Solemn Vows (Marc Edwards)

by Don Gutteridge

  “Did he have financial difficulties?”

  “No, he did not. He was still living comfortably on the money his father made for him and invested wisely back home.”

  “Then that leaves the, ah, personal aspect.”

  Contempt flashed again in Maxwell’s eye: “Did he have a bit on the side, you mean? Like, for example, the wife of a jealous husband, who, finding he could not compete with our dashing Monkee, paid a mercenary to vanquish his rival?”

  “I take your point.”

  “It is possible, of course, that he had a doxy of sorts he visited on each second Tuesday of the month—lots of men in this town do—but such women do not have jealous husbands or lovers. They’re bad for business.”

  “I agree.”

  Marc thanked Maxwell and rose to go. Jacques appeared at the door to show him out. When Marc looked back he saw the receiver general with the cigar clamped tight in his teeth and both hands gripping the arms of the chair—their knuckles white.

  MARC WALKED UP YORK STREET to King, passing several of the substantial homes of those who had prospered in a province that had doubled its population over a decade and in a city where fortunes could still be made in ways never dreamt of in the mother country. A recent dry spell after a rainy spring had left the town’s roads passable, especially those sections that had been well gravelled, but here and there puddles of watery mud—courtesy of a weekend shower—awaited the unwary walker. Drays and country wagons heading home from the Market Square in Old Town jostled for right-of-way, and weary teamsters urged their horses on with a lick and a heeya! Shoeless youngsters hooted and shrieked with laughter, their spirits undulled by a long day of labour (or its avoidance). Jauntily dressed chatelaines and ladies-in-training strolled along the intermittent boardwalk, holding their skirts above the muddy swirl, their bonnets fluttering in the late-afternoon breeze.

  Turning east on fashionable King Street, Marc passed a dozen or more elegant shops (by Toronto standards), several with multi-paned bow windows displaying wares tailored to the taste of the discriminating lady or gentleman. (Marc, of course, had seen the originals of these makeshift establishments in the metropolis at the centre of the Empire itself.) He touched his cap to several young women with whom he had danced at various official functions, but if they had not first smiled broadly (or coyly) at him, he would have been hard-pressed to recall their faces or names. Two of them, recent debutantes he thought, giggled and clutched their brand-new hats—purchased, he assumed, from the millinery shop near King and Yonge, the one Chastity Maxwell was supposed to be visiting.

  Out of curiosity Marc paused to look down the street towards the shop and was rewarded with the sight of Angeline Hartley, the governor’s wayward ward, emerging from its front door. She moved smartly towards a barouche, with its hood down, where the governor’s elderly coachman and a groom stood waiting with impassive rigidity. The latter helped her climb in and open her parasol. Chastity did not follow. Angeline was alone. The carriage lurched and sped away westward towards Government House.

  Marc continued eastwards, and as he passed the alley just beyond the millinery and the dry- goods store attached to it, he glimpsed, at the far end where it met the tradesman’s lane running behind the shops, a blur of taffeta and military red. Chastity and her illicit beau? Perhaps he should ask a few questions around Government House and the garrison on Mrs. Maxwell’s behalf, Marc thought. Ignatius Maxwell was reputed to have a quick temper and, as his good woman had remarked, he guarded his possessions jealously.

  As he crossed Yonge, barely avoiding an errant donkey-cart, it occurred to Marc that Colin Willoughby had come home very late in the evening several times in the past couple of weeks, yet in the morning he had not seemed hungover, or inclined to talk about the previous night’s exploits. Was it possible, then, that Colin had fallen in love? Perhaps, but he was still given to brooding, and even before the disturbing events at Danby’s Crossing, Marc had caught him glancing coldly at him for no apparent reason. If Colin was smitten by Chastity Maxwell, he may have chosen dangerously, though it was conceivable that the receiver general excluded pedigreed lieutenants from his caste of unsuitables.

  As he neared Church Street, Marc noted the imposing two- storey brick jail. Beside it, but set back about fifty feet from the street and encircled by green lawns, sat the matching court house. (Whether the single design had been chosen by the city fathers for reasons of frugality or a desire to make a public statement about justice in the colony was an open question.) Several carriages drawn by matched teams had pulled up in front of the court house and were busily discharging or collecting dark- suited barristers and solicitors—the backbone and principal prop of the ruling Family Compact. Somewhere nearby, in one of the many offices attached to the jail itself, Marc assumed, would be the modest quarters of the Toronto constabulary, and he wondered vaguely why he had been told to meet the constable with the arresting name of Horatio Cobb in a tavern. Had the man’s father read Hamlet, or had he been an admirer of Admiral Nelson, Marc wondered.

  Turning south on Church Street, he was soon at number fourteen, the building that had housed the infamous newspaper, the Colonial Advocate, for many years, and was now home to the even more presumptuous Constitution, both of them conceived and produced by the provincial firebrand, William Lyon Mackenzie.

  Three times this diminutive Scot with the orange wig had been thrown out of the Legislative Assembly, only to be re- elected immediately by the faithful constituents of York County. The frustrated scions of the Family Compact had dumped the Colonial Advocate’s type into Toronto Bay, but had still failed to stop its weekly invective. As soon as the aldermen and councillors of the new City of Toronto had been elected in 1834, they had chosen Mackenzie as their first mayor. He was, by general admission, the de facto leader of the Reform group on the political left, if not always its preferred choice as standard- bearer. He had helped write the Seventh Report on Grievances and had spent a year in England lobbying for the many reforms it recommended. He had come back in fighting trim to sit again in the Reform-dominated Assembly—recently dissolved by Head—and founded an even more radical organ.

  Marc studied the plain printer’s shop and the bookstore attached to it, whose small front window held a dozen neatly displayed, leather- bound tomes and the advertisement: “Latest titles from New York and London.” So this was the den of what, from several platforms, Sir Francis had termed “republican demagoguery.” It appeared to be both ordinary and respectable.

  But Marc had heard the firebrand at his volcanic best at the Cobourg town hall, where he had roused the crowd of farmers to righteous fury and where Marc, in spite of himself, had begun to see the justness of their cause. However the governor managed to shift the balance of forces in the upcoming election, it was imperative that the festering, legitimate grievances of the farmers, tradesmen, and labourers be dealt with immediately.

  “Well, well, I believe it’s Ensign Edwards, is it not, come to beard the mangy lion in his den!” Mackenzie stood in the open doorway, wiping ink from one of his hands on a smudged apron and thrusting the other out to greet Marc.

  “SO IT’S LIEUTENANT, NOW. CONGRATULATIONS.” Mackenzie smiled at Marc across the tiny, cluttered office with genuine warmth. From the adjoining room came the metallic sounds of compositors picking and setting type. A bluebottle fly batted against the window-glass half-heartedly in the heat.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I presume your promotion was entirely due to the small service you rendered me and the Reform party last winter in Cobourg?”

  Marc smiled, as he was expected to—pleased not only that Mackenzie remembered him but that he felt comfortable enough to tease him. Marc had been told that Mackenzie had a sharp sense of humour, observed less in latter years than when he had first come to the colony. Marc turned the subject to yesterday’s tragedy.

  “What do I make of it, you ask, beyond regret at the senseless death of a harmless old man?” Mac
kenzie said. “Well, lad, there are several ways of responding to that question, depending, I suppose, on who’s asking it and why. I infer from your presence here that the governor is concerned about the effect it might have upon the elections.”

  “That, of course, as well as the importance of finding the killer.”

  “Rumour has it that the shooter was an ex- patriot American with a grudge or an empty larder.”

  “Rumour is reasonably accurate, for a change.”

  It was Mackenzie’s turn to smile. Then his chiselled features took on a grave, almost sorrowful, cast. He brushed his wig back unconsciously with his right hand. “A rumour like that could do irreparable harm to the Reform cause in this election. As you know, the governor is stumping the constituencies and playing up the loyalty theme. The murder of one of his hand- picked councillors by a crazed democrat from the States would play to the paranoia out there and make credible the preposterous claim that the Yanks are mustering for imminent invasion.”

  “Which is why the governor wants this man found,” Marc insisted.

  Mackenzie gave Marc a narrow, appraising glance. “I think you do believe that, lad.”

  “But surely, sir, you see that, crazed or not, if this killer were hired, he could have been recruited by anyone with a reason to do away with Councillor Moncreiff—including someone from his own, ah—”

  “—class?”

  “Or party … which might suggest to the electorate that the Compact and the Tories do not have their own house in order.”

  “Yes, I do see.” Mackenzie began drumming his fingers on the desk, rustling the papers scattered there. “Are you sure you’ve chosen the right profession, Lieutenant?”

  “What I am leading towards, sir, is the question of who might have reason to have Councillor Moncreiff assassinated?”

  “Well, then, I’ll save you and Sir Francis some time by stating here and now and unequivocally that no one in the Reform party and no one remotely interested in its welfare would have hired an assassin or shot the old fellow himself.”

  “But there must have been resentment and some bitterness among Reformers when Sir Francis replaced the protesting councillors with even more unpalatable members? Could a Reform sympathizer, albeit temporarily deranged, have hired an assassin to publicly eliminate one of those new councillors, as a message or a warning to the governor himself?”

  Mackenzie gave the question some thought. “Deranged he would have to be, but, yes, it is possible. However, in such a case, Moncreiff could only have been a symbolic target. The old codger had no status as a politician or as a mover and shaker. Remember that Ignatius Maxwell was seated on the same bench as Moncreiff, according to the eyewitness reports my compositors are just now setting to type. If the motive were practical revenge, then that grasping fraud would have been singled out, not Moncreiff.”

  Marc shuddered. How many of the spectators present at Danby’s Crossing yesterday had already relayed their biased accounts of the events there to the radical press? But if Mackenzie had heard details of Crazy Dan’s death at the hands of a less than competent British troop, he had decided not to bring it up. Or perhaps the complicity of Alvin Chambers, one of their own, had given the farmers some pause before spreading the story abroad. But the details, twisted beyond all recognition, would come out eventually and the governor’s crude attempt to smooth over their ugliness would soon become part of the campaign rhetoric.

  Emerging from his momentary reverie, Marc said, “I think you’re implying that the ‘message’ was more likely intended for Sir Francis?”

  Mackenzie appeared shocked. “If that is so, then it is profoundly regrettable. The lieutenant- governor is the representative of the Crown.”

  Marc hesitated, took a deep breath, and said quietly, “But you are accused everywhere, even by some of your own supporters, of being an ardent republican.”

  Mackenzie smiled wryly. “Thank you for the ‘ardent.’ That I am. But if you were to read the many back issues of my Colonial Advocate, you would see that I have been from the outset a champion of responsible government—whatever form it must take in the particular circumstances of British North America. And even if that form turns out to be republican in nature, it would not necessarily mean any irrevocable break from the mother country. I have admired people like Edmund Burke and David Hume all my life. What we have begged for and then demanded in Upper Canada is that the executive of our government be chosen representatively from members of the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly, and that they be accountable in turn to those bodies.”

  “But where does that leave the governor?”

  “It leaves him in the position of vice-regal. For example, to whom is the prime minister and cabinet of Great Britain responsible?”

  “To Parliament.”

  “Precisely—and not to King William. But does that arrangement diminish the traditional and residual authority of the monarch? Not a whit. It’s called a constitutional monarchy, and is a uniquely British configuration. That is all we have ever asked for.”

  “But if the governor could not govern under instruction from the colonial secretary, this province would become a country of its own.”

  “Something like that, eventually and all in good time,” Mackenzie said, somewhat bemused by the drift of the conversation. “And if we are refused that, then … well, an independent republic is always possible.”

  And revolution, thought Marc.

  “At any rate, Lieutenant, you do see that it is in the interest of my party to have this assassin tracked down and the truth revealed. You have my word that if I hear—from my innumerable sources—any news of this person or any snippet of gossip pertaining to the tragedy, I will inform you personally.”

  “Thank you. There is one other thing, sir—the delicate matter of whether Councillor Moncreiff may have had some, ah, personal difficulties—”

  Mackenzie chortled. “Sexual intrigue and all that? Low behaviour among the high and mighty?”

  “Something of that sort, yes. Naturally his family may be reluctant to discuss such indelicacies, so I was wondering if you, as a journalist, one-time mayor, and long-time resident of the city, if you—”

  “Had heard any gossip too salacious to print?”

  Marc merely nodded.

  “Not a whisper, and I’ve heard plenty over the years, most of it true, alas. That brother-in-law of his, now there’s a man with a peripatetic codpiece, a roué by any other name. But not Langdon Moncreiff.”

  Marc’s surprise showed. “The receiver general? But his wife just assured me he was very possessive.”

  “As he is. Of her and all his chattel. But especially of her, as it is still her daddy’s money propping up that hypocritical façade and Daddy’s power in the Compact keeping Maxwell in office. One where graft, nepotism, and corruption are the norm, I might add.” Mackenzie looked sadly at Marc in his bright uniform, the feathered shako cap resting confidently in his youthful hands. “You are still young enough, perhaps, not to realize that the innocent perish more often and more tragically than the wicked.”

  Marc thought of Crazy Dan but said only, “Thank you, again.”

  They shook hands.

  At the door of the shop, Mackenzie said, “As a party, we are confident that all the legitimate political and legal means still at our disposal will be sufficient to see justice prevail.”

  Suddenly Marc turned and said, “By the way, the governor made a special request of me when he learned I was coming here.”

  “And we all know the nature of a governor’s ‘requests,’ don’t we? What is it, lad?”

  “Sir Francis is eager to know the name of the correspondent in the Constitution who signs himself Farmer’s Friend.”

  “Is he, now?”

  “He is interested in the stories he tells, despite their implied criticism. He wishes to speak with this person, as he feels such an encounter might be of great benefit to him as he ponders just how to proceed wi
th the grievances.”

  “I’ll bet he does.”

  “Is that a no, sir?”

  “Lieutenant, I would not reveal the name of a pseudonymous correspondent to King William himself. But you can advise the governor that I do indeed know the writer and that his contributions to the Constitution are both authentic and voluntary. As such they may be of benefit to him and the future health of the province.”

  “I’ll do that, sir. Thank you for your candour. I expected nothing less.”

  “Good luck with your investigation.”

  And it looked to Marc as if luck would be sorely needed.

  SIX

  After returning briefly to his boarding house to bathe, change his linen, and shave, Marc walked to Yonge and Bay, where, as a nearby church bell chimed six times, he pushed his way into the smoky premises of the Crooked Anchor. At the bar, amid the din and wonderfully variegated stink of the place, he had the tapster point out the small figure of a man seated at a table and hunched over a flagon of ale and a plate of trout and onions. When Marc sat down opposite, he looked up, one cheek still plugged with a forkful of supper.

  “Constable Cobb?”

  “Who would like to know?” Cobb swallowed his mouthful without removing his eyes from the intruder.

  “I’m Lieutenant Edwards. Governor Head has arranged, through your superior, for you to assist me in the investigation of the murder of Langdon Moncreiff.”

  Cobb continued forking his supper upwards as if he were pitching hay into a needy manger. In the silence, Marc sized up the man who looked as if he were more likely to fumble the investigation than help it. Cobb reminded Marc of one of Shakespeare’s clowns, several of whom he had seen in Drury Lane: Bardolph or Dogberry, perhaps. His nose met you first, a jutting cherry- red proboscis with a single wart on its left side. Set deep within their sockets, Cobb’s eyes were tiny, dark, and hard. The hair, which apparently had never seen a brush and seldom a bar of soap, stood up starkly wherever a finger or palm had skidded through it. Cobb could not have been much more than five feet, but the thick knuckles and muscled neck suggested a powerful physique. Marc noted the navy- blue coat and trousers that passed for a uniform among Toronto’s upstart constabulary, this version festooned with dried egg and congealed grease. A stiff helmet lay perilously close to the supper plate. Cobb might have been anywhere between twenty- five and forty years of age: he gave the impression that he was born looking like this.