The Bishop's Pawn (22 page)

“Find out what goes on in the back rooms –
gambling, prostitution, whatever. Pretend to get drunk. Start
bad-mouthing Dick Dougherty. Toss out names like Wetmore and
Winship. See what dregs you can stir from the bottom of the
pot.”

“Wonderful! It’s just the sort of lark my old
school chums might go for!”

“But, please, be careful.”

“I will, Marc. And I won’t disappoint
you.”

“You haven’t yet,” Marc smiled.

They came up to a food-vendor, from whom they
bought a hot potato and a glass of cider. “What are
you
going to be doing?” Brodie said between mouthfuls.

“I’m going to beard the lions in their den.
I’m going to the Bar Association and pose as a journalist from
Toronto, seeking background information on a story I’m writing for
the
Upper Canada Gazette
on Richard Dougherty’s life and
untimely death. I want to see what
I
can stir up.”

“I know where the offices are. But you might
get more reliable information from someone like Horace Greely,
editor of the
New Yorker
, one of the few independent and
honest newspapermen in the state, according to Uncle.”

“I’ll start with the legal profession.”

“What will you do with your
evening
?
You could come to the Manhattan Club, I suppose,” Brodie said
dutifully.

Marc smiled and finished his cider. A beggar,
skin and bone and pop-eyed, lurched against Brodie and righted
himself clumsily on the vendor’s cart.

“Get yer filthy paws offa my vee-hicle!” the
vendor snarled.

“Here,” Marc said, flipping a shilling at
him, “give this gentleman a potato and all the cider he can
drink.”

The vendor caught the coin, glowered at Marc,
but did as he was bid. A coin was true specie, whatever its
origin.

“You’ll recall that your uncle left two
thousand dollars to The Bowery Theatre in his will,” Marc said when
they were moving again.

“That’s right. He loved the theatre, as I
told you, especially that one.”

“My mother, Annemarie Thedford, is the
principal shareholder of that establishment.”

Brodie stopped. His eyes grew wide.

“You think Uncle might have known Mrs.
Thedford?”

“I do. And I intend to find out for sure this
evening.”

SEVENTEEN

Cobb generally looked forward to Mondays. Sunday was
the Lord’s day, and even those long since evicted from His Presence
paid lip-service to the Sabbath rituals. Most taverns closed
(though bootleggers here and there in their hidey-holes thrived),
which meant there were no brawls to break up and few domestic
disputes to umpire. Shops were shuttered and the Market untended,
leaving the streets deserted except for promenading family groups.
Some of this serenity, spiritual or otherwise, carried over into
Monday, when the workday began sluggishly, and even the shopkeepers
and tradesmen did not bother to open up until almost noon.

This past Saturday, with no fresh breaks in
the Dougherty case, Cobb had been back on his regular patrol. It
might have been the tension building everywhere as the great debate
over the province’s future heated up – in the legislature where
Mowbray McDowell was said to have delivered another mesmerizing
speech or in the public houses where speech was cheap and loud and
no less partisan – or it might have been just the fickleness of the
weather (it had snowed briefly on Friday), but the last Saturday in
March had been a humdinger for the police. Cobb had been called to
a house on Frederick Street where it was reported that a husband
was threatening his wife and children with a carving knife. By the
time he and Wilkie arrived, the fellow, drunk as a skunk, had been
locked out of his home by his adroit spouse, and was found
hammering on the door with the butt-end of the knife. The
constables managed to collar and disarm him – while being cursed
and spat upon – but just as they began to subdue him, the woman
stepped out onto the porch and levelled him with one blow of her
skillet. They didn’t know which one to charge.

The peacefulness of the Sabbath, then, had
been more than welcome. But this particular Monday morning, alas,
did not promise to be a continuation of that Godly calm. For Cobb
had undertaken to check on the Poor Box at St. James. He had
suggested, of course, that it be emptied right after evensong, but
Constance Hungerford had ridiculed the notion. How else were they
to catch the thief except by providing him with a suitable
incentive? She took matters further into her own hands by
“suggesting” that Mavis McDowell be temporarily relieved of the
burden of emptying the box – until the thief was safely behind
bars. Cobb did not really have a lot of faith in the business of
his planting the torn Halifax dollar for the feckless robber to
spirit off to his lair, but he did remember to bring along the
“matching” triangular portion. It appeared that Mrs. Hungerford
wished the culprit to be her husband’s rival, David Chalmers.
Wishful thinking, in Cobb’s opinion. Certainly the rivalry was real
enough. Dora had gleefully recounted the prevailing gossip after
attending the morning service yesterday, which had been taken by
Quentin Hungerford, who – it being close to Easter – preached about
the two
thieves
who had bracketed Christ on the cross. Would
Chalmers retaliate at evensong? With a homily on Judas
Iscariot?

Cobb was about to sidle around to the rear of
the vicarage when one of the big front doors of the church squealed
open. It was Constance. “In
this
way, Cobb. Quickly!”

Cobb’s heart sank. But he did as he was told.
The church was unlit, with only a hazy daylight filtering through
the mosaics on the windows. The Poor Box stood on its perch, its
little door closed.

“It ain’t been tampered with?” Cobb said,
hopes rising.

Constance stuck out her long-nailed, right
forefinger and casually flicked open the door. “It’s been unlocked.
By someone
with a key.
”

“Why didn’t they lock it back up?”

She stared at him as if he were witless. “And
why would he bother? We were bound to find it empty, weren’t
we?”

“I see yer point.”

“We never find less than five dollars in
there. And as you can see for yourself, there isn’t a farthing
left. Money intended for
widows and orphans
!”

Cobb felt the lash of this latter remark as
if he had somehow colluded in the outrage. “So I guess he took the
dollar I planted in there.”

“That would be a reasonable conclusion,
wouldn’t it?”

“Were these front doors locked?”

“Quentin’s been doing that since Mr. Epp . .
. left us. And my husband never shirks a duty, however menial.”

“So the robber got in here through the
vicarage an’ the walkway?”

“Another unassailable deduction.”

“Which means this is an inside job,” Cobb
said. “Now I
gotta
talk with yer maids, Mrs. Hungerford. You
do see that, don’t you?”

She was suddenly all sweetness and light.
“Certainly. But I hope you are not about to overlook the Reverend
Chalmers. After all, my servants share the rear quarters with him.
My own family never enter that area after the church is closed up
at nine o’clock – unless invited. So we are down to three suspects,
are we not?”

“Looks that way,” Cobb said glumly.

He trailed the vicar’s wife through the
vestry and the covered walkway into the hall at the rear of the
vicarage, trying not to step on her voluminous, rustling
skirts.

“Myrtle and Missy are occupied in my chambers
at the moment,” she said as they drew to a halt. “They share these
two rooms. Whilst they are busy elsewhere, why not take this
opportunity to search for the stolen money?” she said, and pushed
open the door in front of her. When Cobb hesitated, she added, “You
do
intend to search these premises thoroughly?”

“Well, I thought I oughta
talk
to the
ladies first.”

Constance glared at him, and he could feel
his nose reddening. “If one of my servants were involved – and I
have no doubt that they were
not
– then the only place they
could ‘stash the loot,’ as our crass newspapers would say, is here
among their meagre possessions. I’ll stand in the doorway while you
do your duty.”

“If that’s what you want,” Cobb said,
grinding his teeth.

“And don’t go disturbing their effects!”

Cobb went into the maids’ suite. He found
himself standing in a small sitting-room just big enough for two
padded chairs, a tattered carpet, a pot-bellied stove, and a
commode. Gingham curtains on a narrow window and crocheted doilies
on the arms of the chairs were the only signs of a feminine touch.
Among the combs, scissors and
bric-à-brac
he found no coins
or banknotes of any kind. For form’s sake he peered into the
cupboard beneath and tipped the chamber pot up into the light. With
a sigh – and Constance Hungerford’s stare still upon him – he eased
back a curtain and entered the bedroom.

The two women shared one bed. Most of the
rest of the room was taken up by a bulky “highboy,” with six deep
drawers, and a clothes-rack upon which were draped a half-dozen
frocks, uniforms and related items of apparel. Cobb sighed, and
went to work. Ten minutes later – after scrabbling through bins of
frilly, lacy, frothy garments (with calloused hands and eyes
squeezed shut) and patting down several silky, slippery dresses
that might as well have been occupied by their owners – Cobb
emerged to say, “As you thought, ma’am: nothin’.”

“That leaves only one other place, doesn’t
it?” Constance said with only a modest attempt to modulate her
glee.

“You want me to search a minister’s rooms?”
Cobb said, aghast.

“I do. Mr. Chalmers is not there. I
checked.”

Cobb couldn’t see any other option, short of
a court-martial, so he lumbered down to Chalmers’ suite at the end
of the hall, next to the rear entrance and across from the covered
walkway to the church. He knocked discreetly.

“He’s not there, Cobb. And none of these
inside doors can be locked.”

Cobb opened Chalmers’ door slowly.

“For Heaven’s sake, man, go on! The Holy
Ghost’s not in there!”

Cobb went in. All was quiet. No Chalmers, no
ghosts. Still, Cobb felt vaguely disrespectful as he pawed through
the drawers of the vicar’s desk. In the top drawer he found a
compact, leather-bound, gilt-trimmed
Bible.
He felt like a
thief himself, and a sneak-thief at that, as he riffled its pages.
On the fly-leaf he noted the inscription: “To David Chalmers, mae
ye fare well in the sight of the Lord, from Rev. J. Strachan,
Cornwall, U.C., 1811.” He dropped the book-prize. Beside it, where
it fell, lay a silver locket, sprung open. It contained the
miniature portrait of a young woman with ringlets and eyes as green
as her brother’s. The crippled sister in Windsor, Cobb thought with
a guilty shudder, the one referred to in Marc’s notes. He eased the
top drawer closed and slid open the one below it.

In it he spotted a small calfskin purse, its
drawstrings well tightened. He picked it out and dropped it on the
desktop. It clanked. Cobb’s breathing quickened. He poured the
contents out: a variety of English and American coins, and a single
dollar bill.

“That’s the one, isn’t it?” Constance stood
in the doorway, her eyes as round as communion wafers.

***

Cobb and Constance were sitting in the senior vicar’s
study. They were alone.

“I fail to see how there can be any other
explanation,” Constance was saying. “The Poor Box was locked and
full last night. This morning the box is found unlocked and the
money removed. Myrtle assures me that the back door was locked and
barred at ten o’clock, after which she and Missy went to sleep, and
heard nothing till morning. The Halifax dollar you planted in the
box is found in the Reverend Chalmers’ desk-drawer, with the rest
of the cash. Mr. Chalmers has a key for the Poor Box.”

“I agree, ma’am, that it looks bad. But keys
are an easy thing to get copied. A good robber’s even got skeleton
keys that’ll get him into pert near anythin’.”

“So you are telling me that some thief came
into the church, robbed the Poor Box, slipped back in here through
the walkway and, because he’s a good Christian, deposited his booty
in Mr. Chalmers’ desk-drawer?”

“No need to get
scar-castic
,
ma’am.”

At this point in the lop-sided exchange of
views, Myrtle Welsh appeared in the doorway, broom in hand. “Oh,
I’m sorry – ”

“No, no, Myrtle, do come in.”

Myrtle took one cautious step inside.

“Did the Reverend Chalmers happen to tell you
when he would be back this morning?” Constance said to her
sweetly.

Myrtle looked surprised. “But haven’t you
heard, ma’am?”

“Heard
what
?”

Myrtle trembled slightly, but replied, “The
young reverend left right after the morning service yesterday.”

“
Left
?” The word was spat out.

“He got a message that his older brother was
took sick out in Streetsville. Reverend Hungerford told him to go
there straight away. So he took the roan mare an’ rode off. We
expect him back this afternoon.”

“And why was I not informed of this
unorthodox arrangement?”

Myrtle blinked. “But you was visitin’ your
aunt all day. You hadn’t come home by the time Missy an’ me went to
bed.”

Constance’s bosom heaved alarmingly, like a
Diva’s before a death-aria. Her face went as purple as her
husband’s vestments.

“D-d-didn’t the reverend himself tell you,
ma’am?”

“
He did not
!”

And the senior vicar would no doubt regret
the oversight, even though he too had been abed when his wife had
arrived home from a day in the country and rousted the stableboy
out of a deep sleep.