by Argyle, Ray
“Do you really have to leave?” she asked. Leonard was tempted to stay in the city. Kaitlin obviously liked him, just as he liked her. He would be sure to see a lot of her if he remained. He thought of the secret pleasures he night enjoy with Kaitlin if he stayed in Toronto. Then he remembered why he had come to the city, and what he had to do with what he had learned.
“It’s been wonderful to meet you,” Leonard said, “but I must get back to Vandeleur. I’ve a paper to get out. I’ll call on you when I’m next in Toronto.” When they shook hands to say goodbye Leonard saw sadness in her eyes.
Tyler Thompson was wiping down the press when Leonard arrived at the Chronicle. His new tramp printer, Willie Babcock, was cleaning out a form that held last week’s type.
“We’re going to upset a few people,” Leonard told them. “With what I’ve learned at the medical school, the case against Cook Teets just doesn’t hold up. I want the front page for the story. Move the ads inside.”
Willie set the type for the headline that ran across the top of the front page:
LEGAL MURDER – Cook Teets Was Innocent
Leonard’s story challenged the decision of the jury and the acceptance by Judge Armour of its verdict. He cited the fact strychnine kills quickly, but there was insufficient evidence of the poison in Rosannah’s body to prove the cause of death. If she had died of strychnine, it must have been administered well after the time that Cook Teets had left the Leppard household.
“We are inclined to think an innocent man was doomed to death,” Leonard wrote. “Should a man have been hanged on purely circumstance evidence? Granted that he had strychnine in his possession, granted further that he held an insurance policy on his wife. Both these facts were known to a number of persons before Rosannah’s death. How easy it would have been, with such knowledge, for someone with malice and murderous intent to administer the poison. Yet no one granted Cook Teets the benefit of reasonable doubt. The powers that be in Ottawa insisted on proceeding with what, on any fair examination, can now be revealed as nothing less than a merciless act of unwarranted retribution.”
Reports of how certain people reacted to the Chronicle story soon began to reach Leonard’s ears. In Owen Sound, the prosecuting attorney, Alfred Frost, read the Chronicle in outrage and disbelief. The governor of the jail, John Miller, slammed the paper onto his desk in anger. Even James Masson, Cook’s lawyer, thought Leonard had gone too far.
“Everybody connected with this trial shares responsibility for what has happened,” Masson told his law clerk. The clerk, dozing over his study of a boring account of a long ago legal action in the courts of England, perked up.
“Then they won’t like what Babington’s written, will they?”
Chapter 23
THE WARNING
October 20, 1885
Leonard Babington scrawled his name on the last cheque he would ever write to the Toronto Paper Manufacturing Co. It paid off his debt and he vowed he’d never again do business with the company. He returned the chequebook to the top drawer of his desk. It was then that John Miller, the governor of the Owen Sound jail, stormed into the Chronicle office.
“Babington, God damn it, I’ve come to straighten you out on this Cook Teets business. These contemptuous articles you’ve been writing – you’ve got to stop spreading that manure. You’re causing all kinds of talk, getting folks worked up. Destroying faith in the courts, the police, all of us in authority.”
Leonard had written about the case in his last three issues. He’d published half a dozen letters, including two that were critical of what he’d written. More worrisome, four merchants withdrew their ads. “Don’t like all this controversy,” he was told by Joe Greene, the butcher.
“Mr. Miller, have a seat,” Leonard said. “You’ve come down from Owen Sound just to tell me that?”
“Yes, and I’ll tell you more. Teets was guilty as hell. He even confessed to me.”
“What do you mean, he confessed?”
“Just that. He told me he did it. He said he thought it would be a good piece of business, collecting that insurance money. Rehearsed his confession speech, right in front of me.”
“Mr. Miller, why have you never said anything of this? Never told the court?”
“No need to. I knew he’d be found guilty.”
“You mean you knew he’d be railroaded!”
Leonard reared back in his captain’s chair. What Miller was telling him flew in the face of common sense. If Cook had wanted to confess, he wouldn’t have confessed to his jailer. He’d have confessed to those preachers, Howell or Scott. He wouldn’t still have claimed he was innocent, there on the gallows.
“Governor,” Leonard said – being careful to address Miller by his title – “what you say doesn’t ring true. It looks to me you’re trying to put a false face on things, so it won’t seem that injustice has been done. You want to look good in Alfred Frost’s eyes, and in the eyes of the government. I don’t believe Teets ever confessed to you.”
Leonard and Miller argued for another twenty minutes. Miller grew red in the face, raised his voice, and shook his fist at Leonard.
“We won’t stand for it, Babington,” he warned as he stomped from the Chronicle. “If you won’t cease and desist, we’ll see that you are shut down. The law has its ways.”
A few days later, Scarth Tackaberry hailed Leonard as he walked along the Beaver Valley Road. Tackaberry looked worried, Leonard thought, not quite so sure of himself as he’d put on at Cook’s hanging.
“You’re making quite a fuss in your paper,” Tackaberry said. “Trying to make out somebody else did in Rosannah. Some folks are dreaming up all kinds of possibilities. Mentioning different names. Some even think it might have been me.”
“I never said anything about you.”
“You didn’t have to. Folks know I was interested in Rosannah That’s the way it’s been for me. People blame me for things that’s their fault, like what happened to her. Maybe she was asking for it.”
That didn’t make sense to Leonard. “Nobody asks to die. If you didn’t do something you can’t be blamed. If you did, someday you’ll have to own up to it. Clear your conscience.” This wasn’t what Tackaberry wanted to hear, Leonard could see. Tackaberry walked away, muttering to himself.
That night, as Leonard was locking the door to the Chronicle office, he noticed a shadow on the ground. That was when he saw the Runt. It was the only name by which the little man crouched beside him was ever known. The Runt had lost both legs when, drunk on a day that was well below zero, he’d fallen under the wheels of a Toronto, Grey and Bruce freight train he’d been trying to board. When he was picked up, he was nearly frozen to death. The blood running from his wound had congealed, preventing infection from entering his legs. After a month in the hospital, he’d been outfitted with a small, square board fitted with four casters taken from a discarded bed. He learned to squat on the board and propel himself along the wooden sidewalks of the village. He spent most of his time hanging around the general store where he made generous use of the bucket of free whisky that always sat on the counter.
“Runt, what are you doing today?” Leonard asked.
“Hearing bad news about you.”
“What have you heard?”
“I heard it’s time for you to wise up.” The Runt paused, allowing a blank look to come over his face. He farted, then resumed his warning. “Or somebody’s gonna fix you. Lay off the Cook Teets case.”
Leonard handed the Runt a quarter.
“Get yourself some more of whatever’s been making you crazy.”
The next morning Leonard found the front window at the Chronicle smashed by a rock. A note tied to it had fallen loose. “Shut up Babington,” it read. The day after, Leonard spotted a soggy paper bag on the doorstep of his office. When he lifted it, the sack broke. Shit slithered down his pant leg and onto his shoes.
That night Leonard heard a gunshot as he stepped into the road. Involuntarily, he
ducked. He crouched in the darkness for a few minutes before he made his way into the forest and found a path that led him home. He wondered who could be behind the attacks. A rock, or even a bag of shit, he could slough off. But being shot at? Either he’d upset the authorities more than he’d realized or the killer of Rosannah was still out there, wanting the world to forget about her and Cook Teets. No one in Grey County was going to help him. He didn’t feel safe in Vandeleur now. He had to either give up his campaign to find justice for Rosannah, or accept the liklihood of further assaults. He would have to look elsewhere for help. The Dominion Police, perhaps, or even the Minister of Justice. He had to talk to somebody. He’d have to go to Ottawa.
Ottawa was dirty and dusty. Leaves were falling from the elm and maple trees that grew along Wellington Street as Leonard made his way from the railway station to the Russell Hotel. The hotel was directly across the street from the Parliament Buildings. Leonard asked for one of the cheaper rooms, and he was given one that looked over an alley at the back of the building. He had planned to rest for awhile, but the room was so stuffy that he decided to go out and have a look at the Parliament Buildings.
So this is the seat of Canada’s government, Leonard thought, standing near the crest of the hill that rose above the Ottawa River. The three great sandstone structures, topped with towers covered with gargoyles and grotesques, seemed part of a different world than the one Leonard had encountered on his walk from the railway station. He’d smelled rancid garbage in the gutters, seen men behind push carts filled with old clothes and sticks of used furniture, and watched ladies who carefully raised their skirts as they stepped into the road.
Leonard noticed that the Parliament Buildings were protected by nothing more than a waist-high wrought iron fence that ran along Wellington Street. He heard the big clock in the main tower chime eleven times. A gate had been left open and Leonard went through it, heading for the main door of the biggest building. The doorman at the hotel had called it the Centre Block. Under a stairway he found a sign directing him to the office of the Dominion Police. He opened a door into a room barely large enough to contain a bench, a counter, and two small desks fitted under a pair of low windows. One desk was occupied by a short man wearing khaki breeches. They were held up by wide, brown suspenders. Leonard asked to see the officer in charge.
“Mr. McMicken’s on his walkabout. Should be back soon.”
Leonard wondered what a commanding officer of the Dominion Police would find on a walkabout of Parliament Hill. He would have to ask about that.
“Intelligence, don’t you know,” Mr. McMicken told him an hour later when he’d returned and Leonard had been granted a hearing. “Our job is to guard these buildings, and gather information that will help protect the government people. A murder case over in Grey County?
“Nothing we can do about that, I’m afraid. Out of our jurisdiction. You’d be better off talking to the Justice Department. Go to the other place,” Mr. McMicken said, waving vaguely toward what Leonard took to be the building he had heard referred to as the East Block. “Get in to see Richard Langley. Chief clerk to the Minister of Justice. But I warn you, all they care about right now is that Riel business.”
The Riel business? Leonard had almost forgotten about the rebellion on the Northwestern plains. Led by the half-breed, Louis Riel. Captured, and sentenced to hang. Everyone in Ontario was keen to see him drop from the gallows. But not Quebec, Leonard had heard. The French were in an uproar; Riel was half French, half Indian, a Metis as people of that mix were known, and the Quebec newspapers were full of demands that his life be spared. Leonard decided his best chance of getting to see the Minister of Justice would be to ask to interview him about the Riel affair.
Leonard found the Department of Justice in a row of rooms on the second floor. The door to the main office was covered with pebbled glass, and when Leonard entered he found himself in a small waiting room where two men occupied its only chairs. There was no one else about. Leonard stood near the door, wondering what he should do. In a minute, an elderly man carrying a bundle of files came in, spoke to the waiting men, and took them inside. He returned in a few minutes and asked Leonard to state his business.
“I’m here to see the Minister of Justice, press business,” Leonard said.
“You’ll have to talk to the chief clerk, Mr. Langley. I can’t just send you into the Minister. Take a seat.”
It took Leonard two visits before he was admitted to the office of Richard Langley. Sitting in the cramped waiting room, he thought about what kind of man Langley might be. He assumed he’d be stuffy and formal. He wondered whether such a man would show any interest in the murder of an innocent young bride, or in helping to find the person responsible for her death.
Chapter 24
THE TRANSCRIPT
November 5, 1885
Richard Langley fingered a letter opener on his desk and shifted a stack of files as Leonard took a seat. The chief clerk’s striped dark coat and white shirt, with its massive celluloid collar, gave him a stern countenance. He appeared to be about Leonard’s age, thirty-five at the most. He was cleanly shaved and Leonard suspected he was a man who fussed over his clothes and cared about the impression he made on visitors.
“The Minister’s in cabinet,” Richard Langley said. “There is much deliberation on matters related to the North West.”
“That’s just it,” Leonard said. “We’re very interested in Ontario to know the Minister’s views on the matter of Riel. Anything I write for my paper will be shared with other newspapers.”
“That would be good of you,” Richard Langley replied. “What to do about Riel is much on the minister’s mind. John Thompson has only recently taken on the justice portfolio. We have to schedule his time carefully. He resigned from the Supreme Court to run in a by-election in Nova Scotia. Successfully, thank God. Now he’s got a bit of stomach trouble – the doctors say it’s kidney stones – so it may take a few days to arrange something. But tell me about yourself and your paper. I’ve always wanted to get up there to the Queen’s Bush. Enjoy a bit of pheasant hunting.”
Richard Langley listened avidly to Leonard’s account of experiences at the Chronicle, at the Globe, and on the lake boats. These were fascinating new topics for the chief clerk. He compared Leonard’s adventures with his own life in England. “Rather tame compared to what you’ve seen,” he told Leonard. “A bit of fox hunting – dogs and all – and an occasional week of fly fishing in Scotland.” It was clear to Leonard that Richard Langley came from the upper class. Still, they shared a common love of nature. The two men talked for nearly an hour. By the end of it, Leonard felt he had a new friend in the making, despite their different backgrounds.
“Look, it’s four o’clock,” Richard Langley finally told Leonard. “This is Thursday, and the wives of the cabinet ministers will be arriving for their weekly tea. We senior staff usually join them. Come along as my guest.”
“I’ve no wish to intrude,” Leonard answered. He was surprised to be invited to such an exclusive gathering.
“Not an intrusion, a pleasure,” Richard Langley answered.
The room where Langley took Leonard was decorated with vases of fall flowers set on serving tables. A thick rug covered the floor and rich paneling embellished every wall. There was no need of a fire in the hearth. A large painting of General Wolfe, the conqueror of Quebec, hung over it, his bright red jacket a contrast to the heavy clouds behind him. Chairs set out along each wall filled up as the wives of cabinet ministers, led by Mrs. Thomas White, wife of the Indian Affairs minister, and Annie Thompson, the new Justice minister’s wife, came into the room. He dutifully bowed his head and offered his hand in response to the gloved hands of each of the ladies. Leonard thought them dowdy compared to the woman who sat a little apart, on a Queen Anne chair. She had on a fancy tea gown and Leonard suspected she wore no corset. Langley introduced her as Miss Janette Robertson. He added, under his breath, that she was the latest mistr
ess of that old goat from Nova Scotia, Sir Leonard Tilley. Leonard watched as she daintily balanced a cup of Earl Grey tea with a saucer of tiny sandwiches. Miss Robertson smiled warmly, arched her eyebrows and told Leonard, “I do hope this will not be your only visit with us.”
After an hour spent circling the room and meeting other government people, Richard Langley nudged Leonard and suggested it was time to leave. On the way out Leonard caught snatches of whispers about “that handsome young man with Mr. Langley.”
“Staying in the city?” Langley asked Leonard. “Drop in and see me Monday afternoon.”
Leonard went to a branch of the Bank of Commerce on Saturday morning and drew fifty dollars from the two thousand dollar inheritance his father had left him. He slept late on Sunday and in the afternoon walked out to Rockcliffe Park where the best families of Ottawa had their mansions. He was at Richard Langley’s office at three o’clock on Monday. The occasion marked the first of what would become almost daily meetings between Leonard and the chief clerk. They took beer at the Russell Hotel. They had long discussions on the responsibilities of a citizen to help build his country.
“We’ve got to get in there and stir things up, especially in a new country like Canada,” Richard Langley said.
Leonard said he agreed wholeheartedly, and if his services were ever needed, he could be counted on. After a week, Leonard felt he had known the chief clerk for ages. He decided to tell Richard that if he ever got to interview John Thompson, he would ask about the trial of Cook Teets.
“In that case, I’ll have to brief the minister.”
Leonard spent fifteen minutes sketching the highlights of Cook Teets’s trial. He spoke of what he’d learned at the Toronto Medical School and his belief that the killer of Rosannah Leppard was still at large.