Minor Corruption (27 page)

“My brother Timothy came and got me a month
ago. I used to write him letters sometimes and send them to the
Toronto post office.”

“Not addressed to your parents’ home up by
the mill?”

“No, sir. Never.”

“You didn’t want your parents to know what
had become of you since your leaving?”

“I did want my mother to know I was alive.
Tim and I were always close. I knew I could trust him. When he left
home to get married, he came and took me away from Montreal.”

“So it was your father whom you wanted to
keep in the dark about your whereabouts?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you live now?”

“With my brother and his wife near
Thornhill.”

“Under what assumed name does your brother
live?”

“Milord, this testimony is going
nowhere.”

“I agree, Mr. Cambridge. Counsellor, get to
the point – quickly.”

“Tell the court, Miss Thurgood, why you lived
apart and estranged from your parents for nine years and why your
brother has taken another name.”

Lottie hung her head briefly, then looked up
and directly across at Marc. It seemed as if she were summoning up
the last of her meagre strength. “My father abused me . . . from
the time I was twelve till I left home when I was seventeen.”

There was a stirring in the side-gallery to
the left. Burton Thurgood had leaned forward threateningly in his
seat and was refrained from moving further by a large man on his
right. He scowled across at his living daughter, but she was not
looking his way. His mouth hung open to protest, but no words
came.

“You mean sexually abused, do you not?”

“Yes. I had my own room. Betsy and Tim had
the other one. Father came to me almost every night. I didn’t know
what to do.”

“Until you ran away?”

“Yes.”

“To your knowledge, did your father sexually
abuse your sister?”

“She was only six when I left. But Tim, who
was twelve, said he would protect her.”

“So Tim knew what your father was doing?”

“He only found out when I told him – before I
lit out fer Montreal.”

“But Tim got married and left himself, did he
not, in the last week of July?”

A great commotion now halted Marc’s
examination. Burton Thurgood was standing up, pushing away the arms
trying to hold him down. “I loved her!” he cried wildly. “I loved
my little Betsy! And she loved me! There was no rape! None, I tell
you! You’re spittin’ on her grave, all of you! I’d’ve kept the
babe, too, and raised it as my own!”

The bailiff moved in, with help. Thurgood was
pulled towards the back doors of the august courtroom. The judge
banged his gavel into the confusion and consternation that followed
this mad outburst.

“In view of what has just transpired,” he
shouted, “this trial is suspended pending further investigation
into Mr. Thurgood’s ravings.”

***

It was almost four o’clock when Marc joined Cobb and
the Chief in Sturges’ office.

“Thurgood’s made a full confession,” Marc
informed them.

“Thank goodness for that,” Sturges said.
“Saved you and the court a peck of trouble.”

“That’s right,” Marc said, sitting down and
heaving a substantial sigh of relief. “Cobb here filled me in last
night on what he’d found out about the Thurgoods. I figured I’d
have to put Whittle on the stand and grill him about trout fishing,
then call Thurgood and try to break him down. His outburst and
confession have put the seal on it.”

“Then it’s over,” Cobb said, also much
relieved.

“Tell us about the confession, Marc.”

“Well, he started with the admission that he
had in fact sexually interfered with his eldest daughter, Loretta,
for many years – while his wife, poor soul, looked on, terrified to
intervene.”

“Quite a bastard all round,” Sturges
said.

“When Loretta ran away to Montreal, he became
desperate to have a run at Betsy. But he waited until she was
twelve before trying. Then he suddenly had an insurmountable
problem. Betsy and Tim had shared a room during their childhood
years, and were very close. Tim had also become a strapping
teenager, bigger and stronger than his dad. Several tactless
approaches apparently confirmed that Betsy was not likely to keep
quiet if he made a move while Tim was nearby.

“So she was safe as long as Tim was in the
house?”

“Right. But the lad had had enough of the
family and his
tyrant-ical
father,” Cobb added. “He and his
sweetheart moved out and away, gettin’ hitched in Toronto, then
skedadellin’ up to Thornhill. and changin’ their name to Kilbride,
the wife’s mother’s name.”

“Fortunately, or unfortunately from
Thurgood’s viewpoint,” Marc said, “Betsy was taken on steady at
Spadina a few days before the elopement.”

“No fortune involved,” Cobb said. “It was Tim
that arranged fer her to get on steady with the Baldwins, and he
warned her not to come home – ever – without some company.”

“He’s turned out to be quite a lad.,” Sturges
said.

“Yup, it was him who persuaded Lottie to
testify when I told them what happened to Betsy and what the trial
was about.”

“And Thurgood said he realized he was not
likely to get a chance to seduce her at home,” Marc continued. “But
in his twisted mind, he thought if he could get her alone for a few
minutes he could make her love him, and then they could be together
as often as they could arrange it.”

“A sick man, that,” Sturges said, shifting
his foot on the padded stool.

“So that malarkey about buyin’ a pony was all
true?” Cobb said.

“It was. He
had
saved a little cash
and did make a deal for the elderly beast in Whittle’s barn.
Thurgood said he knew Betsy went to the barn despite his
disapproval. Sitting near Sol Clift on the third of August, a week
after Betsy went on steady at Spadina, he did see the girl turn
north towards the barn. At twelve-thirty he and Whittle went up to
repair the sluice at the weir. Once there, Thurgood announced that
he could fix the broken logs himself if the boss wished to slip up
to the trout pool for a little illegal angling. Whittle jumped at
the chance. And, I gather, Thurgood routinely covered for Whittle
when the miller went poaching and risking the nullification of his
lease.”

“And went about lying on the witness-stand,”
Sturges said, “givin’ Thurgood a perfect alibi.”

“Yeah,” Cobb said. “He had to lie because if
he’d’ve told the truth, he was in danger of havin’ his lease
provoked
.”

“Right,” Marc said.

“So that’s what put you on to Whittle?”
Sturges said to Cobb, mightily impressed.

“When I heard Edie Barr go on about Uncle
Seamus not allowin’ any poachin’ on Trout Creek, the bells started
ringin’ in my noggin. I thought: maybe the miller wasn’t at the
weir all afternoon. If so, that left Thurgood – ”

“Unaccounted for,” Marc said. “Right on.
Thurgood waited until Whittle was out of sight – the pool there is
hidden by bushes along the shoreline – and then scooted up to the
barn. Where he found Betsy feeding the pony.”

“And he raped his own daughter,” Sturges said
with disgust.

“He still doesn’t see it that way in his own
mind, although he knows it is wrong and that he will go to jail for
incest and corruption of a minor.”

“How
does
he see it?”

“He claims that the girl acquiesced and that
what they did in that stall was to make love.”

“Absurd!” Sturges said, and winced as his
foot wobbled.

“Well, remember, Sarge,” Cobb said, “Jake
Broom said he didn’t hear any scream or whimper or cry fer help,
and her frock was hangin’ neat as a doe over the wall nearby.”

“Betsy was either too terrified to call out
or resist,” Marc said, “or else she resigned herself to her fate in
the face of her father’s awful power and authority. I doubt she
knew what was happening to her.”

“Did he hear or see Broom come upon them?”
Sturges asked.

“He heard a noise, he said, as Broom was
scampering away, but didn’t see anyone. Still, it was enough to
make him stop his outrage and order the girl to dress and hide out
along the creek until the coast was clear before heading home.
Needless to say, she was warned never to tell: he told her that if
she did, she herself, he and her mother, too, would all be ruined,
and probably go to jail.”

“And she didn’t tell, poor brave soul,”
Sturges sighed. “Not even when he gave her a chance to the night of
her death.”

“Thurgood himself went back down to the weir,
certain that his daughter would now come to him and that they would
be lovers forever.”

“Enough to make a man puke, ain’t it?”
Sturges said.

“But she never returned home again,” Marc
said, “until three days before her death. And while she continued
to bring her father Mrs. Morrisey’s lunch, she never went near the
barn or gave him any opportunity to repeat his outrage. She was in
many ways a remarkable young woman. She tried to make a life for
herself at Spadina, and thrived on Uncle Seamus’s friendship and
tutelage.”

“How is Seamus?” Sturges asked Marc.

“Not well. He’s relieved, of course, that the
trial is over and he has been acquitted of all charges. But this
dreadful business may well have been the straw that broke the
camel’s back. At any rate, he’s to live out his days at Spadina in
the care of people who are truly concerned for him.” There was
relief on another front as well. Hincks, at Robert’s suggestion,
wrote to Louis LaFontaine in Montreal, conveying the good news and,
probably, saving the political alliance.

“So,” mused Sturges, “Whittle and Thurgood
lied fer one another on the stand? Each givin’ the other an alibi –
fer different reasons.”

“It was a happy arrangement and until Cobb
ferreted out the truth, it kept my mind away from either of them as
potential rapists.”

“But I still don’t get the business about the
hair,” Sturges said. “Thurgood ain’t old and he’s got black, curly
locks.”

Cobb looked at Marc, who said, “I managed,
inadvertently, to suggest the answer during one of my frantic and
misguided cross-examinations. I speculated that the mill-hands
could easily and naturally come by whitish hair. After all, they
work in the midst of wheat chaff, wheat dust and milled flour. And
the morning of the rape, all of them had been kept busy shovelling
up a spilled load of grain. Thurgood’s black curls were dusted
grey-white. None of the men bothered washing until the end of the
day, so Thurgood’s hair – in the tricky light and shadow of that
stall and with his curls sprayed wide in his exertions – looked
much like the whitish halo around Uncle Seamus’s head.”

“I see,” Sturges said. “And Thurgood is a
wiry, slim fella who could’ve looked old to an excited Jake
Broom?”

“I feel terrible about Broom,” Marc said,
glancing at Cobb. “The poor devil really was in love with Betsy,
and all kinds of thoughts must have gone through his head as he
came upon that scene – with Betsy apparently accepting the physical
advances of a sixty-year-old. Why he ran and why he decided not to
reveal what he’d seen, only he really knows. But I was dead wrong
to accuse him of rape. It was the last thing he would ever have
done.”

“And if I’d’ve done a proper investigation in
the first place, there wouldn’t
been
a trial for Seamus
Baldwin.”

“But it was your brilliant work that exposed
the culprit,” Sturges said forcefully. “And without the trial you
wouldn’t’ve heard about the ban on trout fishin’ from Edie.”

“Well spoken, Wilf,” Marc said. “But I’d like
to know from the horse’s mouth, Cobb, just how you put together
your second and successful investigation.”

Cobb beamed. “I own it mostly to you,
Major.”

“How so? Surely it wasn’t my losing my temper
and making false accusations against you?”

“Well, that put a bee on my bottom, all
right. But, no, it was you always tellin’ me not to accept
coincidences.”

“I do recall saying that more than once.”

“Well, when you told me to do my job, I got
to thinkin’ that maybe I
had
started out with only one
suspect in mind. But I really didn’t fancy any of the young
mill-hands. Then I remembered. In the last week of July or so,
three things happened, three things that might be connected. Betsy
Thurgood gets a steady job at Spadina, and I know from the trial
that she did not ever return home until her ma got sick in October
and she come back to help out.”

“And two or three days later, Tim Thurgood
elopes and vanishes,” Marc said.

“Right. That’s number two. And number three
we all know about. On the very next Saturday, Betsy foolishly
leaves her pa an openin’ and he takes it.”

“So you assumed that her brother Tim had
deliberately waited to leave until he was sure Betsy was away from
home?”

“It seemed possible. And why would a
fifteen-year-old girl not go home once to visit her ma – not a
half-hour away? Could it be she was afraid of her pa? Likely, eh?
But then lots of terrible fathers beat their kids. Maybe that was
all there was to that.”

“But you recalled the older sister leaving
and not returning?”

“Right again. But I had one big problem with
this theory.”

“Thurgood had a perfect alibi,” Sturges said,
happily getting into the act. “Sworn to by the miller, who seemed
to have no reason to lie.”

“But then I remembered Edie tellin’ the court
about Whittle bein’ forbidden to fish in the trout pools, and
suddenly the miller had a reason to lie.”

“And the bugger’ll just say he misremembered
and avoid perjury,” Sturges muttered. “But when he asked Thurgood
to lie fer him and say he was at the weir all along, Thurgood
must’ve been mightily relieved. He was home free.”

“Well, then, the first move I made after
gettin’ permission from you, Sarge, was to drive up to the mill. I
wanted find out if Whittle’d been anglin’ instead of fixin’ the
dam, and I also figured him or one of the hands would know if Tim
Thurgood had any friends in the area. ‘Cause it was Tim I needed to
talk to, to find out if his pa was a pervert.”