Death in the Age of Steam

by Mel Bradshaw

  “Come along,” Henry was saying, “you must gather your belongings now so I can take you to the coach office.”

  “The eastbound doesn’t leave till one,” said Sibyl in her usual sullen tone. “Well, I won’t be watched while I pack. Wait in the kitchen.”

  So, before I had another chance to confront her, Sibyl was being bundled out of town. She plainly felt the want of ceremony. She naturally would not want Henry to watch her retrieve, and perhaps to insist on reading, the letter she believed to be still behind the mirror, but to address him so provokingly she must have done a very thorough job of convincing herself he was harmless. Or perhaps she simply did not regard her own welfare.

  Through the gap between coverlet and floor I saw Henry’s brilliant black boots stride across to the dresser, before which he dropped a carpet bag of Papa’s. I heard him open a drawer. Sibyl’s preference was nothing to him, any charm which she had once had for him exhausted. Huddled practically beneath his feet, I was scared enough for her if she wasn’t for herself. Yet I stayed quiet.

  “Here,” Sibyl protested, “someone’s been through my things. I never left ’em so tangled.”

  Henry was filling the bag. When he asked if she had anything stowed under the bed, I almost cried out.

  She told him she wasn’t going on the coach, not now, for she had to make sure nothing had been taken. Tomorrow’s steamer would get her to Kingston soon enough, and in “a damned sight” more comfort. She must have known how Henry detested blasphemy.

  “What possessed you to tell Dr. Hillyard yesterday morning that I wished Theresa given a sedative?” he burst out.

  For fear of missing the answer, I struggled to stifle my sense of Dr. H.’s treason.

  “I had to ask him how much to put in the teapot,” Sibyl retorted. “If I gave her too much, we’d have her death to answer for.”

  The sentence ended in an unspoken “also”.

  “I’ve patched the damage,” said Henry, going down on one knee. It seemed he was about to look under the bed after all. “Just watch your unclean tongue.”

  “Ask me civil, and I won’t tell anyone my Henry was the last person to speak to the master.”

  Her Henry and welcome. My distress owed nothing to their endearments. I was torn between fear of Henry’s lifting the hanging edge of the coverlet, which alone concealed me, and fear of what he might have done yesterday evening while I slept. Sibyl’s suggestion, contained also in her letter, he did not deny.

  He withdrew the hand reaching towards me. Slowly he rose.

  “Sibyl,” he demanded, “did you go up to Papa’s room after drugging my dear wife?” His boots stood so close to Sibyl’s scuffed slippers that I thought he must be holding her shoulders. “You move so softly, Sibyl. Did you creep upstairs so quietly that no one heard you coming? It’s dangerous to creep about, you know.”

  “I stayed downstairs,” said Sibyl. “I didn’t watch you kill him.”

  She seemed bent on discovering by direct experiment the worst of which my husband was capable. I winced in anticipation of I knew not what.

  “Who speaks of killing?” His voice was starting to tremble. “Your master had a relapse, or did you fool the doctor?”

  “How would I do that?” Sibyl persisted.

  “By Jesus, I’ll show you!”

  A loud, full curse. I had never known his temper to break free like this. I lacked confidence that anything could check it now.

  Henry must have thrown Sibyl down onto the bed and climbed on top. From where I cowered, I saw her slippered feet lift simultaneously from the bricks and heard a thump above my head. Then Henry’s feet rose from view one by one. Under the double weight, the ropes that held the ticking stretched and sagged. A knot pressed down into my left shoulder. I was too horror-struck to move.

  “Perhaps you took one of Papa’s pillows like this,” he cried, “and held it over his face.”

  I come now, Isaac, to those events I felt least able to speak of when you found me. I concluded that the story to be told at all had to be set down in full, but now wonder if my long-windedness has been any more than a form of reticence, a way to avoid mention of my lying quietly under a bed on which Papa’s housekeeper was being smothered. Worse was to follow.

  Sibyl knew how to hold her tongue and might, I think, have got away scot-free. Perhaps it was remorse for her part in Papa’s death that made her tempt fate with one goading word after another. And yet she did not want to die.

  She squirmed and fought so the ropes creaked. She may have landed at least one good blow or kick, for she managed to roll out from under Henry onto the brick floor. She fell on her side, so close I felt her breath. She saw me. Her eyes opened wider than I had ever seen them.

  “Spare me!” she cried.

  Then Henry was kneeling astride her again, with his left hand twisting and pulling her face up into the pillow that with his right hand he moulded over it. I tried to scream, but as in a nightmare no sound came out. One of Sibyl’s arms was pinned beneath her. Henry sat on the other. Her kicks could not reach him, nor me once I had pulled back farther beneath the bed. The thrashing of her legs served only to show that she was alive and that I still had time to try to keep her so. I shrank back, and the time passed. It ended abruptly with the snap of Sibyl’s neck.

  I didn’t see how it happened. It must have been the way Henry held her or a combination of his pulling her shoulders up while pressing down the pillow. Afterwards, when he laid her supine, her head lolled on the bricks at a sickening angle.

  He was breathing heavily. He put his right ear to Sibyl’s chest, turning towards me his smooth circle of scalp fringed in short sandy hair. Had he listened with the other ear, our eyes would have met. From the back, his head looked innocent, peculiarly childlike. He left it some time on Sibyl’s bosom, to which his right hand stole caressingly. He had stopped listening and was resting.

  This turning for comfort to the woman he had killed revolted me, but I no longer had any wish to scream. I bit my hand so no sound should escape me.

  Rousing himself, he dressed Sibyl in the shawl and bonnet I had placed on her the night before. Then he lifted her limp-necked carcass in his arms. I heard his footsteps recede through the kitchen, the outside door open and close.

  The sense of release was neither immediate nor lasting. Lest he return, I huddled where I lay some minutes more. When at last I crawled out and started to rub my cramps and bruises, my one thought was to get as far from Henry as possible as soon as possible. But how? No steamers sailed on Sunday. I had no mount and no capital but my wedding band and three shillings for the poor box. Papa’s strongbox lay just upstairs. I should have raided it without scruple, had the key he wore about his neck not gone with his remains to Ogilvie’s and the spare not been locked in his office vault on Yonge Street. There was nothing for it but I must return to Henry’s villa. I must face Henry.

  Service had ended, his vehicle not yet arrived, when I returned to St. James Cathedral. The MacFarlane girls were peering behind every shrub in the close while on the steps Kate fired questions at the verger and pointed in a succession of directions with her fan. Ah, there I was! Where? How? What? She had never known “God Our Help in Ages Past” to affect anyone so adversely. I said I had merely wanted air, exercise and solitude, but she must not speak or let her children speak of my absence as the news would unwarrantably distress my husband. I pretended to agree I should have stayed home altogether.

  The known strength of my attachment to Papa earned me a degree of indulgence. I needed it, for I am no actress and was desperately hoping Henry would also interpret my inconsolable anguish in this light. But where was he?

  I was on the point of accepting a ride with Kate when his carriage-horse Providence came trotting up with the old, green, two-wheeled Boston chaise in which we had left the church after our wedding. The black leather hood was up against the noon sun and projected so far forward that the upper half of Henry’s body remained in deepest
shadow. Only his black-trousered knees showed there was a driver at all. I thought how easy it must have been in such gloom to spirit Sibyl’s body from Papa’s back lane through the unsuspecting summer streets. To where? An ice house, perhaps, or the firebox of a locomotive.

  When Henry emerged to hand me in, I couldn’t look at him. His apologies for his lateness I didn’t hear. I was finding it next to impossible to climb into the dead woman’s seat. Again my distress was excused. Young Elsie MacFarlane threw her arms around me and begged me to come sketch with her soon in her garden. I would see how the growing things would “buck me up.”

  I don’t know how I rode home with Henry or how I ate dinner with him, except I believed I had to. This meal might be my last for some time. Fortunately, the full horror of what I had witnessed from under Sibyl’s bed had not yet had time to permeate my soul. I would give it none until after I made my escape.

  I would not cross him as Sibyl had. The closest I came to alluding to his crimes was when he announced in cool, defensive tones that the housekeeper had been released from the lock-up and had left town. I said it relieved me to know that a servant Papa had trusted had not killed him. My previous suspicions had slandered his discernment.

  Henry scarcely listened and seemed as impatient to leave the table as I. His professed intention of returning to his office spared me the necessity of arguing that mourning was compatible with horseback riding. I told him I should rest. Understandably, but for him most unusually, Henry had that day cut his cheek in shaving. When on his trellised verandah we took what I pray was our definitive leave of one another, my last impressions were of the glancing touch of his deadly hands and the scent of not sandalwood, but zinc ointment.

  I didn’t dress wisely. Once decided on a man’s saddle, which would be easier to sell, I should have taken men’s clothes and changed into them when clear of Toronto. At that moment, however, no practical consideration could make me contemplate putting my legs into Henry’s breeches.

  Our cook looked askance at my gaudy green costume. I wanted exercise, I said. Back soon. I rode north, thinking (insofar as I thought anything) to lose myself in the endless woods.

  From campaigning with Papa, I knew some of the less travelled roads of York County. My terror abated the farther down them I rode. I had money for food. I would not chance letting anyone know where I slept, but the warm, clear sky assured me I should come to no harm out of doors. My bed was the dry, fallen needles of a stand of pine that still awaited the settler’s axe. I awoke before daybreak, feeling comparatively safe and utterly tormented.

  Not all the thoughts that follow burst on me at once or in so pointed a form. (I’ve had ample time since to sharpen them for my own discomfort.) The exact sequence is forgotten and unimportant. The first, however, was this: she who does not speak gives consent.

  Qui tacet consentit. William Sheridan’s un-Latin tongue used to mangle this maxim as invariably as his just protests honoured it, in Parliament and out. For all I knew, his raised voice had cost him his life. Even if my speaking had resulted in two women’s deaths rather than one, my silence had authorized the one.

  Practically speaking, could I have stopped Henry? I was ill-equipped and worse placed to pose any physical threat, nor have I any influence over him. He doesn’t respect or care for me. And yet I could have complicated his task, whereas by doing nothing I had made it easy.

  “Spare me!”

  I wondered to what extent Sibyl’s words had been directed at me, to what extent at him. By not addressing me more explicitly, she had spared me. Perhaps I was attributing too much design to a spontaneous outburst, but my musings went still further.

  Her wide eyes haunted me. I wasn’t sure if they had really held surprise. Suppose she had known I lay beneath the bed, known not clairvoyantly, but having felt my shoulder through the mattress. Or suppose much earlier she had heard me close the drawers. I imagined Sibyl leading Henry to reveal himself to me, Sibyl risking everything so I might denounce him.

  Instead, I had broken bread with him, Sibyl’s murderer, my father’s butcher. It was plain enough now, as stark as a crow’s call or a dead stump in the milky dawn. The man I had admitted to our family had destroyed its chief. Such was my cowardice, however, that even in my own thoughts I had been unable to arraign Henry Crane for parricide until I was well out of his sight.

  Sibyl he had used to prevent my interference. Vain of Papa’s trust, she might have needed little persuasion to try sending or scaring me from Front Street, but where persuasion was required, Henry had been ready with caresses and promises of protection. Possibly Sibyl had even been convinced that morphine in my tea was for my good. Plainly, though, she had neither wanted nor foreseen her master’s death. She had not conspired at murder.

  If there had been an assassination plot, as now seemed far less likely, it had not included her.

  When it was light enough to read, I took out her letter. Who could she have hoped to discover it? Who but me? Not Henry or some unlettered servant that would have brought it to him. It concluded thus:

  . . . now if she don’t kill me she’ll have me put in gaol. That wife of Henry’s is too proud to believe any of what I write. I only wish some kinder soul may deliver this to you, so you do not suppose I of my own will let you die alone. Sibyl.

  I knew then I must turn east towards the Penitentiary. Only on arriving some days later beneath its walls did I realize I could not honour Sibyl’s request. Officials would read her letter. Its contents, if they got out, would alarm Henry without disabling him.

  For Charles Martin, it contained few words of consolation anyway. Rather than deliver it immediately, I worked for the commutation of Martin’s sentence by nursing the keeper he had attacked. When Paul Taggart died, and the execution seemed certain to proceed, I had conveyed to the condemned man that his sister had not forgotten him. A feeble gesture? I felt so. Far from making the peace with Sibyl I had intended, I had let her down again. I fled Portsmouth ill and exhausted, as you know, in defeat and despair.

  I can still see no light through my guilt. Good works elude me. Nor do my solitary and unguided prayers show me a path. I had thought to unburden my heart to one of this convent’s clear-eyed Christian women, but have not done so. You are the first to be told its secret shame.

  Isaac, it seems I have a visitor. The sister describes him in such terms (variola scarred, beetle-browed, dolichocephalic) that it cannot be you. She knows or will say nothing more. I fear it may be some agent of Henry’s, in which case I nonetheless pray, like Sibyl, that my testament may reach its addressee.

  Yours always,

  T.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Reinforcements

  Following the adjourned inquest, just as Theresa was beginning her letter, Isaac Harris telegraphed Rasco’s Hotel to ask whether any communication for him had arrived. Their negative reply made him no less eager to reach Montreal.

  A night in Toronto remained to endure. Remembering Jasper’s warning that Crane would want him questioned, Harris avoided the address he had given the coroner and bedded down instead at Randall’s stable in Banshee’s stall. This nest proved even less restful than expected. Ribs showed through the mare’s dapple-grey coat, from which the gloss had all but vanished.

  Next day, although the horse made him more conspicuous, Harris secured a stall for her on the cargo deck of the steamer that bore him down lake. Starting to undo the liveryman’s neglect would occupy some portion of the weary voyage.

  Another portion he spent anxiously perusing Toronto newspapers from the fortnight since his August 1 flying visit. Had anything been published prejudicial to Theresa’s name or safety? While he looked, three articles on other subjects caught Harris’s irritable and restless eye.

  One from the Leader of a week earlier coincidentally concerned an inquest. Harvey Ingram, of Aberdeen, Detroit, Presque Isle and latterly Toronto, aged forty-six years, had been found at the foot of the Gibraltar Light, which he kept. The
jury said he had not fallen, but been killed by drink alone. Beside him lay a partially consumed case of champagne, which reminded Harris of the dropped smuggling charges. Stricter treatment might have lengthened Ingram’s life. It seemed remarkable that one inured to bad whisky should die of good wine, but perhaps the pleasing taste made stopping harder and the knowledge that it was only wine made stopping seem less urgent.

  Harris thought of all the champagne bottles in Mrs. Vale’s sprawling establishment and of lives poured grossly or languidly away.

  The next story to engage his attention was one of progress and enterprise. The Globe reported the mayor’s ceremonial removal of the first shovelful of earth from the foundations of the future Conquest Iron Works. Company president and Provincial Bank director Mr. Joshua Newbiggins had spoken on the occasion to warm applause. “Our friends at York Foundry,” he warned, “will soon feel the bracing winds of competition whistle through their forges whenever railroads tender contracts for track.” Other engagements had prevented the attendance of Conquest’s newest and most prestigious backer, Mr. George MacFarlane—but that Titan of timber and other ventures innumerable was said to have been instrumental in reassuring aldermen that an iron foundry would in no way compromise the residential character of Front Street. Sir George, as the next honours list must have it.

  The addition would not change the fact that MacFarlane had questionable taste in partners.

  Harris turned finally to the papers dated August 15. He had been avoiding these for fear of seeing his own disreputable name in print. He found in the end only one item, alarmingly headed, “Infidel’s Testimony Rejected,” but mercifully short and hidden away near the bottom of a middle column on page four. The writer slyly asked if Mr. Harris’s barrister anticipated trouble collecting his fee after exposing his client to public obloquy. Traced to an address he preferred not to make public, Mr. Jasper Small replied that he liked to think even atheists had some sense of honour and that he, for his part, looked forward to representing Mr. Harris for many years to come.