Death in the Age of Steam (63 page)

“Will I be required to see Papa?” Theresa suddenly asked.

“No.”

“I'd rather remember him chuckling over his mail,” she said.

She and Harris were soon breakfasted and walking back west past Sheridan's villa along Front Street. Autumn temperatures kept pedestrians up to a military gait. Septimus Murdock, short of breath as always, was heaving himself along eastward at an even brisker rate, dragging a well-scrubbed boy of six or seven by the hand.

“Hallo, Septimus,” called Harris with pleasure. “How are you?”

“Isaac!” exclaimed his old associate. “I've been reading of your exploits in the papers. Bravo. Miss Sheridan I know of course by sight, but won't you introduce us?”

Harris did so. He believed he had mentioned to Theresa his highly industrious accountant and successor. Privately, Harris thought Murdock's new responsibilities must suit him, for the man seemed so much more at ease.

Murdock proclaimed himself delighted at Theresa's safe return.

“Like all my co-religionists,” he said, “I greatly admired your late father and sincerely feel your loss. For compassion, for integrity, we'll never see his like.”

Harris felt this to be so. However young, the country was old enough to have an irreplaceable past as well as a beckoning future.

“Tributes such as yours are solid comfort,” Theresa answered. “And is this intelligent-looking gentleman your son?”

Shyly flattered, the boy dropped his satchel in confusion.

“One of many, I thank God, but the aptest scholar. I must get him off to the cathedral school.” Murdock's goateed chin quivered as if he were about to say something quite bold. “I do believe he'll live to see a new harmony between Christian and Christian.”

Here was a change, thought Harris. He wondered what could be the cause.

“I pray so,” Theresa assented.

“Yes,” Murdock continued, “Orange Grand Master Gowan himself has made some most conciliatory statements, and at today's ceremony, both Catholic and Protestant bands are to play. Call on me at the bank, Isaac, soon.”

“Gladly,” said Harris. “Which ceremony is that?”

“Why, to mark the early completion of Conquest Iron Works!” Murdock gestured towards a new brick chimney towering incongruously above the Front Street villas. “Think of it this afternoon when you hear the horns bray—Roman and Orange brass sounding as one. Come along, Decimus! Ah, Miss Sheridan, if only your father had lived . . .”

“If only,” Theresa said dryly when their haste in opposite directions had carried Murdock out of earshot.

Harris thought to himself how Conquest's erratic fortunes came into that hypothesis. Newbiggins's venture had made Murdock a cashier, liberated Harris to be a full-time detective, and to some extent tempted Crane to become a murderer.

Sword's Hotel lay just ahead on the right. The older villas like William Sheridan's were set back behind gardens, but in the forties the experiment had been made towards York Street of building a row of four attached houses flush with the sidewalk. They did not sell. After ten years' service as Knox Presbyterian College, they had just been renovated and—with the addition of a new wing behind—opened to paying guests. By contrast to the more commercial American Hotel, Sword's was styling itself the choice of parliamentarians. It was into Sword's modern ballroom that Reform statesman William Francis Sheridan's disinterred casket was carried on the morning of Saturday, November 1, to be opened in the course of the inquest and in the presence of the jury.

Theresa arrived to find the spectators' seats already largely occupied by her father's constituents and admirers. The constable had not yet called them to order. A spontaneous and sympathetic hush nonetheless fell upon them as, with Harris at her side, she approached the coffin. It rested on low trestles and had been brushed clean of mud except in the deepest recesses of the abundant scrollwork. Theresa rested her hand upon the box's metal lid, so lately weighted down with earth.

“Here I am,” she murmured.

Harris could imagine no words more consoling in the voice of her who had disappeared and was returned. For him, this would always be the memorable moment of a proceeding whose formal results could only be confirmatory, and which Friday's events had drained of any urgency.

Later, when the lid was lifted and the jurors sworn, they considerately uttered no gasps or exclamations, nor let any sign of the cadaver's condition appear in their faces. It transpired that Theresa's testimony would not be heard until after Professor Bernard Lamb had performed his post-mortem
examination. This delay seemed for the best. Another week would give her time to recover from recent shocks before publicly relating Sibyl's death.

The inquest adjourned for the day before noon. Theresa looked in the assembly for Dr. Hillyard, but was told her Papa's old friend had been excused from appearing on the grounds of ill health and had again betaken himself to the West Indies.

Jasper Small had also been unexpectedly absent. He greeted Theresa and Harris at the door with inexplicit apologies and an invitation to lunch. He wore a new suit and bowler hat. He ordered Sword's best wine. Plainly his dishevelled state on meeting the train last night had reflected his anxiety alone and not his current fortunes. Had he a new client? After recounting as much of Crane's end as sorted with appetite and digestion, Harris resumed his inquisitor's rôle.

“The Garrison was not required after all, Jasper, but since when have you been on such intimate terms with the Attorney General as to approach him on the subject?”

“In truth, it's my senior partner who has the influence there,” said the lawyer with his enigmatic smile. He then answered his own riddle by adding, “Lionel Leonard Matheson.”

Harris put down his fork.

“Is he not Henry's lawyer?” asked Theresa in surprise.

“He was,” Small gently corrected. “It seems my prosecution of the bigamy case impressed the old fox. When he lost, Henry discharged him—and Matheson felt at liberty to approach me.”

“I know him socially,” said Harris, “and believe he's honest, but he's a Conservative. Won't that mean quite a change in your work?”

“A John A. Macdonald Conservative, nothing like the hidebound old Tories that Willie Sheridan spent his life battering and educating.” Not seeing what he wanted in their eyes, Small looked into his wine glass. He didn't see it there either. “The fact is,” he admitted, “I'm no good on my own.”

“You did the right thing then,” said Theresa. “Now will you represent Henry's widow?”

Small brightened immediately. By not dying on the scaffold
or under sentence of death, Henry had improved Susan Crane's claim on his estate and saved his remains from perhaps being offered to medical students.

“She should thank you, Isaac, for letting him bleed,” said the lawyer. “I can't imagine how you bore it—but then I've never been on a deer hunt.”

“It wasn't the least like a deer hunt,” Harris affirmed. “And I'm not sure I did do right to let him bleed in William Sheridan's bedroom.”

“A fitting enough place,” said Theresa. “Besides, it's All Saints Day. The ghosts are gone.”

“Really, Theresa?” said Small. “I didn't know you held these quaint beliefs.”

“Perhaps I don't,” she rejoined with a smile, “but neither do I believe it was up to Isaac whether Henry lived or died. You disarmed him, Isaac. You prevented his escape. What was most required you did. Tell us, though, could you also have performed a ligature of the femoral artery? No? From what I saw, nothing less would have stopped the bleeding.”

Harris felt steadied. Less and less seemed to stand between him and the new life with Theresa. He would need employment, of course, but nothing exalted. Last time, in waiting to be made cashier before he contemplated marriage, he had waited too long.

As the three friends were leaving the hotel, Theresa spied a patroness of the new Toronto General Hospital, with whom she stopped to a exchange a word.

“Before I forget,” said Small, handing Harris an envelope, “this is from York Foundry. I believe you are being offered a position.”

Here was a happy opportunity, thought Harris, though—with Conquest poised to cast its first rail—far from a sinecure. He perused and pocketed the letter.

“Your atheism distresses certain of the directors, but for some reason they do not consider your departure from the Provincial Bank a sign of unsteadiness.”

Harris inferred that York Foundry had got wind of his futile attempt to protect their confidences from Newbiggins. Murdock had perhaps said something. Not feeling at liberty to resolve Small's puzzlement, Harris covered a smile by asking whether the lawyer had taken quite all his old clients to Matheson.

“Not quite. I haven't seen Esther myself since returning from Montreal, but my personal affairs are still rather untidy.”

“Spare me the particulars,” Harris entreated.

“Between the two of us, I believe I now share a mistress with the inspector of police.” An amorous glint came into Small's grey eyes. “It's intolerable, but that thieving young tigress Nan Hogan has me between her paws.”

Theresa's return mercifully redirected conversation to the imminent probate of her father's will. When Small left for his new office on King Street East, she rather less felicitously suggested stopping in to see what the villa she was inheriting would need to make it habitable.

New carpeting and floor in the bedroom, Harris grumbled to himself. It seemed soon to him, barely twelve hours since the removal of Crane's body—far too soon to be again pushing open the kitchen door and climbing the fourteen noiseless steps to the main floor. He insisted they not go higher.

In the front parlour, Theresa began pulling dust sheets from the furniture, starting with the pianoforte and a modern easy chair. The sight of the chair, ornately carved and heavily fringed, seemed to make her tremble. Into it she sank, covering her lowered face with her hands. Her inclined neck looked terrifyingly delicate with its lovely dark mole to the left of the nape. She wept softly at first. Presently she cried in strong, keening wails that shivered Harris to the core.

He touched her shoulder, then knelt before her and caught her in his arms as she, falling forward, threw hers about him. She cried more quietly, but for a very long time. She was at home. No one could see or hear. She was far from Harris, even as she pressed her moist cheek to his shirt front, far inside one
of many private griefs. Part of her had disappeared again. He knew helplessly that, even though she gave herself to him, there would always be these times when she went from him, and he would be left wondering whether to search or wait.

“Was it your father's favourite chair?” he asked at last.

“No.” Theresa finished crying and cleared her throat. “I can't explain. The chair has no closer connection to him than does anything else.”

With these words, her arms tightened around Harris. Her tears flowed again. Through her plain wool bodice he felt her rib cage heave. His knees were numb with kneeling, as must hers have been, yet neither could bear to move.

Eventually, through the curtained south windows, march music drifted from the Esplanade.

“What's that?” Theresa asked in something like her normal voice.

“Conquest Iron Works,” said Harris. “Your new neighbours.”

“I had forgotten.” She tore off her black bonnet and tried to push the hair off her forehead. “I detest factories and steam engines,” she said, “don't you?”

Harris hesitated. He meant to fight Conquest's fire with York's, to match forge with forge, to bring ore from Lake Superior and build the new iron age. Despite specific misgivings, of an aesthetic nature mostly, he believed in industry. He believed in employment opportunities, a shrinking world, affordable goods widely distributed. One could not detest the entire tenor of one's age—but then he knew that behind her words Theresa had something much more specific in mind, the career of industrialist Henry Crane.

“How do they make us better or healthier?” she insisted.

“We were bad enough before steam,” said Harris. “Look at MacFarlane and his cholera brig.”

Theresa squirmed a little. “To think he'll be knighted!”

Harris regretted not having asked Crane about the future Sir George, whose confidence on board the train subsequent events had so conveniently justified. Crane was gone now, Hillyard
indisposed, and MacFarlane's title would have to be borne with.

“Perhaps,” said Harris, “the fundamental evil is haste. Henry could not wait for Conquest's fortunes to improve, and George could not wait for the quarantine.”

“You were
too
patient in the old days, Isaac.” Theresa disengaged herself altogether from his embrace, the more thoroughly to look him over. “I like you better now.”

The marching bands had reached the new iron works and fallen silent. Now they struck up an infectious Offenbach polka.

The music on top of Theresa's gratifying avowal restored feeling to Harris's legs. On an impulse, he rose and extended his arms to Theresa where she sat, her skirt a wide black pool on the green and yellow carpet. Its sylvan pattern of twisting branches and curling leaves throbbed with delicious life.

“Do you mean for us to dance?” she asked in amazement.

Harris smiled and tried to catch her hands.

“Well, say it!” she insisted, a challenging sparkle in her large, green eyes. “Don't leave me in any doubt about your intentions.”

“Wicked, I assure you. Come here.”

“I haven't for years. I don't think I can.”

“You can.” Harris would leave her in no doubt. “Theresa, I'm asking you for this dance . . . and all the rest.”

He led her to the unobstructed centre of the room. Side by side, they hopped and stepped forward, then back, to French music played by Toronto Protestants and Catholics for a Yankee venture. Behind drawn curtains the half light was theirs alone. Harris counted out the time.