Bloody Relations Page 22
Marc assured his listeners that Norah Burgess’s confession would make no mention of the particular gentleman caller unfortunate enough to have been present at the scene, as it was not germane to the indictment. That is, Norah would have stabbed Sarah to death regardless of who lay asleep beside her: a scapegoat was a scapegoat. Everyone in the room knew that rumours would spread like the infectious disease they were, but that would happen anyway and the effect would be limited to those already inclined to believe the worst. The important point, for the Durhams and for the earl’s mission, was that it would be the madam’s confession that would fill the front pages of both the Tory and Reform press in the week ahead. A lurid double murder would override political opportunism every time.
When Marc had finished, Lady Durham said, “That poor girl.”
And her husband remarked, “That poor woman.”
• • •
LORD DURHAM WALKED MARC TOWARDS THE foyer. He declined the earl’s offer of a carriage ride home: a stroll in the tender air of a summer’s night would be sustenance for the soul.
“I’m still certain that there was a conspiracy against you,” Marc said, as they neared the front doors. “But I am unable to prove it.”
“Don’t worry, Marc. It won’t be the last such plot, here or at home.”
They stood together for a long moment on the verandah, as if neither wished to take their leave.
“Whether you had been successful or not,” Durham said at last, “I’d decided that you deserved something valuable for your dedicated efforts.”
“But I couldn’t possibly—”
“It’s not that kind of gift,” Durham said with a twinkle. “Earlier today, one of the delegations I entertained included the Baldwins, father and son.”
“Our hosts of Monday evening.”
“And prominent citizens here in the city.” Durham smiled enigmatically. “I’ve learned, from sources I won’t reveal, that you spent two years in the Inns of Court before distinguishing yourself in the army, and that you have recently contemplated studying for the bar.”
“Your sources are impeccable, sir.”
“That being so, I have extracted a promise from Dr. Baldwin and his son that, should you require a firm in which to apprentice, theirs would welcome you unconditionally.”
“Thank you, Your Lordship. I am honoured by your thoughtfulness.”
“The honour is all on your side and the thanks on mine.”
They shook hands, and Lord Durham walked quietly back towards his quarters. Marc nodded to the sleepy corporal on duty and headed down the steps. On the pathway, in a pool of light from one of the bay windows, stood Horatio Cobb.
“Good Lord, Cobb, I thought you would be home and safe in Dora’s arms by now.”
“I figured you should hear what’s happened down at the station,” Cobb said with a sigh that was both frustrated and resigned.
Marc’s blood went cold. “You did get the confession, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yeah. That part went along fine. The magistrate was handy, which ain’t always the case. He come right down with his own clerk and I helped the old girl give all the details pretty much like you did back in Irishtown. It took purty near an hour.”
“And she signed it in the presence of Magistrate Thorpe?”
“He read it back to her and she signed it.”
“Good. That’s all that really matters, eh?”
“If you say so, Major.”
Marc stared at his associate. “What else?”
“Well, the jailer comes in to take Mrs. Burgess to the cells through the tunnel, and there’s been a whole lot of fussin’ and fiddlin’ with the papers in that little room of ours—there’s Sarge and me and Thorpe and the clerk—so we’re not keepin’ a close eye on the missus—”
“You didn’t let her escape . . . ”
Cobb was instantly offended and showed it. “ ’Course not,” he growled. “But somehow when none of us was lookin’, she managed to pull a little medicine bottle outta her floppy bonnet.”
Marc immediately recalled that Norah had fidgeted with something in her dress pocket throughout the interrogation in her parlour. Fearing she would be searched at the station, she must have concealed the vial in the hat he had foolishly allowed her to fetch from her private quarters.
“She starts to cough somethin’ terrible,” Cobb continued, having to relive yet another nightmarish image, “and then she turns blue.”
“She poisoned herself? Right there in the station?”
“Whatever she done, she’s now dead.”
Marc didn’t know whether to be angry at his own ineptitude or at the incompetence of the authorities at the station. Possibly he was more relieved. The thought of such a woman dangling from a gibbet in the Court House square was not one he wished to entertain. Then it occurred to him that she had probably been sitting in that bleak parlour for hours, fingering the deadly vial and trying to work up the courage to take her own life. She had deliberately sent the girls away with all their earnings and, no doubt, her own savings as well. She had killed the man she had secretly loved and who had, in her mind, callously betrayed her. She had seen to it that Sarah, whose unplanned death she must have bitterly regretted, was given a proper funeral and did not die unmourned. She had closed the shutters on her life’s achievement. All that was needed was a final dose of courage to commit the ultimate act of a free will. Marc and Cobb had arrived not a moment too soon. Much later and they might have found her dead—and her crimes unprovable. Marc shuddered now, realizing what a close call it had been.
“I heard her last words,” Cobb said solemnly.
“You did?”
“They was whispered, mind you, but I was leanin’ over ’cause I could see she wanted to say somethin’ to me.”
Marc waited.
“She said, ‘Tell Lord Durham I wish him well.’ ”
EPILOGUE
Fort St. Louis
Quebec City
September 3, 1838
Dear Marc:
As you have no doubt heard by now, I have decided to cut short my mission here in British North America. The knives have been out for me back home since the end of July. While I expect the Tories to slip the blade in whenever they smell an opportunity to do so, the failure of my own party to support the decisions I have had to make given the gravity of the circumstances has left me feeling abandoned by those I counted as friends. My ordinance permitting the ringleaders of the Quebec revolt to serve their sentences in Bermuda was essential to my plan for a conciliated settlement to that unhappy affair, but its being declared ultra vires by Lord Melbourne—at the instigation of Lord Brougham—in a pathetic and futile attempt to prop up his own government has dashed all my hopes. Moreover, if I were to acquiesce meekly to the prime minister’s whim, I would lose any credibility I have managed to achieve in the four months since my arrival. Hence, I shall wind up matters soon and depart for England in late October or early November.
Nevertheless, I have already formulated a general plan for the future governance of the Canadas. It remains only for my associates—Wakefield, Turton, and Buller—to help me flesh it out. There will be a united parliament with equal representation from each province. The Baldwins may prove me wrong about the French way of life fading away or blending with the British to make something strange and new, but for now a single assembly ought to compel the leaders of the two races to say hello to each other across a parliamentary aisle every day: who knows what may happen then? My principal concern, as you know, has ever been to create some kind of legislative forum in which the people who live in the provinces and have a stake in its future will be given the opportunity to work out their own destiny.
Less optimistically, Wakefield assures me that the atmosphere in the Whig cabinet is now so poisoned that we shall be fortunate to get our report written and seriously considered by an indifferent and self-absorbed Parliament. Moreover, the chances of having responsible government—the l
inchpin of any scheme I propose—accepted are doomed from the outset. Of course this will not dissuade me from promulgating it loudly from any pulpit provided me!
On a more personal note, Handford has begun to recover from his ordeal. We offered to send him home to recuperate, but when he realized that Lady Durham is essential to me and my work and could not therefore accompany him, he chose to remain here. All in all, I think it was a wise decision. Please write again and let me know how your law studies are progressing.
Yours sincerely,
John George Lambton
Earl of Durham
P.S. My congratulations to Mrs. Edwards on the blessed event you are anticipating next April. I hope your marriage turns out to be as fortunate as mine has been.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
While Bloody Relations is wholly a work of fiction, Lord Durham and his brief governorship of the Canadas in 1838 are as well known as they are controversial. The particular speeches, opinions, and actions of the earl and his wife, Lady Durham, depicted herein are fictitious, but I have attempted to make their behaviour and personalities consistent with the historical record. In doing so, I have relied upon books like Leonard Cooper’s Radical Jack and Chester New’s Lord Durham’s Mission to Canada. The same is true for the brief appearances of the other historical personages: Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Charles Buller, Thomas Turton, Sir George Arthur, and Robert Baldwin. Handford Ellice is an invented character, and the murder plot involving him is imaginary. Any resemblance between other fictional characters and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
For the record, Lord and Lady Durham did visit Toronto for a day and a half in July 1838, their stay cut short by the earl’s suffering a recurrence of his migraine and neuralgia. I have extended the visit to four days and based his dealings with the local gentry and politicians on the pattern he established while in Quebec. I transposed the “royal arrival” in Upper Canada—with all its official pomp and fanfare—from Niagara (where it actually occurred and was lavishly recorded) to Toronto harbour (though upwards of three thousand Torontonians did turn out on Queen’s Wharf to greet him). I have made Spadina House as described here an amalgam of several of the great houses of the period, including Davenport, Russell Abbey, and Moss Park. Areas like Irishtown did exist in early Toronto (the red-light district was north of Lombard Street in Devil’s Elbow), but its depiction and location here are my own inventions.
Finally, lest the skeptical reader feel my portrayal of prostitution in 1830s Toronto to be an exaggeration, here is a contemporary view from the Canadian Freeman, May 26, 1831:
Houses of infamy are scattered thro’ every corner of the town, and one of them had the hardihood to commence operations next door to our office, last week, in a house under the control of a Police Magistrate! So besotted are some of our would-be gentlemen—so lost to shame and decency—and so dead to every feeling of Christianity—that they crowded in at noonday, and some of them that we know visited it in open day, last Sabbath!—Young lawyers, and others of respectable standing. We had no idea before that such wretched and shameless depravity existed in our infant community—in any other place that we have lived, such men would be viewed as a walking pestilence and scouted out of all decent society. It seems to us that some of our authorities, and heads of families too, connive at debauchery of this kind, which, if not checked, will be sufficient ere long to draw down the wrath of God upon the town, as in times of old upon Sodom and Gomorrah.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to Jan Walter, my editor, for her wise judgement and scrupulous attention to detail. Thanks also to my longtime, faithful agent, Beverley Slopen, and to Alison Clarke and Kevin Hanson for their robust support of the Marc Edwards series.
DON GUTTERIDGE is the author of forty books: fiction, poetry, and scholarly works. He taught high school for seven years and then joined the Faculty of Education at Western University as a professor of English methods. He is now professor emeritus and lives in London, Ontario.
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OTHER MARC EDWARDS MYSTERIES BY DON GUTTERIDGE
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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 © 2013 by Don Gutteridge
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 June 2013
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Cover image: Toronto, from Kingston Road from Picturesque Canada: The Country as it Was and Is
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ISBN 978-1-4516-9050-7
ISBN 978-1-4516-9051-4 (ebook)
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
About Don Gutteridge