Marc sat down at last. It was all coming unravelled. He could see no way to challenge Hepburn’s devious account, especially if the notarized documents existed and Una Badger became his unwitting corroborator.
“I know you and your wife gave Mr. Ellice a ride to town, and I know you led him down to the brothel. And I’m equally certain that your whist-playing chums are co-conspirators. I am deeply grieved that, for the moment, I cannot prove these things. But I am warning you that I will not stop trying.”
“You cannot prove what did not happen.”
Marc sighed. “What still baffles me, though, is why your wife would lie for you. Perhaps when the grisly facts of what happened at Madame Renée’s come out, as they must, she will change her mind.”
Hepburn’s withering look said, Don’t count on it.
Suddenly Marc had another inspiration. “I think I can guess why she lied for you. I’ll wager she knows all about your addiction to the girls at Madame Renée’s, a squalid obsession that could potentially ruin your standing in the community. You’re a banker and a pillar of your church and, alas, an habitué of Irishtown stews.” For a split second Hepburn looked abashed. Marc pressed his advantage. “She is probably ashamed and afraid. I pity her,” he said, without pity.
“Are you quite finished? If so, I have grieving of my own to do.”
Marc showed himself out.
FOURTEEN
When Marc reached the station, he found only Gussie French scribbling frantically at his table, heedless of spattering ink and ravenous flies. “Has Cobb come back?”
“Gone off home,” Gussie muttered without dropping a stitch. “Lucky bugger.”
“And Sarge?”
Gussie appended an extra period for emphasis to the sentence he had just finished, and looked up. “Chief Sturges went off to find Sir George and tell him to call off the fox hunt.” He nudged a sheet of paper with the feathered end of his quill. “Cobb left you that,” he said, and resumed scribbling.
Gussie had taken down from Cobb a summary of Angus Withers’s comments after he’d examined the body of Michael Badger in the ditch where it lay. The bullet appeared to have entered the chest in a slightly upward trajectory. The shooter must have been shorter than Badger. The lead ball had struck bone-a rib or vertebra-and thus had barely exited the body: Withers found its misshapen remnant in Badger’s shirt. He concluded from its size and the probable force of the entry that it came from a small-bore pistol, the kind easily concealed and deadly only at close range. The debris found on the victim’s shirt front included gunpowder, bits of grass, and wisps of dry straw. Thirty dollars had been wadded in one of his pockets. Estimated time of death: between one and four in the morning.
That was it. Not a lot, but Marc found himself unable to care very much. The interview with Alasdair Hepburn had left him angry, confused, and ultimately drained of emotion. He knew he ought to feel at least some sense of triumph in that Michael Badger-on the strength of the key he was carrying and the motive supplied by Mrs. Burgess (with intent to rob possibly thrown in)-would be fingered for the murder. There would be no trial, nor any need for anyone to know or care who the aristocratic stranger was. Handford Ellice could be released to accompany Lord and Lady Durham back to Quebec tomorrow. Sure, rumours would circulate and fester, though Marc doubted whether Hepburn himself would be the source: that spiteful sword could prove to be double-edged. But a public scandal would definitely be averted. Still, Marc did not feel in the least triumphant.
He decided to leave a note for Chief Sturges explaining why he had taken the letter from Badger’s body and admitting reluctantly that it had turned out to be innocent and unrelated to either murder. He took a step towards the door of the chief’s office.
“I wouldn’t go in there if I was you,” Gussie cautioned.
“I thought you said Sturges was out.”
“He is. But there’s a female in there, waitin’.”
Marc had no choice but to conduct one more interview. He opened the door carefully and sat with Una for a moment before asking her to tell him about her brother.
“Michael was ten years younger than me,” Una Badger explained. She dabbed at her eyes with Marc’s handkerchief. “Our mother died when he was six, so it was me who raised him and looked out for him. I knew him, Mr. Edwards, as a mother knows her own child. I knew his good points and his bad ones-and he had plenty of both.”
Una confirmed the essential details of Hepburn’s story. Badger did have some sort of arrangement with his employer to help him hold on to his earnings. While she did not know for sure, she assumed the note she had taken from Michael and delivered to Hepburn on Tuesday was connected with that arrangement. And, yes, Mr. Hepburn had been very kind to Michael, despite his gruff manner and quick temper. He had tried to dissuade him from his gambling and binge drinking, but had always taken him back regardless and given him work. In fact, a makeshift bunkhouse had been set up in one of the unused barns at the back of the property so that he would always have a place to sleep, day or night. But he had not used it to hide out on Tuesday or yesterday. She had checked it many times.
“So your brother would have confided in you?” Marc said.
“About some things, yes.”
“Mr. Hepburn told me that he noticed some change in Michael after the new year.”
“That’s so. Michael came and told me that he was twenty-five and it was time for him to do something decent with his life. He talked about going away to the States, far from his cronies and the habits he couldn’t seem to break.”
“For which he would need to earn money and not gamble it away.”
“Yes. And he tried, Mr. Edwards. Only God and I know how hard he tried. And now he’s dead, shot by those terrible men-”
She sobbed into Marc’s hanky.
“I’m sorry, but it all seems so unfair. He stopped drinking, he really did. Mr. Hepburn gave him work making shelves and cupboards for his new library. I tried to talk him out of being a bruiser in Irishtown, but he said the money was too good and, besides, he liked being there. When he come here on Tuesday, I knew something horrible had happened to him, but I thought, He’s going to get away now because he has to: not to our cousins in Port Sarnia but all the way across the border where he’ll be safe from his demons and be happy.”
Marc reached across the chief’s desk and laid a hand gently on hers. “But we were told that Michael had run up more gambling debts in recent weeks. He may have been saving his money at home, but he was issuing paper promises up at the Tinker’s Dam.”
Una merely nodded. Then through a screen of tears, she said, “I knew he couldn’t stay away from that place as long as he lived in the city and as long as he had ready cash from that madam woman. But I swear, Mr. Edwards, it was only two or three binges: most of the time since January he was sober and working-for Mr. Hepburn or in Irishtown.”
“Unfortunately, he had a serious falling out with Mrs. Burgess on Monday. He owed her a lot of money. We found on him a key to a secret door in the brothel, and you and Mr. Hepburn have confirmed that he came for money ostensibly to leave town. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but the police are going to name him as the murderer of Sarah McConkey.”
The shock of this revelation registered on Una Badger’s face and was slowly absorbed. Then she straightened her back and stared directly into Marc’s eyes.
“Mr. Edwards, Michael Badger was a gentle man. He never swatted a fly if he could avoid it. I know. I watched him grow up. As a boy, he was big and awkward with a stook of orange hair that stuck up every which way. He was teased something terrible. But he never struck back, even though he was twice as strong as his tormentors. Do you know what he did?”