But trouble there had been none for the past two days. Perhaps the fanatics were having difficulty ratcheting up their venom day after frigid day. After all, Coltrane would surely dance to their cheers from the gallows in the Court House yard. They could pursue his tumbrel from Chepstow to the courtroom with spit and spleen every morning for as long as the trial lasted. Why harass the colonel and frighten his servants when it was the newspapers who insisted on publishing the Yankee’s gibberish and the protesters themselves who scooped up every available copy so they could curse it? The queer ways of his fellow man had ever remained a mystery to Cobb, and he had long ago decided that trying to solve it was not worth the effort. If people ran afoul of the law, then they ran afoul of him. What could be more straightforward than that?
It was a surprise when, as he crossed Peter Street and was almost within view of the front gates of Chepstow, one of the many street urchins who acted as scout and runner for him when they needed a penny (perpetually, that is) sprinted out from the brush beside the road and almost bowled him over.
“Hold on there, Samkins! You’ll bust yer head on my belly!” Cobb cried as he reached out and hauled the boy up with one hand.
Sammy was wide-eyed and pasty white. His lips moved but only his frosted breath hit the air.
“You seen a ghost, have ya?” Cobb said, not unkindly.
“G-guns!” Sammy stammered.
“Whaddaya mean, guns?”
“Pistols, sir,” the boy gasped. “With handles as big as . . . as big as . . . yer nose.”
Cobb decided to bypass the insult in the interests of communication. “And just where did you see these big pistols?” he demanded. The mere mention of weapons in the neighbourhood of Chepstow made him jittery.
“F-follow me, sir, and I’ll show ya.”
Before Cobb could reply, Sammy wheeled and leapt back into the scrub brush and woodlot that encircled Colonel Stanhope’s estate, all of four acres on the northeast corner of Hospital and Brock. Cobb trotted behind, happy to feel the slap of his truncheon against his left thigh. Stumbling through the frozen undergrowth, they emerged about half a minute later onto a broad meadow behind the estate. Here in other seasons the colonel would graze his horses, but now it was a snow-covered expanse whipped by a northwest January wind and ringed by an iron fence that kept intruders at bay.
Sammy bolted straight ahead towards an iron gate and, in the distance behind it, a wooden-walled enclosure at the back of the sprawling mansion, which, Cobb had always supposed, was a sort of kitchen garden off the old servants quarters. The infamous inmate was said to be housed there in unwarranted comfort. Cobb’s heart skipped several beats. Had someone got past the guards at the back gate and broken into the garden? With an assassin’s pistol in hand?
When Cobb and Sammy reached the gate, they found it wide open with sentries at both posts asleep on their feet, like a pair of exhausted hogs. They appeared to be ordinary militiamen and members of the colonel’s regiment. So much for security.
“Hurry, this way!” Sammy yelled, and pointed at the Dutch door in the garden wall ahead. His cry brought the sentries awake. Cobb barked at them to follow him.
Cobb and Sammy were four or five paces from the little half door when they were stopped in their tracks by the sharp snap of pistols discharging, two of them in such quick succession they might have been one shot and its instant echo. Cobb sprang into action. He pushed Sammy aside and charged at the door, which, being unlatched, facilitated his rapid entrance into the minor drama being enacted behind it. The protagonists, three of them, froze in their places.
Directly before Cobb, in front of an unbarred door that must have led to the “prison” behind it, stood a large, red-faced man attired in the same green militia uniform as the two laggard sentries. He stared at Cobb in speechless disbelief, uncertain as to whether he ought to be fearful or outraged. At his feet a limp silk handkerchief lay like a jettisoned heirloom. Cobb directed his eyes left and right, and now it was his turn to be astonished. A few feet in front of one wall stood a tall, imposing figure in yet another military costume, a blue and yellow confection Cobb had not seen before. From his right hand, a smoking pistol dangled, its menace spent. At the wall opposite stood a young man Cobb had met several times while loitering about Beth Edwards’s shop: Billy McNair. And he too clutched a smouldering pistol, glowering at it as if it had inexplicably betrayed him.
The man with the hanky at his feet found his voice first. “What is the meaning of this intrusion!” he bellowed with more gustiness than conviction. “This is private property.”
“I am a policeman and you, sir, have just broken the law,” Cobb snapped. “You stay put and tell yer pals to bring their weapons over here. Now!”
“I will do no such thing, you have no juris—”
But Cobb was already on his way to Billy. The two sentries had come up to the Dutch door and were standing there with mouths agape.
“Get him out of here!” the big man yelled at them. “That’s an order!”
The sentries didn’t budge. They had spotted the man whom some were calling the Antichrist—with a pistol in his paw.
“Give me the pistol, Billy,” Cobb said quietly. “Fer yer mother’s sake.” As the Widow McNair was a longtime friend of his wife, Cobb felt justified in invoking her name here.
Billy obliged but said nothing. His face was a blank. Shock, Cobb thought. By some miracle the lad had just survived a duel with the notorious Caleb Coltrane, a fellow reputed to be fearless, treacherous, and deadly. For that surely was he, still standing erect at the far wall with a kind of indulgent smirk on his craggy face. The blue and yellow tunic was Yankee, through and through.
“I’m going to have to arrest these men,” Cobb said to the big fellow, who had obviously been acting as umpire and second for both duellists. He was respectful but in control. “What is your name, sir?”
“Lardner Bostwick,” the fellow said, his bravado dissipating rapidly. His rheumy eyes, the cross-hatching of veins on his bloated cheeks, and his blue bulb of a nose bespoke much of drink and inadequate restraint. He blinked and added, “Lieutenant Bostwick, adjutant to Colonel Stanhope of the 2nd Regiment, Toronto militia.”
“And are you in charge here, Lieutenant?”
“I am Major Coltrane’s jailer.”
“And is conductin’ duels part of yer duties, sir?”
“That is none of your—”
“Men shootin’ at each other are attemptin’ murder, even if they can’t shoot straight,” Cobb barked, and was pleased to see Bostwick wince and blink.
From the far wall came a hearty guffaw. “You’re going to charge me with attempted murder, are you, constable?” It was Coltrane. His voice was deep, with a basso’s vigour and masculine authority. “You can add it to the seven capital crimes they’ve already trumped up against me!” And he roared with laughter. Even the bumbling sentries seemed to find this amusing.
“If I’d’ve wanted the little weasel dead, he’d be stone cold by now.” He tossed the spent pistol at his feet with a dismissive gesture.
Cobb returned to Billy, who had not moved. “I haveta take you in, son. You’ve gone and done a very foolish thing here.”
Billy seemed to snap out of his daze, but it was not Cobb he was paying attention to. He was glaring at his adversary with a look of raw hatred that sent a chill down Cobb’s spine.
“Arrest who?”
Cobb turned in time to see a man emerge from the house through the prison door.
“What the hell is going on here?”
It was Colonel Stanhope, bristling with umbrage. Cobb recognized him from the parade in December. He was whippet-thin, and the rigidity of his posture would have embarrassed a ramrod. He was in full dress uniform—scarlet, green, and white—with his feathered shako perfectly square on his head. Here it was not yet eight o’clock in the morning and the fellow was turned out for church parade. Did he sleep in his tunic?
It was Bostwick who
fielded the colonel’s question. “The duel, sir,” he sputtered. “I thought you—”
“I did no such thing! My God, man, what was to prevent Major Coltrane here from turning the pistols on you and galloping through that door to the United States?”
“He gave me his word, sir. Didn’t you, Major?”
Coltrane had taken several steps towards the group near the prison door but remained happily aloof from the clamour. “I merely defended my honour, Colonel. You of all people will understand that.” He gave Stanhope a cryptic smile that seemed both conspiratorial and contemptuous. “And as you see, the duel has taken place—with both participants unmarked.”
The colonel seemed suddenly to realize that it took two men to fight a duel. He swivelled about and aimed his gaze at Billy McNair, his sometime sergeant. “Is that you, Billy?” he said, his tone softening. “I can’t believe this. I can’t.”
Billy stared at the ground, abashed. And began to tremble.
“Don’t you realize you might have killed Major Coltrane?” the colonel said, anger creeping back into his voice. “And if you had, my sworn word to Sir George to deliver the major to his trial unharmed would have been broken! And everything you and I stood for down there in Baby’s orchard and after would have been dishonoured.”
“He’s a murderer,” Billy mumbled to his feet.
“He’s a soldier! And an officer!”
Who was going to be dragged into criminal court and hanged for his crimes, Cobb thought, but said nothing. Somehow he had to take charge of the situation again.
“And you, Lieutenant. I’ll have you drummed out of the regiment for this. Your behaviour is inexcusable.”
Bostwick looked stunned, bewildered—though why he should be surprised by the reprimand when he had recklessly endangered two lives and given the prisoner access to loaded pistols was difficult for Cobb to understand.
The moment of awkward silence gave Cobb a chance to reassert his authority. “I’m goin’ to haveta take Billy to the magistrate,” he said to the colonel, “and he’s likely to be charged with attempted murder.”
Stanhope took this in. In fact he seemed to acknowledge Cobb’s presence for the first time. He smiled thinly, exposing a ridge of tiny, pointed teeth. “And did you yourself, Constable . . . ah—”
“Cobb.”
“Did you actually witness these men fire upon one another with intent to kill?”
Cobb was taken aback but managed to reply, “I was just outside the garden here when I heard both pistols go off.”
“Indeed.” He broadened his sawtooth grin. “And how can you be sure they were not shooting at pigeons or a bit of ivy on the wall?”
“Well, now, I can’t, but I found Lieutenant Bostwick here with an umpire’s hanky at his feet and the two men facin’ each other with smokin’ pistols in their hands.”
“Then, as the lawyers say, your evidence is merely circumstantial, and I’d like you to apologize for invading my home and then leave me to take care of the business I have pledged this community to execute with—”
“We were duellin’,” Billy said suddenly. “I tried my best to kill the bastard, but I missed.” Some steel had come back into his voice, and the look that must have carried him through the rigours and horrors of the Battle of Windsor now returned. For a fleeting moment he was again Sergeant McNair.
The colonel stared at him, sighed exaggeratedly, and said, “So be it. Do your duty, then, Constable.” He turned to Bostwick. “Lieutenant, escort the prisoner back into his quarters. Patricia will be down with his breakfast in ten minutes. Then report to me in my study.”
“I oughta charge yer man with aidin’ and abettin’,” Cobb said stubbornly.
The colonel looked daggers at him. “Don’t press your luck, sir.”
Coltrane had come over to stand beside his jailer. “Don’t be too hard on ol’ Bossy here,” he said to Stanhope. “McNair and I duelled over a point of honour, something I know you appreciate to a fault. Besides, you know I can be very persuasive when I’ve a mind to.”
The colonel appeared to ignore the comment, but his eyes narrowed nonetheless. Then he spun and literally marched back into the house, almost stepping on a servant hovering nervously in the doorway. He was followed by Coltrane and his keeper. Cobb was left in the yard with Billy, the sentries, Sammy, and two weapons to be taken in as evidence.
“Come along, Billy,” he said. “I got no choice.”
“He ain’t seen the last of me!” Billy cried.
“Now, then, son, you don’t need to go makin’ things worse. We got witnesses here—”
“I’m gonna kill the fucker! I swear it! Hangin’s too good fer him!”
Cobb failed to see the logic of these remarks, but he was more concerned with their implications for Billy than for this unrepentant republican who had had the impertinence to tell the editor of the Examiner that he too had fought at Pelee last March and was himself known throughout Michigan and Ohio as the Pelee Island Patriot.
As he took Billy by the arm and flipped a penny to a goggle-eyed Sammy, Cobb noticed that the colonel had come back into the prison doorway. He had heard Billy’s threat, and on his face there was an odd expression—a grimace of concern or, perhaps, a curious smile.
• • •
While Marc assured Dolly Putnam that he would help Billy in any way he could, he was not hopeful of doing much before the evening was over. Nevertheless, he gave her mittened hand an extra pat at her doorstep, flashed her an avuncular smile, promised to return in the morning with good news, then walked quickly through the softly falling snow down to the Court House on King Street. At seven-thirty on a Monday he was not surprised to see there were no lights in the windows of the court offices. However, when he followed the familiar path around to the back of the building, he noted with some relief a faint glow coming from the police quarters there.
Wilfrid Sturges was often in his office these days, now that tensions in the city were escalating in anticipation of the Coltrane trial. (A special court date had been set for the week following, mandated by the lieutenant-governor outside the usual assizes.) Charges of petty trespass and property damage, in addition to increased brawling in the taverns, had kept his four constables and many supernumeraries busy on the streets and the chief and his clerk busy in the office completing the necessary paperwork for the magistrate.
Marc eased open the door, knocked the snow off his boots, and called out, “You in there, Wilf?”
“Where the hell else would I be, eh?” Sturges’s round, red Cockney face popped into the doorway of his cubicle, and he grinned broadly. “Ain’t you glad you caught me in a good mood?”
“I’ve never known you to be otherwise.”
“You’re just in time fer a cup o’ tea, Marc. Sit down and take a load off.” He rubbed his hands together over the pot-bellied stove, upon which a kettle was about to whistle its greeting. “I’ve a pretty fair idea why you’re ’ere.”
• • •
The news was not good. Gussie French had just finished writing out—in his obsessively neat hand—the various reports that had been dictated to him regarding the morning’s incident. The damning affidavits of the militia sentries lay before them on Gussie’s table. While Sturges sipped his tea and tried not to yawn too conspicuously, Marc read them through. Cobb’s detailed account was clear, compelling, and—for Billy—less than hopeful. The testimony of the sentries as to Billy’s own statements certainly established motive and intent. But the fact that no one had been injured would surely mitigate the severity of any sentence, should he be convicted. Still, there were other, more worrisome aspects of the affair.
“Did Billy say how on earth he managed to be involved in a duel with the most carefully guarded and notorious felon in the entire province?” Marc said to Sturges, who was pouring himself a second cup of tea.
“Magistrate Thorpe asked him that this mornin’. Seems like the lad was crazy enough to go and visit Coltrane yesterday, a
nd they got—”
“Coltrane is allowed visitors? On a Sunday?” Marc was surprised.
Sturges chortled. “Regular caravan of ’em out there at Chepstow. Two or three a day. It’s made our life hell up there on Hospital Street, and most everywhere else.”
“But that’s ridiculous. Coltrane is a dangerous man. There’s constant talk of his escaping and rumours of his agents poking about and stirring up mischief—”
“You don’t need to tell me that, ol’ chum. But the colonel insists the blackguard is a military prisoner and oughta be treated honourably,” Sturges said with a fierce aspiration of the h. “He’s had the bugger’s duds and doodads brung up from Detroit, he’s given ’im a bloody suite to reside in, and he lets ’im see whoever he pleases.”
“But who, besides alien republicans, would want to see him?”
Sturges spat, missed the spittoon, and said with undisguised contempt, “The editors of every paper in town and two in the nearby counties, to start. And a couple of Tory gentlemen and that Orange alderman to boot. Seems they all wanta take a gander at ’im. I been told he gets a kick outta arguin’ with ’em. Some stay in there an hour or more. We know ’cause we gotta control the crowds out on the road hootin’ and hollerin’ and all riled up ’cause they don’t know whether they’re ragin’ at Coltrane or the idiots goin’ in to gawk at ’im.”
“After which our loyal editors print his seditious prevarications and give a credence to them they don’t deserve,” Marc said, glaring at his cold tea. “The man is clever, isn’t he? He knows he’s going to swing, so he’s decided to use the governor’s trial for his own political ends. He’ll end up a martyr, and the whole affair will have blown up in Sir George’s face.”
Death of a Patriot Page 5