Act of Injustice

by Argyle, Ray

  When they were putting the finishing touches to Leonard’s first issue, Harte announced he would like to write an editorial.

  “Come from a long line of writers,” he declared. He claimed to be a cousin of Bret Harte, the famous novelist. Leonard told him of the time he had read from the Luck of Roaring Camp to get his teaching job. He marvelled at the way Harte composed an editorial about the pleasures of the open road. The printer made it up as he plucked letters out of the type case.

  “You’ve put that together in haste,” Leonard remarked, having learned how Harte liked to banter his way through the day. “I hope it’ll give us no cause to repent in leisure.”

  “Leisure, Mr. Babington. That’s something you must know a lot about!”

  The old Washington Press clattered and groaned as Tyler and Harte fed it sheets of newsprint. Leonard beamed with excitement as he picked up two sheets and folded them together to make the first copy of his first issue of the Chronicle. It was dated October 20, 1882. A column on the front page was devoted to the obituary of Leonard’s father. A small notice announced that Leonard Babington, Esq., was the new publisher. Several ads and two other news items filled the rest of the front page:

  ARE THERE MORMONS IN VANDELEUR?

  We have been informed that disciples of Brigham Young are at the present time endeavoring to make converts to their faith in the Township of Artemesia. We can scarcely credit the rumour, but give it for what it is worth. If it be correct, then the sooner this so-called class of Christians are driven out of the place, the better it will be for the morals of the community.

  HARD ON THE BEARS

  Mr. Scarth Tackaberry, who lives on the Beaver Valley Road in Vandeleur, set up a dead-fall on his property this fall, and has succeeded in capturing four black bears, which were foolish enough to investigate the mysteries of the rude but “sartin death bar trap.” Folks say bears seem to be more numerous this season than for many years past. There is something more sportsmanlike in shooting than in trapping them, however.

  “Congratulations Mr. Editor, you’ve got a paper,” Charles Harte told Leonard, wiping ink from his hands with a rag. Harte opened a bottle of whisky and Leonard took two drinks. Tyler looked on, sipping from a bottle of Sarsaparilla. Leonard’s good feeling about the first issue was tempered by a nagging concern in the back of his mind. He knew he couldn’t have gotten the paper out without Harte’s help, but he didn’t like the habit Harte had of lording things over him. Leonard should have brought out the whisky, not Harte. Just a tramp printer, Leonard reminded himself. He better not get too big for his britches.

  At home that night his mother read every line of all four pages of the Chronicle. “Your father would be proud of what you’ve written about him,” she said. “I liked how you called him an indomitable pioneer, imbued with the spirit of the frontier. I wish I felt some of that spirit right now. But I’m tired, and I’m going to bed.” Leonard knew she wasn’t well. She’d been failing since the death of Erasmus.

  Leonard had not seen Rosannah since his return from Owen Sound. He avoided the Leppard place and had not encountered any of the family in the village. It was by chance as he talked with the blacksmith, Tom Bragg, about an ad – “Horse shoeing a specialty” – that he heard Rosannah had gotten married. Worse, her husband had abandoned her, leaving her with two children to support.

  “Married up with Dave Rogers but he’s taken off. Knocked her up and she’s had another kid. She’s back at home with her mother and the brats.”

  Leonard cringed at the news. Almost two years after their parting, the thought of Rosannah in the arms of another man was still like a stab in his heart. Once again she had invaded his world and stirred hurtful memories of their past. He wished he’d not been told of this new misadventure.

  Leonard filled the next month with busy days of selling ads and gathering news. He never seemed to get around to collecting money and he neglected the bills that came into the Chronicle. A stack of envelopes had been pushed unopened to a far corner of his desk. He was unprepared when the visitor from the Toronto Paper Manufacturing Company arrived in Vandeleur.

  He was a short, fat man with a bald head, dressed in clothes a size too small. When Leonard saw him he thought he looked like a comic character he’d seen in a play at the Grand Opera House in Toronto. The card he gave Leonard bore the name Otis Sampson, General Representative. His mood was brisk and he got right down to business.

  “Our records show the Chronicle owes a very substantial sum for newsprint,” Sampson said. “We have not had a payment for eighteen months. The balance due is one thousand, five hundred and sixty-seven dollars. We require the amount in full. Failing that, we will suspend shipments and pursue a court order for our money.”

  The crisis forced Leonard to confront the unopened mail on his desk. He was shocked to find bill after bill, almost all addressed to Mr. Ibbotson. The bill from the paper company was not only the biggest but the most important. He didn’t have the money to pay it and he couldn’t ask his mother to take out a mortgage on the farm. If he lost his newsprint supply, he wouldn’t have a paper.

  Leonard stewed over the problem. He was reluctant to ask his tramp printer for advice, but he had no one else to turn to. The next morning, red eyed from lack of sleep, Leonard told Harte about his problem. The printer was in the middle of making up a poster for an auction at old Ike Williams’s farm. He listened, a quizzical look on his face, as Leonard recounted the threat by Mr. Otis to cut off newsprint and sue the Chronicle.

  “Aw, they do that all the time,” Harte scoffed. “I remember when Mark Twain’s brother got behind in payments at the Hannibal Courier. He pushed them off with a few dollars and arranged to buy his newsprint elsewhere. Why, he had three or four companies supplying him at one time, and he owed money to all of them.”

  “I wouldn’t feel right not paying what I owe,” Leonard said. “I could give them a hundred dollars and pay ten or twenty dollars every month.”

  Harte chuckled. “You’ll be in debt forever at that rate. Here’s what you do. Tell Sampson you’ll pay up ten cents on the dollar – a hundred and fifty dollars, cash. Otherwise you’ll go to their competitor, Laurentide. Those newsprint makers in Quebec hate upstarts like the Toronto Paper Company.”

  When Otis Sampson returned to the Chronicle three days later, Leonard was nervous. He didn’t really want to do as Harte had told him. But he realized he had no choice. He made the offer suggested by his printer.

  “Impossible, Mr. Babington,” Sampson told him. “Not a reasonable proposition. And if you think you can buy from Laurentide, we’ll tell them you’re a bad risk. I’ll have to have three hundred now, and an extra ten dollars on every bundle of newsprint we send you for the next two years.”

  Leonard saw it as a deal he’d have to go along with. He reached into his desk drawer and took out a cheque drawn on the Bank of Commerce. He’d survived his first crisis. Just as well Harte had been there to give him advice.

  While Leonard had been struggling with how to pay off this debt, his mother had been growing more feeble. She’d fallen in her bedroom and Dr. Griffin thought she may have broken her hip. Leonard sat with her all day on Sunday and Monday. That night Sarah Bowles, the neighbour’s daughter, stayed at her bedside. It was after midnight that she came to Leonard to awaken him and tell him his mother was asking for him.

  He found his mother gasping for breath. When she saw him a smile fluttered briefly on her face before she closed her eyes. It was too late for him to say goodbye. Three days later, another funeral. Another sermon of empty chaff by the Rev. Orgell.

  Home after the funeral, Leonard ached with loneliness. The death of his father had been easier on him than the loss of his mother. Erasmus had died accidentally and things like that happen in the country, but Leonard felt cheated at the loss of his mother. He’d been closer to her than to his father and he wondered how he would manage without her at his side to look after him. If only he could turn back the c
lock and bring her back! He wrote a short, careful account of his mother’s life and published it in the Chronicle under the heading, A Pioneer Wife.

  The death of Leonard’s mother caused Leonard to think about whether there was any point in staying on in Vandeleur now that he had lost everyone he loved. He spent several days calculating the reasons he should stay, as against the reasons he should not. He remembered telling Rosannah he wanted to find exciting things out in the world. The murder of Mr. Brown and Leonard’s firing by the Globe had given him excitement enough for a lifetime. By staying in Vandeleur, he might still have a chance to win back Rosannah. Weighing everything up, he decided he must make a success of the Chronicle. Sam Bowles would look after the farm, and Leonard’s half-share of the crops would make up for any shortfall at the paper.

  The day after Leonard put out the issue reporting the death of his mother, Charles Harte announced he was leaving for Cleveland.

  “I’ve taught you all I can,” he told Leonard. “It’s up to you now.”

  Leonard reminded himself that no tramp printer stayed long in one place. For all Harte’s know-it-all ways, he’d miss his help, his banter, and his pronouncements on high level matters, be it religion, science or politics. He envied the printer his skill at hurling bright ripostes to any comment Leonard might make. His own bantering skills had sharpened considerably as a result, he thought.

  “Collect up your empty whisky bottles on the way out,” Leonard told Harte.

  “Thought I’d leave them for you,” Harte laughed as he stepped out the Chronicle’s front door. “Something to remember me by.”

  Leonard felt saddened as he watched Harte, a rucksack over his shoulder, make his way onto the Beaver Valley Road.

  “Goodbye my bantering friend,” he called after him.

  Chapter 15

  THE STRYCHNINE BOTTLE

  Morning, November 4, 1884

  When Angus McMorrin called the court to order on the second morning of Cook Teets’s trial, Judge Armour held up the proceedings. “I have been told,” he said, “that the jurors were forced to spend last night at Coulson’s Hotel without benefit of heat. I apologize for that, gentlemen, and I am assured the problem with their furnace has now been corrected. I hope you were not entirely too uncomfortable. Perhaps some of you found alternative warmth.” Leonard heard snickering from some of the benches. Judge Armour cast a stern glance toward the source of the noise. “Is the Crown ready to proceed?” he asked Alfred Frost.

  “I am, my Lord,” the prosecutor answered. He called Rosannah’s sister Bridget Leppard as the first witness of the day. Leonard Babington watched her make her way from a back seat of the courtroom. She threw a troubled glance at her mother as she approached the witness box. Bridget was a timid girl, Leonard knew. He remembered her as a pupil when he’d taught school in Vandeleur. He’d learned she could be fearful and diffident, a behaviour very different from that of her rebellious younger sister. How he wished Rosannah had been half as reserved.

  Alfred Frost rubbed his hands together, as if chilled by Judge Armour’s comments on the lack of heat in the jury’s hotel. He began his questioning by drawing from Bridget the fact that Rosannah had complained of being sick after arriving home from Michigan. There had been a rumour that Cook had tried to poison Rosannah more than once. “I thought she was in the family way,” Bridget said.

  Bridget described how everyone had been awakened by Rosannah’s screams. “She threw off her bedclothes and trembled like she was in a fit. She leaned her weight on the back of her head. Her legs and arms were all in motion.”

  When her mother realized Rosannah was dead, Bridget said, she asked her to go for Cook Teets.

  “I went down the road to Scarth Tackaberry’s house and spoke to Mrs. Tackaberry. Mr. Tackaberry wasn’t there. I didn’t want to go to the Teets place alone so I got Jane to go with me.”

  “Did Cook express any surprise when first you told him of Rosannah’s death?” Alfred Frost asked Bridget.

  “No, he just wanted to know when she’d died, and what she’d said. I told him Rosannah was still warm when I left. I said perhaps she was just in a trance, and might be able to talk when we got back. We stopped at the house of his sister, Sarah Clark, to tell her. Jane went home and Sarah drove us back in her buggy.”

  “And what did the prisoner do when he first saw Rosannah?” Alfred Frost asked.

  Bridget sobbed at the question. She must have been thinking of how she had watched her sister die, Leonard thought. She repeated much of her mother’s testimony. What Cook had done when he arrived at the Leppard place, and how he never asked what might have killed Rosannah.

  Alfred Frost asked Bridget what else had happened that morning. She repeated that Cook had not asked any questions about what it was that killed Rosannah. Perhaps he already knew, Leonard reflected. He thought the question made for an effective conclusion to the prosecutor’s examination.

  James Masson began his cross-examination by asking Bridget if Cook had wanted to know whether anyone had sent for a doctor.

  “Yes, he asked that question. No one had gone for a doctor.”

  “And did Cook Teets at any time say to you that he had killed his wife? Did he confess?”

  “No, but like my mother said …”

  “Never mind what your mother said, Bridget, we’re interested in what you have to say.”

  James Masson paced back and forth before asking his next question.

  “Bridget, did your sister have many boy friends?”

  “A few, but only one at a time. She didn’t really trust men.”

  “What do you mean? Didn’t she like having men around her?”

  From the corner of his eye, Leonard caught a look of exasperation on Molly’s face. She was motioning to Bridget, muttering, “No, no.” Molly shut up when people seated close by began to shush her.

  Bridget hesitated before answering James Masson.

  “She liked men, but she was always on her guard. Perhaps because of what happened with the priest, she was never the same after that.”

  “Whatever do you mean, Bridget?”

  Leonard saw a look of horror on Bridget’s face. She seemed to shrink into herself as the meaning of what she’d said came over her.

  “The priest, he had his way with her. When she was about twelve. And it happened more than once. Rosannah told me every time. She said she hated men.”

  Judge Armour slapped the dais in front of him. It was clear he had been angered by what Bridget had said.

  “Miss Leppard, you’re under oath. You’ve sworn to tell the truth. We’ll have no slanderous fantasies against the Roman Catholic Church. The jury will disregard those remarks, obviously a tissue of lies. I could have you charged with perjury, or even criminal libel. Is counsel finished with this witness?”

  “I am, your Lordship,” James Masson said. He retreated hastily to his seat. He had no wish to risk anything that might further inflame the judge.

  Leonard struggled to absorb the startling facts he had just heard. Bridget wasn’t so timid after all, he thought. Her testimony explained so many things, no matter what the judge might believe. He remembered hearing rumours about Father Quinn and now he knew they’d been more than idle gossip. Leonard realized what a horrible mistake he’d made that time he’d forced himself on Rosannah. He never had a chance, after that. No wonder she wouldn’t admit he was the father of Lenora. It was a miracle she could love the baby, considering how it had been conceived.

  The swearing in of Constable John Field distracted Leonard from these thoughts. Why were policemen always so thickset and brawny? Field sat heavily in the witness chair, his weight warping its slight wooden frame. He couldn’t have gotten that way on his constable’s pay. Probably picked up more than his salary from other, more devious pursuits.

  “Please tell the jury,” Alfred Frost began, “how it came about that you arrested Cook Teets.”

  Constable Field explained that when the inquest jury
returned a true bill against Cook a year ago, he was sent to his house to arrest him for murder.

  “All right now, John. In what condition did you find Cook Teets? Did he resist?”

  “His mother answered the door. She said Cook was sick in bed. I went to his bedroom and told him he was under arrest. He didn’t resist. I told him I had to search the house.”

  “What did you find?”

  “I asked Cook if he had any strychnine. He said he did. He got out of bed and went to a chest that he kept in his bedroom. He took out a tin box and showed me a bottle he had inside it. It was marked strychnine.”

  Alfred Frost reached for a small green bottle that sat on a table beside the witness stand.

  “Is this the bottle you took from Cook Teets’s house?” He held up the bottle, no more than four inches tall and perhaps an inch across. It was about three-quarters full of a white crystal, the color of strychnine. The powder stood out clearly against the green glass.

  “That is it.”

  “What else did you retrieve?”

  “I asked Cook for any paper connected with his marriage. He gave me a marriage license and a life insurance policy. He got the papers from his trunk. Said he paid eleven dollars for the life insurance. He handed everything to me and said he had nothing to hide.”

  James Masson asked only a few questions in cross-examination.

  “Constable Field, did Cook Teets attempt to conceal anything from you?” Field admitted he did not.

  “Did the prisoner confess to you he had killed his wife?”

  “He said nothing of that sort to me.”

  When Masson was finished with Constable Field, Alfred Frost told Judge Armour his next witness would be Dr. Richard Ellis of the Toronto School of Medicine. He made a show of thumbing through the file in front of him as the doctor made his way to the witness box to be sworn in. Dr. Ellis was tall, bald, and wore thick glasses that were the result, one could assume, of long hours of study of medical texts by the feeble light of coal oil lamps.