Death in the Age of Steam

by Mel Bradshaw

  “No,” Harris was explaining to a chemistry professor, “our charter prevents us from accepting your house as the principal security for a loan. Do you have any bonds you could pledge? Or is there anyone at all that owes you money?”

  The squat Yorkshireman replied that the University of Toronto owed him an increase in emolument. As this was a moral rather than a legal obligation, however, Harris could only recommend that the man get whatever influential friends he had to speak for him to his employers. Best wishes and good day.

  Then the afternoon mail brought a matter that was far from routine. Out of an envelope addressed to Harris personally fell four of his branch’s brand new fifty-dollar notes.

  He stared a moment in amazement at the harbour scene depicted on the backs. A classically draped female figure, spilling bounty from a cornucopia, sat at the water’s edge while a train steamed towards her from one side, a ship from the other. Both billowed clouds of smoke, intricately engraved for the discouragement of forgers.

  These were not forgeries. They were a bribe, equivalent to an even tenth of the cashier’s yearly pay. He pulled from the envelope a letter to the effect that Joshua Newbiggins recognized Isaac Harris’s abilities and would work to ensure they received wider recognition.

  The absence of a stamp showed the envelope had come by private messenger. Even so, Newbiggins must have stepped lively. The money he had picked up at noon he was already putting to work. Harris had suspected its first use would be as gifts, but the likeliest recipients had seemed the railways that Conquest Iron Works hoped to supply or Conquest’s influential Front Street neighbours. Not Harris.

  He knew, though, why he had been so honoured. One of his branch’s major borrowers was York Foundry, an established manufacturer in Conquest’s line. Information the bank held regarding York’s costs, suppliers and clients would help Conquest overcome the handicap of a late start.

  Harris had been offered bribes before, but so discreetly that he had always been able to decline without either taking or giving offence. Newbiggins’s crudeness raised questions about his judgement and, unhappily, about that of the president who had recommended him. Re-enclosing the bills and letter in a fresh envelope, Harris entrusted their return to Dick Ogilvie and instructed his staff to say he was occupied if Mr. Newbiggins should call.

  Thursday evening and every free minute of the next day were spent on the kind of inquiries Harris had outlined to Vandervoort. Neither the ticket agencies nor the city hotels admitted to having seen Theresa. A proper detective job was going to require something Harris had not yet worked out how to get, Crane’s cooperation or that of someone in his establishment.

  Gatekeepers at Crane’s home and office kept offering polite excuses. A personal letter went unanswered. Friday noon Harris did manage to intercept him on King Street. Crane cut him off before Harris could speak.

  He had been about to ask what funeral arrangements Crane had made on Sunday. The undertaker denied having seen him. So did the priest and the pallbearers.

  Harris got a little further with Dr. Hillyard—who appeared in every respect the dotard Small had represented. The opening of his surgery door late Friday afternoon sent dust balls scurrying. Throughout the interview, the doctor’s trembling hands wandered between the buttons of a food-stained waistcoat and a high, scabby forehead bracketed by cobwebs of hair.

  He said he had last seen Sheridan alive on Saturday morning. At that time he had administered no medicine. He had left none. He had recommended none. The symptoms of inflammation having subsided, no medicine was indicated.

  But the annals of physic were full of unforeseen reverses. Sheridan’s demise that very evening was regrettable, but not so surprising as to arouse suspicion. “We are not God, sir.” A messenger from Mrs. Crane had reached Hillyard’s just before nine p.m. and had been sent on to where he was celebrating the Glorious Twelfth. By nine thirty, he was at Sheridan’s villa. There he observed nothing to suggest the death had been anything but natural and, indicating that he would report it as such, took his leave some twenty minutes later.

  That was all he would say. Further questions should be put to Mrs. Crane. No, Hillyard had no idea where to find her. Was she not at home? Mr. Crane then.

  For Friday evening, Harris had a supper engagement he could not decently get out of. After leaving Hillyard, he found he didn’t want to. He craved a few hours’ relaxation. Last Saturday’s laughter and polkas seemed to belong to a summer long past.

  The MacFarlanes’ up on Queen Street West was a household with artistic aspirations. Singing rather than cards accordingly followed the meal. Harris had the voice of a crow but could sight read at the piano well enough to be a useful accompanist. Well enough, but not perfectly. The twelve-year-old daughter of the house broke into such fits of giggles when he hit a wrong note that he began making mistakes deliberately just to provoke her. Elsie’s mother was the most provoked, however, and the two clowns were driven from the pianoforte in disgrace.

  Elsie took this opportunity to corner Harris and show him her sketch book. Managing the crinoline cage her voluminous dress required was plainly giving her the difficulty of a novice helmsman on a broad-beamed steamer, and Harris barely managed to catch a cherrywood teapoy toppled by her passage.

  “The thing I don’t like about these skirts,” she said, patting the wire-supported dome of pink taffeta below her waist, “is you can’t sit in armchairs.”

  “And the thing you do like?” Harris took the book from her hands.

  “Is you can’t be ignored. You must start at the beginning now and not just go flipping through.”

  A sprightly child but very earnest too, Harris realized as he turned the pages and found one excruciatingly literal drawing after another. The birds seemed to be sketched from a taxidermy shop. The houses might have been of great use to a builder. Then there were parts of a cat that, even in sleep, moved around too much ever to have its portrait completed.

  It was high time Harris made an appreciative remark. “You know, Elsie, I like these bits. They leave something to your imagination.”

  Then he turned the page and saw a cloud of cat, a sketch so furious and unconsidered it might all have been done in five seconds. It wasn’t what Harris thought of as artistic. The pencilled swirls better suited a storm at sea than a dozing pet. He wondered if Elsie, frustrated by her own caution, had swung to the opposite extreme.

  “That’s not mine,” she said.

  “Whose is it then?”

  “Mrs. Crane’s . . .”

  Elsie had Harris’s full attention. Here was a connection he had not guessed at.

  “She said that unless I was illustrating an anatomy textbook, I should not worry so much about the details. I do like her. Do you think she will be found?”

  A quick, false yes would not do. If Elsie’s parents had trusted her with news of the disappearance, rather than pretending Theresa was out of town on some cosy visit, then Harris didn’t want to spew easy reassurance either. At the same time, he honestly could not imagine living the rest of his life with this mystery unresolved.

  “I think she will,” he said slowly. “Did you ever sketch her?”

  “I surely did.” The girl’s long face brightened. “Don’t skip now. You’ll come to it.”

  “Come on back, Mr. Harris,” some one called from the piano. “It seems we can’t do without you.”

  “In a moment,” he answered.

  Elsie’s drawings, still highly detailed, did become looser and livelier. Theresa’s portrait was easily the best thing in the book. Affection for the sitter must have helped, on top of which Theresa had given Elsie a pose it would have been hard to make static. Her head was turning as if her attention had just been caught by the glimpse of a person long absent, and her lips were parting as if she were about to speak. The drawing was dated the first of the current month.

  “What do you think? Am I improving?” Elsie wanted to know.

  “You are indeed. Could I
borrow this and make a tracing?”

  “I should want it back. Do you really think it’s good?”

  Harris’s musical services were again being called for.

  “I do, but remember I’m not an art critic, Elsie, just a banker.”

  “And a dazzling pianist,” she reminded him merrily.

  “Plug your ears,” he warned her on his way back to the keyboard.

  After a sufficiency of Mendelssohn and Schubert, the music party broke up for refreshments. Harris watched his chance to get a word with Elsie’s mother, who but for darker eyes and a stronger chin greatly resembled her contemporary the Queen. Kate MacFarlane was for some time occupied ordering staff and guests about in a quick, sharp voice. Her folded fan pointed directions. Harris had never seen her wear anything but tartan—a general fad since the completion of the royal residence at Balmoral. Her timber-baron husband—an older man, very tall and substantial—left to her the duties of general hospitality, while he remained towering in the background in conversation with the comeliest of the young sopranos.

  Harris had only recently been introduced to the family, which explained his not knowing of their acquaintance with Theresa. And yet he felt quickly at ease. Mrs. MacFarlane’s brusqueness had a way of breaking down reserve.

  Speak to her? Certainly. Making sure he had a plate of cakes, she drew him out through French doors onto a vaulted loggia overlooking the garden. Gothic arches added to the picturesque appeal of this villa scaled like a castle. Theresa Crane, said the chatelaine, disliked large gatherings and would have wiggled out of this one even if she had been in town. And what did Harris think had become of her anyway?

  He said he intended to find out—but confessed he had lost touch with her. He lacked current information regarding her interests, character and friends.

  Mrs. MacFarlane stared out at the shadowy carpet of grass. “That’s not a good start,” she said softly.

  “Do you know any old schoolmates she went on nature rambles with?”

  “Not one. She may have mentioned a name or two, but as they married, those friendships seemed to wither . . .”

  “What current friends do you know of?” asked Harris.

  “I couldn’t see that she had any, or family either apart from her father and husband.”

  Other guests were coming out to escape the heat of the lamps, but remained beyond earshot.

  Harris dropped his voice anyway. “Was there discord between her and Mr. Crane?”

  It was too dark to read Mrs. MacFarlane’s face. When she didn’t speak, he repeated the question.

  “I’m not sure I should tell you if I had noticed anything of the sort, but the fact is I didn’t.”

  “How often did you see her?” Perhaps, thought Harris, not often enough to tell.

  “Once a week or so. She made quite a friend of Elsie.”

  Harris said he understood. “And when did you see her last?”

  “Sunday morning at church,” replied his hostess, “at the Cathedral.”

  “Two hours at most before her disappearance!” Harris exclaimed. “Did she say anything that casts light on that event?”

  “Well, she—her father had died just the night before, remember. You could tell it affected her deeply. You’ll want to know when she first came here. I believe it was soon after her marriage. Our husbands had business dealings—to do with ships or trains, I suppose. Isn’t it always one or the other? Or telegraphs.” The mistress of the house was back in stride, one thought briskly pulling the next. “As for Theresa Crane, she and I shared cultural and charitable interests, though I believe she regarded art as a minor recreation, something to do when your brain is tired. Even botany began to seem frivolous to her. Medicine attracted her more.”

  “Was she ill?” asked Harris.

  “No, indeed. Not that I could see, at least, but she felt for those that suffer. We discussed the institutions Toronto is having to build to cope with its prosperity. The casualties of prosperity, that is. You know the places I mean. The new General Hospital, the Roman Catholic House of Providence, the Lunatic Asylum—”

  “There you are, Kate,” an elderly lady called from the doorway. “Our carriage is out front, but I couldn’t leave without . . .”

  While Mrs. MacFarlane was saying good night to the early leavers, Harris waited to see if there would be an opportunity to resume the interview. Under the circumstances, it was difficult to show even polite interest in other topics. He pretended to inspect the oil paintings that lined the reception room.

  “Are you an admirer of Mr. Paul Kane?” Kate MacFarlane was again beside him, pointing out features of an eighteen-by-thirty-inch canvas he had taken in only as tepees and canoes. A Lake Huron encampment, she said. Such and such reclining figure could of course be traced to classical models, but no one who had lived on the upper lakes ever questioned the scene’s essential truth.

  Crane had lived there once. Harris asked if she could think of anything that might have drawn Theresa in that direction.

  “No. Nor in any other. I’m baffled.” She glanced around in case she were needed elsewhere. “Look, Mr. Harris, I do approve of your trying to find her. Private initiative is the only way anything gets done, but Mr. MacFarlane has just this instant been called away on business, and we still have guests. Why not come back tomorrow? Give me till then and I’ll see if I can’t think of something useful to tell you.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Harris, “but so much time has passed already. By tomorrow she may have spent six nights in the open.”

  Kate MacFarlane glared at him. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “No, of course not,” he quickly assented. He didn’t want to risk losing his one supporter. “What I’m thinking,” he added, “is that if I start at dawn and ride in the right direction, perhaps I can make sure it’s not seven.”

  “Briefly then.”

  “What was her favourite ride?”

  “The only one I have heard her mention particularly was the Rouge Valley, but then her husband thought it was too far and forbade her to ride there alone. I suppose that’s why it didn’t occur to me before. Now—if you want more of my company, Mr. Harris, you’ll have to come and meet some young men who have been to New York to hear Signor Verdi’s latest opera.”

  Harris left. On the walk home, it started to rain. He tucked Elsie’s sketch book inside his tail coat and quickened his pace.

  Three quarters of an hour later, Theresa’s face traced onto tissue paper stared up from the writing surface of the secretary desk in Harris’s drawing room. The likeness was crude, but still—he felt—more helpful than a description on its own.

  He tried to compare this face to the one he remembered. Did she look older because three years had passed or because of some particular experience? Or was it because to a child artist every adult looks old? He couldn’t even decide if her face had narrowed or filled out until he realized she had simply changed the style of dressing her hair. While it had been puffed at the crown to either side of the centre part, it now lay flat on top and fell smoothly to where it turned under in a loose roll secured at the nape. That rich, reddish brown roll of hair mere pencil lines had no hope of capturing. It must look glorious, thought Harris.

  He turned off the gas and found his way to bed by the glow of the street lamps below his windows. Having already removed his wet clothes, he had only to slip out of a light dressing gown. Stretched on his back with the sheet thrown off, he listened to the rain drumming on the plank sidewalks and to the passage of a couple of pedestrians. Well-spaced, heavy treads accompanied by quick and light. Through the moist air rose the clear tone of a woman’s laugh. The double set of footfalls ceased sounding in the mud of Bay Street, then resumed on the far sidewalk and faded away to the west. Harris rolled onto his side and felt, as he had not allowed himself to feel for years, the weight of his loneliness.

  Always he had contrived to be busy with work, or with superficial social engagements and
exhausting recreations—long rides, billiards, card parties, curling and ice boating in winter, sailing and swimming in summer, hunting in fall. Or, if all else failed, voracious reading with the lights turned up full. He had managed never to lie down till he was too tired to remember. Too tired to miss her.

  In the darkened room, he rolled over several times more, dozed, and fell more or less asleep.

  He was awake again by dawn but far from certain in which direction to ride. No horsewoman herself, Kate MacFarlane said she had never accompanied Theresa to the Rouge Valley and didn’t know which part of it she favoured. The Rouge River rose some twenty miles north of town, but didn’t begin to carve out anything Harris believed could be called a valley till it had passed Markham. He decided, without much conviction, to start there and follow the stream south to the lake. This had not been a haunt of Theresa’s when Harris had known her. The whole area did seem too remote for a spot of Sunday afternoon exercise, and for a refuge not remote enough.

  Pond-sized puddles sprawled over the ungraded dirt streets, but were no longer growing—the rain having tapered off to something between a drizzle and a mist. Harris let it settle on the shoulders of his fustian hunting jacket as he strode towards the livery stable. The oilskin cape he had brought was too hot to wear in anything less than a downpour.

  He was presently trotting up Yonge Street, which was surfaced with crushed stone on the Macadam system and cambered to shed the water. North of Yorkville, progress was slower because he had not yet made inquiries at the numerous inns and taverns. Nor, of course, had anyone else.

  Harris now had the tracing to show, though he began to doubt its utility when a market gardener at Gallows Hill said he definitely knew the subject—a Negress in her sixties, was she not? Then a Thornhill ostler thought he had seen the lady a week ago. She had been dressed in bright green and riding north, but not on a black palfrey with one white hind foot. Harris turned east and galloped on.