Turncoat

by Don Gutteridge

  “Maybe that money you found had nothing to do with rum or French wine.”

  “Perhaps,” Marc said, “but have a look at this.” In his hand was a strip of paper about twelve inches long whose right half was completely scorched. “See these names down the left side here?”

  “Yes,” Hatch said. “They’re names of various types of whisky and such. Squire Child and I have come across these tally sheets before. Even the writing looks familiar.”

  “And below each,” Marc said with a little more enthusiasm, “is the name of some bay or point along this shoreline, I’d wager.”

  “And you’d win,” Hatch said. “The figures here are dates and times for the drop-offs. All that’s missing are the smugglers’ names—they’ve been burned to a crisp.”

  “Well, we know who Connors and O’Hurley are.”

  “True,” Hatch said. “And you can be sure the alarm will be raised from Kingston to Buffalo. I’ll pass this paper on to Sheriff MacLachlan anyway. I may even get promoted,” he chuckled.

  Marc was still rummaging about the debris, but he found nothing more of any value.

  Riding slowly homeward, the two men kept their own counsel for some time. Then Hatch said, “We’ve got to face the fact that any connection between those sewer rats and Joshua’s death is highly improbable. And that means that the cave itself may not have been his destination that night. Maybe the blizzard did confuse him, and he died in a senseless accident.”

  But Marc said, “I have good reason to believe that Jesse Smallman may have been desperate enough to try to raise money to save his farm by acting as an agent for those freebooters.”

  Hatch paused before responding. “Have you mentioned this to Beth?”

  “Obliquely. But it’s a topic she will not talk further to me about. That much I do know.”

  “Hard to blame her.”

  “Don’t you see, though, it’s possible that Jesse had garnered vital information about the rum-running trade and that, somehow—in going through Jesse’s effects, for example—Joshua discovered this information. Being an upright man, he might have confronted someone more dangerous than he realized. Or he might have doubted its implications and set out to clear his son’s name. In the least, I can’t believe he would not attempt to find out more about why his son hanged himself.”

  “Well now, that makes rough sense, lad. But we’re still left with the question of who.”

  “One thing I did learn yesterday was that most of the farmers out in Buffaloville have been hit hard in the last couple of years. They’re desperate for cash, offering me underfed pigs and mildewed grain. They’re prime suspects for participants in a lucrative smuggling operation. And with Mad Annie’s menagerie half a mile away and deep in a part of the bush nobody visits, I’d say the answer to your question lies out there. She’s long been suspected of being the biggest bootlegger in the district.”

  “If there is a connection of some kind—and we don’t know what, remember—then this cave is very likely where Joshua was heading the night he was killed.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And if the threatened person suspected that Joshua was more likely to be an informer than a convert, Joshua’s possession of any incriminating evidence would be all the more dangerous. The chance of it being conveyed directly to the lieutenant-governor and, more important, being believed there without question, would be very high.”

  “Perhaps bribery was attempted,” Marc elaborated, “and when that didn’t work, murder was the only option remaining. Joshua Smallman knew too much and had to be stopped.”

  They rode on in silence. Since Hatch had raised the issue again, Marc felt the time had come to tell him—and him alone—the truth about Joshua Smallman’s role as Sir John’s official and trusted agent.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” was Hatch’s initial comment on hearing Marc’s account. Then he said, “You know what this means, though? If you’re going to learn anything at all from Beth about Joshua’s motives and behaviour last fall, you’ll have to break the news to her as well, and admit that he managed to deceive everyone—except perhaps his murderer. And remember, when she is told the truth, she may be able to interpret past events and words in a far different light.”

  “I can’t tell her,” Marc said. “It’s too soon.”

  Hatch was puzzled but held his peace.

  As they sighted James Durfee, seated and alone on a snowbank in front of his inn, Hatch said, “Well, at least when you go out to beard the Stebbins couple this afternoon, you’ll be scouting evidence of the rum trade: that’s a sight more solid than a lot of free-floating political nonsense about secret societies and Hunters’ Lodges.”

  Durfee was waving his musket at them like a bosun’s semaphore.

  “You’re right,” Marc said, “but I haven’t given up on the political angle. It’s in the mix somewhere.”

  TEN

  As it turned out, Marc did not get the opportunity to test either of his hypotheses regarding the motive for Joshua’s murder—political treachery or a falling out amongst thieves—on expatriate Azel Stebbins until late in the afternoon of that Friday.

  First, he and Erastus stopped to talk to James Durfee outside the inn, where they were informed by the scarlet-cheeked postmaster that he had just discharged his weapon in defence of the realm. “Missed the bugger by a mile, but that mule of his sure got the message!” After a stiff whisky at his own bar (which did little to steady his heart rate), Durfee assured Constable Hatch that when the noon mail coach arrived, he would forward the news of O’Hurley’s flight westward on the ice, and further assured him that if the blackguard were to put so much as his snout ashore he would be taken without mercy. The official alarm would be rung all the way from here to Hamilton and Newark.

  After commending Durfee’s valour and dispatch, Hatch took his leave, and he and Marc headed for their midday meal at the mill.

  “I must remember to tell the sheriff tomorrow about the peddlers’ loot Durfee is keeping for me,” Marc said as they dismounted and let Thomas see to the horses.

  “And you’re gonna show him Sir John’s warrant and his instructions to you?” Hatch said tactfully.

  Marc smiled. “I did agree to do so, but I was hoping then to have a lot more to tell him than I do now. On the other hand, he may be able to interpret some of my observations in ways you and I have not thought of.”

  “I wouldn’t be overly hopeful on that score. Hamish MacLachlan’s a fine fellow and a loyal servant, but he got the job because he’s a cousin of the attorney general.”

  After lunch, just as Marc was about to set out for the Stebbins place, a boy sent over from the inn brought a message for the ensign to come there immediately. Marc pulled the boy up in front of him on the saddle and galloped him gleefully down the Miller Sideroad.

  Durfee had summoned Marc because, among the post-luncheon crowd at the inn, there were several notorious supporters of the Reform party, men who were not resident aliens and lived nowhere near the Americans in Buffaloville. “I’ll just get ’em talkin’ and you can sit up here nursin’ a toddy with both ears open.”

  In the two hours that followed, Marc learned about elections, the evils of the Family Compact, the toils of farming, and much else irrelevant and otherwise—but none of it incriminating or pointing in that direction. Everyone had known Jesse Smallman and was saddened by his senseless death. Little feeling of any kind attended the occasional mention of Joshua’s name (adroitly dropped by Durfee at intervals). Only the bizarre manner of his death seemed of any lasting moment. The most telling consequence of the entire afternoon was that Ensign Edwards was seen weaving his way towards the double-image of Colonel Margison’s horse.

  A brisk north wind and a steady canter up the Pringle Sideroad, across the second concession, and up the Farley Sideroad into Buffaloville soon sobered Marc for the encounter ahead. Or so he told himself. The Stebbins farm lay just above the concession line and across the sideroad from the McMas
ter place he had visited the previous afternoon, following the drama of Agnes Pringle’s rescue and return. From Hatch’s briefing Marc had learned that Azel Stebbins was by far the youngest of the suspected extremists and the most recently arrived (from New York State). At thirty, and with less than ten years in the province, young Stebbins had established a reputation for himself as a hotheaded republican and an ardent supporter of Willy Mackenzie’s oft-stated view that only by annexing itself to the United States could Upper Canada ever be free and prosperous. His wife was reputed to be much younger than he, a child bride brought back like a trophy on his saddle from Buffalo, where he used to go on a monthly bender to the stews and dives of that pseudo-egalitarian Gomorrah.

  When Marc arrived, Azel Stebbins was walking towards his barn with a bit and bridle in one hand. When he saw the ensign ride up and dismount, he stopped, took him in with a searching stare, then grinned and shot his hand out to the visitor.

  “Hello, there,” he boomed from a barrel chest. “I’m Azel Stebbins.”

  “Good day to you, sir. I am—”

  “Ensign Marc Edwards, come to have a gander at the tons of wheat I got lyin’ surplus all over the farm.” His laugh invited Marc to join in on the joke.

  As Marc smiled, he did a quick appraisal of the man he expected to be his prime suspect. Stebbins looked like a quintessential Yankee: tall and ruggedly handsome with blue eyes and hair the colour of bleached hay, big-boned and muscular (features even his coat and leggings couldn’t hide), and sporting a hair-trigger grin offset by a calculating tilt of brow and chin, from which drooped a blondish goatee.

  “The quartermaster at York has been authorized to purchase extra supplies in the coming months, grains and pork in particular,” Marc said, glancing towards the barn and the coop, smokehouse, and corncrib behind it.

  “A mite worried about the ruckus in Quebec, I’m told,” Stebbins said as he took the horse’s reins.

  “That was a factor, I believe.”

  “And you’re the drummer?” Stebbins said.

  “Advance agent.”

  “Seen plenty of drummers where I come from, though not always glad to.”

  The quick grin telegraphed the joke, and Marc dredged up a weak smile.

  “Anyway, I’d like to see whatever you might have to offer. The price will be good, and paid in pound notes.”

  “Well, I’m relieved to hear that, I reckon—though my Yankee blood hankers after currency you can sink your teeth into.”

  “Are you new to the province, then?”

  Stebbins halted near the big double door to the barn. No grin mitigated his next comment. “I figure you know to the day and the hour precisely when I first set foot on His Majesty’s soil, and a good deal of what I’ve been doin’ and sayin’ since. You and me’ll get along just fine so long as there’s no malarkey between us. You look like a sensible young fella to me.”

  “Erastus Hatch has given me a few details of your stay in the district, but for my part I assure you I am here to reconnoitre grain and pork. There’s no politics to a soldier’s hunger.”

  “When you’ve been here a while you’ll learn that everything’s politics in this country. As it is in the United States. The difference is, back home everybody’s given a chance to join in the game—and win.”

  The obvious rejoinder—“Then why didn’t you stay there?”—was on the tip of Marc’s tongue before he reined it in, took a deep breath, and said, “Be that as it may, Mr. Stebbins, I have a simple duty to perform—”

  “Now, now, don’t get yer garters in a snarl,” Stebbins said, hitching Marc’s horse to a post, dropping his gear, and starting to haul the doors apart with both hands. “And for Chrissake, quit hailin’ me as mister. The name’s Azel, though I been called worse from time to time.”

  “Then you’ve something to show me?”

  “You think we’re headin’ inta my barn to take a leak?”

  The interior of the barn was spacious, well laid out, and scrupulously maintained. Two rows of stalls housed Ayreshire milk cows, a team of Clydes, a roan mare, and a huge bull manacled to a concrete stanchion by a ring in its nose. Fresh straw was evident everywhere. The energy Stebbins was putting into his political activities and unexplained “hunting” forays evidently had not affected his proficiency as a farmer.

  “We had a drought last July that hit the wheat hard,” Stebbins said, “but I put in a fair amount of Indian corn for pig feed, and it’s paid off. The hogs are in the back. Hold yer nose!”

  When they’d finished admiring the hogs—robust Yorkies waxing nicely towards slaughtering time—and tallying a potential purchase by the quartermaster’s self-appointed legate, Marc said casually, “You’ve done exceedingly well here in a short time.”

  “I have done, haven’t I? And I’ve managed a wife and two babes inta the bargain.”

  “I heard about the fuss over alien rights when I arrived last spring,” Marc said in his most empathetic tone. When Stebbins ignored the bait, Marc added, “You must have been concerned you might lose all this.”

  “You’re damn right I was! I built everythin’ you see here, and the house, too, with the aid of my neighbours and other Christians who cared not a fig about my place of origin or the way I voted. I put in my own crops with only my woman and a lad or two from the township. Our harvestin’ is done together, farm by farm. We got no landlords or fancy squires in this part of God’s world.”

  “And Mr. Dutton was your man for the Assembly?”

  “I reckon he didn’t need much help takin’ this seat.”

  “Hatch was telling me a neighbour of his suffered terribly from the drought.”

  Stebbins paused at the bull’s stall, seemed to make some sort of decision, and said, “Smallman. Aye, sufferin’s an inadequate word to cover what happened to that poor bastard.”

  “Jesse was a friend?”

  Again a brief hesitation, then, “Not really. More like a comrade-in-arms, but when you’ve fought alongside somebody for the same cause you can make friends pretty fast. Jesse thought we couldn’t get a fair shake for our grievances under the present set-up in Toronto, but he couldn’t bring himself to cross the line.”

  “Whereas others did?”

  Stebbins grinned cryptically. “Now them are matters I wouldn’t know nothin’ about, would I?”

  “I wasn’t implying you did,” Marc said lamely. “But we heard rumours of seditious talk down this way and meetings of some secret society.”

  “The only so-called secret society infestin’ this county is the Loyal Orange Lodge, led by that lunatic Gowan.”

  “At any rate, the alien question’s been resolved, hasn’t it? Your land is safe and you can hold any office you can get yourself elected or appointed to.”

  Stebbins said, “You’ll also be happy to know I’ve just applied for my naturalization papers. I been here longer than the seven years they’re requirin’ for citizenship.”

  Marc was glad they had turned to leave the barn because it gave him a moment to recover from the shock of hearing this news and the deliberate manner in which it was revealed.

  “Yessirree, in a month or so, Azel Stebbins, his wife, and his bairns are gonna be bona fidee subjects of King Willy the Fourth.”

  Marc was not ready to give up, however, and when Stebbins insisted they seal their verbal contract with a drink, Marc was quick to accept.

  “I never trust a man who turns down a free drink,” Stebbins said, and winked. He led Marc past the horse stall to a manger below the hayloft, reached down, and drew a clay jug into the weak light of the waning day. He tipped it up, took a self-congratulatory swig, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and passed the jug to Marc. “That’ll tan yer insides.”

  Marc made a valiant show of duplicating his host’s gestures, appending only an explosive wheeze to the set. Stebbins’s grin wobbled through Marc’s tears. “My God, that’s raw stuff,” he managed to say.

  “Mad Annie’s boys ain’t too particula
r, I reckon.”

  “You wouldn’t have something a little less—intimidating?” Marc said.

  “Annie’s potion’s about all folks around here can afford.”

  “That’s probably why I haven’t had a decent drink since I left the fort.” Marc smiled.

  “Well now, I surely wouldn’t want a man who’s lookin’ to buy my crops to go back to his commandant and bad-mouth the local hospitality. Nosirree.” Stebbins winked lasciviously, offered a quicksilver grin, and began to brush away at the hay in the manger. “Ahh,” he said, and he drew forth a dusty bottle whose smudged label bore no word of English or American. “Bordeaux, older’n my granny’s cat. In Buffalo they call this stuff ‘French leg-spreader.’”

  Marc flinched when he saw Stebbins attack the cork with his jackknife. “There,” he said, “all ready for the back of the throat. Be my guest.”

  Marc had no choice but to hoist the vintage red and let it slide its way, bits of cork still abob, over his tongue and down his astonished throat.

  Stebbins then did the same, but continued gulping until the dregs arrived, prompting him to spit furiously. “Jesus, but that’s good stuff. A man could do worse’n get pissed on that.”

  “I haven’t tasted anything that good, even in the officers’ mess,” Marc said, dabbing his lips with a handkerchief, a move that set Stebbins grinning again.

  “It ain’t available to members of the Family Compact.”

  “Could an ordinary soldier lay his hands on any of it?”

  “You can get almost anythin’ fer a price,” Stebbins said.

  “What else have I got to waste my money on?”

  “Well now, if I did know where to find such ambrosia, I’d be sure and tell an ordinary officer like yerself.”

  “You didn’t buy this, then?” Marc forced himself to look suitably crestfallen.

  “’Twas a gift, from a friend of a friend. For services rendered.”

  “Ahh … that’s unfortunate.”

  “And we don’t tell tales on our friends, do we?” With this caveat Stebbins turned and ambled placidly out of the barn. Perhaps he did not realize how much he had just given away to his interrogator: the confirmation of a direct link to smugglers and a more oblique one to Jesse Smallman and his father.