Act of Injustice

by Argyle, Ray

  The winter had come and gone since Leonard’s visit to to Grey County with Richard Langley. After Langley’s death and Dr. Sproule’s disheartening letter, he’d given up on going back – neither to engage in politics nor to search for clues to who had killed Rosannah. Too many things had happened, too many obstacles had been thrown in his path.

  John Ross Robertson, despite his long-standing opposition to giving women the vote, liked Leonard’s suffragette article, and told him so. “Sometimes it’s more satisfying to write about politics than to practice it,” he said. “Have you decided if you’ll try again for a nomination?”

  Leonard put his hands on his hips and looked out the window. He knew that his answer had to satisfy his publisher. “No, I’m done with politics. I’m staying right here at the Telegram,” Leonard answered. “I had a certain itch, but it’s been well scratched.”

  “Their loss is our gain,” Robertson told him. “If you’re definite about that, we must go ahead with other plans.”

  “What other plans, Mr. Robertson? What do you have in mind?”

  The publisher swerved in his chair, tossed a copy of that morning’s Globe into a waste bin, and smiled before answering.

  “Mr. Babington, it’s time you took on more responsibility,” he said. “I’m going to make you city editor of the Evening Telegram.”

  The declaration surprised Leonard. He felt his mouth go dry and he licked his lips. He still had a lot of doubts about himself. The job of city editor would require that he learn to manage men as well as the news. It would take a lot of organizing, and involve a good deal of politicking with the reporters. If he could pull it off, he might have a good future in newspapering, after all. But he was uncertain if he could do it.

  “Are you sure you want to give me that position, sir? Are you sure I can handle it?”

  “Of course you can. The way you’ve handled this political business has proven it. Steady and sober, you’ve been. Besides, the men like and respect you. You’re a first-class journalist. I’ll never forget that quote in your story on the Thomas Kane hanging, ‘Jerked to Jesus,’ greatest line we’ve ever published.”

  Leonard cringed. He’d always felt foolish for having passed on that remark by a witness to Kane’s hanging. Robertson continued:

  “Your crime reporting has acquainted you with the city. You know all the police, the lawyers and the judges. Now you’ll get to know the bankers and businessmen, and the church ministers, to say nothing of the politicians. But you’ll have to stop consorting with that riff raff you’ve been seen with at the Queen’s Hotel. The city editor of the Evening Telegram has better use for his time.”

  The old Robertson approach, Leonard thought. All compliments in one breath, derision in the next.

  That afternoon, a memo was sent around the editorial department, signed by John Ross Robertson.

  Mr. Leonard Babington is appointed city editor. He has shown a great sense of duty and responsibility. His supervision will include the sporting, legal, financial, police, and municipal news. When not otherwise engaged, he will review the exchange papers for news items and give at least a column a day from that source. All religious, financial and medical weeklies will be scalped by Mr. Babington.

  Mr. White will act as news editor. He will rewrite all A.P. dispatches and attend to the scalping of outside news in the Toronto morning papers. He will fill out special cables from the London office.

  Mr. C.H.J. Snider will, as usual, have charge of City Hall work. Major L. Anthes will attend to church, Ministerial Alliance, Lord’s Day Alliance, hotels and small conventions. Mr. Fitzgerald will be responsible for all the real estate news. Mr. David Carey has charge of all railway stations, wharves, steamers, labour unions and cemetery returns. Mr. Thomas Champion will do the East End news, the hospitals, and get all the accidents that have been brought in. Mr. Charles H. Fowler’s duties will cover all financial news, Board of Trade, Customs, manufacturers associations, Harbour Commissioners, and insurance matters.

  Reporters are reminded they are not to allow themselves to be pressured for free ads. Mr. Robinson is to be the sole dispenser of free theatre tickets.

  Leonard Babington eased himself into the city editor’s chair. He felt good about how he’d handled the Grey County episode and the suicide of Angus McIntosh. He was feeling a lot more self-confident. Reporters stopped by to shake his hand. Owen Staples found it hard to restrain his pleasure at Leonard’s promotion. “Now we’ll see the Old Lady get ahead right smartly,” he said. That was his favourite name for the Telegram, the “Old Lady,” sometimes expanded to “the Old Lady of Melinda Street,” for the little street that ran beside the paper’s office.

  Since his return from Philadelphia, Owen had been drawing a cartoon every day for the front page – the only thing there besides the small ads. The day Leonard was named city editor, he chastised Owen for the way he signed the cartoons as “Rostap,” a combination of Black Jack Robinson, and Staples.

  “It’s your cartoon, only your name should be on it,” Leonard argued. Owen said Black Jack often gave him ideas, and he was reluctant to say anything to upset “the boss.” The signature never changed.

  Two months after becoming City Editor, Leonard found himself organizing coverage of the city’s three ridings for the federal election of 1891. He felt distanced from any desire to be part of the campaign, and was content to be one of the Telegrams loyal supporters of Sir John A. Macdonald. “This is your first big test,” Owen told Leonard. “The Telegram always makes a grand fuss on election night. People will come down by the thousands to stand outside the building and watch as the returns are posted. We put placards up on the windows.”

  “I’ve a better idea,” Leonard said. “I was at a magic lantern show last week and I got to thinking we could do the same thing. Flash results onto the building opposite.”

  Even before the polls had closed on election night, the street in front of the Evening Telegram was dense with a mass of people jostling for the best positions. At a quarter after eight, a sudden stream of light shot from a window of the Telegram onto a canvas that had been hung on a building across the street. As if by magic, result after result began to flash onto the cloth, each giving the latest vote count in Toronto ridings. Then came news from outside the city. The pro-Macdonald crowd, at least twenty thousand in number, roared in exultation when the most important result of all was flashed into the darkness:

  KINGSTON

  SIR JOHN A. LATEST

  MAJORITY 400

  Men cheered, old men were seen to weep, and a woman screamed, “I knowed it!” The next day, Leonard’s account of the government’s re-election included this paragraph:

  The soul of a great people was photographed on The Telegram canvas last night. The magic of projection brought the people from every constituency in Canada D the people from along the seashore, the people from the woods, the ranches, the farms, the quaint cities and towns, the prairies and plains, the mountains and the big islands, and made them shake the people of Toronto by the hand. For the people had spoken.

  Sir John was back for another term, and nothing was said in the Telegram about the success of the Liberal member for Grey South, Dr. George Landerkin, re-elected by a margin of forty-six votes over the Tory candidate, John Blyth. Perhaps I could have won, Leonard thought.

  Three months later, everyone at the Evening Telegram was overcome, as if possessed of a common soul and mind, by the devastating news of the death of the Old Chieftain. Sir John A. Macdonald was gone. Leonard sent Telegram reporters into the streets to record the city’s reaction. The Standard Bank, the Traders Bank, and the favourite hangout of Macdonald’s supporters, the Albany Club, were draped in black cloth. The Toronto Board of Trade closed its doors for a week of mourning and the City Council adjourned on hearing the news. “It is only a few times in a century that the death of a man is felt as widely all over the world,” Black Jack Robinson wrote, “as for the statesman for whom the nation now mourns an
d has passed away in the zenith of his power and popularity.”

  An impromptu wake got underway at the Queen’s Hotel around five o’clock. The last edition of the paper had been cancelled and reporters, pressmen, printers and men from the business office made their way to the saloon in the basement of the hotel. By six o’clock, every seat was filled and men stood at the bar and along the walls. The room was smoky, noisy, and smelled of sweat, beer farts and tobacco. Anyone who had ever met Sir John A. had a story to tell. Leonard remembered his visit to Ottawa when he’d seen the great man at his seat in the House of Commons. “There was no one in the place to match him,” Leonard said. “I can’t believe he’s dead.” Somebody called out, “He’ll never die! Three cheers for Sir John A.” The barroom exploded, “Hip, hip hurrah, to the great John A.” After the cheer, silence descended on the room. Every man, Leonard thought, should ponder how his life would be affected by the death of the first Prime Minister of the Dominion of Canada. He nudged Owen Staples and the two edged their way from the room and walked slowly along King Street. They said good night quietly, each deep in his own thoughts.

  Leonard gave himself over so completely to his job that he barely noticed the passage of time. He realized he was getting older, and worried sometimes that he was still a bachelor. Still, better to be single than be carried off by passion and marry some woman who might make a poor wife. His years, he realized, had been marked by events rather than dates. Of these, the blackest was the day of Rosannah’s death. Another occasion he would not forget was the dinner for Arthur Conan Doyle at The Grange. Leonard’s invitation had come from Goldwin Smith, for a dinner to take place the night before the author’s lecture at Massey Hall. “The interest excited in the public mind is very intense,” the Telegram had noted of Doyle’s visit.

  Leonard enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes stories. He knew that Doyle had allowed the detective’s sidekick, Dr. Watson, to diagnose death by strychnine in a case where a victim “twisted and turned in the most fantastic fashion.”

  He’d thought of Rosannah when he’d read the story. Who better to ask about strychnine poisoning than this famous writer, himself a medical doctor? Leonard waited for a lull in the chatter over another crime, the shooting death of young Frank Westwood, heir to a Toronto fortune. He had been caught up in an affair with a mulatto seamstress, Clara Ford. Doyle didn’t think much of the fact Toronto police had grilled the woman for hours to force a confession from her. “It savours more of French than English justice,” he said.

  As Arthur Conan Doyle fingered his walrus mustache, Leonard thought him a well-fed man, with his large head, high forehead, and cold, clear eyes that betrayed a sense of insolence. A break in the conversation gave Leonard a chance to speak up.

  “Dr. Doyle, did you have occasion in your medical career to attend a victim of strychnine poisoning?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” Doyle said. “A sad case of suicide, a young woman with child, abandoned by her lover.” Doyle spoke in a high-pitched voice that carried a strong Scottish brogue, something he had been unable to put aside despite his many years in London. His words held the attention of everyone in the room. Leonard’s heart thumped as he listened to the description of the girl’s death and the autopsy that followed. How similar to Rosannah!

  “It took her some time to die because she had just consumed a large meal – a last meal – which slowed the effects of the poison. My autopsy showed trace amounts of strychnine, evidence of the very large dose she had taken.”

  Leonard spoke of the death of Rosannah – “a sad event in one of our outlying villages” – and of his belief that an innocent man had been hanged when her husband went to the gallows.

  “The husband is always the first suspect when a woman is killed,” Doyle answered. “We call it spousal murder. So common, I’ve not often written about it. Our divorce law encourages murder, I sometimes think. But I prefer more tangled mysteries.”

  Still, there was an exception or two, Leonard knew. “What about your story, ‘The Cardboard Box?’” he interjected. “Your character, Browner, has killed his wife Mary and her boy friend in a jealous rage. He severs an ear from each and sends them to Mary’s sister. A gruesome touch but effective,” Leonard allowed.

  Doyle smiled at Leonard. “It’s likely, Mr. Babington, that your jury just assumed your man was guilty.” He paused to chuckle. “That’s why I demonstrate impeccable evidence of guilt in my villains!” Everyone laughed but Leonard could only reflect that Doyle might have put his finger on the reason for Cook’s conviction. Leonard also thought it much simpler to write of an imaginary crime than solve a real one. Later, when an all-male jury acquitted Clara Ford of the murder of Frank Westwood, he thought about how men can be forgiving of the crimes of women, but seldom of other men – whether they were guilty or innocent.

  Chapter 31

  VANDELEUR, AGAIN

  June 23, 1896

  Great change can arrive with suddenness, as Leonard Babington and countless others learned when the federal election of 1896 brought to an end the long era of Conservative party rule in Canada. The election proved a great test for John Ross Robertson, the Conservative Party, and the Evening Telegram. There had been been a succession of Conservative leaders since the death of Sir John A. Macdonald in 1891. The party seemed to wander aimlessly. John Thompson, who Leonard remembered watching as he collapsed at his desk, had been a promising prime minister until he chose to die while on a visit to Queen Victoria. Even more tragic than Thompson’s death, Leonard thought, was the way he had been vilified for his conversion to Catholicism. Fanatical Orangemen called him a pervert. The prejudices of religion were beyond belief, Leonard told himself.

  Now, the government was caught up in a great controversy over Catholic schools and the use of French in the classrooms of Manitoba. The provincial government was against both the schools and French, but the Conservatives in Ottawa argued that publicly funded Catholic schools were a right guaranteed to Manitoba when it joined Confederarion. Black Jack Robinson groused to Leonard that the Liberal party’s new Catholic leader Wilfrid Laurier “has danced all over this business, making the government look bad without taking a stand himself”

  John Ross Robertson was in Kingston, staying at the British-American Hotel, when he received a telegram that would force him to do something he had always resisted: run for Parliament. A breakaway wing of the Conservative party, opposed to Ottawa’s efforts to force Manitoba to stand by the deal that brought it into Confederation, wanted him as a candidate. The wire told him that twenty men had been nominated in Toronto East, but all had withdrawn. They wanted Robertson, whose Telegram was read in virtually every home in the east end.

  When Robertson returned to Toronto, he called in Black Jack Robinson and Leonard Babington and told them of his decision. He would run. “It’s not the duty of the federal government to stretch out a hand to help the French minority,” the publisher thundered. He accepted nomination just a week before election day. Robertson’s readers loyally supported him, and he easily beat the sitting Conservative. “We had a short season for sowing, but we reaped a quick and bountiful harvest,” he said on election night. But Robertson found himself in the House of Commons as a member of the Opposition, not the government. In the election of June 23rd, the Liberal party under its Catholic leader Wilfrid Laurier, took power.

  On Robertson’s instructions, Leonard had played down his publisher’s role in the election. He dropped the news of his chief’s election into a wrapup story headlined, BATTLE IN THREE TORONTOS. The Telegram chief spoke rarely in Parliament. When he did, it was to berate the new government. “Sympathy with minority is a weakening disease,” he told the House of Commons. No voices were raised against him. Leonard knew Robertson was speaking of the French in Quebec, but his words could apply equally to the Irish, Jews, or Negroes, or the country’s natives, still referred to as Indians. The people who ran Canada had more important things to deal with than the problems of those who were
not white, Protestant, and British. They cared little about such things as the murder of an Irish girl in Grey County or the hanging of an innocent man.

  The pages Leonard had written for Rosannah’s Story by now filled most of a small drawer in his bedroom cabinet. Riffling through them, he made a sudden decision. Too long had passed without an answer to the puzzle of Rosannah’s death. In September of 1897, Leonard made up his mind to return to Vandeleur once more. It was time, finally, to come to terms with his obsession.

  Summer in Toronto had been cool and wet. The skies cleared finally and the city looked forward to glorious autumn days, brisk nights and the changing colours of the leaves. Leonard invited Owen Staples to go to Vandeleur with him, where he could paint the fall scenery. Owen had never been north of the city and he welcomed the opportunity. The two arranged a week’s leave and on the last Friday of the month they boarded the noon train. By seven o’clock they were at Flesherton Station where they hailed a hansom and set off for Vandeleur Hall. The driver took the short route to the Beaver Valley Road. The trail had been widened and covered with gravel and Leonard saw new houses in the fields along the way.

  When Leonard first sighted his old house, he was appalled by what he saw. It was smaller than he’d remembered and it gave off an air of despair and neglect, from the weeds around the porch to the paint peeling from the doors and window ledges. The remnants of a rose garden – a single bush bearing two fading blooms – reminded him how carefully his mother had tended those plants, and of the time he had cut a bouquet for Rosannah. The glass in one of the front windows was cracked. The river stone embedded into the brick around the windows looked ridiculous. Leonard realized his father had designed a house that was more a rural monstrosity than the palatial mansion he’d once imagined. He didn’t want to admit this to Owen. “Seems a bit old and tired,” he conceded. “Maybe I should get you to paint the house instead of pictures.” Owen had a quick answer: “Paint the place yourself. I’m here in the cause of art!”