Death of a Patriot

by Don Gutteridge

  Dora came bustling back in with a thick wedge of mincemeat pie.

  “Maybe this’ll soothe the headache a little,” she said.

  “Thanks, luv.”

  She watched him eat. When he was halfway through the pie, she said quietly, “I got another letter today from yer mother. Yer dad ain’t any worse, but he’s still askin’ fer you durin’ his sane moments.”

  “The man’s had a stroke, he don’t know hay from Heaven.”

  “I wanta take the kids to see him next month. He has a right. And Delia’s been writin’ them long letters, fillin’ them in on all yer doin’s.”

  Cobb set the last bit of pie down. “The man told me if I left the farm, I was not to darken his door again. I said I wouldn’t. And I’m a man of my word.”

  “You won’t come with us, then?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Fair enough. But remember, the dyin’ have privileges we ain’t allowed.”

  “Who’ll deliver the babies in this end of town if you go leavin’ it fer a week or two?”

  “I’ll tell ’em all to cross their legs.”

  Cobb laughed, then winced.

  “How’s yer arm?”

  “It hurts, but the worst of it is, it’s damn useless. I feel like a one-winged hawk tryin’ to fly.”

  Just then Fabian popped into the doorway.

  “What is it?” Cobb said, noting the excitement in his son’s face.

  “Mr. Edwards is here to see you.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Cobb and Marc were left alone to talk. Marc was a favourite with the children, applauding their recitations and skits and otherwise fussing over them. And Dora just loved to hear Mr. Edwards “accentuatin’ ” in his cadenced English.

  “I hope you’re not worrying about lost wages,” Marc said to his friend when they were alone.

  “Wilkie come ’round this aft and brought me some cash from the fellas at the Court House.”

  “And Dora does well delivering babies.”

  “Don’t get much cash, though. Mostly chickens and eggs and the odd slab of ham.”

  “Food on the table, nonetheless.”

  “The worst part is just languorin’ about the house gettin’ more bored by the minute. Delia even accused me of bein’ grumpy.”

  “Well, I have a proposition for you that will address the issue of income and that of boredom, too.”

  “Proposit away, then. I’m a desperate man.”

  “As part of my investigation into the murder of Caleb Coltrane, I must go to Detroit and interview a Mrs. Gladys Dobbs, Coltrane’s sister.”

  “And you want me to go with you?”

  “I do. And I’ll pay you your regular wage plus a bonus for the six days we would be away. It’s a delicate operation for which I’ll need a plausible cover story, one that entails my having a partner.”

  “Ya mean an English gentleman in fancy dress might not be too welcome in Yankeeville?”

  Marc smiled. “Something like that. I’ll explain the ruse I have in mind as we go, but right now I need to know whether you are both willing and able. You’ve taken a mighty blow to the head and that splint on your wrist looks serious.”

  “I ain’t worried about my noggin or my useless left arm, Major. And I can sure use the money. But the chief’s been told by Sir George the Dragon not to do any more pokin’ about in the murder. I already bent the rules by siccin’ Nestor Peck on Bostwick, so I could get into a pile of trouble helpin’ you out any further.”

  “Thank you for that,” Marc said, unsurprised but no less delighted that Cobb had seen the importance of finding the AWOL adjutant and had acted. “Could we come up with a credible excuse for your leaving Toronto for a week?”

  Cobb hesitated. He considered the effects of another two weeks of crushing boredom and verbal fencing with Dora. “We can. I got a dyin’ father near Woodstock.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Oh, we ain’t spoke fer humpteen years,” Cobb said without emotion. Then he grinned. “But the sarge don’t know that, does he?”

  Having had complicated relations with members of his own family, Marc was tactful enough not to probe further. Instead he said, “That should do nicely. It’ll be a pleasure working with you again, old chum.”

  “Now don’t go gettin’ all drippy on me, Major,” Cobb said, as the scarlet of his proboscis deepened. “Just tell me when ya wanta leave.”

  “First thing in the morning.”

  • • •

  Marc was tired and hungry when he arrived home some time after six o’clock that evening. As he entered through the front door, he listened for the pleasant ripple of female voices, Beth and Charlene preparing to greet the great man of the house. He stepped fully into the front room and once again confronted a scene of lament. Beth rose to greet him.

  “Oh, Marc, I’m so glad you’re home. I come in fifteen minutes ago to find Patricia sitting here with Charlene.”

  Marc tossed his hat and coat aside. Patricia Stanhope it definitely was. She was a younger version of her mother, dark, beautiful, and tragic. Even her excessive weeping did little to diminish her intrinsic attractiveness. She turned her tear-stained, heart-shaped face up to Marc as he crossed the room and pulled up a chair opposite the women.

  “What’s happened?” he asked cautiously.

  “I’ve been thrown out of the house, bag and baggage!” Patricia cried, indicating a pathetic bundle of clothes tied up with a man’s belt.

  “By your father?” Marc asked redundantly.

  “He told me that unless I obeyed him and got myself ready for the ball tonight and behaved there like a perfect lady, I could go out into the street and fend for myself!”

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” Beth soothed.

  “He’s gone mad over that stupid dance!” Patricia sobbed, reaching for outrage but not quite getting there.

  Marc sighed. “The man has certainly become obsessed about the honours due him at the governor’s gala,” he said to Beth. And while his heart went out to this wretched girl—her lover murdered and his adversary, captor, and jailer demanding her fealty—Marc’s thought was that such an obsession was reason enough to do away with the one person who most threatened its fulfillment. Marc had to find the incriminating letter among Coltrane’s effects or one like it in the hands of his sister. Everything now depended on it.

  “What’ll we do about this?” Beth wondered aloud, handing Patricia a dry hanky.

  “I’m certain the colonel will relent once the gala is over and he’s got his medal and citation. In the meantime, I suggest she bunk in with Charlene for the night, and if necessary you could arrange for her to stay with Mrs. Halpenny in her apartment above the shop. She’ll be safe there and have lots of female company.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Beth said without ceremony, and Marc was once again grateful that his wife was a strong and highly capable woman.

  Marc turned to Patricia. “Where was your mother when this happened?”

  “She was there, and I could see she wanted to step in and stop it, but she didn’t. She just stood there and watched.” The thought of Almeda’s timidity induced a further bout of sniffling. “She used to stand up to him, but lately she’s just let him carry on and doesn’t say a word.”

  “Well, I’ll find a way to get news to your mother that you’re all right. By Monday morning the storm will have blown itself out,” Marc said in his most avuncular voice.

  “I will be delivering some ribbon for the hat your mother chose for church tomorrow,” Beth said. “I’ll take it up in the morning and tell her what’s happened to you.”

  “I’m pretty sure she knows where I was headed, ’cause I told Shad at the door. I didn’t want her worrying all through the dance,” Patricia said. “Oh, how can I ever thank you?”

  By testifying to your father’s obsession in court, Marc thought, but said nothing.

  After supper, when Patricia and Charlene had been sa
fely quartered in the latter’s room, Marc told Beth about his day and his decision to go to Detroit. She took the news calmly.

  “You’re worried about me being alone here, aren’t you?” she said.

  “I am. The colonel is a volatile and unpredictable man.”

  “I’ll get Jasper to come and sleep on the chesterfield. He’s already over here most of the day; he might as well stay the night too. I’ll take Charlene to work with me on Monday. We’ll have a lot of tidying up to do after Twelfth Night. Jasper’ll keep our stoves alive.”

  Jasper Hogg chopped their wood and did any heavy chores around the house that Marc was too busy or too clumsy to do himself. He was a carpenter’s helper who worked whenever and wherever he could but had much idle time on his hands. He was also muscular, reliable, and pathologically shy around adults who were not of his own gender.

  “And he’ll be able to admire Charlene up close,” Marc said. “I’ll go next door and arrange it.”

  “I just hope you’ll be careful in Detroit,” Beth said.

  “Don’t worry, love. I’ll have Cobb with me.”

  THIRTEEN

  It was eight o’clock Sunday morning when the two-horse cutter carrying Marc and Cobb left the comfortable confines of the capital city and struck out through the bush along the snow-packed highway that would take them through Brantford to Woodstock and the forested districts beyond. This particular January morning was crisp and clear. Sunlight and new-fallen snow took turns dazzling the travellers. In the breezeless air, the drift-adroop boughs of cedar, fir, and tamarack preened like debutantes at the Twelfth Night Ball. As the runners on the sleigh sang against the grooved surface of the road and the horses nickered in delight of their task, Marc was once again enthralled by winter’s breathtaking landscapes. So smooth was the thoroughfare and so swift the stalwart steeds that Marc was convinced they were flying, mocking gravity and the illusory grip of civilization. For a precious, distilled moment or two, tawdry tales of murder and intrigue, avarice and vanity seemed far away and insubstantial.

  “I c’n drive a team one-handed, ya know,” Cobb said quietly, but in the silence of the woods and empty skies, it sounded more like a shout.

  “It’s all right,” Marc said, the reins relaxed in his hands, as the seasoned pair of gray geldings knew their own way and preferred to take it. “There’ll be other days, and I’ll let you know when it gets too much for an English gentleman to handle.”

  Cobb was supposed to find this reference amusing but didn’t. As he and Marc had walked to Frank’s livery stable near the market to pick up the cutter and team, Marc had explained the disguise he was planning to don in order to be able to move freely about the dangerous streets of Detroit. And just in case there were enemy agents lurking in or about the inns along their route, each was to take up his role and practise it twenty-four hours a day. The border raids of the past ten months had made everyone jumpy and suspicious. “Walls have ears” was their motto. The idea for the roles they would enact had come to Marc yesterday just as he was leaving Baldwin House and about to head for Cobb’s. Marc himself would be an English gentleman, a journalist from London, and Cobb would be his “man.” (“You took the easy part fer yerself,” Cobb had complained.) Cobb would play not his customary valet but one he had scavenged along the way on his North American journey.

  “I’ll exaggerate my educated accent somewhat to impress the locals,” Marc suggested, “and you can just be your winsome self.” To further legitimate his own role, Marc decided to take on the name of an actual English journalist, Athol Briggs, whose byline appeared regularly in an underground, libertarian paper, Egalité, a publication known to be sympathetic to extremists among English Radicals and to American republicanism. Marc had a stack of back issues, from which he had selected half a dozen samples, each of which bore a front-page fulmination by Athol Briggs. Marc also decided to gild the lily a bit by awarding himself a life peerage.

  “That mean I gotta call ya ‘Yer Lordship’?” Cobb had spluttered.

  “I’m afraid so, while I perforce must refer to you simply as ‘Bartlett.’ ” The coincidence between this appellation and Cobb’s silhouette was not remarked upon.

  Cobb’s aches and pains had kept him awake much of the night, and so he was content to pull the buffalo robe up to his chin, snuggle down, and snooze most of the way to Dundas. Meanwhile Marc tried to blank out as many details of the case as he could, partly because he had already mulled them over more times than was necessary. He wished to absorb and appreciate, with subliminal satisfaction, the scenery they were gliding through: rolling hills, snowbound lakes, the lowering edge of the escarpment, a spooked deer by the roadside. Their plan was to change horses two or three times a day, leaving the current team with the inn’s ostler. These same teams would be picked up in reverse order when they came back by the same route. It would be costly, but then Lord Athol Briggs was a sponsored journalist of private means in search of sensational material for his famous weekly.

  As they approached a two-storey clapboard inn near the village, Marc nudged Cobb awake and placed the reins in his good right hand. “A gentleman never drives his own team, Bartlett, unless he’s trying to impress a lady.”

  “Yes, milord,” Cobb said, giving the reins a brisk snap.

  “If anyone wonders why his lordship is being served by a handicapped valet, I’ll tell them that our sleigh overturned two days ago and you bumped your head and sprained your wrist.”

  “And I’ll tug my tuque and look regrettable.”

  “Don’t overdo it, Cobb. You’re just a local chap I hired out of desperation when I reached Toronto a few days ago—after, ah, a week in Montreal.”

  “I’ll try to curl-tail my uppitiness, Yer Earlship.”

  • • •

  Marc’s aristocratic credentials certainly had an immediate effect at the Queen’s Hostelry. As no mention was made of Egalité, Marc was assumed to be representing the Times. The proprietor, a gushing chap with no teeth on the left side of his mouth, spittled a welcome at the distinguished arrival and rolled out the red carpet, actually a tarnished rug of indeterminate pedigree. Within the hour, a luncheon of venison pie and baked potatoes was prepared, and it was washed down with cold beer from a virgin cask. When Cobb hovered about, eyeing the food and especially the drink, Marc turned sharply to him and said, “Bartlett, please see to the horses. We shall require a fresh team. Make sure they’re properly harnessed and ready to go by the time I’ve finished dining.”

  Bartlett came close to swallowing his Adam’s apple.

  “He can pick up a heel of bread and some cheese from the kitchen on his way,” the innkeeper said graciously, not bothering to look at milord’s man. “And my ostler will see that you have the best team.”

  Bartlett backed out of the room, seething and muttering under his breath.

  “Now, milord, can I tell ya all about the day the rebels come prancin’ through here last year?” said the loyal hotelier, rubbing both oily hands together.

  • • •

  When they were well away from Dundas and headed for Brantford, Marc pulled a handkerchief from his overcoat pocket and unwrapped a piece of cold venison pie. Cobb, whose resistance to his humiliating role took the form of feigning delight with the kitchen fare at the Queen’s Hostelry and the companionable company of stableboys, ogled the proffered delicacy with unabashed desire.

  “Go ahead and take it. It’s your reward for egregious service.”

  Cobb acquiesced. When he had finished and licked the last crumb from his bottom lip, he said, “I sure hope we find somethin’ useful in Detroit.”

  Marc just nodded. He had told Cobb very little about the puzzling intricacies of the case, mostly because Cobb would find Marc’s logical peregrinations absurd, preferring to put his trust in what he could see rather than what he could imagine. It was for this reason that Marc valued him as a partner in any investigation. However, Cobb did know that the object of this arduous and possibly d
angerous journey was twofold: to interview Gladys Dobbs with a view to locating an incriminating letter among her brother’s effects, and then to use the ruse of Lord Athol Briggs to attract the attention of any publicity-hungry Hunters’ Lodgers in hopes of gleaning more information about the status of Caleb Coltrane within their organization. Just how these twin goals fitted into Marc’s scheme for proving Billy McNair innocent was something that Cobb was happy to leave to his lordship.

  There was only an hour or so of light left when they approached the village of Brantford. Marc had travelled this route three and a half years ago during his first summer in North America on a foraging expedition with Major Owen Jenkin, quartermaster of the regiment. A fine stone inn with an excellent livery stable awaited them a mile or so ahead, and none too soon. The sun had disappeared behind a phalanx of dark cloud in the west and, despite their furs and periodic stops at dingy wayside huts with fetid outhouses and limp fires, both men were chilled to the marrow.

  Once arrived, Lord Briggs was wined, dined, and warmed all over at the Brantford Arms, while his man Bartlett chewed on bully beef and stamped his feet beside a woodstove that produced more smoke than heat. The inn served as a major stop for the Hamilton-to-London stagecoach, and thus had a large stable of fast horses. Marc had originally planned to push ahead through the early evening hours as far as a hamlet called Forks of the Grand, where a gypsum mine had drawn a few dozen hardy families and produced a single, ramshackle hotel. But the sixty some miles they had travelled so far, despite perfect weather and a smooth road, had left them fatigued beyond measure.