Unholy Alliance (3 page)

“And his associates?” Marc inquired.

“Two of them are apparently much the same,
but the third is unilingual,” Robert said.

“With your assistance we hope to conduct the
hard bargaining in French,” Hincks said. “And we’ll require your
extensive knowledge of that tongue if and when it comes to putting
our
entente cordiale
into writing.”

“How
is
Beth by the way?” Robert
asked.

“As you know, she’s been laid low with the
grippe for a week, but claims she’s on the mend. I was late tonight
because I wanted to make sure she was telling the truth before I
left her.”

“When is the baby due?” Hincks said.

“Early in April. So, unless Beth has a
relapse or the babe comes prematurely, I’m sure I’ll be able to get
away for the three days you’ll need me.”

Hincks and Robert could not hide their
relief. “Thank you, Marc,” Robert said. “I’m not sure what we would
have done if you had been unable to say yes.”

Marc hesitated before saying, “You do
understand that I must ask Beth about this, don’t you?”

Robert smiled broadly. “Naturally. Nothing is
as important as the son of yours Beth is carrying – not even
responsible government.”

***

Constable Horatio Cobb was not exactly in
conference, nor was he, as he might have been, settled into the
cozy confines of his Parliament Street cottage and thawing his toes
on a warm fender. He was, rather, seated at his “desk” near the
rear portion of The Cock and Bull, thumbing a flagon of tepid ale
and occasionally poking at the crumbs of his game pie with a bent
fork. His day-patrol had ended more than an hour ago, but instead
of heading straight home through the blizzard, he had stopped at
his favourite tavern for supper and refreshment. Missus Cobb had
gone up Yonge Street to Danby’s Crossing to attend a young woman
about to give birth to her first child. The lad who had fetched her
just after dawn had indicated that his aunt was in some distress,
and Dora, bless her, had packed her carpetbag and informed her
family that she would not be home until tomorrow, at best. While
Cobb was proud of Dora and her dedication to midwifery (even
boasting of her skills when she was well out of earshot), her trade
was often inconvenient and sometimes irritating.

His children, of course, had grown accustomed
to her sudden absences, and fended well for themselves. Delia was
almost fourteen, a passable cook, and a prize student at Miss
Tyson’s Academy. Fabian, two years younger, was in his final year
at the common school, and showing signs of a scholarly bent. How
their father could manage to keep both of them in school much
longer was a question that Cobb tried not to ask himself too often.
But he had seen enough of the slavery of live-in maids and the
brutality of day-labour to wish much more for his own precious
ones. With Dora’s uncertain income (payment in kind was the norm)
and his policeman’s stipend, they lived much better than most
ordinary citizens of the town, but a private ladies academy and a
grammar school still seemed beyond their reach. Marc Edwards – the
Major, as Cobb had nicknamed his long-time friend and investigative
colleague – was covering Delia’s fees for this term, but that was
an arrangement Cobb was determined to end this spring.

These were some of the constable’s musings as
he sipped at his ale and watched the snow froth and seethe against
the tavern windows. So preoccupied was he that Amos Coyle, the big
barkeep, had to shake the table to get the policeman’s
attention.

Cobb looked up, startled, and said, “Trouble,
Amos?” He hadn’t noticed anything more raucous than the usual
shouts and guffaws of the drinking crowd around him.

“Trouble brewing, Cobb. Over there at the far
end of the bar.”

Cobb peered through the smoke-haze and
shifting bodies. “That fella bangin’ his cup on the counter?”

“That’s the one. He’s so pissed he’d fall
down if the bar wasn’t holdin’ him up.”

“Why not toss him inta a chair an’ let him
sleep it off?”

“He’s gettin’ real belligerent. He threatened
me.”

Cobb stared up at the two-hundred-pound
barkeep. “I find that hard to believe, Amos.”

“He’s got a knife in his belt. An’ fire in
his belly. I figured you an’ me could each take an arm an’ usher
him inta the bracin’ air outside – before he can blink.”

“But if he can’t walk, he’ll freeze out
there.”

Coyle said coldly, “That’s
his
worry,
ain’t it?”

“You know who he is?” The thought of dragging
some drunk all the way to his doorstep was not appealing. Cobb was
weary after a day of tramping through the winter streets, and his
toes were just now beginning to thaw out.

“I do. He’s been in here stirrin’ things up
two nights runnin’. His name’s Giles Harkness.”

“Never laid eyes on him till now, but I’ve
heard of him. He’s a stable hand out at Elmgrove, ain’t he?”

“Coachman, to hear him tell it. And accordin’
to him, he shoulda been the butler, if ya can believe it.” Coyle
chuckled at the thought. “He’s been tellin’ everybody in town fer
two nights that his brother was the Macaulay butler till he died
three months ago, an’ that he himself was passed over fer the job.
As if muckin’ out manure was good trainin’ fer bein’ a butler!”

“Takin’ it hard, I’d say,” Cobb said as he
watched Giles Harkness lurch sideways and bang his whiskey-cup on
the bar so hard the chap slouched next to him jumped to
attention.

“We better move now,” Coyle said.

Cobb and Coyle moved in tandem across the
room, clearing a path through the tipplers as they went. Before
Giles Harkness could make one more lurch or bang his cup one more
time upon the counter, Cobb had him by the left elbow and Coyle by
the right. In a wink he was ferried thus to the door, which an
adroit customer had conveniently opened. Cobb reached over and
pulled the hunting-knife out of harm’s way, and then swung Harkness
and his dead weight up and out into a snowdrift.

“I’ll have to take him to jail, I guess,”
Cobb sighed.

The toothless fellow who had opened the door
piped up and said, “He’s not stayin’ out at Elmgrove, Cobb. He’s
bunked in up at the inn.”

“Mrs. Sturdy’s?”

“You got it.”

Cobb was relieved. Mrs. Sturdy operated a
sort of hostel for vagabonds and rough trade half a block north on
York Street. He slipped the knife into the pocket of his greatcoat,
buttoned it, pulled up the collar, took his helmet from the
grateful barkeep, wrestled on his mittens, and then turned his
attention to the drunk. So fierce was the blizzard that a coat of
fresh snow had almost covered Harkness as he lay motionless in the
drift, except for the chattering of his teeth. As Cobb picked him
up, the fellow went limp in his arms and, thankfully, seemed
content to let himself be half-dragged and half-carried up York
Street.

There was a light in the lone window of the
ramshackle “inn.” Cobb hauled Harkness up onto the porch, felt a
board give way somewhere under the muffling snow, and pounded on
the door. He could hear someone stirring behind it.

At this point, Harkness opened his eyes and
began tugging at Cobb’s ankle. Seeing the fellow’s lips moving in a
desperate effort at speech, Cobb leaned down and tried to make out
the words.

They came in a sudden, slurred rush. “They
think they seen the last of me, eh, but I ain’t that easy to get
rid of. Not after the way I been treated.
Who does he think he
is
?”

“Calm yerself, sir. There’s a warm bed
waitin’ fer ya inside.”

Someone was fidgeting with a chain behind the
door.

“I’m gonna get even with the bugger. And I
don’t give a damn who knows it!”

“I’m sure you are. But it’ll haveta wait till
mornin’, won’t it?”

A door-latch began to squeal out of its
socket.

“I know a lotta things. Lot more’n they think
I do. And I know who to tell, don’t I?”

Mrs. Sturdy, all two hundred and some pounds
of her stuffed into a crimson kimono, stood in the open
doorway.

“I brought ya one of yer
inn-mates
,”
Cobb said.

“And I’m supposed to thank ya, am I?” she
barked, making her curlers shiver.

Just as Cobb reached down to pull Harkness
upright, the fellow vomited – copiously – all over Cobb’s
boots.

***

“There’s nothin’ to discuss, luv,” Beth said. “You
must go. An’ that’s all there is to it.”

“What if your grippe comes back before the
conference starts the week after next?” Marc said reasonably. They
were seated beside the damped-down fire in the living-room of Briar
Cottage. Maggie, almost a year old, slept peacefully in her cradle
nearby. Charlene Huggan, their servant, was still next door
visiting her fiancé, Jasper Hogg. The wind howled harmlessly
outside.

“If it does, and I’m not sayin’ it will,
what’re
you
proposin’ to do about it – come up with a
cure?”

“What if Charlene has to run to fetch the
doctor or Dora? Who’ll watch Maggie if you’re laid low?”

Beth sighed. “First of all, I’m a month an’
more before my time. Second, I’ll ask Jasper to sleep over here the
three or four nights you’ll be away. He’s here most of the daylight
hours as it is. I’ll make up a bed fer him in the utility
room.”

“The neighbours will talk, surely.”

Beth laughed out loud. “Are you
lookin’
fer an excuse not to go?”

Marc had been out of town on an investigation
and had been absent for the birth of Maggie the previous March. He
was determined not to repeat the folly. “Of course not. But if I’m
to be of any real use to Robert and Francis out there, I’ll need to
be free of anxiety about what’s happening back here.”

“Well, then, you can relax. Jasper will play
man about the house. Charlene or Etta can fetch Dora if she’s
needed.” Etta was Jasper’s teenaged sister. “Dora will come every
day anyway if we ask her. And if there’s a real emergency, Jasper
can drive our cutter out to Elmgrove. It’s only a mile or so.”

“Unless there’s a blizzard – ”

Beth reached over and took Marc’s hand. “I
was fightin’ fer this cause long before you, luv. I been involved
in it all my adult life. I’m not about to let a case of the grippe
or a baby who’s perfectly content in my belly stop you from goin’
out to Elmgrove an’ movin’ the cause forward on my behalf.”

Marc squeezed her hand gently, feeling in her
grip the willpower and courage he had come to love more and more
each passing day.

“Of course, I’ll go,” he said.

“Good. Now take a deep breath an’ tell me all
about it.”

“You’re looking a mite peaked, my friend,” Oliver
Bracken said to the other occupant of the coach as it slid nicely
over the packed snow of the Kingston Road. “Perhaps a nip of brandy
might rekindle the blood?”

It was late on a Tuesday afternoon and,
despite the generally smooth passage, they had been travelling
since daybreak from Kingston en route to Toronto. They had been a
company of five at the outset, but three of their fellows had been
dropped off at various crossroads along the way. Ever a garrulous
man, Bracken had talked ceaselessly with everyone aboard except the
prim and pale gentleman now seated across from him, who had merely
mumbled during initial introductions and said nothing since. He was
impeccably dressed but for the fact that he had wrapped several
scarves around his throat and tied another below his chin so that
it swaddled his ears and the top of his head underneath his hat.
Despite the cold, which tended to redden the most reluctant cheek,
the man had the pasty, disoriented countenance of someone far from
home and weary of arduous travel.

Bracken held up a silver flask, and was
gratified when his companion, without looking him in the eye,
reached out, took it, tipped it daintily up to his lips, and
drank.

“Most kind of you, sir,” he said.

The accent was English, and certainly a long
way from central London.

“You’re welcome. Travel can be a most tedious
business,” Bracken said, taking the flask back and returning it to
his coat pocket. “And my surmise is that you have been journeying
some distance beyond Kingston. All the way from the mother country,
perhaps?”

His companion nodded, but whether he was
acknowledging the general point of Bracken’s surmise or the
specific one was not clear. But Bracken, an important functionary
with the Hudson’s Bay Company, was not easily put off. “I don’t
believe we were properly introduced when you joined us at
Kingston,” he said, “and those who have recently left us, I’m
afraid, tended to dominate the conversation. I am Oliver Bracken,
from Montreal. I’m in the fur business.”

Either the brandy had done its work or the
pale gentleman had realized he had no choice but to enter the
dialogue, for he managed a tight smile and said, “I am Graves
Chilton. And you have guessed correctly. I have come all the way
from London.”

“My word! An ocean voyage at this time of
year! No wonder, sir, that you appear, ah, under the weather. But
let me assure you that we are only fifteen minutes away from the
next stage-stop, and from there less than half an hour to the
Cobourg Hotel, where a hot bath, good whiskey, a decent supper and
a feather-bed await you.”

“I look forward to all four, then,” Chilton
said with just the slightest hint of irony in the remark. How
Bracken knew where they were situated was mystifying, as this
so-called highway was a single-track trail that meandered though
the densest, snowbound bush imaginable. For mile after mile they
had been weaving their way through a virtual tunnel of evergreens
and black-branched hardwoods – with an equally primitive crossroad
here and there at intervals along their route.

“English gentlemen are received well in this
part of the world,” Bracken said effusively. “My company, the
Hudson’s Bay, is chartered by the Crown and has its headquarters in
the grand old city of the Empire.”