Death of a Patriot

by Don Gutteridge

  “I have answered that question already, sir, and I find your tone impertinent.”

  “Did Mr. Bostwick have ready access to your pistols?”

  “You’ve taken that line as far as it will reach,” the judge said to Dougherty. “Move on.”

  Dougherty glanced down at the blank sheets on the lectern that comprised his notes, then said in a most pleasant tone, “You mentioned earlier in your casual chat with Mr. Thornton that you thought you saw Sergeant McNair stumble into the hall tree and get a hand improbably jammed in one of the coat pockets.”

  “Did see,” Stanhope corrected.

  “But according to the same testimony, that part of the hallway, no more than six feet across, I’m told, was crowded with screaming, jostling people: a police constable, two soldiers from outside, one maid descending in shock from the second floor, your wife and daughter from their sitting rooms, you and Chief Sturges and your butler, Absalom Shad—in addition to the man who occasioned the commotion.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “So, even if you are able to swear to what you believe you saw, it is conceivable that almost anyone present during those critical, hectic minutes could have surreptitiously placed the incriminating poison packet in any coat lying or hanging about?”

  Stanhope was unruffled. “I can only tell you what I saw, sir.”

  In Marc’s estimation, Dougherty had picked some tiny holes in the prosecution’s skein of events, but all in all, the colonel had held up well. So far.

  “Let’s go back even further now. At the very beginning of your testimony, you told the jury that Sergeant McNair had been extremely upset at the tragic death of his lifelong friend, Corporal Melvin Curry.”

  “Billy confided this to me shortly after the battle, as I said.”

  “He confessed to you that he harboured animosity towards Major Coltrane, an enemy officer he had tracked down and captured?”

  “I told him this was normal, and that it would fade away when he got home and well away from the battlefield. But the last time we spoke, in mid-December here in Toronto, he admitted that that had not happened.”

  Why was Dougherty going back here? Marc wondered. You didn’t let a witness repeat damaging testimony and embellish it.

  “Still, at the actual scene of battle, near the redoubt where Corporal Curry died and Coltrane was captured, Sergeant McNair had a perfect opportunity to let the wounded captive die, did he not?”

  Thornton started to rise, but the Colonel, warming quickly to military palaver, forestalled him by saying, “That’s exactly what I told the lad at the time. He had already passed the crucial test. Alas, it turned out to be of little help.”

  Thornton sat back down, smiling.

  Dougherty may also have been smiling, but the perpetual flutter of his lips made it impossible to be sure. “Was not the principal source of the defendant’s continuing anger the fact that Major Coltrane arranged an ambush near the abandoned redoubt, during which his friend and several others died? An ambush he considered cowardly and unworthy of an enemy officer?”

  At the word “continuing,” Thornton turned to his junior with a shrug of incredulity.

  “That is so. Again, I did my best to dissuade him of such a view.”

  “Was the ambush not aided and abetted by the enemy’s suddenly and unexpectedly discovering a cache of rifles and bullets in the earthen walls of the redoubt, crates of ordnance that you were responsible for leaving there despite orders to clear all of it out of the place a week before?”

  Thornton leapt up so precipitately that he nearly cracked his skull on the lectern. “This is irrelevant and unprofessional!”

  The judge looked sympathetic but said, “Well, Mr. Thornton, you allowed the topic to be introduced earlier, and it does go to motive. Mr. Dougherty, are you trying to show that your client may have felt some personal guilt over the failure of his unit to remove those crates of ammunition?”

  “Yes, milord. I meant to imply only that a militia detail involving Sergeant McNair and his commanding officer had been the very one to have inadvertently left those rifles where they were subsequently used to decimate the unit a week later, and—”

  “I wish to answer your insidious question, sir!” The colonel had almost climbed out of the witness-box. “Lieutenant Muttlebury was accused, posthumously, of incompetence in the matter, but I accepted full responsibility for it. The lieutenant was cleared of any blame and I received a reprimand—along with a citation for courage under fire.”

  Both the side galleries and the dignified benches reacted to this declaration with a chorus of muted “Hear, hear’s,” and for the first time the chief justice had to wield his gavel, albeit gently. Into the silence following the gavel’s appeal, Dougherty said to the witness, whose stamina and patience seemed inexhaustible, “Now, Mr. Stanhope, tell me about your daughter’s romance with the dashing major.”

  Thornton was apoplectic and the witness stunned, along with most of the gallery. “This is an outrage, milord!”

  “How dare you—”

  “Please, restrain yourself, Colonel Stanhope,” the judge said quickly, “and I would not go so far as to label the question an outrage, Mr. Thornton. However, Mr. Dougherty, you had better have an explanation for it. We do not tolerate cheap theatrics or the abuse of witnesses in the Queen’s courtrooms, whatever the policy may be in your own republic.”

  The great advantage that Doubtful Dick had, despite his near immobility, was that his deep-set, piggish eyes were almost impossible to read and thus disconcerting to anyone trying to do so. “I wish to explore a possible motive that someone other than the defendant may have had for murdering Coltrane, someone who also had opportunity and means,” he said serenely to the judge.

  “Milord!”

  “Are you referring to this witness, Mr. Dougherty?”

  “I am. Mr. Stanhope has already provided testimony on how he arranged for the victim’s incarceration and how he scheduled and vetted all visitors. A key part of that testimony has been omitted, and I wish to ask the witness about that—with a view to constructing a competing theory of the crime.”

  “You have every right to attempt such a tactic, sir, but I must caution you that Colonel Stanhope is not on trial here, and your questions must address facts already in evidence or questions directly relevant to those facts. If you digress one degree, I’ll stop you and dismiss the witness without right of recall.”

  “I understand, milord.” The huge head with the perilously perched wig eased back to Stanhope, who was still fuming and glowering. “Your daughter was a regular visitor to Mr. Coltrane, was she not?”

  “She was. She took him his breakfast every morning.” Stanhope bit off each word, and his scowl was venomous enough to poison a dozen defense counsel.

  “At whose request?”

  “Initially mine, when the maid took sick. Then Major Coltrane’s.”

  “Did you at any time discuss with your wife or anyone else the growing possibility that Patricia, your daughter, might be romantically attracted to an officer in your enemy’s army?”

  Stanhope grimaced in an effort to maintain his composure.

  “Well, sir? You are under oath.”

  “My wife mentioned it to me a few days before the major’s death. I gave it no credence. I told her that even if it were true, the man would be hanged and forever out of our lives within the month. Why should I be foolhardy enough to poison a man already destined to die?”

  It was the very question that seemed incapable of being answered, the one that reared up like a perpendicular cliff before the defense and all their efforts.

  “I suppose, sir, the only possible motive would have to be one of such overweening passion that such a consideration would seem irrelevant. For example, the cuckolding of a proud, public figure, followed by a vicious blackmail scheme.”

  “I must protest, milord, in the strongest possible terms!” Thornton screamed into the excited and noisy response of the ga
lleries.

  The gavel came down and came down again. “I warned you, Mr. Dougherty. You have gone too far this time—”

  “Milord, I have proof of the claim here in my hand.” Dougherty was waving the letter they had recovered from Almeda’s gown, the one in which Coltrane proclaimed his love and alluded to the blackmail “proposal.” “I would like this letter entered into evidence, with permission to establish its authenticity through a handwriting comparison, and subsequently to recall this witness and question him on its contents.”

  “Let me see the letter, sir.”

  Dougherty handed it to Robert Baldwin. Chief Justice Robinson took the document and perused it, while Thornton shuffled nervously from side to side and the colonel looked simultaneously perplexed and enraged. And for the first time, fearful.

  “This letter is not signed,” the judge said, into the prurient buzzing of the assembled citizenry.

  “May we go into chambers to discuss the matter?”

  “No, sir. You will kindly provide the Crown with a copy. I’ll take written submissions on the matter by seven o’clock this evening. I’ll rule on the question of admissibility at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Court is adjourned until then.”

  The chief justice rose. Day one of the trial was ended abruptly amid sensation and speculation throughout the courtroom. Only Doubtful Dick Dougherty appeared unperturbed.

  SEVENTEEN

  Since Doughtery had to be taken directly home and secured in his chair before his spindle legs gave way, Marc, Robert, and Clement Peachey found themselves seated in a semicircle facing the sprawled, exhausted form of their leader and waiting for any words of wisdom that might drift their way. It was five o’clock and growing dark. Everyone was tired and hungry, but the only refreshment was a pot of weak tea served to them by Broderick Langford. The room was chilly, the fire smoky, the atmosphere sepulchral: the ideal setting for a post-mortem.

  Dougherty had his bare feet propped on his footstool, soles hearthward, and his new trousers rolled up to the knee to facilitate Celia’s massage of his calves with some sort of pungent liniment. The three men watched her supple fingers play over the veined flesh and were rewarded with intermittent, shy smiles. The pouches around Dougherty’s eyes intimated that he might be asleep.

  It was Robert who broke the silence. “What are our chances of getting Coltrane’s letter admitted?” he asked the figure in the wing chair. “It indicates both a blackmail attempt and a romantic liaison, either one of which provides Stanhope with a motive goading enough to override the issue of Coltrane’s eventually being hanged. And it is just such an irrational rage that we have to demonstrate.”

  “And we now have Almeda’s love letter to bolster the romance theory, found among Coltrane’s possessions by Cobb and putatively used to continue the blackmail after his arrival in Chepstow,” Marc added.

  In the foyer outside the courtroom, the bailiff had served Marc his summons: the Crown wanted him as a prime witness. After which he had ridden with Robert and Dougherty in the lead sleigh over here. Thus he had had a chance to outline what he and Cobb had found in Detroit. Marc had been particularly keen to sketch out a second alternative theory of the murder: poisoning by an agent of the Michigan Hunters to ensure Pathfinder’s election to the presidency. Dougherty, thoroughly fatigued, had said nothing.

  “I suggest that in our submission to the chief justice we include Almeda’s love letter in order to give Caleb’s letter more legitimacy,” Robert said.

  “The initial ‘C’ at the bottom of Caleb’s letter and the handwriting sample Marc brought back from Mrs. Dobbs should convince the judge that we have reasonable grounds to accept it as written by Coltrane,” Peachey said. “But unless we can somehow get Thornton to put Almeda Stanhope on the stand, I don’t know how we can get around the business of the nickname ‘Duchess.’ ”

  “And if we call her,” Marc said, “she’ll be a hostile witness and deny everything—or else claim husband-wife privilege. We don’t even have an independent sample of her handwriting.”

  “The judge will give us only so much latitude in developing competing theories,” Robert reminded them. “Thus far he’s not been unreasonable. So what are our chances of getting Coltrane’s letter admitted?” Robert again addressed Dougherty’s comatose form.

  The eye pouches did not move, but the lips did. “Not good, though I’ll make as strong a case as we can. We won’t throw in Almeda’s love letter though, tempting as that might be.” The voice was low and rumbling, as if the words were being forged somewhere below the throat and exhaled like oracular pearls at Delphi.

  “But surely we need all the proof we can muster,” Robert suggested. “Robinson’s not likely to expose to needless embarrassment a regimental colonel whom Sir George decorated last Saturday before the town’s elite at the Twelfth Night Ball.”

  “But if the judge throws out Coltrane’s letter tomorrow, he would in effect be throwing out Mrs. Stanhope’s billet-doux with it,” breathed the oracle.

  “And you want to use the latter, I take it?”

  “I want to use both of them. But tomorrow I may not need either.” The lips fell slack. One hand dropped from the chair’s arm and dangled like a spent trout. Doubtful Dick was asleep.

  Celia rose from her kneeling position, every movement unconsciously sensuous. “He’ll only nap for half an hour,” she said to the carpet.

  Broderick came over with a portable writing desk in his arms. “He’ll dictate the statement for Justice Robinson to me, and I’ll run it over to the court,” he said.

  “Then we had better go back to Baldwin House,” Robert said, with some reluctance but little choice. They had cast Billy’s lot to Dougherty and that was that. “We’ll get a bite to eat. Then we’ll start sketching out our defense strategy, using the Hunters’ conspiracy as a fallback position. And if Cobb can locate Bostwick before the weekend is out, we can add him to the mix. Also, Marc, we need to prep you for your own testimony. After all, you’re likely the Crown’s favorite witness.”

  • • •

  Marc got home at nine o’clock. Beth was sitting up on the chesterfield, dozing, but she roused herself with his arrival. Marc insisted that she tell him all about her days with him away. He was growing weary of his own obsession with Billy McNair. Even an hour of casual talk and amiable gossip would be a sign that normal, everyday life was not only possible but inevitable.

  The extra work entailed by Saturday’s gala had kept Rose Halpenny and the girls happily engaged—a blessing for Dolly, whose flagging spirits had to be continually boosted, both for her sake and for the sake of Billy, whom she visited with evangelical determination. Colonel Stanhope and Almeda had paraded up to the podium of honour at the dance (their daughter, unfortunately, “felled by the grippe” and unable to accompany them). Sir George had gritted his patrician teeth and pinned a medal to the colonel’s tunic, the latter feigning modesty with admirable aplomb. The petty aristocracy had thundered with applause. These details had come to Beth, in a variety of interpretations, on Monday and Tuesday, as soiled or torn gowns were brought in for rehabilitation. Patricia Stanhope had stayed secluded in Rose Halpenny’s apartment above the shop until late Sunday afternoon, when Beth received a note from Chepstow, in which Almeda stated tersely that the prodigal daughter was now welcome in her own home.

  “So the family’s closing ranks?” Marc said.

  “And that isn’t good for Billy, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  At the reference to the trial, Marc sighed and, seeing Beth wide awake after her nap, launched into an account of his trip to Detroit and a sketch of the evidence they had uncovered and the alternative theories they were pursuing. He seasoned the forensic narrative with comic asides about Cobb’s Bartlett and his own flamboyant lordship, and finished up with a faithful rendering of Cobb’s reunion with his father.

  “I’ve asked Dora to deliver our baby,” Beth said.

  “You don’t want Dr.
Withers?”

  “He’s a good coroner,” she said.

  After a bit, Marc said, “Did Patricia tell you anything more about what went on up at Chepstow?”

  Beth hesitated. “She did. But if I tell you, you must promise not to use it in the trial.”

  “Even if it means Billy’s life?”

  Beth took that in.

  “Please, believe me, darling, we would only use such information if we needed to, and even then with the utmost discretion.” While he was thinking of himself and Robert in this regard, he knew he couldn’t speak for Dougherty.

  “Coltrane seduced her,” Beth said.

  “Jesus—”

  “A few days before Christmas, she said. And it only happened once.”

  “Did she tell her mother or father?” Marc said, his hopes rising.

  “I’m afraid not. She was wise enough to know how they’d react. Besides, her lover swore her to secrecy. And she was mad for him. Still is, poor thing.”

  Marc sighed. “Even so, Almeda had her suspicions, though she swore to me that she didn’t pass them along to her husband.”

  “Would you?”

  Marc yawned. He had been up since dawn and he was beyond fatigue, but his mind had not stopped racing with thought all day. “I’m sure to be called tomorrow. That means I’ll have to sit in the witness room until I’ve given my testimony.”

  “You want me to go to court?”

  “Do you have the time?”

  “I’ll take Dolly,” Beth said. “She’s too scared to go by herself.”

  • • •

  Before the jury was brought in, Chief Justice Robinson summoned Robert Baldwin and Kingsley Thornton to him and rendered his decision on the letter found in Almeda Stanhope’s ball gown.

  “I am not going to allow the defense to use this letter at this time. It would be speculative and prejudicial without a proper foundation. First of all, the letter, according to the affidavit sworn by Rose Halpenny, was found sewn into a dress belonging to Mrs. Stanhope, it is addressed only to ‘D’ and signed only as ‘your demon lover, C.’ So, while Mrs. Stanhope may be the possessor of the letter, it does not appear to have been meant for her. Without her corroboration of its provenance—a maid could have placed it there, as after all, such a gown is used only on rare occasions and, if out of style, never again—we have nothing usable. Moreover, while the handwriting sample you supplied, with an affidavit from Mr. Edwards as to its source, is similar to that of the letter in question, I am no expert, and a forgery is a distinct possibility, given its inflammatory contents. Hence, without a foundation, which can only be provided by direct testimony from Mrs. Stanhope, you cannot introduce the letter or allude to its contents or any implications thereof while cross-examining Colonel Stanhope. However, it is conceivable that you may be able to establish its legitimacy and relevance later on during the presentation of the defense’s case.”