  “All right,” Marc said. “It was my idea, so I guess I really can’t say no, can I?”

  Marc and Christopher Pettigrew were instructed to go up to the young man’s room and begin drafting a second letter right away.

  Up in the room Pettigrew looked suddenly forlorn.

  “What’s the matter?” Marc said. “Don’t you want to leave your fiancée?”

  “It’s not that,” Pettigrew said. “Mar
tha would be very understanding about it.”

  “It’s not your sister again?”

  “I’m afraid so. I’ve had another disturbing letter. My attempt to reassure her she’s safe and loved apparently had little effect. Would you mind reading the letter and giving me some advice?”

  “I’d be glad to,” Marc said. He took the letter that Pettigrew picked up off his desk, and read:

  Dear Christopher:

  Once again you confess what, knowing you, I cannot accept as the truth. You are not the only one in the Reform party who can deal with this execrable Frenchman, and your including a pathetic screed from one of those you bow down before was a pathetic attempt to persuade me otherwise. Mr. Edwards writes well and passionately, but then he does not know anything essential about you or your bride to be. He does not know you have forsaken the one to whom you pledged your love and lasting devotion. What sort of witch must this Martha Todd be if she can beguile you so and woo you away from the troth you made to me, and the promises to remain at my side forever? It is all right for you on your own there in Kingston because you have your gentlemen friends and your inamorata. How could you allow such diversions to keep you away from Toronto and me, who waits as patient as Penelope for her soul-mate to return and make her well again?

  Yes, the headaches have come on as severe as they did when we were five years old and I was struck down, you’ll remember, like a tree felled by lightning, and you refused to leave the darkness of our room and my side even though the doctors insisted on it. Please know that because of your absence, I was semi-conscious for almost a day, moaning by myself in the dark of my bedroom, knowing you ought to be in the adjoining room preparing to offer me the only comfort against the pain.

  I want you back in Toronto. I need you desperately. I rant against that awful woman who keeps us apart and me miserable. If I were a witch I would curse her.

  Come home. And write me no more lies. They double the pain!

  Your twin sister,