“In half an hour.” Sir John kept his appraising gaze on the nephew of Frederick Edwards.
Marc gave him the answer he was looking for: “Yes, sir.”
There had been little more to say, then, except to sort out in their brusque, soldierly way the mundane details of Marc’s departure and, as it were, his marching orders. Sir John went over the contents of the special governor’s warrant that would allow him to interview witnesses and otherwise invoke the governor’s authority to investigate the suspicious death of Joshua Smallman. Marc was given a bundle of notes and papers that might be pertinent to his efforts and told to read them over before he reached his destination. Colonel Margison, his commanding officer, had provided a swift horse and was to concoct a suitable story to account for Marc’s absence from Fort York.
So it was just before three in the afternoon that Ensign Edwards set off down King Street on a secret and possibly dangerous mission into the troubled countryside of Upper Canada. He still had no idea why he had been chosen.
As Marc trotted along the main thoroughfare of the province’s capital-past its self-important little strip of shops, offices, and taverns-he was pleased that the sun was shining. It highlighted the scarlet and grey of his regimental uniform, most of it dazzlingly visible through his unbuttoned and wind-buffeted greatcoat. But his initial sense of excitement soon gave way to consideration of what faced him seventy miles east on the Kingston Road. Even if murder had actually occurred-and there was no guarantee that Smallman’s death had not been a bizarre accident-his chances of resolving the matter were slim. He knew no one who might be involved in the affair or was in a position to provide useful information. Perhaps a studied disingenuousness, combined with the secret information supplied by Sir John and his own observation skills, would be his best hope.
Someone waved a mittened hand at him from the doorway of Miss Adeline’s dress shop, and a feminine cry sallied up. Marc kept his eyes front so that his quick smile went unappreciated. The brisk winter breeze chilled and stirred him. He felt physically alive, acute, like some exotic woodland creature that was both hunter and hunted.
Only one discordant note threatened to disturb the pleasure he was feeling, and he fought hard to suppress it. By the time he got back to Toronto-even if he were to be spectacularly successful in Crawford’s Corners-his role model and benefactor would be in Quebec. Sir John’s replacement as lieutenant-governor was already on his way from England: Sir Francis Bond Head, a man with not a single battle under his belt or laurel to his name, a scribbler of travel books and sonnets for the titillation of ladies-in-waiting among the petty gentry of Toronto and York County.
As he crossed Simcoe Street, Marc’s eye was drawn to the red-brick silhouette of the two-storeyed parliament buildings a block to the south. Their glittering glass windows and cut-stone pilasters gave them an air of permanence and pertinence. Like their counterparts along the Thames in London, these legislative halls were in his mind mere houses of words, monuments to bombast and hyperbole. He had seen the originals at Westminster, at first in awe as a child at the side of Uncle Jabez (as he called his adoptive father, Jabez Edwards), and later as a law student at the Inns of Court when he was old enough to judge for himself. Even now, even here, a thousand leagues from all that mattered in the world, men slung epithets as if they were weapons: to sting, incite, confuse, and corrupt. But in the end it was the soldier who had to set things right, risking body and soul.
Marc was so deep in thought that he didn’t notice crossing Yonge Street or seeing the Court House or St. James’ Church farther east. Before he realized it, he was easing Colonel Margison’s second-best horse back to a walk as they began a slow descent to the Don River. The few sporadic clearings on either side of the road indicated that the industry and mercantile zest of the capital city was reaching well beyond its civic borders. He breathed in the yeast-sweet odour of Enoch Turner’s brewery before he spotted its outbuildings and brewing stacks. Just below it lay Scaddings Bridge, as it was still called by the locals, even though Scaddings and the original structure were long gone to grass. Ignoring the bridge, Marc tugged the horse down the slope and onto the frozen surface of the river itself. The recent snowfall allowed him to spur his steed into a lusty gallop, and together they charged across the wind-swept, treeless expanse as if it were the perilous space separating the armies of Wellington and the Corsican usurper. As he plunged through knee-deep drifts up the far bank, a fur-capped trapper stood up to take notice, then waved enthusiastic approval. Marc tipped his plumed shako hat with elaborate politeness.
At the top of the rise he paused to rest the horse and check that he had not overheated it. The trapper held up one of his trophies as if to say, “Both of us are having a good day, eh?” It looked to Marc as if the drowned creature (missing one leg) was what the locals called ermine, which in truth was merely a fancy word for stoat or common weasel, a canny predator who could, like a turncoat, adjust the hue of his skin with the fickle swing of the seasons. Even the hares in this alien landscape went white with the snows.
And it was alien territory that Ensign Edwards-late of the shire of Kent and the Royal Military School-was heading into. He had no reason to believe that affairs in Crawford’s Corners or the nearby town of Cobourg would be much different from the querulous, mongrel politics he had done his best to ignore here in Toronto: with its raving and moderate Tories, rabid Reformers, and ordinary Grits, annexationists like John Rolph and William Lyon Mackenzie, out-and-out Yankee republicans recently arrived from Detroit or Lewiston, and Loco Foco Democrats insinuated from Buffalo or Oswego. His own brief dalliance with the study of law had taught him to be logical and analytic, though he hadn’t persevered there long enough to learn the trick of deviousness. His subsequent career as a soldier, so much more to his liking and talent, had taught him to be direct and ever poised for precipitate action.
Marc emerged from the woods and once again headed east along the Kingston Road. The sun was well past the high point of its daily arc but still shone bravely in a cloudless sky. The weather appeared promising. He would take his time, he would savour the liberal air and pleasing sensation of his body moving with the rhythm of the horse’s stride.
When Sir John had suggested that he go directly to Crawford’s Corners, where he felt the answers, if any, to the puzzle of Smallman’s death lay, he had assured Marc that he would find ready allies there to assist him, should he have need: in particular Magistrate Philander Child; Major Charles Barnaby, an ex-army surgeon; and James Durfee, local postmaster and innkeeper-sensible gentlemen and true Tories all. Moreover, the supernumerary township constable, Erastus Hatch, was also the miller for the region and a man whose honesty and bluff friendliness should prove invaluable. It seemed he always had a spare room for allies in the cause and a not-unhandsome daughter inexplicably unattached. And, most conveniently, Hatch’s hostel was situated right next to the Smallman farm.
Marc’s plan was to arrive unannounced at the miller’s place sometime the following afternoon (after a satisfying supper and a feather bed at the Port Hope Hotel), discreetly explore the site of the “murder” with Constable Hatch’s assistance, and then interview the members of the victim’s household before his presence in the area became generally known and speculated upon. He would then pronounce himself satisfied that everything connected with the death was just as it had been reported. From that point he would fabricate some plausible excuse for remaining in Crawford’s Corners (the handsome, unengaged daughter of miller Hatch?) and then, using leads generated by Magistrate Child or other loyalists, he would keep his ears pricked for the undertones of sedition he was certain would provide him with the motive and, if God were a monarchist, deliver up the treacherous assassins themselves.