“You still figure Badger was involved somehow?”
“I’m saying that if he did actually commit the murder, he would have had some reason beyond petty revenge or simple robbery. He apparently needed cash, a lot of it, but certainly more than he was likely to find lying about the brothel. Where could he get that kind of money?”
Thinking out loud, Marc continued, the rush of his words matching a military stride that left Cobb puffing in his wake. “Yesterday morning he was caught unawares by Mrs. Burgess’s ultimatum. Let’s say that someone from the city who wished to scupper Lord Durham’s mission had been dangling monetary bait before him in anticipation of doing just that. At first he had refused, out of perverse loyalty to the woman he was fleecing or out of simple discretion. Suddenly he is desperate for money, fearing perhaps for his own life. So he decides to take on the nefarious task.
“His co-conspirator-the man behind the plan-is emboldened to implement a scheme he has been contemplating for some time. He will know all about the troubled nephew from his counterparts among the Tories in Quebec. He will know that the sexual scandals still clinging to Edward Wakefield and Thomas Turton will make Lord Durham vulnerable to any further disgrace of that sort. He helps get young Ellice drunk, lures him away from the gala, and leads him directly to that scarlet door. Badger is hiding nearby.
“At the right moment-he’ll know the routine of the house-he sneaks in through the booby-hatch, as Miss Garnet called it. Perhaps he was meant merely to injure Sarah-it could have been any one of the girls, remember, as he couldn’t know whose turn it would be-but some fit of rage at Mrs. Burgess grips him as he slips the knife out from the hiding place he knows well, and he drives it into the helpless victim’s neck, killing her instantly.”
Cobb did not offer a comment on this sustained peroration until they had turned south on Yonge Street. “I c’n follow all that, Major, but there’s just a coupla things I don’t see yet.”
“Oh?”
“How would some fancy-pants toff get to know and conspire with the likes of Michael Badger?”
“Quite easily. We know that Ellice’s escort used the code when knocking to gain admittance. He was or had been a regular. As such, he may have had plenty of opportunity to get to know the bruiser of Madame Renée’s and sound him out about his plan to sabotage Lord Durham’s vital work here in the Canadas.”
“That’s possible, Major, but a bit far-fletched fer my likin’.”
“You’re willing to accept that it is pure coincidence that Handford Ellice has become the target of someone’s malice?”
“Seems to me the girl Sarah was the target.”
“Of course. But why put the knife in Ellice’s hand? Surely being found beside a prostitute with a dagger still in her throat would have been sufficient to implicate him.”
“Though Ellice probably would’ve blamed one of the inmates or else skedaddled without anybody knowin’ who he was.”
“Exactly. The frame-up had to be foolproof, didn’t it? He had to be found comatose with the bloody weapon in his hand. Somebody wanted Ellice to be charged, in the least, with felonious assault, and to be put in jail here to await trial. As he is likely to be very soon. See what a bind that puts His Lordship in? With that knife in his grip, Ellice could not claim to be a victim of circumstances, however sordid.”
“I agree, but that just makes my second question all the harder to answer.”
“I forgot you had another doubt.”
“How did that knife get into the lad’s hand, the right hand that was next to the girl, without the true murderer gettin’ blood on himself and trackin’ it to the hatch or inta the ladies’ half of the house? Doc Withers told me the knife cut through the big vein in Sarah’s throat. He said the blood wouldn’t spurt, but kinda gush-like a pig’s throat when it’s first slit. If the killer pulled out the knife and then had to reach across the body in the dark to find the lad’s right hand, he’d get blood on him, wouldn’t he?”
“True, but he could have pulled it out and edged around to the other side of the bed, as you did apparently, then reach over from that side to plant the knife.”
“But you ferget, I had a lantern. There was only a stub of candle in the room. You figure the killer, with Ellice breathin’ there three feet away, is gonna go stumblin’ around in the dark-without gettin’ some blood on him or rousin’ the lad?”
“I think you’re likely correct in that assumption. That’s a part of the mystery I can’t quite work out yet. But as soon as Ellice is recovered from his shock, he may be able to shed light on it.”
“There’s another likelihood you gotta consider, Major.”
“And what is that, pray tell?”
“That Mr. Ellice did it himself.”
Foot-weary as he was after a night patrol, four hours’ restless sleep, and an emotionally charged interrogation, Cobb dutifully turned into the police quarters at the rear of the Court House on the corner of King and Church Streets. It was near suppertime and Gussie French was just about to tidy his desk when he looked up to see Cobb enter. He groaned.
“Get yer quill quilled, Gussie,” Cobb said. “We got work to do.”
French slumped unhappily over his desk while Cobb dictated a summary of what he and Marc thought they had learned, minus any high-blown theories. To further irritate the clerk, Cobb pulled out his notebook and pretended to be reading from it. Cobb had long ago gauged the velocity of Gussie’s pen over paper to the second, and hence was able to dictate just fast enough to infuriate him without actually bringing the business to an ink-blotted halt. Cobb’s words reached the page in a barely legible scrawl.
Cobb finished at last, snapped his blank notebook shut, then whirled and walked out, leaving the door open long enough to permit a platoon of flies easy entrance. Behind him he heard a series of slapping sounds, the clatter of falling objects, and a string of vituperative oaths. Cobb whistled all the way home.
Cobb’s house was situated near the edge of town on Parliament Street just below King. From his back yard he could see the smokestacks of the brewery and distillery down by the Don River and watch the slow churning of the gigantic Dutch windmill on its promontory above the lake. Dora, bless her, kept a neat cottage inside and out. Cobb paused to admire the unknown flowering shrubs beside the front walk (“I don’t haveta know their names to like their looks,” he had argued on more than one occasion). He could hear his son, Fabian, hoeing in the vegetable garden out back. Fabian must be ten years old by now, or was it still nine? Feeling enervated but otherwise at peace with the warm spring evening and an honest day’s work behind him, Cobb entered his castle and called out for Dora.
Delia popped her pretty blond head out of the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Where’s Missus Cobb?” he demanded, suddenly irritable.
“Mom’s gone off on a call. I’ve got supper here whenever you’re ready.” Like her mother, eleven-year-old Delia had learned to ignore his mood if acknowledging it would inconvenience her. It was maddening.
“Why must women do their whatchamacallems at suppertime? Yer mother’s place is here. In her home. Lookin’ after her children.”
“It’s venison stew,” Delia warbled, and ducked back into the kitchen.
Cobb realized that he wanted to unburden himself at the end of a day like the one he had just endured. But even if Dora had been home, he knew that he would have been allowed to do so only if she’d granted him special dispensation. For they had a code, strictly adhered to, never to burden the other with sad tales from their different but equally troublous professions-unless by mutual consent. While Cobb assented to this arrangement (he had been given little choice), he felt it to be inherently unfair, for he bridled and blushed and squirmed at any description of matters to do with female plumbing, while she could be quite unmoved by accounts of the fistfights and blasphemies of drunks.