Child rocked back, but not from shock or the onset of fear. He was laughing. “Well now, this time you’ve been too clever by half,” he roared. “For a second there you had me damn near convinced that you knew what the hell you were talking about. You might even have swayed a gullible jury envious of the gentry’s innate superiority.”
“My duty is to report everything I find to Sir John or his successor.”
“It’ll have to be to Francis Head, I’m afraid. Your mentor and protector is on his merry way to Montreal and obscurity.” He let a chuckle ripple to a halt, heaved his bulk forward in his chair, and fixed Marc with a look that blended contempt, complacency, and aristocratic anger. “You are a brilliant fool,” he said, “a meddling tyro whose vanity is exceeded only by his vocabulary. You do not have the hired hand in custody at Hatch’s. You appear not even to know his last name.”
“What do you mean?” Marc snapped.
“Elijah Gowan left the district right after the donnybrook last night, with his own kind.” The magistrate smiled his patronizing, judiciary smile. “The man is second cousin to Ogle Gowan, grand master of the Loyal Orange Lodge, whose lunatic apostles broke up the rally last night and tried to tar and feather the leading light of the Reform party. Elijah’s a more fanatic Orangeman than his notorious cousin. He can track republican sentiment like a hound on the spoor. The Orange Order see any suggestion of annexation or democratization as tantamount to treason against the British crown, which in turn they revere as a bulwark against popery.”
Marc was momentarily thrown off stride by the sudden failure of his trump trick and this revelation of “Chown’s” true name, but he quickly regained his momentum. “I admit that I do not have him in custody. However, he will not be very far from his cousin; we’ll have him apprehended within a day.” Marc did not feel obliged to confess that he had inferred from Elijah’s obsessive interest in radical newspapers that he was a sympathizer, not an implacable opponent.
“We shall see, shan’t we?” Was there a flicker of doubt before the resurgence of confidence? “Anyway, Elijah Gowan is long gone from Crawford’s Corners. And I have good reason to believe he will be found only if he wants to be found. You’ve played your bluff, I’m afraid, without a deuce to support it.” The smugness in Child’s face was galling, to say the least.
“We’ll find him. And when we do, he’ll talk. In fact, I see now that you did not really need a hold on the man. All you had to do was convince him that Joshua Smallman was a turncoat who had thrown in with the Hunters’ Lodges and arch-republicans. He would have throttled Joshua in his own bed.”
“That is quite true. But even if you should somehow find him, he’ll never say a word against me or any other loyalist. You could put him on the rack and crack every rib and he would remain steadfastly silent. You see, for fanatics like Elijah, this isn’t a game of politics or conflict of ideologies, it’s a holy war, a crusade carried forth with God’s own connivance.”
“And what does that make the man who uses such fanaticism for his own ends?”
“It depends on the ends, doesn’t it?”
Time now for the ace up his sleeve. “I think he’ll talk,” Marc said, “because I have irrefutable evidence that places him outside that cave in a position that gave him an unobstructed view of, and snowshoe access to, the deadfall trap.”
Child maintained the smug expression he had no doubt cultivated on the bench and in the counting house, but his gaze was fixed on Marc as he reached into his jacket pocket and drew out two halves of a clay pipe.
“Hatch and I found this bit of stem on a ledge near the cave. I picked up this other piece a few minutes ago in Elijah Gowan’s cabin. As you can see, they are a perfect fit. This evidence and his fabricated alibi will be enough to loosen his tongue. He won’t fancy hanging or rotting in prison for a man whose motives had as much to do with greed and personal power as political sentiment and loyalty to the Crown.”
“You have no direct proof of my involvement.” Child’s voice had gone cold.
“But I do have a case: a motive, a plausible scheme of events, a suborned servant, a man in flight without explanation, testimony that a message was received by the victim, and a summary of this conversation.”
“You would take all that rubbish to Francis Head?”
“I intend to. Without delay.”
Child uttered a world-weary sigh and sat back in his chair. “You are a sterling young man, Ensign Edwards. You showed us incredible courage and a selfless devotion to duty yester-evening when you rescued Mackenzie from that lunatic lot. You are a credit to your regiment. Your actions could well earn you promotion, even in these post-Napoleonic doldrums when such preferment is hard to come by. I observed your kindness out there at Mad Annie’s, and the calm and solicitous way in which you dealt with the dying Connors.”
“My God,” Marc said suddenly, “it was your man who shot Connors. Would you stoop so low to protect your own hide as to involve John Collins in your crimes?”
Child ignored the remark. “My point is this: why are you going to the fruitless trouble of concocting such a report and presenting it, with all its flaws showing, to a lieutenant-governor who will have been in office for less than a week?”
“Until Elijah Gowan is caught and offers up his confession, I may not have proof enough to satisfy a court,” Marc said, with more spite than he had intended, “but the evidence I do have, at the very least in these politically sensitive times, will throw serious doubt upon your character and on your probity as a justice of the peace. You are finished as a magistrate and as a pillar of this community.”
“Francis Head will laugh you out of his office,” Child said, straining now to maintain his air of unconcern and suppress his rising anger.
“I have no alternative but to do my duty,” Marc said stiffly.
“Then you truly are a fool,” Child said.
Marc rose. He reached into his pocket and withdrew two letters. “I may know little of politics, sir, but of one thing I am absolutely certain. Joshua Smallman was no turncoat. I doubt even that he was a committed Reformer. What you didn’t know, and what you would have learned if you had not been obsessed with seizing control of his farm and had given the gentleman the courtesy of an interview, is that he was a commissioned informant for Sir John Colborne, the governor’s personal friend and a trusted confidant.”
Philander Child desperately tried to look amused. “Another bluff, Mr. Edwards?”
“Why don’t you take a moment after I’ve left to peruse the last report he ever sent to Sir John? I had it from the governor’s own hand, along with this detailed memorandum outlining the reasons why Sir John himself suspected foul play and chose me to come down here to investigate.”
Marc dropped the letters on the table beside Child. It took all the moral courage he could muster not to turn at the door and watch the magistrate as he read through the documents-whey-faced, stunned, all the pomp and pride leaching out of him as the contents of each successive page burned itself into his heart.
FIFTEEN
Marc was almost at the end of the winding lane that linked Philander Child’s estate to the Kingston Road when he heard sleigh bells. He brought the colonel’s horse to a halt and waited. Seconds later, Erastus Hatch’s Sunday cutter passed by the entrance to Deer Park on its way to Cobourg, where the rituals and ceremonies of the sabbath would be played out as they had for generations of millers and other ordinary day-labourers. Thomas Goodall manned the driver’s bench, cracking his whip above the ears of the horses and trying not to over-notice the erect and proper, but not unhandsome, figure of Winnifred Hatch seated at his side and looking quite ready to take the reins should he unexpectedly falter in his duty. Seated serenely in the sleigh itself, cheek by jowl, were the stout constable of Crawford Township and his one-time scullion, Mary Huggan.