Marc slipped out of bed and into his study before seven the next morning. He wanted to write down what he had learned at Government House while it was still fresh. Outside his window, bobolinks and meadowlarks warbled the fields and gardens awake. About eight o’clock Charlene tapped on the door and brought in tea and toast. A little later he heard the two women preparing breakfast in the kitchen, chatting amiably as they did so. How far such easy domesticity seemed from the sordid and sad scene at Madame Renée’s: a girl’s blood spilled wantonly and death sudden and undeserved.
When Charlene tapped next, Marc assumed it was the call to breakfast proper. He was surprised when she announced that Constable Cobb had arrived. They had planned to meet at the police station at nine-thirty. He hurried out to the parlour, where Cobb stood fiddling with his truncheon and looking everywhere but at the women of the house.
Without ceremony he announced, “I got some news, Major.”
Cobb then sketched out for Marc the events up at the Tinker’s Dam and the almost certain sighting of the red-headed giant thereafter. Chief Constable Sturges had trotted up to Government House, roused Sir George Arthur from a warm bed, and persuaded him to dispatch a mounted troop to the Kingston Road in search of Badger.
Marc seemed more interested in the Tinker’s Dam than in the imminent capture of their key witness. “That was very good work up there last night,” he said. “You know, of course, what it means?”
“Yeah, we didn’t catch the bugger.” Cobb blushed, then glanced towards the kitchen where the two women had discreetly retired.
“It means two things. First, Badger turns out to be a reckless gambler in trouble with the toughs of the town, who was facing a deadline for repayment of his debts to them, which in turn means that Mrs. Burgess’s account of him and his recent behaviour has been essentially substantiated. So far we haven’t caught her or her girls in a single lie. For instance, I learned from Lord Durham last evening that the timeline of their story jibes with what Wakefield discovered at Spadina.”
Marc brought Cobb up to speed on that subject.
“You mentioned two things,” Cobb reminded Marc.
“The second is that we now have a chronological account of the entire evening, from the moment Ellice entered the whist game until you found him with a bloody dagger in his hand sometime after two in the morning.”
“And?” Cobb seemed more bemused by all this than impressed.
“We have ipso facto both the perpetrator of the deed, Badger, and his motives, money and revenge, along with a fair idea of who might have supplied him the blood money and escorted Ellice to the brotheclass="underline" one or more of the whist players. And we can easily infer what their motive was.”
“And you’re gonna see these gents at ten o’clock?”
“Precisely.”
They agreed to meet at the Cock and Bull at one. Cobb turned to go.
“What are you going to do this morning?” Marc asked at the door.
“I’m gonna dig up my snitches and put the word out on this Badger fella, in case he tries to sneak back into town. But with that head o’ hair and that size, he won’t be able to find a hidey-hole anywheres in this county.”
Cobb neglected to mention that he had other investigative plans of his own. The Major wasn’t the only one who could concoct a theory.
• • •
MARC SAT DOWN TO A HEARTY English breakfast. While Charlene was clearing up, Marc and Beth sat in the parlour discussing his visit to Government House the previous night. When he had completed his summary and followed up with his conspiracy theory, Beth nodded politely, then remarked, “I’m worried about that poor young man.”
“We all are, darling. That’s why we’re desperate to find the real killer.”
“He sounds like he’s about to lose his mind.”
“I think Lord Durham feels the same.”
“Then it won’t matter much who killed Sarah McConkey, will it?”
“No, but-”
“I feel I’m partly to blame for what happened. If I hadn’t got him to dance and start feeling comfortable with himself, he never would’ve gone into that card room and-”
“Beth, you must not blame yourself for this tragedy. Not in the least way. Handford Ellice is a grown man. He made the decision to go with a stranger to look for a woman.”
Beth let the admonition pass. “You said he’s hallucinating about stabbing me?”
“Yes, that’s what His Lordship told me. More exactly, he said that his nephew repeatedly fantasized pulling the knife out of your neck.”
Beth thought about that, then said, “I think they’re pouring too much laudanum into the boy. He’s got to come back to reality, not escape it by being drugged silly.”
“You may be right, but-”
“He needs to see me, in the flesh and alive.”
“You’re not thinking of going up there!”
“No, I’m not thinking about it at all. I’ve made up my mind to go.”
After much further debate with no change in outcome, Marc agreed to prepare the way for Beth to visit Handford Ellice that afternoon on condition that she not try to tell Dr. Withers how to practise medicine. He took her nod for consent.
The colloquy with the Earl of Durham, Her Majesty’s High Commissioner to British North America, took place in a comfortable meeting room in the east wing of Government House. Padded chairs surrounded a rectangular table of polished oak. A warm breeze billowed the curtains on the mullioned windows open now to the benevolent weather. Lord Durham sat at one end of the table, resplendent in his formal morning clothes and smiling at his guests, though a tightness at the edges of the mouth betrayed the tension he was feeling. The Tory gentlemen sat in pairs along either side, looking a bit nervous in the presence of such power and privilege but nonetheless confident in their cause and its ultimate preponderance. At the other end sat Robert Baldwin, son of Dr. William Baldwin of Spadina, and still a Reformer, if a somewhat tarnished one after his ambiguous role in the Rebellion. His expression was unreadable.
In one corner of the room, well away from the table, sat Charles Buller and Marc Edwards, pens poised. The only person in the room requiring an introduction was Marc. And Lord Durham proceeded to do that as the first order of business, having noted the puzzled and not unsuspicious glances of his Tory guests.
“I have asked one of your own to take notes and prepare minutes of our meeting in addition to my own secretary, Mr. Buller. This is Mr. Marc Edwards, formerly Lieutenant Edwards of the 23rd Regiment of Foot, now a permanent resident of the city and”-he paused until all eyes had returned to him and added-“a heroic combatant at St. Denis.”
While Marc was continually embarrassed by such references, he understood precisely why the wily earl had mentioned it. The Tory gentlemen-or whist players, as Marc thought of them-visibly relaxed and thereafter paid no attention to him.
Lord Durham opened the dialogue.
“Let me begin, gentlemen, by saying that there is not much about the conflicting political positions in Upper Canada that I do not know at secondhand. I have read every Report on Grievances, every written submission made to Parliament over the past three years, and a number of critical dispatches shown to me by the colonial secretary, Lord Glenelg. I have spoken at length with that distinguished gentleman and with his successor-designate, Lord John Russell. I have brought with me Edward Wakefield, the public servant who knows more about the colonies and colonial policy than any other man in England, in order to benefit from his advice. But there is no substitute for firsthand experience, for being able to listen to the very people whose lives are entangled in the issues and who reside in the disputed terrain, as it were.”
There was a murmur of assent here, and Marc noticed the whist players lean forward perceptibly, abandoning the detached air they had been feigning.
“However, what I need most at this point in my odyssey of reconciliation and reconstruction is not so much a reiteration of long-entrenched views and positions-though I promise to attend to these if you feel you have a particularly cogent or fresh perspective on them-as to hear your response to the proposals which I have been formulating as potential solutions to the province’s difficulties and the political stalemate it finds itself in.”