Unholy Alliance (25 page)

Marc found Robert and Hincks in the
billiard-room.

“There’s been a development in the case,” he
said quietly, not wishing to excite them unnecessarily. Both men
were looking exhausted, and very much dispirited.

“Thank God,” Robert said. “We’ve come so very
close to our goal.”

“Yes, we have. But I’m afraid this
development will occasion a delay in the investigation – until
Sunday at least.”

“That long?” Hincks said.

“I’m sending Cobb out of town on a
mission.”

“You’re after that malcontent, Harkness,
aren’t you?”

“Giles Harkness has a powerful motive,” Marc
said to avoid an outright lie. Macaulay had agreed to keep the news
of the impostor to himself, and Marc felt it best that no-one else
know anything about the current direction of the investigation.

“And he would know how to get in and out of
here without anyone being the wiser,” Hincks said, cautiously
hopeful once again.

“You and Robert should go back to Toronto
tonight. There’s no reason for you to stay on, and your appearance
in town carrying out your customary activities is the best defence
we have right now for keeping everything here at Elmgrove under
wraps. Come back after church on Sunday, unless I send for you
earlier.”

“You’ll stay on, then?” Robert said.

“Yes. I’ll give Garnet some help in amusing
our guests, and I’ll keep on poking about – discreetly – for
evidence. Would you mind letting Beth know about my plans? And ask
her to inform Dora Cobb that her husband will be away from home,
possibly until Monday.”

“We’ll be happy to do that,” Robert said. He
put his hand on Marc’s shoulder. “I don’t know how we would manage
without you.”

Marc was touched, but he knew what they did
not: if Cobb was not successful on the Kingston Road and the
present line of inquiry proved abortive, all that had been achieved
this week would be lost.

Marc was surprised that he fell into a sound sleep
and woke up at eight o’clock on Saturday morning feeling almost
refreshed. It was eight-thirty when he arrived in the dining-room
amidst the aroma of sausages and coffee. But only Louis LaFontaine
was seated at the table, just finishing his meal. He gave Marc an
abbreviated smile and motioned him to an adjacent chair. Marc
nodded, quickly poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat down.

“Where are the others?” Marc asked. “Or have
I outslept the entire household?”

Another smile, slightly broader. “I believe
you have at that. But, then, while you worked feverishly all day
yesterday, we spent the time pretending not to worry.”

“I suggested that Robert and Francis go home
to their families until Sunday afternoon. Cobb and I have taken
statements from them, so there is little more they can do here –
until . . .”

“Until you and Mr. Cobb catch the
murderer.”

“Yes.”

“Please don’t fuss unnecessarily about us.
Mrs. Macaulay, it turns out, has an extensive collection of French
books – novels, poetry, and political tracts. Whenever you do not
require the library for your investigation, our host has invited us
to read there or in the beautiful parlour or in the privacy of our
rooms.”

“I won’t be using the library, and Constable
Cobb is off investigating in the city. I trust you’ll have a quiet
day.”

LaFontaine excused himself and left Marc to
his breakfast. A few minutes later Prissy Finch appeared in the
doorway. Marc assumed she was here to clear away dishes and check
the food supply, but she stood still, hands behind her back, and
looked over at him uncertainly.

“Come in, Miss Finch. You’ll not be
disturbing me. I’m almost done.”

“Prissy,” she said. “Everybody calls me
Prissy.”

“Did you wish to talk to me?”

Prissy nodded, and took several small steps
towards the table.

“I’m sorry you and Austin had to get tangled
up in the investigation.,” Marc said. “But you know, don’t you,
that you should not have lied to us, even to protect your
fiancé.”

Prissy reddened slightly. “He ain’t my fiancé
no more. And I’m very very sorry I lied about where he was on
Thursday night.”

“I see. Then you do know that he and – ”

“I do. We ain’t got many secrets downstairs.
And I know he did it because of what I did with poor Mr.
Chilton.”

“Why did you lie for him, then, if you
already knew he didn’t need an alibi?”

Prissy looked down at her shoes. “I didn’t
want everybody – up here – knowin’ what he did with poor Hetty. And
I was certain Austin had nothin’ to do with poisonin’ Mr. Chilton.
Don’t you see, sir, Austin got even with
me
, not the butler.
That’s his way.”

“But if you loved Austin, why did you let
Chilton press his affections on you?”

Prissy looked up and, with a touch of
defiance, said, “Austin wasn’t payin’ me much attention lately. He
was upset that Giles run off an’ he didn’t like anybody takin’
Alfred’s place. I – I only wanted to make him a little bit
jealous.”

Marc said very gently, “Perhaps he was trying
to make
you
a little jealous by sleeping with Hetty?”

“You’re kind to think that and I’d like to
believe it,” she said, coming right up to the table, “but I come
here fer another reason. I found somethin’ you need to see.” From
behind her back she brought out a wine bottle.

“Where did you find that?’ Marc asked, eyeing
the label.

“I was tidyin’ up Mr. Bergeron’s room a few
minutes ago and I found this bottle stuffed inside one of his big
pillows when I went to fluff it up.”

Marc took the object from her. It was a litre
of sherry, partially consumed and recorked.

“Thank you, Prissy. You’ve done well.”

“I gotta do a lot of things awfully well to
make up fer the mess I made downstairs,” she said, and turned
towards the door so that Marc would not see her tears.

***

Erneste Bergeron was sitting peacefully in an
easy-chair in the parlour, smoking a pipe and taking in the
snowscape beyond the French doors. He glanced up as Marc came up
beside him with the sherry bottle in plain view.

“This is yours, I believe,” Marc said evenly.

Bergeron’s only response was a deep sigh. He
motioned for Marc to sit in the chair nearest him and said with an
embarrassed smile, “I feel so very foolish, Mr. Edwards. It was a
stupid thing to do – hiding my wine in a pillow – but I had a
moment of panic when I heard the butler had been poisoned by
drinking sherry laced with laudanum.”

“But you must have soon learned it was
Amontillado? Everybody else seemed to know.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And this is a hunting sherry – one you
brought with you, I assume, because it doesn’t match the brand
Macaulay has been serving.”

“That’s right. I have trouble sleeping, as
you know, and at home I take a glass of this sherry before I
retire. I knew Mr. Macaulay would have sherry in his stores, but I
thought my own brand would be better – for me.”

“I still don’t see why you hid it from
us.”

“That’s simple, or so it seemed yesterday.
You see, I came here very uncertain of the kind of alliance
LaFontaine was hoping for. I knew about the attempts here to keep
Upper Canada a secular state and to veto any sort of established
church. I am deeply religious, and I feared for my own church and
its schools.”

“And then you got to observe the Anti-Christ
firsthand across the negotiating table,” Marc smiled.

“Yes. Mr. Baldwin is obviously a devout
Christian, an Anglican even. I believed him when he said our
religions would be protected. And I passionately wished to see the
economic reforms proposed in our meetings come to fruition. So,
when the butler was found dead, and a bottle of sherry with
laudanum in it suspected as the instrument of his death, I feared
that my weakness for sherry and the bottle in my luggage – along
with the access I had to the laudanum in the bathroom – would cast
suspicion our way and, in the least, break the bonds of trust we
had so painstakingly established. I know it seems foolish in
retrospect, but I went immediately to my room and hid my sherry
where I thought no-one would find it – in a decorative pillow that
hadn’t ever been used as far as I could tell. But the maid was too
conscientious. She insisted on fluffing up all the pillows in my
room whether they needed it or not.”

“That must have been her doing,” Marc said
carefully, “because I assure you I have not asked that your rooms
be searched.”

“So you are now looking outside the estate
for the culprit?” Bergeron said hopefully.

Marc offered him a noncommittal nod.

“I do hope you’ll forgive my foolish
fears.”

“I already have,” Marc said, then rose
quietly and left the room.

Well, he thought as he headed down the hall
in search of Macaulay, Bergeron could now almost certainly be
eliminated as a suspect. His enthusiasm for the alliance was
undoubtedly genuine, as was his religious fervour. It was hard to
envision him poisoning the impostor, even if he somehow discovered
he was a spy, making off with the three-page summary of the
proceedings, and hiding an irrelevant sherry bottle ineptly in his
own room. LaFontaine – like Robert, Hincks and Macaulay – was not
even in the picture. And the servants likewise. Even Bragg, if
Prissy was correct, was more into petty revenge than deadly
conspiracies. That left Tremblay and Bérubé. Somehow before Cobb
returned on Sunday, Marc would have to develop a tactful strategy
for bearding those two.

Unless, of course, Cobb were to unearth fresh
and convincing evidence of another kind. And Marc had learned never
to underestimate his partner and friend.

***

It was pitch-dark when Cobb guided Ben and the
two-man cutter out of Elmgrove and onto the Kingston Road.
Fortunately the six-year-old horse that Struthers had introduced
him to outside the stables was a mixed breed that combined
endurance and reasonable speed. “Give him his head and he’ll get
you where you’re goin’ on his own time. He won’t need feedin’ an’
waterin’ every five miles,” Struthers had advised. So Cobb did just
that. It was not often that he took the reins of a sleigh or a
carriage, as in town he walked wherever he needed to go. Once in a
while the police would commandeer a vehicle from one of the local
livery stables or, on a rare occasions, a saddled mount. But Cobb
had been raised on a farm outside Woodstock, and although his
father sometimes let them drive the Percheron team to church and
back, he and his brother Larry (christened Laertes) would hitch
them up whenever Papa was off on an errand to the neighbours and
race down the back lane pretending they were Ben-Hur among the
Romans. No such boyish temptation presented itself this day,
however. Cobourg was about seventy meandering miles away, and he
might have a dozen stops to make before he got there late in the
day. Instead, he tied off the reins and left his progress to Ben’s
experience and judgement. This stratagem allowed him to begin
sampling the hamper of delectables prepared for him by Mrs.
Blodgett and the Janes sisters.

A couple of miles out of town, just beyond
Scaddings bridge over the Don River, sat a rough log tavern
operated by Polonius Mitchum. Although it was unlikely that the
real Graves Chilton had got this close to Elmgrove before being
waylaid and robbed of his identity, Cobb decided to stop there and
try out his cover story. At five-thirty in the morning, only the
ostler would be up with the animals, but that was the man he wanted
to see.

As he anticipated, the ostler did recall
every occasion the Weller stage had stopped at Mitchum’s over the
past two weeks. Not often, of course, and only when some passenger
or other insisted on stopping for reasons of thirst or intestinal
emergencies. However, like most ostlers and stablemen, this fellow
had a keen eye for faces and eccentricities among stagecoach
passengers. Unfortunately, on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
of the previous week, there had been no stops made. And before the
Tuesday in question, he was certain no-one fitting Chilton’s
description (bald or otherwise) had been among the paying customers
who did stop.

Confident now that his pretending to be a
cousin of Chilton’s on the lookout for a butler who hadn’t arrived
when scheduled to, Cobb pointed Ben east along the Kingston Highway
through the snowbound bush of Upper Canada. The road itself, more
like an exaggerated lumber trail, weaved its way around
impenetrable clumps of hardwoods, stretches of stubborn evergreen,
frozen swamps, and rigid outcroppings of rock. But as no snow had
fallen since Thursday evening’s brief squall, the roadbed was
packed flat and icy. Ben clopped along at a sprightly pace while
the runners hummed behind him.

Just as the sun was rising above the treeline
about seven o’clock, Cob spotted a square-timber dwelling built too
close to the road to be merely a farmhouse. He pulled up in front,
and was pleased to see a sign scrawled in chalk above the rickety
door:

DЯINK & FOOD

Through an oil-paper window, he spied a flicker of
light.

A stout woman with a friendly face blemished
by the elements (or too much of the inn’s liquid product) came out
to greet him, blowing clouds of her own breath before her.

“What’re ya doin’ on the road this early,
young fella?” she boomed, wrapping her shawl more snugly about her
throat.

“I’m on a mission to find my missin’ cousin,”
Cobb said.

“Well, I ain’t got yer cousin inside, but I
got plenty of stuff to stoke yer vitals!”

Cobb was happy to pay for a small whiskey,
despite the dingy interior of the hovel and a glass that had never
been baptized with soap. And his hostess was just as happy to
talk.