Bloody Relations (13 page)

“Well, sir, I intend to find the real killer. That will be a start in
helping Mr. Ellice recover. Perhaps then he could be sent home to recuperate.”

“You are right, of course. But I was hoping, as you may be, that Handford could provide us with material assistance in the investigation. Yet so far he seems to have confused Mrs. Edwards with this . . . ”

“Sarah McConkey, the murdered girl.”

“Yes. I'm afraid he thinks not only that he may have committed murder, but also that he has destroyed a woman who befriended him.”

“Be assured, sir, that I lend no credence to what Mr. Ellice may say in a delirium or as a result of delayed shock.”

“Your discretion is appreciated. Now, please tell me what you've discovered at the crime scene.”

For the next twenty minutes Marc talked and Durham listened. Marc recounted what he assumed to be the established facts in the case, avoiding all speculation and theorizing. He told Durham that it appeared Ellice had been deliberately lured away from Spadina about midnight, probably by one of the whist players, driven to Lot Street, escorted to Madame Renée's, taken to bed by Sarah McConkey, and subsequently discovered asleep beside her bloody corpse with the murder weapon in his hand. Marc then reviewed the interrogation of the four women, the revelation of the escape hatch and the missing key, and the madam's dismissal of Michael Badger.

When Marc had finished, Durham sat back wearily and asked, “How far can we trust anything these prostitutes say?”

“I believe we have to be skeptical of anything they tell us. The denizens of Irishtown don't exactly revere authority of any kind. What Cobb and I have endeavoured to do is to look for inconsistencies and to tally their claims against those incontrovertible
facts we do know. For instance, none of the victim's blood left the bedroom except for that on the bare feet of your nephew. Cobb himself saw the dagger in the young man's hand, with no evidence that anyone else had entered the room after the stabbing to stage a false scene. It's conceivable that all four women were in on it together, but we have found no plausible motive yet for such an assumption, nor do we have a rational explanation for how they might have managed it.”

“I see.”

“So it is important in that regard to verify the timeline. We need to know for sure when Mr. Ellice left Spadina and, if possible, whom he left with.”

Durham smiled. “I can help you there. As I mentioned this morning, I ordered Wakefield to question the servants carefully about what they observed last evening. Mr. Wakefield is both persuasive and thorough.”

Marc's heart leapt. “He found out who lured Mr. Ellice away?”

“Not quite. But here is what he believes to be a reliable account of what happened. It was about ten-thirty when Handford left us to try his luck at whist. He was observed to join one of the tables and keep to it for the remainder of the evening. One of the four gentlemen already there would give up his seat for fifteen minutes or so—putting in a token appearance with his wife in the ballroom, no doubt—then return and take the seat of another, who left in turn, and so on.”

“I think I know the four gentlemen in question,” Marc said, to Durham's surprise.

“You do?”

Marc named the foursome that he and Owen had observed from their vantage-point in the smoker: the Reverend Temperance Finney, Alasdair Hepburn, Patrick O'Driscoll, and Samuel Harris.

“Precisely. And you know these gentlemen?”

“Good Tories all,” Marc said. “Finney is a fire-and-brimstone Methodist, Hepburn runs the Commercial Bank, O'Driscoll is second-in-command of the Orange Lodge, and Samuel Harris is a wealthy landowner in town and an importer of dry goods.”

“You suspect there may have been some skullduggery in that card room?”

“It's possible. Though I think that whatever happened there was partly improvised. But before I bore you with my theories, please tell me more of what actually happened.”

“Several times Handford accompanied one or another of the gentlemen to the bar for a drink before Handford was sent back to rejoin the whist. All this was apparently convivial. Nonetheless, one of the servants was alarmed at Handford's state of inebriation and went looking for my valet. He couldn't find him, and when he returned to his post, Handford was gone—to his quarters, the man assumed.”

“Did he leave the whist table alone?”

“Yes.”

“Not with one of the players?”

“No. They were there until nearly midnight.”

Marc's hopes sank. They had to find the culprit who drove Ellice into town.

“But he was spotted leaving the grounds.” Durham smiled at the effect this revelation had. “At precisely ten minutes past midnight, in one of the carriages, accompanied by a gentleman and possibly his lady.”

“Then it could have been one of the whist players after all. Do we know who?”

“Alas, no. Two different stableboys saw Handford stagger into the carriage, but neither can recall whose carriage it was—only
that it was likely a barouche. It was dark and several other carriages were leaving about the same time.”

“Damn. Most of the guests came in barouches.”

“Wakefield will continue the investigation out at Spadina. It's still possible that someone will recall something of significance.”

“I hope so. But this new information is helpful. It tallies with the account of events given by the women at Madame Renée's, and makes it almost impossible to believe that they had time to perpetrate the crime as a group and cover their tracks. And it suggests that Mr. Ellice was plied with drink—possibly even drugged—and may have been seduced into accompanying one of the whist players.”

“Those conclusions, however tentative, sound reasonable to me.”

“If true, it narrows our search to four men, not the dozens now scattered across three counties.”

“Though it is not inconceivable that a fifth conspirator may have been engaged to do the transporting.”

“Perhaps, but I now have four people to interrogate that I didn't have half an hour ago.”

Durham looked at Marc as if unsure how he should broach the point he felt obliged to make. “I think we have to be extremely tactful in how we go about interrogating prominent citizens about a murder, especially those not known to be Whig sympathizers.”

“But I—”

“And that is why I invited you to lead the investigation rather than leaving it to the local authorities.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Durham dredged up a smile and said, “Now, I sense you're keen to begin theorizing.”

Marc smiled back. “Yes, sir, I am.” And with that, he
sketched out his hypothesis—now reinforced by Wakefield's report from Spadina—that the murder was the result of a conspiracy to derail His Lordship's mission and its perceived pro-Reform bias. One or more of the whist players—Finney, Hepburn, O'Driscoll, Harris—had arranged to get Ellice drunk and lure him to a brothel. Hiding close by was a recruited thug, who knew the routine of the house and possessed a key to its hidden entrance, not six feet from the door to the victim's room. When the house was quiet, said thug slipped in, slunk into the cubicle where Sarah McConkey and Ellice were asleep (his snores audible through the netted opening of the window), and created mayhem.

“Surely the slaughter of an innocent girl—fallen soul though she was—seems a bit extravagant for the purpose of embroiling my family in a scandal,” Durham ventured.

“I agree, sir. As I mentioned earlier, Badger had a personal grudge in addition to his need for money, but even so, I don't believe he was paid to kill anyone. When we apprehend him—”

“If we do—”

“If we do, then I'll bet we find that he was hired to beat up the girl, perhaps knocking her unconscious, then scoot back out the hatch before the women were wakened and came running in. That would be enough to compromise your nephew, especially if the respectable citizen who set this up informed the police or encouraged Mrs. Burgess to make a complaint. Or perhaps Badger was meant to break Mr. Ellice's leg or otherwise incapacitate him so he would be found there in disgrace.”

Durham looked skeptical. “Would he be able to do any of this and get away?”

“I believe so, for two reasons. First, he was a professional bruiser. He made his living by intimidating rowdies and beating people up.
He'd have little trouble silencing Sarah while he clubbed her unconscious or smashing a leg with a brick, and then retreating through an unlocked escape hatch only steps away.”

“And all this to sabotage my mission?”

Marc grimaced. “I'm afraid so. Remember, we just fought a bloody civil war over the fate of these provinces, and publicly hanged several of the rebels. Even as we speak, our borders are being threatened by Yankee fanatics.”

Durham nodded in sad agreement, then said, “Well, it's a plausible theory. But as I see it, we need to find two men before we can take it one premise further: Michael Badger and the man who took him to the brothel.”

“Cobb is heading to the Tinker's Dam tonight to look for Badger and check out Mrs. Burgess's characterization of him as a reckless gambler and deadbeat.”

“Meanwhile, I've prepared the ground for you and me both to assess the character of the whist players.”

“You have?”

“After Wakefield's report, I anticipated that we might need to examine these men, even if only to eliminate them from our suspicions. You said you've read the characters and relationships among the women of the brothel during your time there this afternoon. Well, I have invited Finney, Hepburn, O'Driscoll, and Harris to meet with me here at ten o'clock tomorrow morning, ostensibly to have them offer advice to me and to be privy to some of my current thinking on potential solutions for the political problems in Upper Canada.”

“But won't they be suspicious, especially if more than one is in on the game?”

Durham gave Marc a look that he must have used a hundred times in cabinet meetings just before revealing some particularly
subtle piece of political deception. “I've also invited Robert Baldwin, son of the squire of Spadina and lifelong Reformer, to provide diversion and ballast.”

“But you said ‘both' of us.”

“I did. You will bring your notebook and sit in a corner with Charles Buller, as my recording secretaries.”

“Two secretaries?”

“It'll reinforce the importance I attach to their every word, eh?”

Marc was impressed. “So you'll get to look these chaps in the eye while I observe unnoticed from the side?”

“Exactly. Moreover, I intend to invent some pretext for asking, casually you understand, about certain events in the card room last evening. We'll test their responses and go from there.”

“I'll be here, with notebook, before ten.”

“Good. I feel we've made real progress in just a few hours.”

“Thank you. Oh, one last matter: was there any further information from Dr. Withers about Sarah?”

“He submitted a copy of the written report prepared for Chief Sturges. There's nothing new. She was stabbed once and fatally. There were no other wounds or even bruises. Interestingly enough, according to Withers, she had not been . . . engaged, shall we say, during the evening. Poor Handford was so inebriated he must have doffed his clothes and then collapsed on the bed and fallen asleep.”

“It does sound as if he might have been drugged.”

Durham sighed. “You may be right. If so, your conspiracy theory gains credibility.”

Marc wished now he had checked the decanters on the sideboard at Madame Renée's. It would be far too late to do so now.
More likely, though, any drugging had taken place out at Spadina or en route to the brothel.

“Dr. Withers released the girl's body to Mrs. Burgess and the undertaker late this afternoon. Apparently her own family has publicly disowned her.”

“Sadly, I believe that is so,” Marc said, “though I intend to verify it.”

Marc rose and the two men shook hands.

Outside it was now dark. Marc walked briskly towards Sherbourne Street and home. One of the cabs that had just started to patrol King Street slowed expectantly, but Marc waved it on. He was far too agitated to ride in style. He was not only in the midst of a murder investigation that might heavily influence the future of Upper Canada, he was about to be allowed entry to the inner sanctum of high-level politics. At ten o'clock tomorrow he would be privileged to watch one of the most brilliant public men of the post-war period in action.

•  •  •

SOMEONE WAS JABBING COBB IN THE
ribs with a truncheon. But whenever he tried reaching for his own trusty instrument of justice, his arm froze in mid-reach and his ribs took another wincing blow. Cold panic twisted in his gut . . .

“Dad! Wake up!”

Groggily, Cobb forced his eyelids open.

“You said to wake you up before dark, but we couldn't get you to budge!”

Delia and Fabian stood beside his prone figure with expressions of bewilderment and irritation.

“Mom ain't home, so it was only us,” Delia said, more in the way of defence than apology.

“It was Delia's idea to use the soup ladle on your chest,” Fabian said.

“Missus Cobb's been out all night?” Cobb sat up, trying to shake off the lethargy of deep and illicit sleep.

The children laughed. “It's not morning, Dad. It's about nine o'clock at night. We've been trying to wake you up for almost an hour.”

“Jumpin' Jesus!”

The children recoiled, not so much at the expletive as at the daunting sight of their father clad only in cotton drawers that did little to prevent his paunch from greeting the world raw and unmitigated.

“Fetch my clothes! I gotta be up to Lot Street before dark!”

“It's too late for that,” Fabian said.