by Argyle, Ray
Leonard withdrew a large key from his jacket and unlocked the front door. The rays of a late evening sun reflected off a shiny floor, evidence that Sam Bowles’s granddaughter Maggie had received his letter and had made an effort to have the place ready for them. The parlour had been dusted and in the kitchen Leonard found a plate of roast beef, a pumpkin pie, a jug of milk and a loaf of bread.
“A veritable feast awaits us,” Leonard laughed. Owen took a bottle of whisky from his trunk and while Leonard primed the pump, he poured generous helpings into two glasses. They spent the evening telling stories of their boyhood. Owen recalled his early life in England. Leonard remembered Tom Winship who had lost his life on the docks – either a murder or an accident – and he thought of his father, dead from an errant dynamite blast. The whisky bottle was nearly empty by the time the coal oil lamp on the kitchen table ran dry. Leonard was feeling teary as he told Owen of that long ago picnic on the banks of the Beaver River when he fell in love with Rosannah Leppard.
“It’s a damn shame what happened to you two,” Owen offered. “You’d have been happy together. But all that’s behind you, Leonard. I hope this visit to Vandeleur doesn’t get your mind off where your life is today.”
Leonard took Owen into the countryside almost every day. Sometimes it was to fish in the Beaver River and others times to wander about the hills above the valley. Owen carried his paints with him and on most days he produced two or three watercolor pictures. No matter the weather he dressed in the clothes he’d worn at the Evening Telegram – solid shoes, a suit and a vest, with a tie around his neck and a fedora on his head.
Whenever the mood struck him, Owen would open up his campstool and set it down. Leonard watched fascinated as Owen reached into his paint box, took out his brushes and paints, and set about mixing his watercolors. “I like to use the colours of the Impressionists,” Owen said. “My favourites are Cadmium yellow, Alizarin crimson, Ultramarine blue. Add a nice touch to a picture. Before I start, I like to soak my paint blocks in water.” He poured from a small bottle, making little puddles of colour on his palette. Then he unfolded his easel, propped a board on it, and tacked on a sheet of paper.
Leonard noticed that Owen would pause to take in a scene, as if he were drinking it up. They were in an open meadow atop a hillside on Bowles’s Bluff, property that had once belonged to Jacob Teets. A path bordered with maple and beech trees ran down the hillside. You could see crops planted up and down the valley. Hills on the other side faded away into the purple distance, revealing a high ridge of the Escarpment.
“The Impressionists have changed everything about art,” Owen told Leonard. “Their pictures reveal their conception of what they see, rather than what’s merely there. I like to stop and get a feeling for the scene. Get an impression of it. Take a moment to measure the light – you have to watch that in plein-air painting. There, I’ve got it now.”
With a few quick strokes, Owen set the horizon, the route of a path running up from the river, and the foliage on the hillside. Then he began to paint the sky, capturing the warm sunshine that filtered through a thin cloud. He painted in the lower reaches of the valley, purposely blurring the detail. Next he dabbed at the trees and flowers in the foreground, using strong colours to contrast with the lighter shades of distant slopes. No more than twenty minutes had passed.
“You have to decide when a painting’s finished,” Owen said.
Leonard stood behind Owen looking at the picture. He thought it more striking and its colours more vivid than anything he’d seen in nature. “It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve done,” he said. “Do you like it?” Owen asked. “Here, you can have it.”
“Are you back to stay, boy?” It was Rosannah’s father, James Leppard. Leonard had thought of looking him up, but hadn’t been able to bring himself to doing so. “Folks say they still miss that paper of yours, after all these years.” James was standing on the steps of the Methodist church after Sunday morning’s service. Owen had insisted on going.
“Only here for a visit,” Leonard said. He introduced Owen and they talked about what they’d done during the past week. Leonard wanted to bring up Rosannah’s name, but he wasn’t sure how to go about it. Too many years had gone by, there was really no reason to talk about her, and he had no wish to return to those dark days in the life of the Leppard family. He decided instead to ask about how James and the other Leppards were faring.
“Oh, good as can be expected, I calculate,” James answered. “Family’s all scattered. Tom’s got a farm in the North West. Joe and Jimmy are still around Vandeleur, Jimmy had a bad marriage and come home. Young Billy’s my biggest help, he always stuck by me. The girls are all married, and away.”
James stopped talking. He stared across the road, over Leonard’s shoulder. “Guess you’ve heard what’s become of Molly,” he added, as if in afterthought.
The remark caught Leonard off guard. “No, what about Mrs. Leppard?”
“Why, they’ve got her in jail. Sent down to Toronto for arson. Tried to poison the cattle and burn up the barn over to Peter Campbell’s. They had a feud going. She was upset about one of Peter’s bulls loose in our yard. I told her it weren’t worth it, making trouble like that.”
All the old apprehension Leonard had felt about Rosannah came back on him. A chill came into his chest and his mouth tasted chalky. Would this news of Molly Leppard be likely to help him in his search for Rosannah’s killer?
“You never can tell what will set someone off,” Leonard said. “How long did they give her?”
“Six months, and that was last February. She still hasn’t come back. I had someone write a letter to the Mercer prison, but I’ve never had an answer. In some ways, I think she’s maybe more comfortable down there than she’s ever been around here.”
Leonard wanted to get away, to clear his mind, and think out what this meant and what he might do about it.
“I’m sorry to hear about Molly,” he answered. “When I get back to Toronto I’ll see what I can find out. I’ll let you know. But we have to go. Owen wants to finish up a painting he’s started.”
Leonard nudged Owen to get him moving. He couldn’t imagine Molly locked up in a cell. She might hold the clue he’d almost given up ever finding. The thought of seeing her was foremost in Leonard’s mind, and by the time they boarded the Sunday afternoon train to return to Toronto he’d made up his mind. He would go to the Mercer Reformatory on Monday. He had to find out what had become of Molly Leppard.
Black Jack Robinson was waiting on the second floor landing of the Evening Telegram when Leonard came up the stairs. It was seven o’clock, an hour when few reporters had arrived at work. Leonard carried a black umbrella in the crook of his arm and on his head he wore a black Bowler hat. He imagined his outfit gave him the appearance of a proper Victorian gentleman, a fact that did not entirely displease him. “Why are our reporters never around when we need them, Babington?” Robinson demanded. “A damn fool horseless carriage has run amuck on Queen Street, rammed a streetcar, several people injured.” Robinson’s insistence on calling automobiles horseless carriages irritated Leonard. He thought it was time to call an automobile by its name; they’d been on Toronto streets since 1893. “I’ll go myself,” Leonard said.
He found a policeman interviewing the owner of the automobile while onlookers inspected the damage. The driver said his passage had frightened a horse just as the streetcar approached him. It was one of the new electric models. He swerved to avoid the horse and skidded into the streetcar. No one had been seriously hurt. Leonard returned to the paper and wrote a one-paragraph account of Toronto’s first automobile accident.
All day, Leonard thought about Molly Leppard and wondered how she was dealing with her imprisonment. He left the Telegram at four o’clock, caught the streetcar going west on King Street, and twenty minutes later stood outside the Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women. He wondered if she would remember him, or if he’d recognize her. It had been how
long – thirteen years since Cook Teets’s trial? She’d be embarrassed at his finding her in jail. A visit could bring him closer to learning the perpetrator of Rosannah’s death. That was the important thing.
Chapter 32
LOOKING FOR MOLLY
October 4, 1897
The Mercer Reformatory, like all prisons, had a forbidding look about it. Leonard Babington lifted the knocker on the front door and banged to make his presence known. A small panel at shoulder height slid open. “State your business,” a voice demanded.
“Babington of the Evening Telegram,” Leonard answered. “Inquiring about Molly Leppard. I want to know if she is at this institution.”
The door opened to allow Leonard entry. The guard escorted him to an office where a man sat behind a stack of ledgers. “Do we have a Molly Leppard, Jocko,” the guard asked. “Newspaperman here wants to know.”
“If we’ve got her, she’s in here,” the man named Jocko said, referring to the ledgers. He bent over a large journal and ran his finger down lines of black script. He flipped over several pages before stopping. “Ah, here it is,” he said. “Molly Leppard, six months for arson, assigned to kitchen work. I remember her. We have to keep these wretched women busy. Of all wretched women, the idle are the most wretched. We teach them the importance of labour. One of the great means of their reformation.”
Leonard had to laugh at the man’s oafish arrogance. He’d never known anyone who had worked harder than Molly Leppard. Raising thirteen kids on a stone farm takes a lot more effort than sitting in some dismal room writing entries in a ledger. “Can I see her?” he asked.
“Not visiting hours,” the man named Jocko answered. “But it doesn’t make any difference – she’s not here. Transferred to the Asylum for the Insane, 28th of August. Go over to 999 Queen Street. Doubt they’ll let you in today.”
Molly in the Insane Asylum? Leonard found this hard to believe. He’d always thought her a little strange, but insane? Should he still try to see her? Rather than visit the Asylum now, he decided to go home and think about what he should do. At the office the next day, he sent a copy boy to the Telegram’s morgue to collect clippings on the Insane Asylum. There were stories about the rehabilitation of its inmates and flattering accounts of the work of its doctors. One article invited the public to enjoy the grounds and wander through the Asylum to see “the favourable consequences of treatment as it is effected on the inmates.” There were several articles quoting the Superintendent, Dr. Daniel Clark. Leonard decided to telephone him. A device that should be used more often in gathering news, he thought as he put in his call. He was connected at once. Dr. Clark agreed to see Leonard at four o’clock the next afternoon.
The stone walls loomed large around the Asylum when Leonard stood in front of it in the afternoon sunshine. A dome set atop the highest tower in Toronto rose over the middle of the building. Wings four storeys high, windows barred, extended left and right for several hundred feet. The only door was at the foot of a stone stairway that descended to the basement, creating a dismal and forbidding entrance even on a day as bright as this.
How frightening these surroundings must be for new arrivals, Leonard thought. He hesitated at the top of the stairway. He was curious to see Molly. And if a visit could lead to him finding out more about how Rosannah had died, it would be worthwhile, no natter how uninviting this place. He had pictured in his head so many times how Rosannah’s last hours might have unfolded. How was she given the strychnine that killed her? In some food, or in a drink? Mixed in with her tobacco, perhaps? And who had brought the poison into the Leppard house that night? Someone the Leppards must have known. Not a stranger assuredly. Thinking through all the possibilities, for the thousandth or the ten thousandth time, made him dizzy.
Leonard rang the bell at the bottom of the stairs. An attendant ushered him inside. Everything about the building was grey. The concrete floors and walls were soiled and dingy with the accumulation of years of grime. The white gowns worn by male and female staff alike provided a sharp contrast. Leonard saw Dr. Clark emerge from his office leading an elderly man by the hand. “Lie down when you’re taken back to your ward,” he told the man. “Someone will be along soon with your tot of rum.” He sent him off with an affectionate pat on his shoulder.
Seeing Leonard, Dr. Clark whirled suddenly. A brief flash of pink traveled up his cheek. He seemed embarrassed at what Leonard had just witnessed.
“Pay him no mind,” Dr. Clark said. “Many of our patients respond favourably to a tittle of alcohol once or twice a day. Better than giving them opium. Helps them to relax and eases their minds. But you don’t have to print that, do you?”
“I’ve come only to inquire of an inmate,” Leonard said.
“Patient, you mean,” Dr. Clark interjected. “All our guests are patients.”
“Of course,” Leonard acknowledged. He was seeking a middle-aged woman named Molly Leppard. He knew her family back in Vandeleur and they were concerned for her welfare. Would it be possible to visit her?
“That might be arranged,” Dr. Clark said. Leonard thought the Superintendent sounded a little defensive, perhaps worried about having let it be known patients were given alcohol.
“Mrs. Leppard came to us suffering manic depression,” Dr. Clark added. “She experiences delusions and threatens violence to herself and those around her. Just yesterday, she claimed Napoleon was her uncle and she raved about a pit with buried gold and explosives. Poor woman, we’re doing our best to help her.”
Fanning his arms as if to brush off some unwanted presence, Dr. Clark declared that no matter how unruly a patient might become, no physicial force was ever used at the Asylum.
“You’ll find none of the physically corrective forms of confinement here. No crib-beds, restraining waistcoats, or tethering to chairs. We emphasize moral enlightenment and firm guidance. We prefer fresh air, generous diet, and cleanliness to drugs.”
Leonard listened carefully. He barely noticed the arrival of a burly man in a white gown. He stood a few feet from Leonard, glowering as he waited to speak.
“You buzzed for me, Dr. Clark?”
“Ah, yes, Wainwright. This is Mr. Babington. He’s here to see Molly Leppard. Take him to her, please. But for no more than half an hour.”
Wainwright escorted Leonard to a ward at the far end of the Asylum basement. The occasional bare electric light bulb cast a dim light on this dark corridor. Not long ago, Leonard thought, candles would have been used down here.
A female attendant guarded a door at the end of the corridor. She was of medium height but thick, with an expression suggesting she had no time for levity.
“Bring out Mrs. Leppard,” Wainwright told her. “She has a visitor.”
Wainwright motioned Leonard to a bench. He sat down and waited. There was no conversation. In a few minutes, the door opened and the attendant emerged, followed by a woman clad in a grey nightgown. She had torn slippers on her feet. Leonard stared. It took him a moment to recognize the woman he had known as Molly Leppard. Her hair fell in knotted strands to her shoulders and her wrinkled face bore evidence of strain and worry. Nonetheless, she carried herself with a certain dignity. At the age of sixry-one, she still bore the bones of a good-looking woman.
The attendant sat Molly beside him. They looked at each other.
“Do you remember me?” Leonard asked.
Molly searched his face for a clue to his identity.
“Now I do,” she said. She spoke in a soft, throaty voice. “You’re Leonard, Leonard Babington. I wouldn’t forget you.” She looked around quickly. “Too bad you have to see me like this.” She let out a nervous laugh.
Molly told Leonard she would be going home soon. “My sentence is just about up.”
She must think she’s still in the prison, Leonard thought. The attendant offered to take Molly and Leonard to the verandah where they could enjoy the view and the fresh air. The day had warmed and he saw women sitting about in light dresses.
The men had the sleeves of their shirts rolled up. Leonard soon realized the veranda was not just a place for dormitory patients to take fresh air. It also served as a ward for the tubercular sick, who ate and slept here. Molly was given a chair near a screened door. As they talked, a tall, red-haired girl approached. Leonard judged she was in her mid-twenties. She had brown eyes and a clear, unblemished face and he wondered if she was a nurse. Then he realized she wore the same grey nightdress as Molly.
“Who is your friend, Molly?” the girl asked. “I think I’d like to meet him.”
The attendant interjected. “You shouldn’t be trying to flirt with the visitors,” she said.
“Gosh, that’s just Kathleen’s way,” Molly said.
Leonard learned a lot about the red-haired girl: that her name was Kathleen Fitzgerald and that she had been committed on the complaint of her stepfather. “They told me I was bad but I could never see why,” Kathleen said. Leonard found her easy to talk with. She answered his questions in a forthright way and expressed a keen curiosity about newspapers and their doings.
To Leonard, Kathleen seemed quite normal. Still, he thought, there must be a good reason for her being in the Asylum. She was attractive, yes, he had to admit that. She seemed bright enough, too. But he had learned from Rosannah that the mood of a high-spirited girl could shift in a flash from exuberance to despondency. Be careful with this one, he told himself. He said goodbye to Molly and promised to come back on Saturday. That night, he wrote to James Leppard to tell him of Molly’s confinement. He suggested James visit her but as far as Leonard could learn, he never did.