Desperate Acts Read online

  The northern perimeter of his patrol did bring him across the street from Government House, but the police happily left the protection of His Excellency and his six-acre park to the regular army. Still, Cobb got a chuckle thinking about the demi-royal residence now being occupied by two bigwigs: Sir George Arthur, the little martinet calling himself Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, and the recently arrived Poulett Thomson, the supreme Governor of both the upper and the lower province. And since it was said the two men were on opposite sides of the Union Bill debate, he wondered what they found to chat about at teatime.

  Cobb walked around both parliament buildings, not forgetting the extensive gardens behind them where enemy grenadiers or sappers (or, more likely, a pair of panting lovers) could be lurking, bombs at the ready. Back out on Front Street, he strolled west – wholly at ease and very much enjoying the sudden arrival of Venus and its retinue of stars in the south-western sky. On a whim, or perhaps to delay checking out The Sailor’s Arms a block farther on, he swung north up John Street to Wellington. A woman smoking a clay pipe on her verandah waved to him, and he waved back. On Wellington he drifted westward again, thinking mostly about how well Delia was doing in her studies at Miss Tyson’s Academy and just how he and Dora might manage her second-term fees.

  “C-C-Cobb, come quick!”

  Cobb snapped out of his reverie in time to catch young Squealer before the boy tumbled headlong into his robust, belted belly.

  “Slow down, lad. You’ll injure us both!”

  “You gotta come, Cobb, right away,” Squealer panted as he fought any breath left in his scrawny urchin’s body. He was one of a dozen street kids who hung about the taverns, Court House, City Hall or market in hope of earning a penny running errands and delivering messages.

  “Come where?” Cobb said patiently. He knew better than to take the boy’s excitement at face value.

  “To the Sailor’s Arms!” The lad’s voice began to rise and splinter (the source of his nickname).

  God, Cobb thought, fingering his whistle, not a dust-up or a full-scale brawl this early in a fine Indian summer evening. “What’s goin’ on in that dive?”

  Squealer’s cry soared into falsetto: “M-murder! Somebody’s gettin’ murdered!”

  ***

  Cobb followed Squealer in his best loping trot, constrained as always by the risk of his thick, muscled pot-belly becoming overbalanced and pitching the neighbouring parts in an unfriendly direction. They were rushing down Peter Street and were almost at Front when Squealer wheeled and darted into an alley. With just a second’s hesitation, Cobb loped in after him. It was so dark now that Cobb could see only the thrashing of the boy’s bare legs just ahead of him. Somehow they managed to avoid stumbling over the discarded crates and barrels that littered this and every other alley in town. Half a minute later Cobb pulled up beside Squealer, and followed his gaze up to a faint light in the second-storey window of a large building.

  “This ain’t The Sailor’s Arms,” Cobb said sharply, grabbing the boy’s left wrist. “What’re you tryin’ to pull?”

  “B-but it is, Cobb. This is the back end of it.”

  “I’ll back-end yer arse if you’re havin’ me on,” Cobb said just as Squealer broke free of his grip.

  “Upstairs! In that big room! I c’n still hear ‘em!” Squealer had dashed around the west corner of the building – up to what looked like a door.

  Cobb was about to put his threat into action when he heard the faint but precise cries of a number of voices.

  “I think they’re doin’ it!” Squealer sobbed, overcome by it all.

  Cobb brushed past him, found a latch, and stepped into a dark stairwell. Looking up, he could see a partially open door with a light of some kind behind it. Taking the stairs two at a time, he barged his way into what appeared to be an anteroom, lit by two flickering candle-lanterns. The cries were suddenly vivid in his ears: they were definitely raised in anger and tinged with a strange kind of exultation.

  “Jesus,” he whispered to himself as he drew out his truncheon, “somethin’ awful’s goin’ on in there.” Where “in there” was he was not quite certain. He was vaguely aware that The Sailor’s Arms might have such a private upper room, and could easily imagine it being used as a gambling or opium den where all kinds of mischief might be hatched. It was this thought that made him hesitate and wonder if he ought to risk going in alone. Then he noticed along the inner wall of the anteroom a row of neatly hung gentleman’s coats and cloaks, a sight which puzzled him momentarily, until he remembered that gentlemen were capable of anything when their interests were at stake.

  “Aaaghhhh!”

  This cry of utter anguish struck Cobb like a cold dagger in the belly. Someone was being murdered! With no thought for his own safety, he shouldered aside the inner door and plunged into a large, brightly lit room. Directly before him he saw a ring of five or six well-dressed men, each uttering some sort of triumphant howl in various keys as they hunched forward over some object amongst them. In their right hand, several of them were raising and lowering what appeared to be silver-bladed knives. Others were lifting their hands over their heads, then dipping them down towards what had to be the target of their violence and source of their exaltation. He had interrupted some bloodthirsty, satanic ritual!

  “Stop where you are!” Cobb shouted. “I am the law!”

  For a brief moment the hunched and gesticulating ring of assassins froze before Cobb in a grotesque tableau: mouths agape, heads swivelled halfway around to take in the interloper and his awesome command, eyes stiff with surprise. Several knives clattered to the floor. Then the murderers, if that is what they were, fell back and aside as Cobb inched slowly forward, truncheon cocked, towards the victim – now exposed in a pathetic heap on a small platform or dais.

  Keeping a sideways glance on the perpetrators of the outrage, Cobb stepped up to the corpse, and as he did so it began to show signs of life. It rolled lumpily over onto its back and opened its eyes. No knife-wounds rent the white robe the fellow was wrapped in, nor was it stained with his blood. He sat up, his corpulent bulk propped up by his hands splayed out behind him. On his head, slightly askew, sat a somewhat tattered wreath composed of vine leaves. The white robe appeared to be a single linen bedsheet inexpertly folded so as to resemble a Roman toga.

  “Jesus,” Cobb hissed, “who in blazes are you? Banquo’s ghost?”

  ***

  The eight assembled members of the Shakespeare Club invited Constable Horatio Cobb to join them in a good laugh over the misapprehended “murder” of Julius Caesar by Brutus, Cassius and their fellow conspirators. While Cobb did not see much humour in the situation, he was moderately mollified by a tumbler of first-class Burgundy and several pats on the back for “being a sport” about it all. Brodie, embarrassed and apologizing profusely, escorted Cobb into the cloakroom and watched him descend the stairs and disappear into the darkness. A spacious window in the rear wall of the cloakroom overlooked the alley, and Brodie took a moment to peer into the moonlit area immediately below, where Cobb had been stopped by a skinny ragamuffin whose hand was now stretched out, palm upwards. Cobb made a threatening gesture that had no apparent effect on the lad, took two steps away, paused, turned back, and deposited a coin in the boy’s hand.

  Brodie smiled to himself and went back in to join the others, still buzzing and chuckling over the incident.

  ***

  The topic for discussion on this particular Wednesday evening, assigned last week by their chairman – Sir Peregrine Shuttleworth, bart. – was “Were Brutus and his associates justified in overthrowing the legitimate ruler of Rome?” The normal procedure for these weekly gatherings, as far as Brodie could tell from his first two sessions, was to begin with a round of drinks, during which pleasantries and light gossip were exchanged and everyone got into a relaxed state. This part of the evening (and the last one as well) took place at the east end of the room where their hosts, the Budges, had arranged two set
tees and several padded chairs around a threadbare carpet – with cigar-stands and spittoons placed at strategic intervals. Then, at eight-thirty or so they all moved to the west end of the room where a long executive table was set up, with comfortable chairs for a dozen or more. Here the serious discussion of the Bard’s works took place, punctuated by dramatic renderings of favourite passages to illustrate a point or indulge an ego. But this evening Sir Peregrine had suggested that they “get in the mood” for the debate on the ethical implications of tyrannicide by staging the assassination scene from Julius Caesar. No-one had been surprised that Sir Peregrine had brought along a costume for his self-appointed role as Caesar, as well as several wooden stage-knives to be plunged hysterically into the bloodied tyrant. It had been their third run-through (the fervour of the conspirators’ “plunging” and ululations being not nearly hysterical enough on the first two tries) that the unwitting Cobb had interrupted.

  Thus it was close to nine o’clock when the group finally settled down around the long table to entertain the question of the week. Self-conscious about his youth and his New York twang among these British gentlemen, Brodie had spent much of his time so far listening and observing. He realized, and accepted the fact, that only the sponsorship of Horace Fullarton, his senior at the Commercial Bank, had allowed him entry into this exclusive club of middle-aged gentlemen. Although Marc Edwards and others – after the scandal and tragedy of last March – had done their best to disabuse the better classes of Toronto of their misguided opinion of Brodie’s deceased guardian, the taint of Dougherty’s supposed “sins” still clung to his wards. And, Brodie told himself, a desire to re-establish the good name of Dougherty – and, by association, Langford – had been the prime motive for his accepting Mr. Fullarton’s offer to join this club.

  “Gentlemen, I trust our little stage-play, with its truly dramatic climax, has put you all in the proper frame of mind for discussing this evening’s question, the meat of which is: When, if ever, is it right to overthrow a legitimate ruler, as Brutus did Caesar?” Sir Peregrine smiled his most ingratiating smile, bringing all of his jowls into action and inducing a flush across the vast expanse of his hairless head. “And, as you were perusing the text in preparation, I trust also that you reflected upon what the Great Versifier himself is telling us about the issue.”

  There was an awkward silence, broken only by the drumming of Sir Peregrine’s plump, effeminate fingers on the table-top. As the chairman waited impatiently for someone to leap into the fray, Brodie recalled what Mr. Fullarton had told him about this portly caricature of an English nobleman. Shuttleworth, it was said, had inherited, at the tender age of twenty-five, a thriving cotton mill from his ruthless father and, having been bred and raised to be the first true gentleman in the family, had had the good sense to let the business run itself. His only contribution to its success was a suggestion that they concentrate on producing stockings for Wellington’s army in its long fight against Napoleon. For such “meritorious service to King and country,” Shuttleworth had been made a baronet and his wife, Madeleine, by proxy, a lady. Their arrival here on the outskirts of empire, however, had not been part of the Shuttleworth march to destiny’s beat. Fate took a hand in that. Lady Madeleine’s sister had emigrated to Upper Canada with her husband, who became wealthy speculating in land transactions and hobnobbing with those who mattered. But the fellow had been irresponsible enough to squander much of his fortune and then die under a falling tree while supervising the clearance of a prime lot – leaving a wife and six children with little money and a half-constructed mansion. Having worn out their welcome on the fringes of London society, the Shuttleworths made the magnanimous decision to sell off the nettlesome business, pack up their accumulated trinkets, and sail for the New World. Arriving only last July, they had managed to complete the construction of Oakwood Manor in one of the park lots up on Sherbourne Street north, with a generous (albeit separate) wing provided for the widow and her destitute brood.

  “Is that a sheet of notes I spy before you, Mr. Dutton?” Sir Peregrine said helpfully.

  Andrew Dutton, a retired attorney, glanced up warily from under his flared brows, gave his trimmed goatee several nervous strokes, cleared his throat and said, “Not on the topic per se, Sir Peregrine – just a list of key personages. The memory, which used to be as sharp as a tack, has begun to lose its edge – or is it point?”

  When, despite an indulgent smile of encouragement from the chairman, Dutton offered no further elucidating comment, Sir Peregrine said with a failed attempt at light-heartedness, “Surely such a topic, so ably and dramatically represented by the play, should be of interest to a colony that itself has experienced some sort of minor coup d’état?”

  “I think that very fact may have occasioned our unusual reticence,” said Cyrus Crenshaw from his seat at the far end of the table, facing the chairman. “You see, the wounds from our recent farmers’ revolt have not had time to heal.”

  “Ah, just so,” Sir Peregrine replied – not, in his almost total ignorance of things colonial, really seeing the point.

  “But perhaps I may move the discussion forward by saying that in my considered opinion the nub of the issue concerning tyrannicide is whether the purported tyrant is, first of all, a tyrant in fact, and then whether or not he is the legitimate head of state.”

  As Brodie had noted in earlier meetings, Cyrus Crenshaw spoke in a deliberate and overly formal manner, as if his vocabulary and sentence rhythms had been acquired late in life and meticulously overlaid. He was the owner of a prospering candle-factory up on Lot Street and the occupant of a fine house nearby. A previous lieutenant-governor, Sir John Colborne, had made him a permanent member of the Legislative Council, the colony’s so-called Upper House.

  “I agree whole-heartedly,” said Horace Fullarton, sitting beside Brodie. “We must consider the fact that Caesar crossed the Rubicon and made himself ruler of Rome, using, of course, the usual excuse of bringing order out of chaos and preventing civil war.”

  Brodie was pleased to see his mentor – a tall, handsome, nattily dressed man of forty years – join the discussion with obvious relish. While a natural banker – in his rectitude, his impeccable manners, and his instinct for making money – he seemed to have paid a heavy price for his success and his public standing. Away from the bank and in casual settings, Brodie found him to have a sense of humour and a personality that craved company and social interaction. But a lifetime of “minding his Ps and Qs” had apparently made it difficult for him to “let go.” His day-to-day existence was further constrained by the fact that his wife Bernice had been an invalid for ten years and had not been able to bless him with children. That he treated Brodie like a son was both understandable, and welcomed.

  “And just because he placed a crown on his own head does not make him a tyrant,” Phineas Burke, the hawk-nosed stationer said. “We’re given only the conspirators’ opinion of Caesar. And their motives, Brutus excluded, are suspect, aren’t they?”

  “Very good points,” enthused Sir Peregrine.

  “I wasn’t particularly fond of that Martellus Timber,” Dutton said.

  “And how can we forget that our own rebels, just two years ago, used the same false reasoning to justify their actions,” Crenshaw said. “They claimed that Governor Head had usurped the election of 1836 and had acted arbitrarily against the express wishes of the Colonial Secretary in London. And they suggested that the province was drifting into chaos and certain ruin.”

  “But Francis Head was the King’s surrogate here, was he not?” said Dr. Samuel Pogue, physician and unsolicited advisor to successive lieutenant-governors. “To threaten him was to threaten the Crown itself.”

  “I shudder to think on it,” Sir Peregrine added.

  “But is the state not something larger than the monarchy?” Dutton chipped in, his lawyer’s mettle having been whetted. “Is not Britain bigger than any single king or queen?”

  “Surely the monarch is the
state,” Sir Peregrine said hastily, alarmed that the discussion was plummeting from the lofty altar of Bardic idolatry.

  “Tell that to King Charles,” said Ezra Michaels, King Street chemist and staunch supporter of the Orange Lodge and its obsession with all things monarchical.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen. Could we not bring the debate back to Mr. Shakespeare’s glorious play?”

  But the ferret was out of its box.

  “Surely we are right to see Cassius as a kind of Willie Mackenzie, organizing the overthrow of the legitimate government for his own selfish ends,” Dutton said with some passion, “and in the process deceiving both ordinary, naïve citizens and his own associates, like Bidwell and Rolph – and poor, pathetic Matthews and Lount, whom we hanged for their sins.”

  “And who, then, would our Brutus be?” Fullarton said, giving Brodie a gentle nudge, “Robert Baldwin?”

  This drew a laugh that puzzled Shuttleworth but was well understood by the assembled Tory gentlemen.

  Brodie, no Tory, knew that the others around the table saw Robert as a reluctant rebel who had not exercised his conscience so much as his sense of self-preservation in not joining Mackenzie’s revolt. He felt it was time to make his maiden contribution to the discussion. “Are there, then, no circumstances in which an oppressed people can legitimately seek to relieve their grievances by some kind of insurrection?” he said.

  Those around the table turned as one to the nineteen-year-old upstart – more expectant than hostile. How would the Yankee youngster and prospective banker answer his own question, given his upbringing in the breakaway republic to the south?

  “You are alluding to the soi-disant revolutionary war, I presume?” Sir Peregrine said, lifting both chins and staring down the table with a watery, blue-eyed gaze.