Bloody Relations Page 6

  “That’s not so. You were seen at the whist tables later on. Beth tells me that you are an avid player.”

  “She was k-kind.”

  “Do you remember how you got from Spadina House to Madame Renée’s way up north of the city?”

  A shake of the head.

  “I’m sure you didn’t walk.”

  “Rode in a c-coach.”

  “Whose coach?”

  “Man and a l-lady.”

  “Did they tell you their names?”

  “M-m-may have. I don’t remember.”

  “Perhaps when you’ve had a chance to rest and—”

  “I was drunk!” The intended venom of this admission was cut off by a sob.

  “But you must have walked through Irishtown. Did this couple let you off there? Did someone then take you to the brothel?”

  “A n-nice gentleman.”

  “Why would you leave your aunt and uncle and go to a strange house in town after midnight? Especially when I’m told you are too shy even to dance.”

  “Don’t know.” The lower jaw shook as if it had become unhinged.

  Marc waited.

  “I wanted a w-w-woman.”

  “And the nice gentleman promised you one?”

  A slow, sad nod.

  “Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “Do you recall arriving at Madame Renée’s? Meeting Sarah and going into a room with her?”

  “I was confused, thought she was Mrs. Edwards . . . ”

  “You were found naked beside Sarah McConkey with her dagger in your hand. Surely you remember getting into bed with a young woman?”

  Ellice kept his head down and brought his hands up over his eyes as if to blot out the horror of some image there. Marc realized what a horror it must have been to awake in that room in those circumstances.

  “Do you remember making love to her?”

  The head came up and the face with it, anguished and shamed. “I don’t know. I c-can’t remember!”

  • • •

  “WELL?” DURHAM ASKED WHEN MARC HAD returned to the office.

  “I find it difficult to believe that your nephew could have committed the murder. I think it more plausible that he was so far intoxicated as to be barely mobile and far too disoriented to have rummaged around for a knife said to be under the girl’s pillow and then driven it with deadly force and unerring accuracy through her throat and spine. I can see no motive nor any latent hostility or repressed rage in the young man. He appears abnormally passive.”

  “Then how do you intend to proceed? The resources of the government are at your disposal.”

  Marc had already been thinking about that. “The only way we can exculpate your nephew is to find the guilty party. I shall go out and interview the women at Madame Renée’s—without revealing your nephew’s name, of course. There has to be something Cobb has missed. If so, I’ll find it.”

  “You believe, then, that this could well be the result of a dispute among the inmates of that brothel?”

  “That’s the most obvious place to begin. Four of them were in the house when the stabbing occurred.”

  Durham looked thoughtful. “That’s true. But if one or more was responsible, we may never be able to prove it—if they stick together, as they well might, having a fortuitous scapegoat handy.”

  “Yes. I don’t suppose I could appeal to their patriotism.”

  “And the rack went out with the Inquisition.”

  “I think we should try to track down the couple who gave Mr. Ellice a lift into town. Where they dropped him off could be important. They may also have seen who collared him and led him off to Irishtown. In the least they’ll be able to vouch for the state of his insobriety. Surely someone at the gala, one of the whist players or a valet or coachman, must have seen your nephew leave and with whom.”

  “There’s no need for you or Cobb to go out to Spadina. I’ll put Wakefield onto it. He’ll know by this evening every move that Handford made up to the point of his leaving, whom he talked to, and what was said. The walls, and servants, have ears at such functions.”

  “That would be very helpful, sir. But even if we find out who took him to Madame Renée’s—and it appears to have been one of her regulars—we’re still left with the business of explaining subsequent events inside the house. Madame Renée told Cobb that she saw the man leave right after dumping the young man on her doorstep.”

  “True, but I am thinking now of something related to motive.” Durham drummed his fingers on the desk and glanced across at Marc as if making up his mind whether or not to continue. At last he said, “There are many people in this city who would like nothing more than to see my mission here fail.”

  “Almost every Tory, I should imagine, sir, and a few of the less temperate Reformers.”

  “To that end, a major personal distraction would be a heaven-sent gift, don’t you think?”

  “You suspect that one of your opponents here might have taken advantage of Handford’s near-comatose state and naiveté and deliberately lured him to that brothel?”

  “It is a possibility you must keep in mind.”

  “But no one could foresee the death of the girl in his bed.”

  “I agree. But the mere scandal of my wife’s favourite nephew being found in a squalid house of ill repute would have been enough. I’m sure you’re aware that my mission here was almost aborted because I chose to bring along two trusted associates, Thomas Turton and Edward Wakefield.”

  Marc nodded. “Yes, I see. Both were embroiled in scandals when they were younger men. And Prime Minister Melbourne has enemies within his own caucus waiting to pounce.”

  “Who are also my enemies, who would stoop to anything to have me brought to heel and disgraced.”

  “In that case, the damage may already have been done.”

  “Possibly. That is why Handford must not only be cleared but, if true, be seen as the victim of a heinous plot.”

  “How long have I got to do all this?”

  “Three days at the most. I must be back in Quebec City by the beginning of next week, which means leaving here by Friday noon. As you can see, I’ve already had to reschedule my planned meetings this morning to free up time for this conference. I am prepared to deal with any personal consequences from a perceived scandal when I get back to London, even if it means resigning my ministry. But these provinces are not yet wholly free of military conflict and they have no future unless I can provide one for them. Few men in the Whig government care a fig for what happens in British North America. And the Radicals, who would like to have me lead a political coup, will pay lip service to my recommendations only as long as it suits their immediate purpose.”

  “But what will you do if I fail?”

  “That’s just it, Mr. Edwards. I find myself on the horns of a terrible dilemma. How can I leave Handford here in a jail cell to await trial and certain conviction in the fall assizes, while I go off to Quebec to broker a just peace? And how could I ask my wife to leave her nephew in a strange country to hang alone for a crime he most assuredly did not commit? Even if I were cruel and heartless and felt no affection for Lady Durham, I could not work fruitfully in such stressful circumstances.”

  “But you are supreme governor of all the provinces with absolute authority.”

  Durham smiled grimly. “Believe me, my power has been well hedged by the cabinet, for which I am, despite much chaffing, very grateful. Moreover, if I did use my executive authority to unduly influence the legitimate efforts of the police and the independent courts, my enemies would have a free-for-all with my reputation and vaunted probity. Besides, is it not just that sort of arbitrary action I am here to bring an end to?”

  Marc got up. “What you’re saying, Your Lordship, is that I must not fail.”

  “Something like that.”

  The fact that the future of the Canadas might be at stake was, mercifully, not revisited.
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br />   FIVE

  That afternoon, with a sense of urgency that they had only three days to absolve Handford Ellice of Sarah McConkey’s murder, Marc and Cobb walked briskly to Lot Street and peered across at the ramshackle suburb of Irishtown. The shanties themselves did not begin for thirty or forty yards beyond the northern edge of the street, where a ragged copse of alder and hawthorn provided an inadequate screen for them and their unfortunate inhabitants. It was certainly less intimidating in the daytime, Cobb thought, than in the dead of night. In a year or two the severed lots on the north side of Lot Street would be cleared, and legitimate houses or businesses built on them. What would happen then to the squatters on the bleak acres behind was a question no one in authority was willing to discuss in public.

  “How do we get in?” Marc wondered aloud. He could see nothing resembling a road.

  “At night the sailors, low-lifes, and men of proberty slink along here until a tracker or scout hails ’em.”

  “And then?”

  “They get led by the baton to some house of ill repute, dependin’ on which vice they’re interested in or can afford.”

  “So that’s how young Ellice and the blackguard who led him this far found their way to Madame Renée’s?”

  “Her real name’s Norah Burgess, though that wouldn’t do fer the con-see-urge of a fancy hooer-house,” Cobb said, starting across the street. “But Ellice wasn’t taken there in the usual way. That’s just one of the queer things about this business.”

  They had reached a scraggly clutch of hawthorn trees, their bright pink blooms just beginning to shrivel and tarnish.

  “As you said earlier,” Cobb continued, “one of them gents from the ball must’ve lured the silly fella from Spadina down to here. Then, accordin’ to the Burgess woman, the gent must’ve known the way to her place in the dark, ’cause he come right to her door, give the secret knock only her regulars know, shoved the lad inta the parlour, and skedaddled.”

  Cobb pointed to a gap between two trees and, ducking to avoid the thorns, led Marc onto a narrow path that meandered through the scrub ahead of them.

  Marc picked up the narrative. “My guess is that this gentleman did not want to be recognized last night—not even by the madam or one of her trackers. That suggests to me that we are investigating something more complex and sinister than a prank or a piece of mischief designed to embarrass Lord Durham before he begins his work here.”

  “Well, we shouldn’t go jumpin’ to conclusives, Major.”

  Marc smiled at being reminded of one of his own homilies, however mangled.

  They were now out of the bush and into the shantytown proper. While Marc stared in disbelief—he had seen worse slums in London but did not expect to encounter such communities here—Cobb was again struck by how much less intimidating and how much sadder the place was in the revealing light of afternoon. They had come out onto a wide pathway that, while it curved about carelessly, was nevertheless a street of sorts—with makeshift huts and jerry-built shacks arrayed on either side, each with a flimsy and stinking outhouse tucked in behind. Where there was glass in a window, it was invariably broken. Most of the dwellings simply had gaps in the side walls to let air in and the stench out. A few were clad in oiled paper in faint hope of stemming the tide of blood-sucking mosquitoes in the night. Middens and festering garbage pits lay in squalid view between or in front of the hovels, where dogs, pigs, and rats contended for a meal.

  Nonetheless, children, oblivious to the rags their unwashed little bodies were clothed in, sprinted along the roadway, kicking a ball or darting among the houses in the squealing pursuit-and-retreat of an age-old game of tag. One tilting, barn-board cabin sported a set of red-checked curtains that lifted and fell in the soft breeze. But any trees or shrubs that had once been native here had long since been hacked down and used for firewood. The city council had given up trying to discourage the poaching of hardwood from the university parkland to the north and west of Irishtown—the sheriff having more vital concerns since the Rebellion in December—so the sun blazed down upon the inhabitants here without interruption or pity. The squall of exhausted and overheated babies mingled with the happier shouts of the children outdoors. So far they had seen no adults but were certain that every step they took was observed.

  “You lookin’ fer somebody?” A scruffy lad of twelve or thirteen had stepped out onto the path in front of them, not belligerent but wary.

  “Madame Renée’s place,” Marc said.

  “They don’t work in the daytime.” He was speaking to Marc but his gaze was fixed on Cobb’s truncheon.

  “We wish to speak with Madame Renée.”

  The boy looked puzzled.

  “You’re one of her trackers, ain’t ya?” Cobb said. “Peter or Donald.”

  “Who wants ta know?”

  The scarlet of Cobb’s nose brightened alarmingly. “The police,” he barked.

  Marc put out a restraining hand. “We’re here to find out who killed Sarah McConkey. Please show us where we need to go.” He held out a penny. “Is this your usual fee, Donald?”

  “Peter,” the boy answered, and latched on to the penny before it dissolved. “Come with me.”

  “You’ll spoil the little bugger,” Cobb chided, but he followed Marc and Peter without further comment.

  After a left and a right turn, of sorts, they came upon the sturdy brick dwelling that Cobb had visited last night, a structure replete with screened windows, a chimney, and what appeared to be a cistern along the far west wall.

  “Sarah was the nicest girl I ever met,” Peter said. “But we already know who stabbed her—some toff from the town.”

  Bad news travels faster than good, Cobb thought.

  “Do I just knock or do I need the secret code?” Marc said as one man to another.

  Peter grinned, exposing a one-inch gap in the teeth of his upper jaw. “Lemme do it.”

  He gave an intricate sequence of taps with the knocker on the scarlet door. It was almost a minute before it opened reluctantly, like an arthritic hand.

  • • •

  “BUT I BEEN OVER ALL THIS last night,” said Norah Burgess, a.k.a. Madame Renée. “Can’t your man remember the colour of his hat?” She glared at Cobb, who was seated on one of the hard chairs across the room. Cobb glared back but said nothing.

  “Constable Cobb has made a full report, in writing and again to me in person. I’d just like you to go over the events of last night, painful as they must be, in the hope that you might recall some detail or other you may have overlooked in the stress and turmoil of the situation.”

  “Well, sir, there was plenty of both, and neither me nor my girls has slept more’n an hour since.”

  Norah Burgess had little need to make this point: one look at her devastated face was enough. Her green eyes were bloodshot, the lids swollen and raw from weeping, the indigo pouches below proof of sleeplessness. She had thrown on an ordinary flowered housedress in obvious haste, and her hair, normally a kind of frizzy, pinkish halo that gave her plain features a natural attractiveness, lay upon her scalp in unkempt, greasy coils.

  Her girls, younger and more resilient, had fared better. Their hollow-eyed, tear-stained faces were certain signs of their own grief and anxiety, but their youthfulness and bodily good health (too much of it exposed, perhaps) simply made such distress seem eccentric and temporary. Molly Mason, Carrie Garnet, and Frieda Smiley were draped about their mistress on the arms and back of the padded chair below the parlour window in a variety of wanton poses. Marc had seated himself directly across from them on a hard chair. Cobb was beside him but had angled his chair so that his gaze caught Norah Burgess’s profile and managed to take in as little as possible of the obtrusive female flesh around her. Marc, however, felt he must size up the four women carefully and dispassionately, for all of them were critical witnesses at best, and at worst one or more might be implicated in conspiracy and murder.

  “We ain’t got nothin’ to hide, have
we, Mum?” Molly said with a trembling lower lip.

  “That fella seemed like a nice young gentleman, but I hope they hang him twice!” said Frieda from her perch on the other arm.

  “Poor Sarah. The doctor come this mornin’ and carted her off to cut her up,” Carrie said, so vehemently that she slipped from the back of the chair and inadvertently advertised more of her leg and less of her slip.

  “There, there, Carrie. The doctor is gonna do no such thing,” Norah soothed.

  Cobb tipped up onto his feet. “I better have a look at the other half of the house. We need to check all the windows and the other door to make sure nobody snuck in whilst you ladies were asleep.”

  “Good idea, Cobb,” Marc said.

  “You go with him, Carrie,” her mistress said, and no one contradicted her.

  Blushing furiously, Cobb followed Carrie into the domestic part of the house. Marc noticed that the door between the parlour and the hall leading to the private bedrooms was sturdy and equipped with a bar on the inner side.

  “Tell me, Miss Burgess, do you bar that door after, um, business hours?” he said.

  “Yes, we do. But I didn’t last night because ‘business,’ as you term it, was still being done in Sarah’s cubicle over there. And please address me as Mrs. Burgess. I was married once, but the bastard ran off and left me nothing but his name.”

  “I see. Well, then, Mrs. Burgess, I have some questions for you and your employees that Constable Cobb may not have thought to ask. But first I would like to go over what happened last night, starting with the early part of the evening.”

  “As you wish,” Mrs. Burgess replied with a resigned sigh. As she began, Molly and Frieda reached out and put a hand tenderly on each of her plump arms, an apparent gesture of affection and mutual support.

  For the next quarter-hour the events of the previous evening were detailed for Marc, and they jibed in every important respect with the account given him by Cobb. And while Mrs. Burgess bore the burden of the sad narrative, Frieda and Molly chipped in spontaneously with minor additions and several emendations: “Oh, Mr. Whiskers had on his yellow vest, didn’t he, Molly?” or, “I don’t think it was me, Mum, who said we better answer the knock after midnight, it was Frieda, I’m sure.” At which accusation Frieda burst into tears and was instantly comforted by Molly and her mistress. The critical points were retold much as Cobb had said: the house had closed for the night; the clock on the sideboard had chimed one o’clock; Mrs. Burgess and the four girls were about to enter their rooms when the knock of a “regular” was heard, loud and insistent. Mrs. Burgess opened to it and was nearly bowled over by Handford Ellice (“the pale gentleman” subsequently dubbed Jocko) stumbling inside, aided by a push perhaps from a black-caped gentleman who melted into the darkness before he could be identified.