“I also suspect,” Child continued with a smile, “that you will have to eliminate me as murderer because I happened to have spent New Year’s Eve from eight o’clock till two in the morning in this very room with a score of the district’s most law-abiding citizens. But do continue. I’m eager to hear how I killed a man I admired while I was several miles from the site.”
Marc took a deep breath. “I believe you watched with growing unease as Joshua Smallman began to attend Reform rallies with his daughter-in-law, ostensibly as her chaperone. Every Wednesday evening you and your Tory acquaintances talked a bit of politics between bouts of whist, and it became apparent that the Reform propaganda was having a serious effect on Joshua. I imagine he nodded his head in assent less and less as the summer wore on. I’ll wager he began to stay on after the others had left to voice his concerns to a man of some power and authority in the district, and indirectly in the councils of the Family Compact in the capital. He would have been discreet at first, ambivalent even, not knowing himself what was happening to him. I think he found it nearly impossible to accept the dawning truth that the Tories themselves were ultimately responsible for the economic mess the province was falling into, and not the rebellious farmers with their legitimate grievances.”
“You can’t be a true believer without periods of doubt,” Child said.
“But was Joshua Smallman still a true believer? That was the question that tormented you. Beth has told me that her father-in-law started missing the Wednesday soirees in the fall. By early December you two had had a serious falling out. All your subtle attempts to persuade him to sell the farm had failed. Moreover, Joshua’s increasing sympathy for the Reform cause seemed to guarantee that he would never sell his son’s land-as a matter of principle. I suggest that you quarrelled openly after the others had gone one evening. He may have hinted to you that his own son might have been driven to break the law, and later to take his own life, by the injustices inflicted upon him. However he worded his withdrawal on that day, he left you with the shattering conclusion that he had turned Reformer.”
“Good reason for losing a friend, I should think, but hardly provocation for murder.” Child poured himself another brandy. The man seemed to be pleased that this droll young ensign had provided him with a ready excuse to miss the tedium of an Anglican sermon.
“Agreed. But it is one thing to turn one’s political colours-many gentlemen have done so in the Mother Parliament-and quite another when those colours belong to a nation.”
“As our own United Empire Loyalists did in the eyes of the American revolutionaries?”
“I’m talking about treasonous activity, sedition, casting your lot in with your own country’s enemies.”
“You are not implying that Joshua Smallman was a traitor, a turncoat?”
“No, but I know for a fact that you yourself thought so.”
“Indeed. Do you read minds in addition to your military duties?”
“Just before Christmas, Constable Hatch apprehended a peddler named Isaac Duffy and brought him promptly to you. You soon discovered he was up to his Yankee eyebrows in rum-running. On the document Hatch had removed from him, you caught sight of the names of a couple of notorious villains you’d been trying for years to get evidence against: Jefferson and Nathaniel Boyle. The two of you rode straight out to their farms, but they’d already fled back to the States or gone into deep hiding.”
“I fail to see where this is going,” Child said, but he made no move to rise.
“You took special note of their names, but you also took note of the name just below the Boyles’ on that incriminating document: J. Smallman. A very faint line had been drawn through it, so faint that Hatch only noticed it this morning upon close examination. Since the list seemed to be a current one, you assumed that the ‘J’ referred to Joshua. Hatch assumed it was Jesse and ignored it: what good would it do to speak ill of the dead? But you were so shocked you said nothing. Instead, you went along with Hatch in search of the Boyles. But you couldn’t get it out of your mind that Joshua Smallman’s name was listed under the words ‘Hunting Sherry.’ You likely knew from your own sources at Government House that there were serious allegations being made concerning the existence and operations of the Hunters’ Lodges-even though you showed only nominal interest in the subject on Wednesday evening. Connors and O’Hurley used ‘hunting’ as a code word for the local insurrectionists they were enlisting. Given what you had observed of Joshua’s leanings over the preceding months, it all fit.”
Marc leaned forward in his chair. “I submit, sir, that by Christmas Day you had reached the sad conclusion that Joshua Smallman, in his grief over his son’s horrific death and the bitterness he felt at the collapse of his lifelong beliefs, had gone over to the enemy and that, using the smuggling operation as a cover, he was actively supporting the Hunters.” Marc practically hissed the next sentence. “And you yourself said to me in this very room that the people you despised most in the world were smugglers and traitors.”
“It sounds as though you’re well into the second act of this tawdry little tragicomedy,” Child said affably. “Or should it be called a fairy tale?”
Marc ignored the jibe. “When you gave that heartfelt speech in front of Mr. Mackenzie last night, I realized just how fanatically you felt about loyalty and about playing by the rules. Your family has served eight or nine kings through thick and thin, dispensing justice and upholding laws even when they didn’t agree with them. You can’t be half a patriot any more than you can be half human.”
“This is not even news, let alone evidence.”
“I also got a glimpse into the depth and vindictiveness of your temper when, after tolerating the peccadilloes of Mad Annie for years, you incited a herd of vigilantes to burn her out. It’s also possible that you got wind of Connors and O’Hurley operating hereabouts again. It wouldn’t do to have one of them blabbing on about Joshua’s involvement in smuggling-raising questions you wanted left alone-so you decided to eradicate the whole lot of them at one fell swoop, despite the dubious legality of the operation.”
Child looked abruptly up at Marc, held his eye, and said, “I imagine murder might be viewed in some circles as legally dubious.”
“Yes, surely. But not when it comes to the treatment of seditionists or spies, not in circumstances where authority feels itself besieged or in a state of apprehended insurrection. The unobtrusive removal of a dangerous turncoat becomes a kind of noble service to the state, to be sanctioned-lauded even-after the event, should it ever become public knowledge. And when that ‘noble’ act eliminated a man who stood in the way of your gaining his property, then it was doubly serendipitous.”
“You seem to have forgotten that Mrs. Smallman would inherit her father-in-law’s estate. If so, why would she sell, eh?”
“But I have not forgotten that you were the man’s solicitor. You knew he had no will, and that there were possibly relatives in the States with a claim on the estate.”
“The chances of finding them would be slim.”
“True, but as a lawyer, you knew you could delay the probate until Beth Smallman was forced to sell her farm-to you.”
Child smiled cryptically, poured himself another brandy, and said, “Why did you ever abandon the bar, young man?”
“Words are no substitute for action.”
“Agreed. Well, you’ve established a plausible motive for me, but I must say that I’m still unable to envision my leading a friend-turned-enemy into a deadfall trap while sitting in this chair sipping brandy, much as I am now. Did I have a three-mile-long piece of string to trigger the trap or a siren song only poor Joshua could hear?”
Like the accomplished barristers he had seen in high flight at the Old Bailey, Marc decided it was time to prick the complacency of the witness in the box by playing the first of his trump cards. “I have just come from interviewing Miss Marsden. It didn’t take long for her to break down and admit that she had lied to the sheriff when she swore that Elijah Chown spent the whole of New Year’s Eve with her.”