Unholy Alliance (24 page)

“It did,” Macaulay said, pulling the letter
itself from the pile they had left on the table. “And he appended
his proposed itinerary, one that would have seen him arrive in
Kingston from New York State and, I quote, ‘on Tuesday with a view
to my catching the stagecoach there and arriving at Elmgrove the
next day, Wednesday the 16th’.”

He handed the letter to Marc, who perused it
closely. “The writing here is quite distinctive – slanted left and
elongated.”

“So he was plannin’ to get here a week ago
Wednesday?” Cobb said to Macaulay.

“Yes. But he didn’t actually arrive until
late on Thursday, did he? He must’ve got delayed somewhere in New
York State.”

“Or delayed here in Upper Canada,” Marc said
darkly. “It’s improbable that anyone would waylay a travelling
English butler and steal his clothing and effects in order to carry
on and take up the fellow’s duties in Toronto – and do the
ambushing in an adjacent country. After all, Chilton was heading
here anyway. Why not wait till he got closer?”

“What are you suggesting, then?” Macaulay
said.

“It seems logical to me that Chilton was
waylaid somewhere between here and Kingston in a move that was
carefully planned by someone who expected him along that route. And
this someone – our murdered impostor being the most likely
candidate – wished to assume Chilton’s identity for reasons we have
yet to determine.”

“But how would the waylayer know the clothes
would fit?” Cobb asked. “The real Chilton come from England. Our
waylayer couldn’t’ve seen him till he got here.”

“That may have been a happy coincidence,”
Marc said. “All the impostor really required was the monogrammed
luggage and the personal papers. He could have been prepared to
supply his own clothing.”

“Come to think of it,” Macaulay said, “I
remarked to Chilton – to the impostor, that is – that his suits
seemed to hang a bit loose on him. And he said, quite properly,
that he had lost considerable weight due to his seasickness and
travel fatigue.”

Was he was able to convince you and your
staff that he had been a butler in Sir Godfrey’s service in
England?” asked Marc.

“He was certainly very English!” Macaulay
replied.

Marc did not pursue the matter further
because he realized that Garnet’s amiable and trusting nature had
contributed to the ease of the interloper’s deception.

“All this is well an’ good,” Cobb grumbled,
“but we’re talkin’ here about somebody committin’ a
hangin’
offence just to become Elmgrove’s butler!”

“You think the real Chilton’s dead?” Macaulay
said, greatly shocked.

“He’d haveta be, wouldn’t he?” Cobb said
matter-of-factly. “Stands to reason the impostor couldn’t carry on
his business here with the genuine butler likely to pop up at any
moment.”

“This is appalling,” Macaulay said with a
sharp intake of breath. “Two butlers, and both of them now
dead.”

“An’ we ain’t likely to find poor Chilton’s
body till the snow melts,” Cobb pointed out. “If he was killed on
the Kingston Road, his corpse would’ve been tossed inta the bush in
a four-foot drift. By the time the wolves or coyotes get through
with it, only the bones’ll be left fer us to find.”

“But
why
?” Macaulay said. “Why would
someone go to such desperate lengths to get himself into this
house?”

There was a pregnant pause while the answer
presented itself inexorably to each of them.

It was Cobb who spoke first: “To spy on yer
economical mash-a-nations
?”

“It has to be,” Macaulay breathed. “Somebody
was prepared to kill in order to infiltrate our deliberations this
week.”

“Possibly,” Marc said slowly. “But that sort
of operation would take a fair amount of planning. And remember,
the impostor knew how to be a butler. Someone, probably more than
one person, recruited him and arranged for the takeover of
Chilton’s identity.” Marc looked at Macaulay. “Who would know you
had hired a butler from England to replace Alfred?”

Macaulay sighed. “Half of Toronto. I made no
secret of it. I might even have told people in town when he was
expected, more or less.”

“And that he was named Chilton?”

“I suppose so. Elizabeth and I socialize a
lot in town and I do business there most weeks. Everyone asked
about Alfred and how ever was I to replace him. Many of my Tory
acquaintances would have known about Chilton, that’s for sure. In
fact, knowing as I did that we were going to have our conference
here this week, I went out of my way to suggest that everything out
here was normal. The last thing I wanted to do was to appear
secretive.”

“I understand,” Marc said. “But we’ve got
nothing concrete to go on here. The perpetrators of this fraud
could be anyone opposed to our views and plans.”

“An’ how are we gonna find the spy’s killer
if we don’t know who he is or who he’s been workin’ for?” Cobb
said.

“We’re assuming he was a spy,” Macaulay
continued, “but I don’t for the life of me see how this phoney
butler could have determined what was being said in this room over
the past few days.”

“I can speculate how it was done,” Marc said.
“The entrance-way to this room is recessed. The impostor could have
stood within it with his ear pressed to the door and not have been
observed by anyone farther down the hall or anyone crossing the
rotunda. And since the butler was the only servant allowed in here
to serve coffee or tea, there was little chance of his being taken
by surprise from behind. If he did hear someone coming up the hall,
all he had to do was bustle across to his office directly opposite
– a perfectly natural action that would arouse no suspicion.”

“But a lot of our discussion was in French
and not always translated,” Macaulay pointed out.

“It’s entirely possible that the impostor
understood French and kept that fact well hidden,” Marc said.

“So what do we do?” Cobb said, suppressing a
yawn.

“Always begin with what you know or have in
hand,” Marc said. “We can be pretty sure that Chilton was
intercepted between here and Kingston. My instinct suggests that it
would be even closer to Toronto than Kingston. Chilton wrote Garnet
that he was going to be travelling on Weller’s stagecoach. He would
have had fellow passengers. He would have been aboard no earlier
than Tuesday of last week and no later than Thursday, the day the
impostor arrived here in his stead. The real Chilton, a completely
bald Englishman of slim build, would have been noted by passengers
and driver, and certainly by the hosts of various inns where the
sleigh stops en route. Following the usual schedule, the passengers
disembark at Cobourg and stay there overnight.”

“So what’re you sayin’?” Cobb inquired,
beginning to sense the possibility of some positive action in lieu
of this endless palaver.

“I believe we can discover exactly how far
the real Chilton got on that trip. At some point he vanishes, and
another chap pops up in his place. That can’t have happened without
someone noticing
when
it occurred, even if nothing sinister
was suspected at the time. With luck we’ll be able to pinpoint the
precise location.”

“Where there might be a body?’ Cobb said.

“And possible witnesses to whatever happened.
Even if we don’t find the body, we need to determine who the
impostor was. Until we do, we won’t be able to track down the
person or persons who collaborated with him.”

“That may be the way to catch
Chilton’s
killers,” Macaulay said, “but we’ve got a bigger
problem right here and now: to charge somebody with the
impostor’s
murder before Monday morning.”

“I can’t believe they are not connected,”
Marc said. “And I don’t want to speculate
how
until we have
more hard facts.”

“But how can we get the facts we need before
Sunday night?”

Marc looked at Cobb. “By retracing the
itinerary of Weller’s stagecoach, all the way to Kingston if
necessary.”

“You want me to hit the road?” Cobb said with
obvious delight.

“I do, old friend.” Marc turned to Macaulay.
“Could you provide Cobb with a fast horse and cutter for a couple
of days?”

“Certainly. I’ll give him Ben. He’s not fast
but he can trot for miles without tiring or complaining.”

“Good. I think also that you should go in
plain clothes,” Marc said to Cobb. “You have no jurisdiction as a
constable outside of Toronto anyway.”

“Alfred’s clothes will fit,” Macaulay said,
eyeing Cobb’s muscled belly. “They’re in a trunk in my room.”

“What d’ya expect me to do once I get onto
the Kingston Road?” Cobb asked.

“Stop at every inn or wayside hutch you see
and simply say you have been hired by friends to find a missing
man, one Graves Chilton. Find out if they happened to have spotted
a
bald
English butler on board the stage when it stopped
there – a week ago Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. At some point he
is bound to have been noticed and then to have disappeared. When
you find that point, use all your investigative skills to determine
what might have happened.”

“You said a couple of days?”

“Yes. I’d like you to get back here by Sunday
night, if you can, and no later than Monday afternoon. I’m hoping
that Angus will grant us a day’s extension, given these new
developments.”

“But I couldn’t get much past Cobourg an’ be
back by Sunday night,” Cobb said.

“Right. But I really don’t think you’ll have
to go any farther.”

“So
we
just wait,” Macaulay said, “and
try to keep our guests amused?”

“I’m sorry, but I think that’s what we have
to do. If we can confirm that the impostor was a deliberate plant,
then we can reasonably assume that the motive for his murder was an
attempt to silence him.”

“But that means – ” Macaulay stopped
himself.

“Yes. One of our guests becomes the most
likely candidate.”

“Christ,” Macaulay sighed, “this is getting
worse by the second.”

“But we must not get ahead of ourselves.
Cobb, I’d like you to leave at five tomorrow morning. With luck you
could reach Cobourg by late afternoon or early evening. And, of
course, you’ll need a place to sleep here tonight.”

“You can take the butler’s quarters,”
Macaulay said to Cobb. “I’ll have Struthers fetched and tell him to
have the horse and cutter ready. I’ll have Finch pack you some
linens and toiletries for the journey, and Mrs. Blodgett can
prepare some food for you to take along.”

“Thanks, Garnet,” Marc said. “You’ve been a
tower of strength all day, and I appreciate it.”

“So, if this
imposin’
fella really was
a spy,” Cobb said, “then we got an explanation fer them three pages
bein’ ripped outta the
lead-ger
an’ carted off before they
fell inta the wrong hands.”

“I just wish we could be absolutely sure he
was
a spy,” Macaulay said.

Marc’s face lit up. “I think we
can
determine that, Garnet. Right now.” He jumped to his feet. “Those
pages may be missing and long burned, but the killer didn’t realize
he may have left behind a trace element for us to read. Follow
me!”

With that, Marc dashed out into the hall,
veered to his left, entered the parlour, scooted over to the
fireplace, ran both hands across a charred log in the hearth, and
then brushed past his astonished colleagues still in the doorway.
They turned in time see him enter the butler’s office, and followed
him in. There they were further astonished as he began to rub his
blackened fingers across the open pages of the ledger, which lay
exactly where they had left it this morning.

“You gone an’ flipped yer wig?” Cobb said,
coming up beside him.

Then he saw what Marc was doing, and chuckled
appreciatively. As the charcoal was rubbed gently across the blank
page, the impressions left by a pencil having been pressed firmly
upon the page above it (now missing) began to emerge.

“A child’s trick,” Marc explained as the
blurred outlines of letters and words became more and more visible.
“We used it to leave secret messages for our friends.”

“Can you make out what was written on the
missing page?” Macaulay asked anxiously.

“The impressions, as you can see, are not
uniformly sharp and in places are not deep enough to be of any use,
but, yes, I can make out quite a few words and phrases. And the
handwriting here is not even close to that of the New York
letter.”

“Well, that seals it, then,” Cobb said. “We
got two dead Chiltons on our plate.”

“What about the
content
?” Macaulay
said, leaning over Marc’s shoulder. “What was the impostor
scribbling there?”

Marc was moving his lips silently as he
strained to bring some sense to what he was seeing.

“These aren’t my accounts, are they?”
Macaulay said.

“No, they aren’t,” Marc said, whistling
softly. “I can’t make out any entire sentences, but I can see
enough to know that our impostor was recording the key points and
conclusions of our discussions across the hall – in both English
and French!”

“Well, don’t that beat all,” Cobb said.

Macaulay groaned. “This is terrible,
terrible.”

“But the missin’ pages are sure to be ashes
by now,” Cobb suggested, not quite certain why Macaulay was
distraught.

“If the motive was to remove those pages and
silence the spy who wrote on them,” Marc explained, “then our prime
suspect has to be one of the negotiators, doesn’t it?”

“One of them French gents,” Cobb said.

***

Marc assured Macaulay that he would wait until
Cobb’s return from the Kingston Road on Sunday or Monday before
interrogating any of the Quebecers or, for that matter, Robert or
Hincks, who technically shared their motive. Meantime, he would
keep his eyes and ears open for any further evidence, but that was
all. For they still had those historic documents ready to be
signed: thus there was every reason to delay accusations or
intrusive interrogations that would shatter the trust needed to
legitimate the terms of the accord and make them operable over the
next year or so. Somewhat relieved, Macaulay went off to round up
clothes for Cobb and to arrange for the constable’s early-morning
getaway. Cobb himself went into the butler’s quarters to try and
get some sleep.