“I been on the road all day searchin’ fer my cousin,” Cobb explained. “I was hopin’ you could be of some help.”
“I see,” Bessie said, sitting down in one of the armchairs beside the fire – with much roiling and ruffling of cloth. She pointed to the chair opposite, and said with a chest-jiggling chuckle, “That’s as noble a reason as any for being abroad in this weather, but even Jesus got off his donkey once in a while to have his feet polished.”
Cobb unbuttoned Alfred’s expensive overcoat and sat down on the edge of the chair.
“Much better. Now tell Mother Jiggins all about your long lost cousin.”
Cobb gave her the full version of his much-practised cover-story. She listened with more than casual interest, throwing in a helpful “tut” or “hmn” from time to time.
“So you’ve tried half a dozen places along the way and nobody’s seen or heard a thing?” she said when Cobb sat back to catch his breath.
“That’s right, but I now have reason to think he might’ve got as far as The Cobourg Hotel or at least to The Pine Knot here.”
Bessie’s eyebrows furrowed. “I remember every soul who gets on and off Weller’s coach. The horses are changed here, so the stopover lasts long enough for the folks to enjoy the luxuries of my establishment.”
“I’m countin’ on that. Mr. Martin in Cobourg told me he saw a man who might’ve been my cousin Graves arrive to catch the Toronto-bound stage on Thursday mornin’ a week ago. He said the fella come in a cutter driven by yer man Brutus, so I figure he might’ve stayed here overnight fer some reason. Do you recollect any of this?”
“I find a glass of claret improves the memory,” Bessie said, glancing at the bottle on the table. “If you’ll take that coat all the way off, I’ll pour us a tumbler and bethink myself.”
“I guess it won’t hurt to stay fer a bit,” Cobb said as his stomach grumbled.
Bessie stood to fill both goblets and handed one to Cobb, now coatless and looking sharp in Alfred’s best suit. She sat down again. “Cheers!” she said, raising her glass.
“Cheers,” Cobb replied, took a mouthful of the surprisingly smooth claret, and then simply waited.
Bessie wiped her lips with a handkerchief she withdrew delicately from her cleavage, and responded at last to Cobb’s query. “A week ago Tuesday the stage from Kingston got here about five o’clock in the afternoon. On it was a Mr. Bracken and a skinny gent all bundled up like an Eskimo. They came inside to take refreshment, and I could see the skinny gent was looking peakèd. He took a little tea but it didn’t do him any good because he puked on my blue rug and fainted dead away. We got him to my best room, the one right across the hall beside the stairs, and I detected a high fever. The coach and Mr. Bracken had to go on without him – after they brought his suitcases in here. He moaned and groaned, poor devil, all the next day, sweating with the fever. But it finally broke on Wednesday evening about nine o’clock. Cass and I got some soup into him, but he kept saying he had to get to Toronto because he had a job waiting for him.”
“Then it must have been my cousin! He was due at Elmgrove estate last week.”
Bessie gave Cobb a self-satisfied smile, having spun her tale in such a way as to delay its climax as long as possible. “Indeed it was. He told us then that his name was Graves Chilton and he’d come all the way from England. He insisted he was well enough to travel and begged us to ferry him into Cobourg in time to catch the Thursday-morning stage before it left the hotel. Finally, we gave in, and Brutus drove him and his baggage there early the next morning.”
“An’ he had a real English accent?”
“He did.” She took another swig of her claret.
“This is gonna sound odd, Bessie,” Cobb said slowly, “but was my cousin bald-headed?”
Bessie chortled at that. “Not odd at all. A billiard ball’s got more bristles than that fellow had. I could’ve used his skull as a looking-glass on my vanity! Ask Brutus or Cass – they couldn’t help staring at it!”
At last, Cobb thought exultantly, the incontrovertible evidence he had been seeking all day. But his exultation was brief. If Brutus had delivered the real Graves Chilton to The Cobourg Hotel a week ago Thursday and the impostor had shown up at Port Hope fifteen miles to the west, then something had happened between Cobourg and Port Hope. Had Chilton, under some ruse, been lured off the coach. How could that happen in front of the other passengers who had got on at Cobourg? Perhaps the hapless Englishman had passed by some hut or cabin that the stage used as an emergency stop, and here the ambush and exchange had occurred. He wouldn’t be able to interview the coach-driver until late Monday, but there was one quicker way to get information about that journey. Seth Martin had told him that several local passengers had got on with Chilton at the hotel. And one of them, he remembered, was a girl with a club foot. Nine days had passed since then, so the odds were good that she or her relatives were now back in Cobourg. He could seek them out and, with luck, discover exactly when and where Graves the bald had been turned into Graves the hairy.
“I can’t stay fer supper,” Cobb said bravely, getting to his feet. “If my cousin Graves got as far as Cobourg last week, then he’s gotta be somewhere in Cobourg or Port Hope. I need to go back there right away.” Even so, he realized he would have only an hour or so left in the evening to locate and question those passengers who had travelled with the real Chilton from Cobourg.
“What can you do there tonight that you couldn’t do in the morning?” Bessie asked, keeping her blue-eyed gaze locked onto Cobb.
“I’m sorry, really, I am, but – ”
Cobb’s apology was cut short by a sharp bang from the direction of the kitchen. A door was being roughly slammed by the sound of it.
“That’ll be Brutus at the side door,” Bessie said, launching herself upright. “He’s finished with your horse, most likely.”
Brutus Glatt came to the archway and brushed aside the beaded curtains. What Cobb saw was a huge bear of a man with an ungainly, large head, ape-like brows, deep-set eyes with a feral glint in them, and enough facial hair to carpet Graves Chilton’s pate twice over.
“What is it?” Bessie said to him softly. Apparently she was accustomed to his arriving thus, unannounced.
A gargling noise, spittled and repulsive, erupted from his thick lips, and his hands began to jerk and spasm.
“He says your horse is knackered, Cobb. He’s fed him and bedded him down for the night.” She smiled at Brutus, and he backed out of the archway and shambled off towards the kitchen.
“He don’t talk?” Cobb said, puzzled.
“Got no tongue, poor devil,” Bessie said solemnly. “But he gets his meaning across just the same.” She grinned at Cobb and added, “And I think you ought to follow your horse’s example, don’t you?”
Cobb heaved a big sigh, as much in relief as resignation. Perhaps Bessie Jiggins was right. He was certainly exhausted and hungry. He could be back in Cobourg by daybreak, and start his inquiries there refreshed and mentally alert.
“All right, then, Mr. Cobb from Toronto, I’ll get Cass to serve us our supper, and have Brutus bring in your grip, if he hasn’t already done so.”
As if on cue, Cassandra poked her head through the curtains of the archway. “You ready fer supper, ma’am?”
“I am, dearie. Why don’t you grab a bite of your own in the kitchen, and then go on out to the taproom and tell those bumpkins to drink up and go on home to pester their long-suffering wives.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cass said meekly, and vanished.
Bessie winked at Cobb, and chuckled. “If they’re still able to pester anybody.”
***
Cobb managed two helpings of chicken and dumplings, and made no protest when a second bottle of claret appeared on the table as if by magic. He was pleasantly drowsy, and considered just closing his eyes and spending the night in the comfortable chair is this cosy chamber – with this warm, motherly woman somewhere at hand and on watch.
“I like a man with character in his face,” she was saying as she leaned across the table – with a generous rippling of cleavage – to refill his goblet. “You can have your fancy gentlemen with their pasty cheeks and button noses and weak chins. Give me a man with a Roman beak like yours, purple as a peony and proud as punch; with eyebrows you want to rub yourself against; with a chin that won’t take no for an answer! A man of substance and girth, eh?” As she enumerated Cobb’s peerless features, her amorous blue gaze – enhanced by five glasses of claret – lingered lovingly on each.
There was no other sound in the inn but their voices. Cassandra had eaten, turned out the tipplers, and departed. “She’s off home,” Bessie informed him, “to the wretched cabin her family squats in, unless one of her customers has other plans for her.” Brutus, it seemed, had his living-quarters in the barn near his belovèd horses. Ben would be in good, if wordless, hands.
“I don’t think I can stay awake a minute longer,” Cobb said, starting a second yawn before the first one had finished.
“It’s only eight o’clock, and it’s not every day I get to break bread with a true gentleman.”
“Just this one glass of wine, then, or you might haveta carry me to my bed.”
“Now, wouldn’t that be naughty?”
“You talk like a lady that’s been to school,” Cobb said, trying not to stare at the pink swell of her bosom and wishing to steer the conversation towards less perilous ports.
“Surprised, are you?” she said mischievously. “A lot of folks are.”
“An’ you run this place yerself?”
“Without a husband, you mean?”
“We don’t get many lady innkeepers in this part of the world.”
“Well, there hasn’t been a Mister Jiggins for over twenty years now. I’ve been on my own since I was twenty – though I don’t look a day over thirty, do I?”
“Not a minute more,” Cobb agreed willingly.
“And you’d never guess I was born and raised on a miserable homestead in the Ohio bush country. My folks came up there from Kentucky.” She paused as her eyes misted over, blew her nose into her handkerchief, and continued, while Cobb struggled to keep his eyes open and the fire in the hearth began to falter. “We got caught in the Indian wars down there, the savages against the bluecoats and the bluecoats against the redcoats.”
“So you had to move up here?”
“We had to flee up here with only the clothes on our back. The Shawnees burned our barns and torched our crops – all that was left of them, that is, after the so-called Yankee army marched past scouring for forage. I was just a toddler, but I can still hear those mad cries and whoops. Not that I blame the Shawnees any more, after what the civilized folk did to them first. So we had to flee to our neighbours, but it wasn’t long before a band of renegade Indians found all of us. My parents got me into the woods, where we hid and watched another barn go up. The next day, my father told me many years later, he crept back to our neighbours’ charred cabin. The Glatt family were charred with it, six of them. Only one survived, seven-year-old Brutus.”
“An’ he’d had his tongue cut out so he couldn’t tell what he’d seen?” Cobb said, suddenly awake.
Bessie finished off her wine and sat staring at the bottom of the empty goblet. “We brought him up here with us. We started over again along the Thames River. My parents saved enough to send me to school in Sandwich.”
“So, how’d you end up in the hotel business hundreds of miles east?”
“I married Howard Jiggins, that’s how. He was eighteen years older than me, he owned a store in Windsor, and he occupied a brick house with glass windows. Fortunately for me, he had the good sense to get himself killed whilst out slaughtering deer. I inherited the store, and a mortgage on the brick house. It’s a long story, but ten years later I put what money I had left into this place.” She sighed theatrically. “It, too, is mortgaged to the hilt, but still thriving, I’m proud to say.”
“An’ Brutus gets to care fer horses?”
Bessie beamed a smile at Cobb that suggested she had found him, despite the odds, as insightful as he was handsome. As groggy and disoriented as he felt, Cobb was able to beam a smile back at her.
“I gotta hit the sack before it hits me,” he sighed.
“Then I’ll put you up in the room across the hall, the one I save for visiting royalty and American presidents. It’s got a feather mattress and a genuine china chamber-pot.”
***
While some of the heat had migrated from the fireplace in the dining-area to his bedroom, Cobb could still see his breath as he struggled into the flannel nightshirt Macaulay had packed for him. His long underwear and wool socks remained in place. He felt a bit foolish putting on Alfred’s nightcap, but did so anyway. He could hear Bessie Jiggins clearing away the clutter in the kitchen. He decided he had better christen the china chamber-pot before collapsing under the thick comforter, and was fishing around in the dark for it when he heard a whispered female curse close by. He eased open his flimsy door, and peered out into the narrow hall.
Bessie was standing outside the door to her private quarters, bending over a candle she had placed on the floor. (As she had shown him to his room a few minutes earlier, she had given him a full description of the layout of The Pine Knot: the stairs beside his chamber led to a pair of rooms-to-let on the second floor; and at the far end of this hall she kept a sitting-room and a bedroom for her own use.)
“I stubbed my toe,” Bessie called out when she spied Cobb’s nightcap in the dark. “Sweet dreams, constable.”
Cobb said goodnight again, but something made him remain in the hall long enough to see Bessie reach down into her cleavage past the handkerchief there and draw out a metal object which, Cobb surmised, was attached to a chain or string around her neck. A treasured trinket of some sort? A family heirloom? A loving miniature of Howard Jiggins who had died so thoughtfully?
The answer came immediately as, using the glow from the candle, Bessie inserted the object into the lock on the door to her quarters. She unlocked it, dropped the key back into its haven between her breasts, picked up the candle, and disappeared inside. Well, Cobb thought, a lady with a figure like that and good grammar to boot could not be too careful.
***
Cobb was in the midst of a heavenly dream. It was one of those rare, absorbing dreams where you know you are dreaming and yet tempted to remain forever trapped in its sweet amnesia. He was naked. He knew it was him because the head and expression were his own. The body, however, was that of Adonis or Dionysus or Don Juan – all glistening limb and taut flesh. And this particular Cobb-Adonis lay cocooned in a cloud of swan’s feathers that soothed and titillated simultaneously. All this serenity and titillation was disturbed (though ever so soothingly) by something softer than swan’s-down, something he could feel but not see, easing up behind him as he lolled onto one side. Soon he could feel its presence along his shoulders and back and buttocks and thighs, a warm shadow moulding its form and curvature to his own, settling like a lover’s cloak all over him now, generating heat and prickles of light where it touched and tantalized and – oh, my! – what an erection Adonis was boasting . . .
“Oh, Dora, luv, I thought you was out on a call,” he heard himself say, and suddenly he was not so sure he ought to keep the dream going, there were other imperatives and obligations, and Dora wasn’t often in the mood of late. And then, as a set of female fingers closed upon the very instrument of passion, he knew it was time to awake – and do his duty.
He rolled over and wrapped his right arm around the ample, loving flesh of the fine woman he had married and remained faithful to all these years. He heard her moan breathily, and slid his hand down to squeeze her oh-so-generous rump and silky-soft thighs – only to find his fingers fondling a leg no bigger than a spindle. Jesus! He was entangled in the most compromising position possible with Bessie Jiggins!
He had just sucked in enough breath to
shout something – anything – that might break the death-grip she had on his erection when he realized that she was asleep. Deeply asleep, and snoring away like a sow with plugged nostrils. Evidently she had slipped in beside him with dishonourable intent, for her nightdress was bunched up around her throat, and she wore nothing else. Unfortunately (from her point of view) her own fatigue had seized her at the most inappropriate moment, and she had succumbed.
Cobb was now beginning to breathe more easily, and was soon able to disengage his reconnoitring fingers and bring them safely back to his side without interrupting the steady stutter of Bessie’s snoring. However, a more serious problem loomed: how to detach his stiff member from her grasp without jarring her awake or doing damage to its future performances. He squeezed his eyes shut, and commanded it to stand-at-ease, but Bessie’s fingers, on their own initiative, kept kneading their catch, and the heat radiating from her exposed, vulnerable flesh kept the treacherous thing rigidly alert. He cursed his own lusty nature. He thought about his sweet, innocent son and daughter. He pictured Constable Ewan Wilkie gorging a jam tart. At last he was pliant enough to pull slowly away and roll onto his back – completely detached.
Now he had to figure out a way to avoid a rematch. It was obvious he could not stay here. She was immovable and unlikely to abandon the hunt, should she wake up before morning. He would find some nook or other and bunk down there. What sort of excuse he could come up with for fleeing her charms he’d worry about later. He was still bone-weary, and the moon, high and bright in the eastern sky, indicated that the night had barely begun. Apparently Bessie hadn’t waited long before making her move. With extreme care he eased himself up to the side of the bed, cursing its slats as they squeaked and squawked. He made certain no blast of icy air disturbed her as he slid the comforter aside.
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