by Argyle, Ray
Molly put her hands on the witness box and leaned forward with her answer.
“The prisoner was at my house before he and Rosannah went off to the States,” Molly replied. “We had some onions on the table. He said they were the best he’d ever tasted. Rosannah told him someone was stealing them out of the garden. He said, ‘Why don’t you catch them?’ I told him it was a pretty hard thing to catch a thief between night and daylight.”
Far from being worn out, Molly was wound up now and the words poured forth without a break.
“He said, ‘I’ll give you what will catch them. You take two or three rows across your garden, get a needle and put some strychnine in the onions in those rows and you’ll catch the thief.’ I said I wouldn’t do that. The prisoner wanted me to do it. He offered it to me different times.”
“Did Cook Teets say if he had any strychnine, or where he kept it?”
“He said he had plenty of it, in his trunk. He got it in the States. He said he would bring it the next day. I told him if I had it I might poison my own children by mistake. I didn’t want any lives on my head.”
“How often did he speak to you about the strychnine?”
“At different times. I am sure he did three or four times.”
Alfred Frost was finished with his examination. “Thank you, Molly, you’ve been most forthright. Your witness, Mr. Masson.”
When James Masson rose from his chair he tugged on his suspenders and looked, in turn, first at Judge Armour, then at Molly and finally at the jury. Leonard thought he must feel frustrated with the testimony he’d heard. Leonard had asked around about Masson and had been told he’d moved to Owen Sound from Belleville, another Lake Ontario town, and that he prided himself as a shrewd judge of character. He was known to be a man with military experience, having served in the 18th Regiment of the Canadian Volunteer Militia. Leonard wondered why he hadn’t been called back to duty, with rumours of all that trouble with half-breeds and Indians in the North West. What facts might the lawyer bring out that the court hadn’t already heard?
James Masson’s first question of Molly opened up a new line of inquiry.
“When Rosannah came home from her trip to Michigan,” Masson asked Molly, “did you suspect she was again in the family way?”
“I thought that,” Molly said.
Leonard knew this line of questioning could be uncomfortable for Molly.
“Rosannah was married before, I believe?”
“She went away from home,” Molly replied. It was obvious she wasn’t going to admit to any marriage.
“That man she married, you knew nothing at all about him?”
“His name was Rogers, that was all I knew about him. She came home about three weeks after she went off with him.”
“That wasn’t the first time she had run away from home?”
Leonard thought Molly looked as if she was again on the verge of collapse. She was breathing more rapidly now and she gasped as she struggled with her answer.
“She used to leave home from time to time, if that’s what you mean.”
“I put it to you, Mrs. Leppard, that your daughter was hardly a chaste young lady. She’d had two children out of wedlock. She was having affairs, running around with one man after another. Isn’t it possible one of these men, one of the many she’d thrown over, might have had it in for her?”
“I never gave any thought to that.”
“But you wanted to get rid of her? Did you order her away?”
“Yes, I wanted her away.”
“Were you violent to her after she was married to the prisoner?”
“I talked to her pretty sharp, but I was never violent.”
“Didn’t you threaten to knock her brains out with a poker?”
“I never threatened that.”
“Didn’t you hear she had tried to throw herself in front of a train?”
“I never heard about that.”
“And how do you account for that black eye you had when you testified at the inquest? Did you and your daughter have a good punch-up over her marriage to a Protestant?”
“Like I said, her arms were flailing around when she was in a fit and her fist hit me in the face.”
James Masson was going hard at Molly Leppard, Leonard thought. He wondered if Judge Armour would allow this line of questioning to continue. So far, he’d made no move to interrupt Masson. The lawyer continued with his cross-examination.
“Was everything going on smoothly between your daughter and the prisoner before her death? They appeared to love one another?”
Molly stared out at the gallery as she pondered the question.
“Well, he pretended to,” she said.
“He pretended?” Masson asked, his voice rising. “How can you say he only pretended to love your daughter? Do you have any evidence he didn’t love her?”
“No.”
Cook’s lawyer pressed Molly with more questions. He asked why she hadn’t sent for a doctor and whether Rosannah might have eaten anything besides bread and jam during the night. He wanted to know why Molly had distorted what Cook had said when he arrived at the Leppard place that fateful morning.
“You have testified you heard Cook say” – and here Masson made a point of examining his notes – ‘Poor Rosie, it is me that caused this.’ “You went on to say that he told your husband, ‘Mr. Leppard, it’s all over.’”
“That’s right,” Molly said. As she answered, she seemed to shrink into the witness box.
“And that is the extent of what he said about his connection with her death?”
“I’ve told you just as I remember it.”
James Masson paused for a moment. He scratched his nose and cupped his chin in one hand. Leonard thought Molly must have hoped he was finished with her. But the questions kept coming.
“You’ve told us Cook Teets was speaking in a whisper. You admit you were on the opposite side of the room. And that the children were crying. How can you be sure you heard him correctly?”
“I know what I heard.”
“Mrs. Leppard, did you at any time hear Cook Teets say he had killed Rosannah?”
“Not in so many words.”
“Did you hear him say he had poisoned her, or he had murdered her?”
“No, but that’s what he meant.”
“What he meant! How do you know what he meant? It seems to me, Mrs. Leppard, that when Cook Teets saw his wife dead, he was stricken with grief, the grief of a loving husband and an honourable man. He was distressed at having brought Rosannah into a marriage that ended in such catastrophe. You admit you heard no admission of guilt.”
Molly looked up at Judge Armour. The judge seemed fixated on the lawyer’s questions.
“Your Lordship, the defence moves that all Mrs. Leppard’s testimony of Cook Teets’s remarks on the morning of Rosannah’s death be stricken from the record. The jury must be told to disregard all she has said in that connection.”
Alfred Frost bolted from his chair.
“Objection, your Lordship. I implore you to stop this outrageous harassment of the witness. She has given an honest account of what she saw and heard. She doesn’t deserve this treatment.”
Judge Armour shifted in his seat.
“The jury will disregard the opinion of the witness as to the meaning of the prisoner’s comments. Her conclusions are inferential and not evidentiary. But as to the balance of her testimony, I see no reason it should not stand. And Mr. Massson, I advise you to treat the witness with more respect.”
“Most assuredly, your Lordship,” James Masson responded. He had one other issue to deal with.
“Mrs. Leppard, did you know that Rosannah’s life was insured?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Was that your idea, or your husband’s?”
“I don’t know whose idea it was.”
“But you thought that if the beneficiary was disqualified by having committed a criminal act, you might lay claim to the mone
y? A lot of money, more than four thousand dollars.”
“I never thought any such thing.”
James Masson shook his head, and ended his questioning with a sarcastic flourish:
“I’m quite sure, Mrs. Leppard, the jury will take that into account.”
Molly had been two hours on the stand, and it was obvious to Leonard that she was exhausted. By the time Judge Armour called for adjournment a few minutes before noon, Leonard was feeling sick to his stomach. He had listened with mounting dread, remembering how yielding Rosannah had been in his arms. The pain in his gut told him of the agony she must have endured. He rushed from his seat at the newspaper table, down the stairs and onto the street where he stood, hands on his hips, retching. He heaved again and again, as if that would cleanse him of the knowledge of Rosannah’s suffering. But nothing came, other than the taste of bile that filled his mouth.
Chapter 8
THE TALE OF WAHBUDICK
October 15, 1869
Molly Leppard’s testimony carried Leonard Babington back to the days before he’d lost Rosannah, when they’d rambled together through the woods around Vandeleur and hiked into the Beaver Valley. Leonard had not spoken with Rosannah in the last months of her life but he’d listened to stories about how she had carried on with different men. He found such talk upsetting, and he wondered if the medicines she had taken, laced as they were with opium and alcohol, had affected her ability to think straight. Considering all the impulsive things that Rosannah had done, nothing shocked him like her sudden marriage to Cook Teets. Leonard felt he had been betrayed, and that led to anger over the fact she’d chosen to marry a man so much older and so handicapped by his blindness.
Molly’s testimony also stirred in Leonard memories of the high hopes he’d had when he’d first become a teacher and he’d hardly known Rosannah, before his life had begun to fall apart.
When Leonard was twelve, his father inherited five thousand pounds on the death of Grandfather Babington. Erasmus Babington squandered a good part of it on an ostentatious two-story stone house, complete with a tower, that he shamelessly named Vandeleur Hall. He had a forty-gallon barrel of whisky hauled up from a distillery in Toronto. The liquor became an essential part of the wages of the workers who built the house.
Leonard took a keen interest in its construction. His father had told him he wanted their home to be different from that of other settlers. He took Leonard with him as he drove along the concession roads looking at the homes of better off farmers. Most favoured Ontario Gothic or Wilderness Georgian architecture, simple variations of old forms adapted to the needs of a cold and remote land. Erasmus decided on a different but still functional plan. He had a house built of stone in the shape of an “L” with a tower of not inelegant proportion. Affixed to the tower was a portico supported by timber and stone that lent an impression of a grand entranceway. It opened on a foyer with a hearth that in winter assured a warm welcome to visitors. Erasmus had river rocks of various sizes set around each window and door, providing a pleasant contrast of color and texture. And as if to measure time, he had cast into the concrete lintel above the front door the date of construction - 1868. It was put in place on Leonard’s fourteenth birthday, and the boy thought of it as a sign of his growing up.
Erasmus furnished Vandeleur Hall with the most fashionable and expensive pieces shipped from London and Philadelphia and hauled at great cost by horse and oxen from Owen Sound. A handsome rosewood table covered in marble dominated the foyer. The dining room featured a cut glass chandelier, a walnut dining suite and a sideboard of carved walnut. The headboard on Erasmus’s and Esther’s bed was seven feet high, of solid walnut, so heavy two men were needed to carry it into the house. In the parlour, a sofa covered in crimson velvet sat below a tapestry of cabbage and vines. The room was filled with chairs, small tables and miscellaneous bric-a-brac. Flowered wallpaper adorned every main floor room except the foyer, which was painted in a simple slate grey.
It was here that Leonard grew up as the only child of this mismatched British couple. He was a quiet but happy boy whose light hair, whitened by the summer sun, gave him the appearance of a towhead. Erasmus and Esther insisted that Leonard be schooled at home and that he become a literate British gentleman, no matter how primitive their surroundings. His exposure to books had come in his first year when his father read to Esther and Leonard by lamplight every night.
Leonard was reading by his fourth birthday and by seven he had devoured Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels. He was happy in his solitude but due to there being few visitors to the Babington home, he grew up uncomfortable with strangers. Leonard preferred to wander in the forest when he was not at home reading or attending to the few chores his mother had assigned him. The first time a neighbour brought his two children to visit, Leonard had run out of the house to hide behind a large elm tree.
There was one boy who, like Leonard, preferred the company of animals in the forest over people. Tom Winship lived three miles away on an acreage fronting the Beaver River. He went to the Vandeleur school until he was twelve, but Leonard had met him much earlier when their parents worshipped together at the Methodist Church.
One October afternoon, when the air was warm and the sun bright, Leonard and Tom played in the yard of Vandeleur Hall with Leonard’s dog, Toby. Erasmus was intent on fixing a fence and the boys, in their roughhouse play, were getting in his way. “Go and play some place else,” he told them. Leonard had heard fish were spawning and he decided to take Tom down to the Beaver River to watch them swim upstream to lay their eggs. The route was downhill through thick bush, and they would have had an uneventful outing except that Toby, a black and white water spaniel who loved to chase birds, caught sight of what he took to be an injured pheasant. It was a hen playing decoy to protect her young, but Toby neither knew nor cared and chased the bird back uphill, well away from where the boys had entered the woods. Leonard and Tom followed.
The hunt for Toby took them into a thick stretch of woods broken by clearings filled with blueberry bushes. In one, Leonard sighted a herd of whitetail deer. “Shh, look at how they’re grazing in the grass,” he whispered to Tom. Unseen by the boys, a large mountain cat known to locals as a cougar, moved stealthily toward them. Leonard caught sight of a tawny blur leaping into the clearing. The blur landed a few feet from a doe munching grass at the edge of the clearing. A second leap carried it onto the back of the helpless animal. The rest of the herd dashed into the bush. Leonard grabbed Tom’s arm and the two ran in the opposite direction. An hour later they were reunited with an exhausted dog. By then, neither boy had any idea where they were. The slanting rays of the sun were on their backs as they settled down at the foot of a giant cedar. Both fell asleep.
When Leonard awoke, it was dark. He told himself he had to stay calm. There was nothing to panic about. He shook Tom awake, and told him they should remain where they were. Later, they heard coyotes wail in the dark. In the cracks between the treetops Leonard saw the moon rise and dapple the forest floor with brightness. He worried they’d be in trouble when they finally got home.
As the night became chillier, the boys clung together for warmth. Leonard wondered, as they sat with their arms around each other, what it would be like to hold a girl. He’d heard older boys tell of stealing kisses from girls at school.
“Have you ever kissed a girl, Tom?”
“Naw, don’t like them.”
“But if a fellow had a chance to kiss a girl, how would he go about it?”
“Don’t know,” Tom answered. “Maybe like this.”
Tom planted his lips squarely on Leonard’s mouth. Leonard felt warmth that spread into his arms and chest. The kissing lasted several minutes. After, they took turns cuddling with Toby. They slept fitfully through the night. In the morning the ground was covered with a dusting of frost. The first rays of the sun warmed their faces.
Leonard knew they would have to turn around to get home. Tom saw bear tracks in the frost
and the boys agreed they were lucky not to have been attacked during the night. Two hours later they wandered into Leonard’s front yard. A gang of men was milling about and asking questions of his father.
“I see them,” one shouted. Leonard saw his father break from the group and rush toward them.
“Where have you been?” his father demanded. “Are you two all right?”
A neighbour took Tom to his house where his tearful mother wrapped her arms about him. After, Tom‘s father gave him a stern talking to and for good measure, a severe licking. Erasmus was guilt-stricken for having turned the boys away from his work on the fence. He saw no reason to punish him. As if to make sure all was well with Leonard, he insisted on taking him for a check-up by Dr. Griffin.
“Nothing wrong with the boy that a few good meals won’t fix,” the doctor said after examining Leonard.
“He’s a little thin for his age,” Dr. Griffrin added. “You need to fatten him up.”
Leonard realized later that the experience changed forever the relationship between himself and his father. What should have been nothing more than a childhood misadventure, he knew, had turned into a calamity of immense proportion. From that day on, Erasmus showed an increasingly irrational fear for Leonard’s well being. The boy felt hounded day and night, his father rarely letting him out of his sight.
“We don’t want you falling in the river or being attacked by a bear,” Erasmus told him. “You’ve got to learn it’s dangerous in the woods.”
Leonard could never understand his father’s distress. He came to recognize it as but one signal of the dark mood into which Erasmus was descending. His father had warned him that what he called “self abuse” would lead straight to mental derangement and other horrifying consequences. These warnings haunted Leonard. Every time he did it, he descended into despair. In time, without any real awarerness on his part, feelings of guilt and apprehension began to seep into other aspects of his life.
It was not long before Leonard began to resent the constant watch his father kept on him. With his resentment came a profound curiosity that would shape his personality for the rest of his life.