Bloody Relations Read online

  “Who’s the fellow with the collar?”

  “That’s the Reverend Temperance Finney, a Methodist ranter who should be burning his cards, not slapping them on the table.”

  “And that’s not tea in his glass, I’ll wager.” Marc was enjoying himself immensely.

  “His partner, the scrawny chap, is Samuel Harris, as lean and ascetic as Hepburn is paunchy and epicurean. He owns about a quarter of King Street.”

  “Then he’d have something in common with the other Tories.”

  “True: money, power, and privilege. Unfortunately for him, he’s Catholic.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “With a French wife.”

  “Maybe they’re playing for keeps.”

  “Well, they look mighty chummy to me.”

  At this point the orchestra let out a fresh blast of danceable noise, indicating yet another shift in tempo.

  “I’d better get back there and rescue my girl,” Marc said.

  When he re-entered the ballroom, Beth was nowhere to be found. He paced the periphery of the waltz, a European dance which pinioned couples together in an elegant but over-proximate contact. Beth could not waltz. At least he assumed she couldn’t.

  “I can’t find her anywhere,” Marc said to Owen after they had gone halfway around the dance floor.

  “She’s off in the powder room, I expect.”

  “If it’s Mrs. Edwards you’re looking for,” said a feminine, cultured voice nearby, “she’s over there under the mezzanine, conversing with my nephew.”

  Both men gulped hard, then snapped a pair of quick bows to Lady Durham, after which they stood speechless in the presence of Earl Grey’s daughter.

  “Your wife, sir, is a delight, if you’ll permit me to say so.”

  “By all means, Your Ladyship,” Marc managed to say.

  “My nephew, my sister’s boy, Mr. Handford Ellice, has been standing beside your good wife for the past ten minutes—talking.”

  “I hope she’s not monopolizing his time—”

  Lady Durham laughed, a melodic ripple that would have done a diva proud. “Good gracious, no. You see, Handford is painfully shy and socially rather awkward. He refused to stand in the receiving line and spent the first hour of the party in our rooms, trying to drum up the courage to make a brief appearance, lest he suffer what he takes to be the wrath of his uncle. I believe we call that being forced to choose between Scylla and Charybdis.”

  “Well, I’m pleased he has found someone to talk to.”

  “Mrs. Edwards has a way with people,” Major Jenkin said with a smile.

  “My word, gentlemen. Look, she’s leading him towards the dance floor!”

  And she was. They passed by about twenty feet away, not aware they were being watched with some amazement. Marc got his first close look at Handford Ellice. The youth was slender and no more than five foot two in height. His hair was a light shade of brown, almost blond, his features compact but well formed. The most memorable aspects of his person were the pale eyebrows, alabaster complexion, and eyes so faintly blue that he might have been an albino. About him there was an ascetic, almost haunted look as he shuffled nervously behind Beth. The orchestra struck the opening chord for a minuet, Beth drew him gently by the hand and they stood erect and poised for the dance to begin.

  Lady Durham remained at Marc’s side, staring in disbelief at what she was seeing. Although usually stiff and prone to embarrassing miscues, her nephew moved easily through the minuet, hardly ever taking his eyes off his partner. At times he approached gracefulness, his body caught up in the music and the blissful forgetting it can engender.

  “I think you may have lost a partner for the evening,” Lady Durham said, then excused herself and hurried towards her husband, presumably to give him the happy news.

  When the set was over, Beth reluctantly let go of Handford Ellice’s hand, and he bowed deeply before turning and stumbling towards his aunt.

  “You’ve made a hit with Lady Durham,” Marc said when Beth came up to him and Owen, breathless and not a little excited.

  “I didn’t even know who he was,” she said, “until he told me just at the end. I nearly fainted.”

  “I think it was the young man who was near fainting,” Owen said.

  “Perhaps he’ll get up enough courage to try again,” Marc said.

  “I hope so. I spotted him hiding in a corner and just felt sorry for him. He’s got a stammer that comes and goes, so I just kept talking a lot of nonsense until it seemed to go away. I told him that dancing would help it even more.”

  “Well, it certainly improved his confidence,” Marc said.

  “I was afraid he’d keep on drinking. Apparently that’s how he copes with his shyness.”

  “Has he been doing so tonight?” Owen asked, suddenly concerned.

  “He’d had a few glasses of champagne, but you saw him dancing out there: he was far from drunk.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “Well, he’s now under the watchful eye of his uncle,” Marc said, but even as he spoke, they saw Handford Ellice shake off his aunt’s hand, smile at her, and head in the direction of the smoker.

  “So much for more dancing,” Owen said.

  “Don’t worry, Owen dear,” Beth said. “He told me he’s been trying all night to get up the nerve to join the gentlemen playing whist. Seems he’s got a great passion for the game but is too bashful to get himself invited to sit in. I think I may have helped him along a little.”

  “And good for you,” Owen said. “I just hope you’ve got enough energy left to put an old soldier through his paces.”

  “For you, always,” Beth said. She turned to Marc. “But first, I think I’m ready for something fizzy and one of those tidbits.”

  Left alone again, Marc glanced toward Lord Durham, standing a few steps to his right and, for once, unattended. He approached and was gratified when the earl remembered him from the receiving line. “Marc Edwards,” he greeted him warmly, as the two men shook hands once again.

  They exchanged niceties about Spadina House and the weather only briefly before Lord Durham asked for his views on the current political situation in the Canadas. Marc was hesitant at first, but then found himself reciting the familiar litany of farmers’ grievances and frustration with a deadlocked legislature.

  “How can we break that impasse?” asked Durham, perhaps testing the younger man.

  “We need an elected assembly with real powers,” Marc said boldly. “And ministers who are responsible to it.”

  “A controversial but interesting notion,” was the reply.

  Just then Lady Durham arrived and, with apologies, steered her husband towards a nearby group of hovering admirers.

  Marc found Beth and happily partnered her for the rest of the evening’s dancing. From time to time, they glimpsed the whist players, who kept their game going despite the distractions of music and food. Handford Ellis played with concentration and did not return to the dance floor. Shortly after eleven o’clock, Beth admitted to fatigue and Marc agreed they should take their leave. They said their good-byes to their hosts, Lady Durham gracious and grateful to Beth, Lord Durham smiling broadly at Marc.

  • • •

  “I COULD REACH UP AND TOUCH that big star,” Beth said sleepily, her head resting on her husband’s left shoulder as they sat close together in the gig on the way home, “if I had an ounce of energy in me.”

  “You left it all on the dance floor back there.”

  “You did pretty well yourself, for a man with a war wound.”

  They moved along in companionable silence, with only the rhythmic clack of the gig’s wheels and muffled clop of the horse’s hooves to interrupt their thoughts.

  “You did a wonderful and generous thing tonight,” Marc said, as they wheeled off Spadina Avenue, crossed Lot Street, and entered the city proper.

  “You mean I survived the good intentions of the Family Compact?”

  “You made yo
ung Ellice’s evening. His shyness was painful to watch.”

  “I hope he enjoyed his whist.”

  “I’m sure he did. In addition to the obvious benefit, I think you may have helped to put Lord Durham’s mind at ease in that regard. He’s got enough worries here without that particular one adding to the list.”

  “Handford must’ve had a lonesome upbringing.”

  “I can imagine it—only son of a famous and ambitious father, wealthy from his business interests and highly influential with the Whig government. Do you know, they call Ellice Senior the Bear!”

  They swung east onto King Street.

  “By the way, there’s something important I must tell you,” Beth said, suddenly solemn.

  Marc almost dropped the reins. Was this the news he had been hoping for? The marriage of Beth and Jesse Smallman had produced no children, but still . . .

  “I think I may be starting to fit in with that crowd up there,” she said, with just a hint of amusement.

  Marc swallowed his disappointment and asked, “Why is that?”

  “Mr. Wakefield pinched my bottom.”

  THREE

  Cobb reached the corner of Lot and Yonge for the umpteenth time, and nodded at the nearly full moon that had risen far enough into the eastern arc of the sky to pour a mellow glow along the ungravelled road, making the shadowed ruts appear deeper and not a little sinister, and the silhouettes of the buildings and houses loom ominously at the edge of his vision. Across the road, Montgomery’s Tavern was unlit and eerily silent.

  A tiny, involuntary shudder rippled up his body as Cobb approached the intersection of Bay and Lot (the name of the latter, it was suggested in the right circles, to be changed to Queen Street in honour of the new sovereign). Bay Street ended here; everything north of it as far as College Street was part of the extensive university grounds—College Park, as it was locally dubbed. However, the few hundred acres of its expanse that lay just to the north and west of the Bay-Lot intersection, not a quarter mile from the majestic Osgoode Hall, had a less savoury designation: Irishtown.

  Technically it was part of Wilkie’s patrol, but unless called upon in some dire and self-evident emergency, no constable ventured into its grubby interior and, even then, not alone. The area was essentially a squatters’ haven. Its three dozen dwellings were ramshackle affairs at best: half-log shanties, clapboard hovels, temporary lean-tos confected out of the handiest scraps and flotsam of the town they appended, as welcome as a carbuncle on a buttock. Here the unemployed, the underemployed, and the unemployable permanently congregated and became indistinguishable from the petty criminals, absconding spouses, and all-’round deadbeats who found temporary refuge among the maze of crooked lanes and labyrinthine walkways no respectable citizen could, or would wish to, negotiate. The stench of open sewers rose up around Irishtown as sturdy and dissuasive as a rampart.

  It had been christened Irishtown some years back when a few destitute families from Connaught had camped there, but its current denizens were as polyglot as their legitimate counterparts in the town and, if the truth be known, little different in the range and persistence of their vices. However, lest a decent citizen wax sentimental about this truism, Cobb would be the first to point out that Irishtown had been the likely source of the biennial epidemics of cholera in the early thirties. It was an indisputable fact that anyone entering the area, day or night, without a plausible reason for doing so was almost certain to be persuaded to depart posthaste, and usually physically assisted in the act.

  Among the acceptable excuses for nocturnal entry—and one earnestly condemned each Sunday from multiple pulpits—was a visit to either of two well-maintained and annually repainted houses. These were, in the fiery words of Archdeacon Strachan, “houses of infamy” or, in the common parlance preferred by Cobb and his colleagues, “hooer-houses.” There were, of course, a number of less settled and less ostentatious bawdy shops or cathouses throughout the town. But while these came and went, flourished and withered, the unholy pair in Irishtown had stood stalwart against verbal assault and police raid. (The latter threat had been carried out only once, a few months after the constabulary was formed in 1835. When the found-ins were discovered to be principally members of the same class who had established the new police force to eradicate such crime, a stalemate was quickly declared and it was hands off ever since.)

  But why would any respectable gentleman, born or self-proclaimed, risk the night dangers of Irishtown for a brief and costly romp with some mangy female of indeterminate age and pedigree, when other, less hazardous alternatives were often available? It was a question Cobb had asked himself once or twice but, finding no answer, he dismissed the puzzlement as inexplicable and got on with his life.

  What he did discover, from Wilkie and at first hand on his occasional patrols up here, was that the hazards of reaching and returning from these dens of fleshly delight were minuscule in comparison with those inside them. If a gentleman of obvious prosperity or a sailor with a bulging purse lingered on the edge of Irishtown any time after dark, he would soon be corralled by what Wilkie termed a tracker or scout, usually a scruffy youth, who would lead the prospective client through the shadowy maze of lanes to the house of his choice: Madame Renée’s or Madame Charlotte’s (neither woman was French, nor madame). A discreet knock, whispered negotiations, and the contract was sealed. Much later, sated and lighter in the wallet, the client would be guided back to Lot Street, where a tracker of obsequious discretion might well be tipped a shilling for his pains. What actually went on in these French parlours, beyond the mundane act itself, Cobb did not know and was unable, despite some effort, to imagine.

  He surmised it must be nearly two o’clock in the morning, as the three-quarter chime of the City Hall clock had rung some minutes before. For the past hour or so he had paced along Newgate between Bay and John Streets, watching the gala revellers pass by on their way to their beds or to further wassailing in impromptu parties at home. Most of them seemed to feel obliged to wave at him and roar out some greeting more raucous than intelligible—in derision or pity he could not determine. He declined to return the favour.

  Cobb decided to take one more stroll around the perimeter of his patrol and then go home to the comfort of his own bed and Dora’s more than adequate bodily solace. As he moved eastward along the southern edge of Lot Street and passed the lugubrious silhouette of Osgoode Hall at the head of York, he spotted a few feeble lights, bonfires most likely, flickering up into the general gloom. A woman screamed with a sound as sharp and terrified as a seized animal, then her cry skittered upward and became a manic ripple of laughter. Male guffaws answered it. Finally silence, except for the seesawing crick of peepers and the deeper boom of bullfrogs bellowing their belligerent lust from ponds above the shantytown. In the pauses between gusts of night breeze, mosquitoes—bred by the millions in the pools of slime between hovels—buzzed at Cobb with evil intent.

  He quickened his pace, praying that the wind would not die and no disquieting noises would erupt from the vicinity of Newgate or Hospital Street. He had almost reached Bay when he heard just such a noise. But it came not from the streets of his patrol to the south. It was coming distinctly and beseechingly from his left, from somewhere in the impenetrable darkness of Irishtown.

  “Help! Help me! Somebody . . . please!”

  Cobb turned and peered across the roadway. The voice was female and urgent with terror. Still, Cobb could see nothing. With his hair rising at the repeated and ever more desperate pleas and with every nerve instantly alert, he edged across the road. Just as he reached the far side, he spotted something white and shimmering in the darkness ahead. There was just enough moonlight to catch its sudden flutter, stepping between the shadow of two trees into the roadway. It was a girl, a young woman actually, clad only in a cotton shift. Her face was as pale as her clothing.

  “What’s the matter?” Cobb demanded.

  The woman flinched at the sight of a stranger with a club
in his right hand. As she turned to flee, Cobb grabbed her by the arm.

  “It’s all right. I’m a policeman. What sort of help do you need?”

  Cobb was beginning to breathe more easily. Even in this poor light it was plain that the woman was the inmate of one of the brothels or at best the unlucky appendage of some tough or drunk in Irishtown. Unless it were a clear case of attempted assault, he would not move a step farther to the north.

  “Thank God, thank God,” the woman sobbed, her fear now venting itself in tears. Cobb felt her young body rock against his, not unpleasantly. He doubted very much whether God would be any more likely to intervene here than the constabulary.

  “Do you need a safe place to stay fer the night?” he offered wearily, knowing that Dora never refused a woman refuge in such circumstances. “It’s the best I can do.”

  Controlling her sobs as best as she could, she said in a desperate rush, “You don’t understand. Somethin’ terrible’s happened, and Madame Renée’s sent me to fetch the police. I can’t go back without you.”

  “And what’s so terrible at Madame Renée’s?”

  “Someone’s been murdered! There’s blood all over. It’s awful! You’ve got to come.”

  Cursing his fate, Cobb knew that he no longer had any choice. He let the terrified girl take him by the hand and draw him deep into the noisome interior of Irishtown, where no sensible bobby ventured on his own. Fortunately, the girl seemed to know her way through the warren of huts, ruts, middens, and pathways greased with God-knows-what from coop or sty. Cobb skidded and lurched, grazed and ricocheted, arousing the suspicions of several dogs, whose jaws snapped at his boots, and one pig, who protested with a teeth-jarring squeal. The girl took no notice. She continued to pick her way with unerring dexterity, like smugglers were said to do across the deadly night moors of Devon.

  Finally, exhausted and panting, they came to an abrupt stop before a dwelling that resembled an ordinary house. There was just enough moonlight to reveal a one-storey brick structure with a gabled roof, regular windows with sills and curtains, and a stout hardwood door that sported a saucy knocker on its scarlet façade.