“Meanwhile, I’ve prepared the ground for you and me both to assess the character of the whist players.”
“You have?”
“After Wakefield’s report, I anticipated that we might need to examine these men, even if only to eliminate them from our suspicions. You said you’ve read the characters and relationships among the women of the brothel during your time there this afternoon. Well, I have invited Finney, Hepburn, O’Driscoll, and Harris to meet with me here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, ostensibly to have them offer advice to me and to be privy to some of my current thinking on potential solutions for the political problems in Upper Canada.”
“But won’t they be suspicious, especially if more than one is in on the game?”
Durham gave Marc a look that he must have used a hundred times in cabinet meetings just before revealing some particularly subtle piece of political deception. “I’ve also invited Robert Baldwin, son of the squire of Spadina and lifelong Reformer, to provide diversion and ballast.”
“But you said ‘both’ of us.”
“I did. You will bring your notebook and sit in a corner with Charles Buller, as my recording secretaries.”
“Two secretaries?”
“It’ll reinforce the importance I attach to their every word, eh?”
Marc was impressed. “So you’ll get to look these chaps in the eye while I observe unnoticed from the side?”
“Exactly. Moreover, I intend to invent some pretext for asking, casually you understand, about certain events in the card room last evening. We’ll test their responses and go from there.”
“I’ll be here, with notebook, before ten.”
“Good. I feel we’ve made real progress in just a few hours.”
“Thank you. Oh, one last matter: was there any further information from Dr. Withers about Sarah?”
“He submitted a copy of the written report prepared for Chief Sturges. There’s nothing new. She was stabbed once and fatally. There were no other wounds or even bruises. Interestingly enough, according to Withers, she had not been. . engaged, shall we say, during the evening. Poor Handford was so inebriated he must have doffed his clothes and then collapsed on the bed and fallen asleep.”
“It does sound as if he might have been drugged.”
Durham sighed. “You may be right. If so, your conspiracy theory gains credibility.”
Marc wished now he had checked the decanters on the sideboard at Madame Renée’s. It would be far too late to do so now. More likely, though, any drugging had taken place out at Spadina or en route to the brothel.
“Dr. Withers released the girl’s body to Mrs. Burgess and the undertaker late this afternoon. Apparently her own family has publicly disowned her.”
“Sadly, I believe that is so,” Marc said, “though I intend to verify it.”
Marc rose and the two men shook hands.
Outside it was now dark. Marc walked briskly towards Sherbourne Street and home. One of the cabs that had just started to patrol King Street slowed expectantly, but Marc waved it on. He was far too agitated to ride in style. He was not only in the midst of a murder investigation that might heavily influence the future of Upper Canada, he was about to be allowed entry to the inner sanctum of high-level politics. At ten o’clock tomorrow he would be privileged to watch one of the most brilliant public men of the post-war period in action.
Someone was jabbing Cobb in the ribs with a truncheon. But whenever he tried reaching for his own trusty instrument of justice, his arm froze in mid-reach and his ribs took another wincing blow. Cold panic twisted in his gut. .
“Dad! Wake up!”
Groggily, Cobb forced his eyelids open.
“You said to wake you up before dark, but we couldn’t get you to budge!”
Delia and Fabian stood beside his prone figure with expressions of bewilderment and irritation.
“Mom ain’t home, so it was only us,” Delia said, more in the way of defence than apology.
“It was Delia’s idea to use the soup ladle on your chest,” Fabian said.
“Missus Cobb’s been out all night?” Cobb sat up, trying to shake off the lethargy of deep and illicit sleep.
The children laughed. “It’s not morning, Dad. It’s about nine o’clock at night. We’ve been trying to wake you up for almost an hour.”
“Jumpin’ Jesus!”
The children recoiled, not so much at the expletive as at the daunting sight of their father clad only in cotton drawers that did little to prevent his paunch from greeting the world raw and unmitigated.
“Fetch my clothes! I gotta be up to Lot Street before dark!”
“It’s too late for that,” Fabian said.
Cobb found Constable Rossiter at his customary post, a nameless dive on Yonge Street near Lot. Rossiter had the northeast patrol and the distinction of policing the worst den of thieves and miscreants in the city. Where Irishtown was an unintentional slum inhabited mainly by fatherless families, the unemployed, and sundry others left stranded and friendless by mainstream society, it was blackguards and outright felons who populated the shacks and hovels grouped around the Tinker’s Dam along a straggling lane that ran off the corner of Lot and Jarvis. Cobb never went there alone at night, though he had often been compelled to join Rossiter (and once, a sheriff’s deputized posse) in search of men wanted for serious crimes. If they didn’t turn up their quarry on the initial sweep, there was no hope of getting anything truthful or helpful from the rest of the population.
Rossiter was not happy about having his backgammon interrupted but agreed to come when informed that this case was so important that Chief Sturges himself had offered to cover Cobb’s southeast patrol until it was solved. It was pitch-black by the time they turned onto the lane that led to the Tinker’s Dam. Rossiter had brought along a lantern, but Cobb refused to let him light it.
“We’ll nip along in the moonlight,” Cobb said. “Our only chance of catchin’ the bugger is to surprise him in the back room where there’s usually heavy bettin’ on the dice.”
“If they ain’t off in the fields watchin’ a cockfight,” Rossiter said.
They made their way cautiously along the lane, hands on truncheons just in case they were mistaken for ordinary citizens who had wandered in unawares. But no one accosted them. Several dogs barked ferociously from nearby outposts but chose discretion over valour. Up ahead a barn-like blotch of shadow against the moonlight, low from the east, signalled their proximity to the Tinker’s Dam. At the same time the burst of laughter and umbrage from its open doors and paneless windows struck the constables like the wall of a tidal wave.
“Well, they sure as hell won’t hear us comin’,” Rossiter said.
“You go ’round back,” Cobb directed. “There’s a door that opens up from the root cellar. Stand there with yer club at half-mast and rap the bugger on the noggin when he comes out. I’m goin’ in a-hollerin’ his name, and he’ll make like a ferret in a burrow.”
“Jesus, Cobb, be careful. They got knives in there, and pistols too.”
Cobb waved him to his post, then strode into the mêlée with his truncheon cocked. No one noticed. The light tossed up by the candles was uncertain and more camouflaging than revealing. The noise level among the tipplers-crowded half a dozen to a table-cum-tree stump or sandwiched along the raw plank that served as a bar and separated the throng from the barrels of whiskey behind it-was so deafening that Cobb could not detect his own bellowed threat: “Police! We’re here to arrest Michael Badger! Give him up now!”
Cobb prodded his way through the stench and smoke, but there was so much incidental elbowing going on that no one particularly noticed a jab from a constable’s truncheon. “Michael Badger! You’re under arrest!”
“What kinda whiskey did ya say?” the bartender shouted next to his ear.
Exasperated, Cobb pushed towards the door to the gambling den. Suddenly a large and very ugly man lurched in front of him. “Where the fuck do ya think yer goin’?”