Unholy Alliance (23 page)

At Robert’s suggestion, Marc began by reading
the English summary of what had been agreed to yesterday in regard
to principal policy initiatives and parliamentary strategies for
the new coalition. As he read out the English, clause by clause, he
translated it into French for LaFontaine’s benefit. At several
points, LaFontaine interrupted to ask for clarification, which was
followed by a brief exchange between the two leaders by way of
their translator. The fact that both men had put their
unquestioning trust in him was not lost upon Marc. Next, Marc read
through LaFontaine’s French summary and translated it for Robert.
Only two minor clarifications were required. No additions or
cross-outs were asked for. These two men – of differing culture,
religion and political experience – had grasped the essentials of
the two-day negotiations and independently summarized them with an
uncanny convergence. They seemed able to read each other’s
thoughts. It boded well for the future.

The two leaders shook hands, pleased with
their achievement.

The smile on Robert’s face, however, faded
slowly as he turned to Marc and nodded meaningfully.

Clearing his throat, Marc said, “Mr.
LaFontaine, we feel obligated to ask all our members to come into
the room at this time in order that I may bring them up to date on
the murder investigation, a briefing I’m sure they have been
anxious to hear despite their admirable forbearance. In addition, I
have some further news that may be disquieting in the extreme.”

“Which may affect your decision to sign the
agreement,” Robert said carefully, and LaFontaine responded with a
Napoleonic furrow of the brow.

Marc went out and with Macaulay’s help
rounded up everybody concerned. When they were all seated and the
excited buzzing had diminished somewhat, Robert stood and announced
that Marc had something to say about the investigation. The two
documents, meanwhile, sat on the davenport nearby and were subject
to more than one curious glance from those assembled.

As the news affected the Quebecers most
directly, Marc spoke in French, trusting that Robert, Hincks and
Macaulay would get the gist of his remarks. “I want to thank
everyone here for their patience and cooperation,” he began. “What
you deserve to know is that Constable Cobb and I have worked
diligently all day to track down the person or persons who poisoned
Graves Chilton. We have developed some promising leads, which I
cannot specify for obvious reasons, but I must be frank and tell
you that we will not be making an arrest any time this evening. In
fact, our investigation may take us as far afield as Burford, a
village beyond Brantford, and require another day or two – at
best.”

“Are you saying we’ve got to stay here until
Sunday!” Tremblay cried, and looked as if he were ready to punch
anyone within range of his fists. “That’s outrageous, and absurd!
You told us this morning we were not suspects! If not, then why
should we be asked to hang about here?”

“
Are
we suspects?” inquired Bérubé,
who had entered the parlour with the smile of a satisfied merchant
on his face.

“It’s not that you are or are not suspects,”
Marc said. “It’s something else. Our coroner, Dr. Angus Withers,
has given the police until Monday noon to come up with the murderer
or else he will call for an inquest later next week. He has also
agreed to keep Chilton’s death under wraps, in deference to the
delicacy of the situation here, but in turn has declared all of us
at Elmgrove, guests and staff, to be potential witnesses at the
inquest.”

“You’ve got to be joking!” Tremblay
spluttered.

“We cannot be put on a witness-stand,”
Bergeron said, “before the public – in
Toronto
! Everything
we’ve been doing here since Wednesday will be known! We’ll all be
ruined!”

“
If
we aren’t all discovered and
exposed
before
then,” Bérubé said as his plump cheeks
reddened. “How long can we stay here without
somebody
noticing us?”

“The news of these – these negotiations will
get back to Montreal long before we do!” Tremblay said, looking to
his colleagues for support. “Our enemies will be laughing up their
sleeves. Your Tories here will do the same.”

“Try to calm yourself, sir,” Macaulay said in
his fractured French.

“Kiss my arse!” Tremblay shouted in perfect
English. To Marc he said with slightly less vehemence, “You cannot
keep us here. Your coroner has served us no subpoenas. We shall
depart first thing in the morning.”

“There are no subpoenas, and won’t be until
Monday noon,” Marc said, “because Mr. Macaulay and I made a
gentleman’s agreement with Dr. Withers.”

“
Your
agreement, not ours!”

“Perhaps we
should
leave,” Bergeron
suggested, “while we can.”

“What’s another day?” Bérubé said with a
sideways glance at the unsigned documents.

“We’ve been told that this so-called alliance
has to be based on trust,” Tremblay carried on, “but what kind of
trust is it when gentlemen’s agreements are made behind our backs
and we are told we are not suspects when it’s obvious we are?”

“Maurice, restrain yourself,” Bérubé said.
“Please.”

Robert, who had got the import of these angry
remarks if not their precise wording, looked over at LaFontaine and
said, “Louis?”

LaFontaine stood up. The room fell
silent.

“There is no need for any of us to panic,” he
said calmly. “My colleagues and I will be safe here until Sunday,
and have been treated with kindness and generosity. I, too, share
their concerns about public exposure at an inquest. As a lawyer, I
also am cognizant of the imperatives of a criminal investigation.
As the crime was committed here, everyone in this house has to be
considered a suspect, whatever his station. And that is as it
should be. After all, it is precisely the unearned privileges and
automatic entitlements of the established elite that we have come
here to oppose, so it would be the plainest hypocrisy for any of us
to claim immunity simply because we are gentlemen.”

He paused while Marc quickly translated and
his followers stared at him with a kind of wary reverence – even
the fiery Tremblay.

“A deal has been struck with the coroner,” he
continued, “chiefly to protect us and the deliberations we have
distilled in those documents over there. We shall honour it by
remaining here until Sunday evening, and offering the police our
full cooperation. At that time, if there has been no charge laid, I
propose we all meet again here in this room – to weigh our
options.”

“What about the accord?” Bérubé said.

“It cannot be signed this evening. The risks
are too great for all of us. If we are exposed before Monday, the
documents will have to be burned. With luck and God’s will, Sunday
evening will see a murderer charged and an historic alliance sealed
with our signatures.”

At this stage, Marc felt that even God
wouldn’t lay odds on that happy outcome.

***

Garnet Macaulay joined the wake in the library as
soon as he had seen his guests comfortably settled in the
dining-room, where hot soup and cold chicken had been laid out. He
glanced at the pile of papers that Marc and Cobb were shuffling
idly.

“At least we’ve got till Sunday night,”
Macaulay said, sitting himself down with a world-weary sigh. “Did
you mean it, Marc, when you said you had some promising leads?”

“We did, Garnet, but they’ve fizzled out. I’m
trying to persuade Constable Cobb here to go home and get a good
night’s sleep, and we’ll all start fresh in the morning.”

Cobb was riffling the pile of Marc’s notes
like a deck of cards. “While you were deliverin’ the bad news, I
read through everythin’ you jotted down here, Major, an’ there’s
only one small item I’m puzzled about.”

“Only one?” Marc said.

“Way back near the beginnin’, you mention
some reference letters from the butler’s betters back in
England.”

“Yes,” Macaulay said, “I showed them to
Marc.”

“I don’t see ‘em amongst these papers.”

Marc looked up quickly. “They’re in a drawer
in my room. I glanced at them and then promptly forgot about
them.”

“Hard to see why they’d be important,”
Macaulay said reluctantly.

“Yeah, we’re cluckin’ at straws, ain’t we?”
Cobb said.

“Nevertheless,” Marc said, “we’d be remiss in
not going over them line by line. I’ll go and get them.”

Three minutes later Marc returned and dropped
half a dozen letters on the table. “Let’s start reading. You never
know.”

They each took a letter and began.

“This fella should’ve been
cannon-ized
, not murdered,” Cobb muttered. “I don’t believe
what I’m readin’ here!”

“This one’s the same,” Macaulay said. “You
see why I quit reading these after the first two or three? I just
wrote Sir Godfrey and said, ‘Send the paragon
to
me!’”

Marc muttered his agreement with these
sentiments, but a minute later cried out loud enough to make Cobb
jump.

“What is it?” Macaulay said.

“It’s a routine letter from a Theodore
Montgomery about Chilton’s stint at his estate last summer.”

“Sir Theodore? He’s a high-court judge,”
Macaulay said.

“Then I guess we ought to believe what he’s
written here at the end of a lengthy paean of praise. Listen to
this: ‘Graves Chilton is the most competent, thoroughly honest and
trustworthy servant I’ve ever had the pleasure of employing. Let me
know when he’s available again. My only complaint is that every
once in a while the light from a chandelier will bounce off his
bald pate and damn near blind you! (ha! ha!)’.”

“‘Bald pate’?” Macaulay said, as if he had
misheard the phrase.

“That’s what it says,” Marc replied, the
truth having already dawned upon him.

“What the hell’s goin’ on here?” Cobb said.
“Our corpse’s got a head full of orange hair, thicker’n a mink’s
crotch!”

“What’s ‘goin’ on’,” Marc said, “is this:
we’ve had a butler murdered in his office, but it wasn’t Graves
Chilton.”

“That can’t be,” Cobb said. “We searched his room
and it was full of the butler’s belongin’s.”

Macaulay could do nothing but look from Marc
to Cobb, bewildered.

“Then we’d better have a closer look,” Marc
said to Cobb. “We’ve got to start by taking the judge’s comment at
face value: the butler who spent several months in his home was a
bald man named Chilton.”

They went down the hall to the butler’s
quarters, trying not to appear as dazed as they felt. Once inside,
they turned out every pair of trousers, frock coat, morning coat
and shirt to scrutinize the labels. Every one of them bore some
reference to a London tailor or shop. They tore apart the
monogrammed luggage in search of some telltale clue stuffed in a
pocket or lodged in a crease: with no luck. These were
unquestionably the belongings of one Graves Chilton, even if the
man who had most recently possessed them was not.

“Maybe we got the lord’s letter wrong –
somehow,” Cobb suggested as he looked forlornly at the thoroughly
dishevelled sitting-room.

“I think we’ve got an even more puzzling
mystery on our hands,” Macaulay said miserably.

“Perhaps not,” Marc said. He was standing in
the open doorway of the butler’s bedroom, holding a good-weather
walking-boot in one hand. “I examined this boot this morning,
looking for the maker’s stamp and hoping to find a laudanum bottle
or some equally significant piece of evidence inside it. At the
time I took this object here merely to be a black stocking jammed
in the toe. But, as you can see, it’s not a stocking, it’s a –
”

“
Too-pate
!” Cobb cried just as
Macaulay gasped, “A hair-piece!”

Marc dangled the limp object between a thumb
and forefinger. “An expensive bit of wiggery,” he smiled, “to
camouflage a vain butler’s bald head.”

“It must have been hidden there by the
murdered man when he found it in the stolen luggage,” Macaulay
speculated. “Either that or he hadn’t got around to needing these
particular boots.”

“However it got here,” Marc said, “it
corroborates Sir Theodore’s claim. And that means – ”

“We got ourselves a poisoned
im-poseur
,” Cobb said, grinning.

***

When they got back to the library, Macaulay and Cobb
waited patiently for Marc to begin making some sense of this new,
baffling development.

“Now that we are ninety-nine percent certain
we are dealing with an impostor,” Marc began, “the question arises:
how did this come about? And after that: why?”

“Well, I suppose this red-headed chap could
have stolen Graves Chilton’s belongings, including any papers and
letters, way back in England, and then boarded a ship for New
York,” Macaulay suggested.

“In order to steal the man’s position here at
Elmgrove?” Marc said sceptically.

“Well, now,” Cobb said, “I reckon it’s a
cushy enough job hereabouts, but who’d risk robbery or worse just
to get a job thousands of miles away in a foreign country?”

While Macaulay may have had some objection to
one or two particulars in Cobb’s statement, he had to nod his
agreement with its main point.

“Quite so,” Marc said. “I believe that
explanation is merely a remote possibility. So, let us assume that
the real Graves Chilton got as far as New York. We do have a letter
in what is purportedly his own handwriting from that city. And I’m
sure a comparison of that letter with the impostor’s handwriting in
the ledger will tell us one way or the other.”

“What then?” Cobb said.

“The letter you received, Garnet, was penned
in a New York Hotel, wasn’t it? And announced his safe arrival
there. And told of his seasickness and the likelihood of his being
delayed, if I remember rightly?”