Desperate Acts

by Don Gutteridge

  “Who delivered it?” Brodie said, surprised.

  “Mrs. Crockett found it slipped under the back door to the kitchen. She thought she saw a youngster hightailing it around the barn.”

  One of the many street-urchins paid to run errands, Brodie thought. But why the secrecy? “I’d better have a look, then,” he said evenly.

  He took the envelope from Celia. His name was printed in block capitals on the outside. It wasn’t sealed. He pulled out the single sheet of ordinary writing-paper and read the contents, printed also in crude upper-case.

  LANGFORD:

  I KNOW ALL ABOUT MISS RAMSAY’S DIRTY

  SECRET – AND THE WORLD WILL KNOW TOO UNLESS

  YOU BRING 5 1-POUND NOTES WRAPPED IN BUTCHERS PAPER

  & LEAVE IT IN THE TRASH CAN NEAR THE BACK DOOR TO

  THE SAILORS ARMS – NEXT WENSDAY EVENING AT 9-30. BE

  THERE OR ELSE.

  “What’s wrong?” Celia said, getting up.

  Brodie knew better than to try to keep the note away from his sister. They had shared so much, happy and tragic, over the short span of their lives. He let her take it while he strove to compose himself.

  “This is from an extortionist,” she said.

  “It is. But there’s nothing to worry about,” he said not too convincingly. “Diana has no guilty secret she needs to hide from the world.”

  “But it says – ”

  “It’s some opportunist taking a wild stab at me where he thinks I’m most vulnerable. Remember, sis, that you and I are wealthy residents of this town, and natural targets for all sorts of schemes to get at our money. You wouldn’t believe the harebrained financial offers and business proposals that have been pressed upon me since Uncle died last spring. And, I suspect, that if Horace Fullarton were not known to be my employer and protector, I would have received much worse.”

  “I didn’t know, Brodie. You should have told me.”

  The gentle rebuke hurt, but not nearly as much as the truth. His beloved – his all-but-betrothed – did have a terrible secret, one she had confided to him and thereby sealed the bond between them forever, even though she had confessed to him thinking that her revelation would destroy their relationship. Two years ago she had become pregnant with a child fathered by a young French-speaking Montrealer who had pledged his troth, but shortly afterwards found himself embroiled in the rebellion. At the Battle of St. Eustache he had been killed while defending the local church from English firebrands. Diana’s brother, with whom she lived, arranged for her to go off to a cousin’s farm near Chambly, purportedly as governess to a nearby wealthy family. The baby girl was born there in April of 1838, and after nursing it for two months, Diana left it in the care of her cousins and returned to her brother’s house. Her brother’s plan was to have the infant brought to him as a foundling a month or so later, and adopted. He and his wife had one child of their own, a ten-year-old son, but longed for a daughter. Soon after the baby arrived and the elaborate deception was played out, Robert Baldwin’s request for a governess came by letter, and the decision was made to send Diana to Toronto – for the best.

  “But we will bring the baby into our family as soon as we’re married,” Brodie had said gallantly.

  Astonished that any young man would even consider her a suitable bride in the circumstances, Diana was driven to weeping, something she had determined not to do. But Brodie himself had been the ward of a man who had been the victim of sustained scandalmongering, here and in New York, and, of course, he was very much in love. “Oh, Brodie, you are such a dear, dear man. But we can’t.”

  “What do you mean? Who will ever know?”

  “My brother and sister-in-law have been raising little Sarah now for almost a year-and-a-half. She is their child. I could never ask them to give her up.”

  And though they had returned to the matter several times since, Diana had remained adamant. However, while each of them knew that they must wait some time before announcing an engagement, its certainty was no longer in doubt.

  Now this. Had someone actually got wind of Diana’s secret? Surely not. It had to be a desperate and feckless attempt at extortion.

  “What will you do?” Celia said, handing the note back to Brodie.

  “This!” Brodie tore the letter to shreds.

  “Good. And that’ll be the end of it?” Celia smiled uncertainly.

  “I promise. Don’t I always take care of everything?”

  But the end of it, Brodie had already decided, would take place next Wednesday evening at nine-thirty in the alley behind The Sailor’s Arms.

  ***

  Nestor Peck was weaving his way along Wellington Street, pleasantly inebriated, a state he prized above all others. Added to his sense of well-being was the fact that for the first time in years he had a fine wool coat to wrap around his shrunken torso and a silk scarf to keep his wrinkled throat warm. A stiff breeze had come up from the west just as he had left The Cock and Bull, but the stars were still shining and the three-quarter moon was gliding apace and lighting his homeward path, as if he had ordered up such luxuries himself. It was near midnight when he approached the stone-cottage beside the chicken hatchery. It was the first genuine house he had occupied since he had drifted into Toronto a decade ago. Not that it would be considered so by the town’s finer folk, for although it had once been a sturdy farm cottage with quarry-stone walls and a timbered roof, it had been abandoned long before the city had reached out and encircled it. In the interim, its roof had rotted out in three places (now patched, thank you) and the glass in its windows disintegrated (now neatly covered with oiled paper). Leather hinges now held the decrepit door almost vertical and a welcome-mat had been placed on the step by the proud new lessee (the hatchery-man having claimed ownership).

  Nestor stumbled over his welcome-mat and fell against the door. It sprung open, propelling him into the main room just in time to see his cousin sweep something off the table into his lap and make a haphazard effort to snuff the nearby candle.

  “Oh, hullo, Nestor,” Albert Duggan grinned. “I thought you were out for the night. You give me a start.”

  “Sorry, Bert. Had one too many at the Cock and – ”

  A pound-note fluttered out of Duggan’s lap onto the wooden floor.

  “I thought you was broke,” Nestor said, more puzzled than annoyed.

  “That I was, cousin. Indeed I was. But I opened a letter I got from the lawyers in Montreal this afternoon and found these crisp banknotes tucked inside.”

  “Yer legacy?”

  Duggan reached down, picked the stray bill up with two fingers, and proffered it to Nestor. “Just another installment, they say. A tidbit, really. But it means I can pay you back and give you this week’s rent.”

  “I ain’t never seen a lawyer’s letter,” Nestor said, taking the money.

  Duggan improved upon his grin. “Oh, I tossed it in the stove a while ago. No need to keep it, eh?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Not like it was a personal letter or anything. Just a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo.”

  “No.” Nestor pulled up a rickety chair and settled down opposite his cousin, his gaze fixed on the whiskey-jug beside the candle on the table. “You go out tonight?”

  The grin froze on Duggan’s face and slowly reconstituted itself as a grimace. “I went to The Sailor’s Arms for a drink.”

  Something in his cousin’s face alarmed Nestor. “Ya didn’t cause any trouble there, did ya?”

  “The only trouble was that ape, Budge. We had a bit of run-in – and he got the worst of it.” But the bruise on Duggan’s cheek suggested his “victory” had not been a clear-cut triumph.

  “Jesus, Bert, you’re gonna queer it fer me down there.”

  “Don’t sweat, Nestor. The bastard may’ve heard my name from one of the tars in the place, but he don’t know who I am or anything about the two of us. I made damn sure of that.”

  “Well, I hope so. This is the first payin’ job I
’ve had in this town. It ain’t much, but it let’s us live in style, don’t it?”

  Duggan guffawed, but the shadows thrown up by the candle exaggerated the sharp edges of his features, and for a moment he resembled a gargoyle chortling at some grotesque joke. “Nestor, if this is style, I’d hate to see a hovel!”

  Nestor looked stricken. “Then why’d you agree to move in here with me?” He grabbed the jug and tipped it up to his lips. It was, incredibly, almost full.

  “No need to get your balls twisted,” Duggan said. “I threw in with ya because you’re kin, my mother’s sister’s boy. And I knew we weren’t gonna be here for very long.”

  “Whaddya mean?” Nestor let his fear show. He didn’t take well to change as it invariably meant a change for the worse.

  “We’re gonna be rich, Nestor. Rich as Croesus. It was all in that letter. And very, very soon.”

  “In the letter you burned?”

  Duggan gave Nestor a searching glance, and said, “There was only the money and the good news in it – no details, yet. But they’ll come. And when they do, you and me are goin’ to open up a public house of our own and put that son-of-a-bitch Budge out of business!”

  His brain already fuzzy with drink, Nestor tried to take this startling news in. “But it’s Missus Budge that owns the place,” he said. “An’ she’s a nice lady. Tough, she is, but nice all the same.”

  “I’m not interested in the lady. But I got that husband of hers by the short hairs.” The fierce, gloating joy in Duggan’s huge, black eyes gave Nestor a further fright.

  “You ain’t plannin’ on doin’ nothin’ stupid?”

  “Only stupid people do stupid things. And I’m not stupid. No, sir. You should’ve seen me there tonight. Remember, last week, when you told me you thought Tobias Budge might be cuddling that barmaid of his?”

  Nestor paled. He had only a hazy recollection of that conversation, fuelled as it was by a jug of whiskey not unlike the one he was now fingering. But he recalled enough to be – suddenly – very, very anxious. “Fer God’s sake, Bert, you won’t go tellin’ the missus! I only seen him give the girl a pat on the behind.”

  “He’s been pattin’ her in places other’n her ass,” Duggan leered.

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “I smooth-talked her again this evening when Budge was busy. Then when she was least expecting it, I asked her how her sweetheart was doing and whether or not he knew about the bun in her oven.”

  Nestor dropped the jug onto the table, and Duggan deftly stopped it from tipping over. “Holy Jesus – ”

  “And it worked, cousin. Oh, how it worked. She went all red, which you’d expect, then she went white as a ghost and looked over at Budge behind the bar. It was as clear as day. I’d struck the mother-lode!”

  “But if you go breathin’ a word of this, Budge’ll sack me an’ come gunnin’ fer you! He’s a gorilla when he’s riled up!”

  “Quit your worrying and have another drink. You don’t get it, do you? Now that we’ve dug up this dirt on Budge, even if he’s smart enough to figure out who we are, it’s him that’s got to be afraid of us. Your job was never safer than it is now.”

  “So you’re not gonna tell on him?”

  Duggan did not directly answer the question. He wiped the mouth of the jug on his sleeve, took a sip of Swampy Sam’s bootleg whiskey, and placed the jug back in front of Nestor. “You’re a snitch for the police, aren’t you? You know the value of information – to the penny. You might say that I’m learning the game from my cousin, eh?”

  Nestor couldn’t quite follow the logic of this remark, but he was so relieved that Duggan was not about to do anything rash in the way of petty revenge that he relaxed visibly and took another gulp of hooch.

  “In The Blue Ox yesterday some fella told me you were the best snitch in Cobb’s stable,” Duggan said after they had consumed several more draughts. “And that’s not the first time I’ve heard it!”

  Nestor grinned, exposing his gums and a single, blackened tooth. “You bet I am. That Itchy Quick goes around braggin’ about how great he is, but that kinda boastin’ can get a fella’s legs broken. I still got both knees workin’ ‘cause I know when to talk and when to shut up.”

  Duggan made as if to drink, paused, and said quietly, “You happen to see Cobb in The Cock and Bull tonight?”

  Nestor blinked several times, a sure sign that he was preparing to lie. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Hadn’t got anything new to tell him, eh?” Duggan said in what he took to be a light, teasing tone.

  Nestor bridled. “I always got somethin’ to tell him. But there’s things I know I don’t tell to nobody. I know right from wrong.”

  Duggan grinned. He was recalling a similar scene as far back as September, when he had coaxed Nestor into a state of near-inebriation and taunted him in the very same way . . .

  “So, cousin, you’re forever bragging about the dozens of secrets you’ve dug up on your own, but you don’t ever say why I ought to believe you,” he had said then, pretending to take a great swig of liquor, as he had done this evening.

  Nestor, never overly astute even when sober, had taken the bait. “Think I just make things up, don’t ya?”

  Duggan had become instantly conciliatory. “I’m your cousin, Nestor – the guy who’s goin’ to share his legacy with you and haul you out of this shack and get you what you deserve.” Duggan’s words appeared to be somewhat slurred by the whiskey, but no liquor could dull the man’s cunning.

  “That’s true,” Nestor sniffed. “You’re the only livin’ relalive I’ve got in the whole wide world.”

  “So, if you’ve got onto something juicy, you oughta be able to tell your sole, living blood relation, right?”

  Nestor had smirked, a look he had few occasions to exercise. “Itchy Quick told me this in his cups yesterday. He was up at that Oakwood place burnin’ some stumps fer that fat English lordy-dah – this was back in the summer – an’ he seen the Lady What’s-her-name in the flower bed with her legs spread an’ one of our local gents pumpin’ away between ‘em.”

  “Nice an’ juicy,” Duggan had agreed with an appreciative smile that warmed Nestor more than the whiskey had. “But hardly news any peeler would pay for.”

  “Ya never know. That’s my point. It’s the odd bits an’ pieces you gotta keep collectin’ – till they turn out to be useful, to somebody.”

  Duggan had nodded sagely. “Did this Itchy fella happen to mention who the local gentleman was?”

  “He did. But that’s one name I’m keepin’ under my hat,” Nestor had said almost primly. “I ain’t in the home-wreckin’ business, am I?”

  “Of course you aren’t. Here, you might as well finish off the booze.”

  Nestor drank, and a mellow feeling of fellowship and good will coursed slowly through him, rendering him wonderfully drowsy. But before he had fallen asleep upon his arms at the table, Albert Duggan had wheedled out of him the name of the naughty local gentleman . . .

  That little tidbit had been dropped in Duggan’s lap more than a month ago, and he didn’t see why tonight should not prove just as productive.

  FIVE

  Marc Edwards was as busy as he had ever been in his life, and twice as happy. Another strategy meeting was slated for Friday afternoon out at Spadina, the country home of the Baldwins. Marc was charged with fleshing out some of the arguments raised at the earlier meeting in a form suitable for various letters to the newspapers, ones that could be assigned to sundry sympathizers (suitably reworked, he hoped, to reflect the submitter’s own style and views on the union question). At the same time, Beth’s announcement of her pregnancy compelled them to sit down and seriously discuss the expansion of Briar Cottage. They would need a lot more room, that much was certain. They had the money to do whatever they wished: Marc had an income from his adoptive father’s estate in England, Beth had inherited money and property from her former father-in-law, Joshua Smallman, and her ladies shop an
d dressmaking operation were thriving. But they liked the cosiness of Briar Cottage enough to dismiss any thought of building a grandiose residence farther up Sherbourne on one of the park-lots there. So, while one or the other used a spare toe to rock Maggie in her wooden cradle, Beth and Marc sat at the kitchen table and drew sketches – verbal and otherwise – of an addition to the rear of the cottage.

  Nothing could be done until spring, but once the decision to build had been made, it was impossible to pretend that they could postpone the pleasures and anxieties of planning and replanning. Their servant, Charlene, and her beau, Jasper Hogg, were equally excited. Jasper was a talented carpenter and all-round builder, but he worked intermittently and not often enough to feel comfortable proposing to Charlene. When Marc suggested that Jasper be engaged to do the lion’s share of the construction, using whatever assistance he deemed necessary, the couple were understandably ecstatic. And more helpful than was absolutely necessary. Marc was not unhappy that he was often “called away” to attend the fall sessions of the Court of Queen’s Bench in order to observe the several trials going on there and learn as much as he could about procedures in that august chamber – in the event that Baldwin and Sullivan called upon him to represent them in a criminal proceeding. Both Robert and his partner were too involved in politics to take on serious cases, and Marc figured it would be sooner than later when the call came for his services.

  How soon and in what guise he could not have foreseen.

  ***

  About three o’clock on a crisp Friday afternoon, with the taste of imminent snow on the breeze, Governor Poulett Thomson and two of his military aides cantered up the forested lane from Government House onto King Street. While such a demi-royal entourage did turn a head or two, no particular importance was attached to the movement of the mounted trio, as His Excellency was often seen riding out into the countryside to take the air and exercise the expensive horse provided him. On this occasion, the Governor and his outriders swung north on Brock Street and followed it up to the city boundary at Lot Street (soon to be renamed Queen in honour of the young sovereign). Here it branched off in three directions, offering the prospect of more than one pleasant ride through parkland and forest. His Excellency opted for Spadina Road, a winding north-westerly pathway that brought him eventually to the gates of a splendid country residence. The Governor dismounted before an excited groom could reach him and steady the horse’s bridle. A tall and impeccably attired figure, accustomed to deference but not disarmed by it, Poulett Thomson strode to the front door just as it opened to reveal, not a fawning butler, but the equally imposing figure of Dr. William Warren Baldwin.