“No, Perry, I can’t. I have to go back,” Luke said with what he hoped was a firm tone.
“I promise not to make eyes at you. We had quite enough of that from the young lady — what was her name again? Walter Thomas has a raft of girls and they’re all called something like Patience or Prudence or Charity. I can never keep them straight.”
“Grace,” Luke said. “Her name was Grace.”
“Grace? Was it really? In any event, there’s quite a passel to get safely married off. Lavinia must be rubbing her hands with glee at the prospect of how much the good Mr. Thomas will owe the Van Hansels if she engineers suitable matches for them all. Poor Arthur. He’s as good as hogtied and delivered at this point and he knows it. So what do you say?” Perry was about to pull the carriage into an alleyway.
“No. Drive.”
Perry frowned, but did as he was directed.
More to break the silence than anything, Luke said, “So has Lavinia found a match for you yet?” He meant it as a joke, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.
“No, but I’m sure she’s looking.” Perry sounded glum. “One of these days she’ll find one. And I may have to agree to it.”
“Does she know? That you’re …”
“Basically not interested?” Perry was silent for a moment before he confided, “Of course she knows. She’s no fool. Father, on the other hand, hasn’t a clue. He thinks my lack of eligibility is a result of my lamentable lack of initiative. My brother Theo, now, there’s a catch. Everything a father could hope for. Lavinia would love to get her hooks into Theo, but there’s little chance of that. He’ll be found a suitable wife within our own circle here. Here or in England. No chance for anyone the Van Hansels might know. I, on the other hand, can be fobbed off on anyone as long as her father has enough money.”
“I don’t understand how you got tangled up with the Van Hansels in the first place,” Luke said.
“I knew Arthur and he invited me along to a party one night.” Perry cast a sidelong look at Luke. “No, it wasn’t that. I just knew him. I can’t even remember where I met him. Toronto’s not that big a place, you know. Everybody meets everybody sooner or later. Anyway, when father found out where I’d been, he suggested that I cultivate the connection. Lavinia was delighted, of course, to be able to present a Biddulph to her bevy of prospective brides, and I was just as happy to do it, since it meant that father stopped ranting at me, at least for a while.” He pursed his lips while he chose his next words. “At first I thought it was just my name she was after — as an ornament if you like — and then it became something else.”
He flicked the reins and turned the horse into a side street off Yonge. “You see this stretch of trees?”
To Luke it looked like every other section of undeveloped land in the northern regions of the city. Undivided park lots, most of them, not yet carved up into a patchwork of shops and houses.
“This belonged to Alexander Wood,” Perry said.
The name meant nothing to Luke.
“Most people call it Molly Wood’s Bush.”
“Was Molly his wife or something?”
No, Alexander Wood had no wife. The story goes a long way back. Back to when Toronto was still Muddy York. Wood was a magistrate. There was supposedly a rape, and the victim went to Wood to lodge a complaint. The young woman claimed that she didn’t know the identity of the man who attacked her, but that she scratched his privates while fending him off. Wood decided to personally inspect the genitals of the suspects — of which there seemed to be rather a large number. He also inspected very closely. Someone complained and soon rumours were flying that Wood had made the whole thing up as an excuse to fondle young men. He became the object of ridicule and scorn. Someone dubbed him ‘The Inspector General of Private Accounts’ and the nickname stuck like a piece of horse dung.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was persuaded to leave Upper Canada for a time to escape the scandal. He returned a few years later, but the old stories kept following him around. He owned this lot but he didn’t ever get around to building a house on it. It’s been known as ‘Molly Wood’s Bush’ ever since. Now have you figured out what a molly is?”
Luke felt slightly sick. He didn’t like the way this conversation was playing out.
“Anyway,” Perry went on, “he died a few years ago. He had no heirs, of course. So while the courts try to decide what’s to become of his property, his woods have become a favourite meeting place.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Luke had no intention of going anywhere near Molly Wood’s Bush. He didn’t want to meet anyone. He just wanted to go back to Dr. Christie’s house, sit in the office, and do his best to ignore Mul-Sack.
“I’m telling you because there’s something Lavinia wants me to find there. But I don’t know what it is.”
“What sort of something?”
“I don’t know. And neither does she. But she’s starting to get frantic about it. I’d tell her to go away and leave me alone, but I’m afraid she’ll carry tales to my father. She’s quite capable of doing something like that if she’s crossed.”
Luke felt so tense he thought some of his bones must soon crack. “What would your father do if she did?”
“Throw me out. Cut me off. Have me charged. I don’t know.”
“What do you mean charged? With what?”
Perry turned to look at him, astonished. “With sodomy, of course. It’s a hanging offence in this province. Hardly anyone is ever arrested, mind you, and even then no one has ever actually been executed for it. But there are a few who have been sent to jail. I can’t go to jail, Luke.”
“Would your father really do that?”
Perry flicked the reins and the carriage began to move again. “I wouldn’t put it past him. I’m not in very good favour as it is, and that would probably be the last straw.”
Luke couldn’t imagine his own father turning on him to such an extent. Thaddeus would show extreme displeasure, yes. Would refuse to ever speak with him again, quite probably. But have him arrested? But then Luke realized that he really had no idea how his father would react if he were ever to find out. He was nauseated just thinking about it.
“So,” Perry continued, “now you know why I need to keep Lavinia happy. I wish I could find what she wants, but I can’t.”
“What exactly did she ask you to do?”
“Have a look around Molly Wood’s Bush.”
“For what?”
Perry shrugged. “That’s the problem — she doesn’t know. She seems to think there’s something hidden there, but I’ve been all over that lot and there’s nothing but trees and bushes. Well, and men, of course, but I don’t think she’s interested in that.”
Luke was puzzled. Lavinia had an imperious manner that had set him on his guard from the beginning, but otherwise she seemed like any other well brought up lady, perfectly at ease with teas and dances and recitals. Was she even aware of her husband’s illegal activities? Most wives wouldn’t be. They were kept in the dark about their husbands’ financial dealings and business affairs, even in some cases the expense entailed in running their own households. But the more he thought about it, the more he was inclined to think that Perry was right, and that Lavinia Van Hansel was every bit as ruthless as her husband and would use whatever means she could to get what she wanted. She was obviously not above blackmail.
“Why is your father so eager to cultivate the Van Hansels?” he asked. “It can’t be that important to get you married off, can it?”
“No, although that would be a bonus,” Perry replied. “It’s because Phillip Van Hansel is becoming an important man. The old families don’t run Toronto anymore, you know. Things have changed. Men like Van Hansel are building empires. He controls a lot in the city, mainly through his connections with the Orange Lodge. Father’s smart enough to know that and he’s using me to curry a little favour.”
“But Van Hansel is a crook.” The words
came out of Luke’s mouth before he even stopped to think about it.
Perry seemed unsurprised by his outburst. “Of course he is. I know that. Father knows it, too. So does everyone at the lodge. Is that why you went running out the garden door that night? Because Van Hansel is a crook?”
“It’s a long story,” Luke said. And he had no intention of telling it to Perry. Or to anyone else for that matter. If Phillip Van Hansel was as powerful as Perry claimed, Luke and Thaddeus would be wise to stay well out of sight. Luke would have to find some way to deal with Lavinia’s persistence. After the first rebuffs, anyone else would have given him up as a lost cause, but she had gone to the extraordinary measure of appealing to Dr. Christie. Perry was right. There was something she wanted from Luke. He was determined not to give it to her.
Perry slowed the carriage as they approached the intersection of Tollgate Road and Yonge Street. There was a disturbance ahead, with vehicles stopped and people milling in the street.
“It looks like there’s been an accident of some sort,” Perry said.
“I wonder if I should see if anyone needs help.”
“Oh … I’d quite forgotten that you’re a doctor. By all means, gallop to the rescue. I’ll wait here.”
Luke hopped out of the carriage and made his way through the crowd. He had not brought his medical bag with him, so he knew that whatever help he could render would be rudimentary, but an unequipped doctor was still better than no doctor at all. But when he arrived at the scene of the commotion, he discovered that the cause of the holdup was a dead horse. It was a poor, skeletal beast hitched to a cart that carried a load of hay. It had apparently given up on life and fallen over just as the wagon reached the middle of the busy intersection. Two men were trying to remove the harness that still tethered the horse to the wagon.
There was nothing he could do for the horse and nothing that anyone could do about the bottleneck but wait until the obstruction was cleared. He turned and walked back to where Perry was waiting, intending to send him on his way. It was an easy walk from there to Christie’s, but a number of carts and buggies and wagons were jammed together in a line down Yonge Street, causing as much obstruction to traffic as the mishap ahead of them. Perry would be unable to turn the carriage until it cleared. Luke could scarcely walk off and leave him sitting there by himself. He would have to wait, too.
Just as he climbed up into the carriage, he happened to notice a rather handsome buggy a hundred feet or so down the street. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought it might be the same vehicle that Lavinia had been driving the day he rescued Cherub.
He was about to point it out to Perry, but suddenly decided against it. Even if it was the same buggy, he had no way of knowing if it was just happenstance that it was on the same road. It could be anyone from the Van Hansel household driving it. And even if it was no coincidence, and Lavinia had arranged to have he and Perry followed, he decided it didn’t really make any difference. He wasn’t going to have anything to do with any of them ever again.
They had to wait only a few minutes until traffic started to move again. As they went through the intersection, Luke saw that the horse had been carted away and the hay wagon pushed to the side of the road, awaiting another horse to complete its journey. He pretended he was studying it, so he could take a look behind him again, but the handsome buggy he had spotted was nowhere in sight. Maybe he was mistaken after all.
He directed Perry to Dr. Christie’s house and quickly climbed down when they reached it. “Thank you for the ride,” he said. He knew that Perry was expecting to be invited in. Good manners can go to the devil, Luke thought, and he tried not to notice the look of disappointment on Perry’s face when he was left sitting in his carriage.
Chapter 12
Thaddeus had worked his way through most of his circuit and was hoping to make it back to Christie’s for dinner, but the men’s class in Davisville ran far later than he anticipated and he arrived in Yorkville long after the household had retired for the night. He went straight up the stairs to Luke’s sitting room, intending to fall into bed immediately, but once he got his boots off he realized that he wasn’t in the least sleepy. He could light a lamp, he supposed, and read for a while, but he had neglected to grab a paper from the pile on the hall table and he was reluctant to risk waking someone by thumping down the stairs again. He could always read his Bible, but as he had long since memorized most of it there seemed little to be gained by reading it again. Eventually he pulled an armchair over to the open window and sat looking out at the deserted Yorkville street, a faint breeze blowing in to chase away the stuffiness of the room. As he watched a bank of low stratus cloud scud across the face of the moon, he wondered if Morgan Spicer was awake, as well, vigilant lest yet another grave be disturbed.
Thaddeus knew that there was a clue somewhere, a tiny piece of thread that he would have only to pull and the story would begin to unravel, but it was elusive, hiding out of sight. Maybe he could find it the next day in the city, but he would need to look carefully and consider everything.
Thaddeus was startled awake when a stray beam of sunlight flashed into his eyes. He had fallen asleep in the chair. Tentatively, he stretched his legs out. It wasn’t the first time he had slept upright in a chair, and certainly over the years he had nodded off in far more uncomfortable circumstances, but that was when he was young and limber, before accident and injury and age stiffened his muscles and ate at the strength of his bones. To his surprise, however, there was no twinge of pain as he moved. He felt marvellous. And he was ravenous.
Luke and Dr. Christie were already at the breakfast table.
“Mr. Lewis! Home again! Wonderful!” Christie said as he passed him the customary bowl of oatmeal.
“Successful circuit, I hope,” Luke said.
Thaddeus thought his son looked a little low, and wondered if there was a particular reason. “Fair to middling,” he replied. “Nobody at all in some places, picking up in others. What’s been happening here?”
“Oh, Luke has turned into quite the social butterfly,” Christie said. “In great demand at all the parties in the city.”
Thaddeus shot a glance at Luke, who signalled with a frown that they would have a private discussion later.
“Came home in a carriage, he did,” Christie went on. “Hobnobbing with the local gentry. A Biddulph, no less.”
Biddulph was a name that carried a fair degree of weight in Upper Canada. None of the Biddulphs had been members of the old Family Compact that once controlled nearly everything in the colony, but they had certainly been welcome in their drawing rooms. Lawyers and land speculators, Thaddeus seemed to recall. Advantageous marriages. Lucrative investments.
He was curious as to how his son had connected with someone like a Biddulph, but Luke’s frown seemed to indicate that there was more to the story, and that he didn’t particularly want Christie in his audience while he told it.
“Well, it’s nice to see that you’re making some friends,” he ventured.
“And helping the practice at the same time,” Christie crowed. “Good stuff, my lad, good stuff.”
“Any plans for today?” Luke asked his father.
“I thought I’d collect Morgan Spicer and take him with me into the city. I’m not optimistic that I’ll find any of the answers that I’m looking for, but I think it’s at least worth nosing around.” He turned to Christie. “Do you happen to know specifically where dissections are done?”
“In a rather squat two-storey building on Richmond Street,” Christie replied. “It’s part of the School of Anatomy. Go, by all means, but I somehow doubt anyone there will be inclined to talk to you.”
“What about the hospitals?”
“I think you can exclude the lying-in hospitals, as both of your corpses are male. That leaves the General Hospital and the Asylum. And the House of Industry, of course.” Christie stared thoughtfully at his bowl of oatmeal for a moment. “Any of those might be willing to confirm
that the gentlemen in question were patrons at some point, but I doubt they’d be willing to tell you much more than that. Might I offer my assistance in this? I have a contact or two who might be able to help. I could drop a note and ask for details. Better the request comes from a doctor, you see.”
“Or you could just come with us,” Thaddeus said.
“Oh no,” Christie protested. “Far too much to do here. Happy to help if it means writing a letter. Not keen on traipsing all over the city.”
Only then did Thaddeus recall the old doctor’s reluctance to travel any distance. It was why Luke was hired in the first place. However, it would be most helpful to have Christie make the inquiries, even if it was only by mail. “I’d be most obliged for any assistance you can offer.”
Christie beamed. “Consider it done.”
“I’d like to talk to the people at the African Methodist Chapel as well,” Thaddeus said. “That’s on Richmond Street too, isn’t it?”
“Do you think they’ll know anything about it?”
“Probably not,” Thaddeus admitted. “But I’m curious to see the church and I’ll be in the neighbourhood anyway. Would you like to come with us, Luke?”
“No, I’d better stay put,” Luke said. “Dr. Christie has been good enough to stand in for me on several occasions already.”
“I do have one request,” Christie said. “Should you happen to gain entry to the dissecting rooms, I’d appreciate it if you could keep an eye open for any interesting bones.”
Thaddeus nodded. “Yes, of course.” And then he dove into his oatmeal. He was starving.
Luke waylaid his father just as he was leaving to collect Morgan. Dr. Christie had once again disappeared into the back rooms of the house. Even so, Luke spoke in a low voice.
“Christie thinks it’s a wonderful thing that I’ve been taken up by the Van Hansels,” he said. “And he’s quite over the moon that I’ve met a Biddulph. I was quite prepared to ignore them all, but Mrs. Van Hansel sent an invitation for us both. I couldn’t get out of it gracefully. Fortunately, Hands wasn’t present.”
The Burying Ground Page 13