Cobb had waited in vain for the man to calm down, hoping to question him and even drawing out the notebook he carried to jot down items he might fail to remember. His memory, however, was usually quicker and more reliable than his handwriting, so he was content to carry information in his head and, when he returned to the station, to dictate it to Augustus French, the police clerk. But the only word the trembling fellow had uttered in the past fifteen minutes was something resembling “awful,” and even that was garbled and hesitant. Madame Renée sat a few feet away, staring at him. Cobb could sense that she too was on the verge of crumbling. Dr. Withers had suggested sedatives all ’round, but Cobb had waved him to the victim’s room.
As soon as the doctor disappeared down the hallway, Cobb had decided to accelerate the proceedings. He unwrapped the dagger, which he set on one of the end tables, and held it up into the candlelight before the killer. “This is what you stuck inta that poor lass’s throat,” he snarled.
The man had yelped, as if he too had been stabbed, leapt up, and staggered over to the chair near the stove. Without looking up, he moaned, and this time the words were clear: “I d-d-didn’t mean to.”
Cobb had turned away in disgust. So here they sat, the three of them, waiting for the doctor to confirm the obvious and, in Cobb’s case, listening for the arrival of the chief constable. The wood in the stove crackled like gunshot.
Cobb suddenly thought of a use for his notebook. He turned to Madame Renée.
“What was the young lady’s full name again?”
“Sarah McConkey.”
“And the others?”
“Molly Mason, Carrie Garnet, and Frieda Smiley.”
Cobb gave a little cough and said, “And your name, ma’am?”
A wee smile trembled at the corners of Madame Renée’s mouth. “Norah Burgess,” she said. “Just plain Norah Burgess. Madame Renée is my. . professional appellation.”
Cobb nodded sagely. “Yer sober-ket, I take it.” He scribbled down all the names, content with phonetic approximations. Gussie French could tidy up the spelling, and enjoy himself in the process.
“Do you know where Sarah’s from? Who her parents are?”
Norah Burgess grimaced. “I do. But I doubt they’ll give a damn about what’s happened here.” She spat out these words, then added tonelessly, “They live on a farm out near Streetsville.”
“Sarah and them didn’t get along?”
“They threw her out on the street. Disowned her. It was me who took her in when no one else would. She was beautiful and sweet. They didn’t deserve her.”
“They’ll have to be told, all the same,” Cobb said gently. “Do you know where we can find them? They may want to make the arrangements.”
Norah’s face darkened, its pleasant, plump contours suddenly hardening. “I’m gonna give her a proper burial. Up in the town. I won’t have her body dumped into some pauper’s grave.”
“Well, ma’am, her soul’s elsewhere now.”
“With God,” Norah said, with a touch more bitterness than gratitude.
Cobb wasn’t sure there were harems in heaven, so refrained from comment.
“We’re ruined, you know, Constable. What gentleman would come here now with such a scandal about the place?” She looked around at her handiwork. “We’ll have to cater to drunken sailors with the clap and no manners.”
Just then Dr. Withers emerged from the bedroom. He glanced fiercely at the perpetrator of the outrage he had just scrutinized. The killer, however, remained oblivious, rocking on the edge of his chair with both arms locked around his chest and his chin on top of them, the rose-petalled dressing gown still draped preposterously over his pathetically thin body. He was white enough to intimidate a ghost.
“She was stabbed once in the throat with a thin blade,” the doctor said to Cobb and Norah Burgess. Cobb indicated the bloody weapon on the end table.
“A single powerful thrust. Straight in, then twisted about. Cut the jugular in two by the looks of it. Then kept on going through the neck, severing the spine, I’d say. Certainly there was no resistance, no spasming of the body. Very likely she was in a sound sleep and died instantly.” He looked at Norah Burgess. “Without pain.”
“I think you oughta have a gander at the fella here who did it. I can’t get a sensible word outta him.”
“Shock,” Withers said. “It does that to people.”
“But the fella was sound asleep and snorin’ like a spent horse when I got here,” Cobb said. “How could he stab a helpless girl to death with such a blow and then drift off like nothin’d happened?”
“Perhaps he did it in his sleep,” Withers suggested. “It wouldn’t be the first time.” With that he went over to the fellow, stayed the rocking, catatonic figure with one gentle hand, and very slowly lifted the chin up to expose the wan face and desperate eyes, feral with fear.
“I’m going to give you something to drink, young man: tincture of laudanum. It’ll calm your nerves.”
Outside the door they could hear footsteps and voices. Cobb recognized the cockney semitones of his superior: reinforcements had arrived. But most of the work here, Cobb thought to himself with restrained pride, had already been done-and done well.
“My God!” Withers cried. “I know this man.”
Cobb reached for his notebook. The final piece of the puzzle was about to fall into place. There was a timely pounding on the scarlet door.
“Who is he?” Cobb asked quickly of the doctor.
“I saw him at the gala out at Spadina not three hours ago. At the whist table.”
There was a flicker of recognition in the murderer’s face.
Norah Burgess stood to unbar the door.
Dr. Withers drew Cobb to one side and said in a low, tremulous whisper, “This is Handford Ellice, Lord Durham’s nephew.”
Cobb dropped his notebook.
FOUR
Marc was taking his first sip of coffee at ten o’clock the next morning when there was a loud rap at the front door. Beth was still pleasurably abed, but Charlene scooted across the parlour to answer the knock. Seconds later she came through to the kitchen.
“It’s the police,” she gasped, awestruck.
Marc got up. He could hear Beth stirring behind him in their bedroom. “All of them?” he asked Charlene with a teasing smile.
“Just one. A large fella who looks like he could use a good pressin’,” Charlene said, obviously relieved by her master’s reaction.
“Wilkie, then.”
And Constable Ewan Wilkie it was, rumpled and pale. “They routed me outta my sickbed, sir,” he began without ceremony.
“What’s happened to occasion such a catastrophe?”
Wilkie blinked. “There’s been a murder, sir. On my patrol.”
“And it concerns me somehow?”
“In a way, sir. Some bigwig stabbed a”-here he lowered his voice and whispered-“a hooer, if you’ll pardon my French. In Irishtown.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“What is it, Marc dear?” Beth had come up behind them, pulling her robe close.
Wilkie blushed and ducked sideways.
“There’s been a murder,” Marc said.
“And you’re to go to the station and then on up to Government House,” Wilkie said to the rosebush beside the stoop.
“But what is wanted of me?” Marc asked again, genuinely puzzled.
“It’s His Earlship, sir.”
“Lord Durham?”
“He’s asked particularly fer you.”
Cobb and Sarge-as Chief Constable Wilfrid Sturges was affectionately called when he was out of earshot-were waiting for Marc at the police quarters: two cramped rooms at the rear of the Court House and directly across from the jail adjacent. Gussie French, the desiccated clerk, was seated behind the constables scribbling furiously at official-looking papers.