Marc was surprised that he fell into a sound sleep and woke up at eight o’clock on Saturday morning feeling almost refreshed. It was eight-thirty when he arrived in the dining-room amidst the aroma of sausages and coffee. But only Louis LaFontaine was seated at the table, just finishing his meal. He gave Marc an abbreviated smile and motioned him to an adjacent chair. Marc nodded, quickly poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat down.
“Where are the others?” Marc asked. “Or have I outslept the entire household?”
Another smile, slightly broader. “I believe you have at that. But, then, while you worked feverishly all day yesterday, we spent the time pretending not to worry.”
“I suggested that Robert and Francis go home to their families until Sunday afternoon. Cobb and I have taken statements from them, so there is little more they can do here – until . . .”
“Until you and Mr. Cobb catch the murderer.”
“Yes.”
“Please don’t fuss unnecessarily about us. Mrs. Macaulay, it turns out, has an extensive collection of French books – novels, poetry, and political tracts. Whenever you do not require the library for your investigation, our host has invited us to read there or in the beautiful parlour or in the privacy of our rooms.”
“I won’t be using the library, and Constable Cobb is off investigating in the city. I trust you’ll have a quiet day.”
LaFontaine excused himself and left Marc to his breakfast. A few minutes later Prissy Finch appeared in the doorway. Marc assumed she was here to clear away dishes and check the food supply, but she stood still, hands behind her back, and looked over at him uncertainly.
“Come in, Miss Finch. You’ll not be disturbing me. I’m almost done.”
“Prissy,” she said. “Everybody calls me Prissy.”
“Did you wish to talk to me?”
Prissy nodded, and took several small steps towards the table.
“I’m sorry you and Austin had to get tangled up in the investigation.,” Marc said. “But you know, don’t you, that you should not have lied to us, even to protect your fiancé.”
Prissy reddened slightly. “He ain’t my fiancé no more. And I’m very very sorry I lied about where he was on Thursday night.”
“I see. Then you do know that he and – ”
“I do. We ain’t got many secrets downstairs. And I know he did it because of what I did with poor Mr. Chilton.”
“Why did you lie for him, then, if you already knew he didn’t need an alibi?”
Prissy looked down at her shoes. “I didn’t want everybody – up here – knowin’ what he did with poor Hetty. And I was certain Austin had nothin’ to do with poisonin’ Mr. Chilton. Don’t you see, sir, Austin got even with me, not the butler. That’s his way.”
“But if you loved Austin, why did you let Chilton press his affections on you?”
Prissy looked up and, with a touch of defiance, said, “Austin wasn’t payin’ me much attention lately. He was upset that Giles run off an’ he didn’t like anybody takin’ Alfred’s place. I – I only wanted to make him a little bit jealous.”
Marc said very gently, “Perhaps he was trying to make you a little jealous by sleeping with Hetty?”
“You’re kind to think that and I’d like to believe it,” she said, coming right up to the table, “but I come here fer another reason. I found somethin’ you need to see.” From behind her back she brought out a wine bottle.
“Where did you find that?’ Marc asked, eyeing the label.
“I was tidyin’ up Mr. Bergeron’s room a few minutes ago and I found this bottle stuffed inside one of his big pillows when I went to fluff it up.”
Marc took the object from her. It was a litre of sherry, partially consumed and recorked.
“Thank you, Prissy. You’ve done well.”
“I gotta do a lot of things awfully well to make up fer the mess I made downstairs,” she said, and turned towards the door so that Marc would not see her tears.
***
Erneste Bergeron was sitting peacefully in an easy-chair in the parlour, smoking a pipe and taking in the snowscape beyond the French doors. He glanced up as Marc came up beside him with the sherry bottle in plain view.
“This is yours, I believe,” Marc said evenly.
Bergeron’s only response was a deep sigh. He motioned for Marc to sit in the chair nearest him and said with an embarrassed smile, “I feel so very foolish, Mr. Edwards. It was a stupid thing to do – hiding my wine in a pillow – but I had a moment of panic when I heard the butler had been poisoned by drinking sherry laced with laudanum.”
“But you must have soon learned it was Amontillado? Everybody else seemed to know.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And this is a hunting sherry – one you brought with you, I assume, because it doesn’t match the brand Macaulay has been serving.”
“That’s right. I have trouble sleeping, as you know, and at home I take a glass of this sherry before I retire. I knew Mr. Macaulay would have sherry in his stores, but I thought my own brand would be better – for me.”
“I still don’t see why you hid it from us.”
“That’s simple, or so it seemed yesterday. You see, I came here very uncertain of the kind of alliance LaFontaine was hoping for. I knew about the attempts here to keep Upper Canada a secular state and to veto any sort of established church. I am deeply religious, and I feared for my own church and its schools.”
“And then you got to observe the Anti-Christ firsthand across the negotiating table,” Marc smiled.
“Yes. Mr. Baldwin is obviously a devout Christian, an Anglican even. I believed him when he said our religions would be protected. And I passionately wished to see the economic reforms proposed in our meetings come to fruition. So, when the butler was found dead, and a bottle of sherry with laudanum in it suspected as the instrument of his death, I feared that my weakness for sherry and the bottle in my luggage – along with the access I had to the laudanum in the bathroom – would cast suspicion our way and, in the least, break the bonds of trust we had so painstakingly established. I know it seems foolish in retrospect, but I went immediately to my room and hid my sherry where I thought no-one would find it – in a decorative pillow that hadn’t ever been used as far as I could tell. But the maid was too conscientious. She insisted on fluffing up all the pillows in my room whether they needed it or not.”
“That must have been her doing,” Marc said carefully, “because I assure you I have not asked that your rooms be searched.”
“So you are now looking outside the estate for the culprit?” Bergeron said hopefully.
Marc offered him a noncommittal nod.
“I do hope you’ll forgive my foolish fears.”
“I already have,” Marc said, then rose quietly and left the room.
Well, he thought as he headed down the hall in search of Macaulay, Bergeron could now almost certainly be eliminated as a suspect. His enthusiasm for the alliance was undoubtedly genuine, as was his religious fervour. It was hard to envision him poisoning the impostor, even if he somehow discovered he was a spy, making off with the three-page summary of the proceedings, and hiding an irrelevant sherry bottle ineptly in his own room. LaFontaine – like Robert, Hincks and Macaulay – was not even in the picture. And the servants likewise. Even Bragg, if Prissy was correct, was more into petty revenge than deadly conspiracies. That left Tremblay and Bérubé. Somehow before Cobb returned on Sunday, Marc would have to develop a tactful strategy for bearding those two.
Unless, of course, Cobb were to unearth fresh and convincing evidence of another kind. And Marc had learned never to underestimate his partner and friend.
***
It was pitch-dark when Cobb guided Ben and the two-man cutter out of Elmgrove and onto the Kingston Road. Fortunately the six-year-old horse that Struthers had introduced him to outside the stables was a mixed breed that combined endurance and reasonable speed. “Give him his head and he’ll get you where you’re goin’ on his own time. He won’t need feedin’ an’ waterin’ every five miles,” Struthers had advised. So Cobb did just that. It was not often that he took the reins of a sleigh or a carriage, as in town he walked wherever he needed to go. Once in a while the police would commandeer a vehicle from one of the local livery stables or, on a rare occasions, a saddled mount. But Cobb had been raised on a farm outside Woodstock, and although his father sometimes let them drive the Percheron team to church and back, he and his brother Larry (christened Laertes) would hitch them up whenever Papa was off on an errand to the neighbours and race down the back lane pretending they were Ben-Hur among the Romans. No such boyish temptation presented itself this day, however. Cobourg was about seventy meandering miles away, and he might have a dozen stops to make before he got there late in the day. Instead, he tied off the reins and left his progress to Ben’s experience and judgement. This stratagem allowed him to begin sampling the hamper of delectables prepared for him by Mrs. Blodgett and the Janes sisters.
A couple of miles out of town, just beyond Scaddings bridge over the Don River, sat a rough log tavern operated by Polonius Mitchum. Although it was unlikely that the real Graves Chilton had got this close to Elmgrove before being waylaid and robbed of his identity, Cobb decided to stop there and try out his cover story. At five-thirty in the morning, only the ostler would be up with the animals, but that was the man he wanted to see.
As he anticipated, the ostler did recall every occasion the Weller stage had stopped at Mitchum’s over the past two weeks. Not often, of course, and only when some passenger or other insisted on stopping for reasons of thirst or intestinal emergencies. However, like most ostlers and stablemen, this fellow had a keen eye for faces and eccentricities among stagecoach passengers. Unfortunately, on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the previous week, there had been no stops made. And before the Tuesday in question, he was certain no-one fitting Chilton’s description (bald or otherwise) had been among the paying customers who did stop.
Confident now that his pretending to be a cousin of Chilton’s on the lookout for a butler who hadn’t arrived when scheduled to, Cobb pointed Ben east along the Kingston Highway through the snowbound bush of Upper Canada. The road itself, more like an exaggerated lumber trail, weaved its way around impenetrable clumps of hardwoods, stretches of stubborn evergreen, frozen swamps, and rigid outcroppings of rock. But as no snow had fallen since Thursday evening’s brief squall, the roadbed was packed flat and icy. Ben clopped along at a sprightly pace while the runners hummed behind him.
Just as the sun was rising above the treeline about seven o’clock, Cob spotted a square-timber dwelling built too close to the road to be merely a farmhouse. He pulled up in front, and was pleased to see a sign scrawled in chalk above the rickety door:
DЯINK & FOOD
Through an oil-paper window, he spied a flicker of light.
A stout woman with a friendly face blemished by the elements (or too much of the inn’s liquid product) came out to greet him, blowing clouds of her own breath before her.
“What’re ya doin’ on the road this early, young fella?” she boomed, wrapping her shawl more snugly about her throat.
“I’m on a mission to find my missin’ cousin,” Cobb said.
“Well, I ain’t got yer cousin inside, but I got plenty of stuff to stoke yer vitals!”
Cobb was happy to pay for a small whiskey, despite the dingy interior of the hovel and a glass that had never been baptized with soap. And his hostess was just as happy to talk.
“Weller’s sleigh usually stops here comin’ an’ goin’,” she said in reply to his opening query. “A week ago Tuesday, you say? Now let me think. Yes, that was the day the young lady puked all over my welcome rug. There was only two other riders with her, her husband and an elderly gent.”
“And the next day, the Wednesday?”
“That’s easy. There were four passengers: a very chatty merchant gentleman from Montreal, headin’ to the big city, he said, to sign some paper or other that’d make him rich. But I let all that sort of braggin’ roll off like water down a duck’s ass. An’ there was a girl with a club foot, got on at Cobourg, I think, along with her mother and uncle.”
“What about Thursday?” Cobb asked, knowing as he did that the impostor was spotted by young Cal Struthers getting off Weller’s stage late Thursday afternoon.
“You’re expectin’ me to remember an awful lot, ain’t ya?”
“What if I was to buy a jug of yer hooch? Would that re-gress yer memory?”
“Might do the trick,” she chortled as she gave his gentlemanly duds a further appraising look. “Let me see . . . It was Thursday of last week when Danny Stokes the driver pulled in with a near-lame horse. My husband – least that’s what he calls himself – helped him put a new shoe on her. The passengers all sampled my wares except fer this well-dressed fella who talked with a ten-dollar accent. Coulda been English. He turned his nose up at my hot biscuits.”
“Was he bald-headed?”
“Yer cousin was hairless, was he?”
“Bald as a bull’s whatchamacallits.”
“Well, this fella kept his fancy hat on in a most unmannerly way, but I could see his greasy orange hair stickin’ out from under it.”
“Then that wouldn’t’ve been my cousin Graves,” Cobb said. He gave her a quarter for a jug of her homemade whiskey, thanked her, and headed back out into the cold – mightily pleased with his efforts in there. For he now knew that the real Graves Chilton had not got this far, that somewhere east of this point the red-headed impostor had pounced.
“Let’s go, Ben. We got a ways to travel yet.”
***
Marc spent the rest of Saturday morning in his room going over the accumulated notes he and Cobb had made on the case. He was looking for any angle they might have overlooked or any questions they might have failed to ask. They had not pressed the Struthers, father and son, very hard, particularly in light of the fact that they seemed to be the only employees on the estate who had ready access to the outside or were unaccountable in general for their whereabouts. But they had no discernible motive, and of all the persons resident in Elmgrove this week, they seemed the least perturbed by the events in the manor house. But something was definitely niggling at the back of his mind, some fact or other he had not viewed from every possible vantage-point. But two hours spent poring over these notes did nothing to bring it to light.
At one o’clock he went to the dining-room for some lunch, and was relieved to find only Garnet Macaulay there. He looked haggard, but did his best to greet Marc with a smile.
“I don’t think I could play another game of backgammon or piquet without having a brain seizure,” he said, poking at a soft-boiled egg.
“That bad, eh?” Marc said, sitting down.
“It’s Bérubé. He’s mercilessly sociable. LaFontaine is quite content in the library reading back issues of Hincks’s Examiner and the Tory Gazette. Bergeron is reading in the parlour. But I was unable to get away from Bérubé and the games table – that is, until I got an inspiration.”
“Which was?”
“To find him a risqué French novel from Elizabeth’s collection. He’s reading it in the sanctity of his bedchamber. Thank the Lord for minor mercies, eh?”
“What about Tremblay?”
“Well, he brooded in his room all morning, but fifteen minutes ago he came down and asked me for a pair of raquettes.”
“Snowshoes?”
“Right. I took him to the back shed and outfitted him with a pair, a huge wool sweater, and a tuque. Seems he did a lot of snowshoeing back home.”
“And he’s gone off on his own?” Marc said, letting his alarm show.
“Oh, don’t worry, Marc. I helped him dress for the outdoors. He wasn’t concealing anything contraband on his person, and I doubt he’ll attempt to snowshoe all the way to Montreal.”
“I suppose blowing off a little steam through physical exertion can’t do him any harm.”
“Why don’t you slip home for a few hours?” Macaulay suggested. “If you’re worried about being spotted coming into town from this vicinity, you could take my saddle-horse and head out the back way.”
“The back way?”
“Yes. You’ll recall the lumber road that you arrived on just to the north of Elmgrove. Well, it soon turns into a narrow Indian trail, not wide enough for a sleigh but suitable for a horse and rider. It comes out of the woods at a swamp – now frozen solid – where Parliament Street now ends. You could ride down to your cottage from that direction.”
Marc laughed. “I haven’t been seen in town riding a horse since I left the army two years ago. To say I’d be noticed would be an understatement. Thanks anyway, but I’ll take the usual route.”
“As long as you’ll go and get away from this place for a while,” Macaulay said with evident relief. “I’ll have Struthers bring a small cutter around to the front door in fifteen minutes.”
Marc thanked Macaulay, and while he went off to find Struthers, Marc had some lunch and thought about what he might do in the city, in addition to spending some time with Beth and Maggie. It would be useful, he decided, to seek out Nestor Peck, Cobb’s most reliable snitch, and have him and his cronies try to trace the movements of Giles Harkness over the past two weeks and, if possible, determine his present whereabouts.
By the time the horse and cutter drew up at the front door, Marc had packed his grip (with soiled clothes) and pulled on his outdoor things. He stepped out into the cold, clear afternoon, thanked Abel Struthers, and hopped up into the cutter. It felt good to be outdoors and on the move after the claustrophobia of Elmgrove. He snapped the reins and the horse began to trot smartly up Macaulay’s driveway towards the Kingston Road. The driveway wound its way among spruce and cedar, their boughs still glistening and pristine with snow.
He was in sight of the highway when he heard a strange sound coming from the grove of evergreens on his right. He drew back on the reins. There it was again. It seemed to be a lone blue jay shrieking, as they sometimes did in the early spring: sharp and insistent. With the cutter stopped and the horse standing still, the woods around Marc became eerily silent – until the jay-shriek came again.
“Au secours! Au secours!”
Not a bird at all, but someone crying out desperately in French, crying for help. Marc knew he could not get the horse and cutter through the evergreens, so he jumped down and ploughed straight towards the cry, which, after a brief pause, started up again – somewhat fainter than before. The drifts were three- or four-feet deep, and Marc found himself floundering in them up to his thighs. It was easy to see why the locals resorted to snowshoes to travel anywhere off the roads or trails. In less than a minute he had become winded and, despite the piteous and fading cries ahead, he was forced to stop and catch his breath.
“It’s all right! I’m coming to help!” he shouted in French.
Several minutes later, panting and sweating, Marc thrashed his way past a bushy cedar-tree and spotted the source of the cry for help. Maurice Tremblay lay on his back in a huge drift. One leg – still snowshoed – was sticking up in the air and being shaken about as if it were trying to get a purchase on the air itself. The other was, apparently, twisted underneath him at an unnatural angle. He’s tipped over and sprained or broken his left ankle, was Marc’s thought as he pushed his way the final few yards to the stricken man.
“Don’t try to speak,” Marc said firmly. “I’m here to help. I’ve got a sleigh nearby on the driveway. If you can stand it, I’m going to lift you onto my back and carry you there.”
Tremblay, his face white and contorted, nodded, then grimaced horribly and sighed against the pain tearing up through his injured leg.
Marc quickly removed the raquette from the sound right foot, then got behind Tremblay and very gently lifted him upright. But as the bent leg and twisted ankle straightened out with the rest of his body, Tremblay screamed in agony, and the shock of his scream almost sent Marc toppling. Realizing that it would be too painful to try and remove the other snowshoe, Marc simply eased himself around Tremblay’s body, squatted down, and heaved him up onto his shoulders, pick-a-back.
As he staggered forward with his burden, Marc could feel the man’s trembling and his hot, wheezing, pain-driven breath on the back of his neck. The extra weight caused Marc to sink even deeper in the drifts as he made his way back towards the cutter. At times he sank up to his hips, and had to use one mittened hand to paw a path through the snow ahead while balancing Tremblay and steadying him with the other one. Soon Marc’s breathing became heavy and tortured. His chest tightened and burned as he gasped at the icy air. He lost count of the number of times he had to pause and rest, while Tremblay continued to whimper pitifully. Perhaps he should have driven back to the house and gotten a sled or toboggan, and expert assistance, Marc thought. But Tremblay’s suffering had been acute and the cutter had seemed so near.
Finally, Marc staggered onto the firmer snow of the driveway, almost tipped over, righted himself and, using the last reserves of his strength, eased Tremblay across the cutter’s leather seat. He set the injured leg down tenderly and began unlacing the raquette. Tremblay’s cries had now become a single, heart-wrenching moan.
Marc took the reins and stood up behind the seat to guide the horse. He was forced to take the cutter out onto the Kingston Road in order to get it turned around, after which he was able, at last, to transport Maurice Tremblay back to the manor-house and whatever comforts it might offer.
***
“It’s not broken,” Macaulay informed Marc, who was sitting in the kitchen being pampered by Hetty and Tillie Janes. “It’s a severe sprain, which is often a damn sight more painful than a clean break.”
“He’s settled in his room, then?” Marc said, waving off another cup of tea from Tillie.
“Mrs. Blodgett’s been her usual wonderful self. She poured brandy down his throat, probed for breaks, found none, packed the ankle in ice, and made him put it up on a high stool. When the swelling goes down, she’ll wrap it tightly or apply a splint. Meantime, she’s given him a dose of laudanum.” He smiled and added, “From her private supply.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Marc said. “It’s hard to think what else could go wrong, eh?”
“By the way, Marc, Tremblay wishes to speak with you – now, before the sedative takes effect.”
“I’ll go right up,” Marc said, putting down his teacup and giving the sisters a grateful smile.
Upstairs, Marc found Tremblay sitting in a chair with his leg propped up on a pillowed stool. He was looking somewhat dazed, and barely able to open his eyes wide enough to take in his visitor. He gave Marc as broad a smile as he could muster.
“I’m pleased to hear that your injury was not as serious as we thought it might be,” Marc said. “You’ll be in good hands here, at any rate.”
“I wanted to thank you personally,” Tremblay said, looking straight at Marc as he spoke. “What you did out there was courageous and very – very generous.”
“I did what anyone would do in the circumstances,” Marc said, meaning it.
“After the way I have treated you and your colleagues, and abused our host’s hospitality, I could not have blamed you for driving on and leaving me to my own devices. Who would have known if you had? I wish to apologize with all sincerity, and hope you will convey my apologies to Mr. Macaulay and the others.”
“I will make certain of it.”
“I have been in turmoil all week,” Tremblay said, fighting hard against the onset of the sleep his body was demanding. “I have had to admit to myself the logic of many of the arguments put forth on both sides of our discussions, but have been unable to put aside the kind of hate and outrage that has built up in me since the failure of the rebellion. This surprised me, and made me even more difficult to get along with.”
“I do understand.”
“I wish you every success in your investigation.”
“Thank you. Now I’ll leave you to rest.”
Tremblay had already closed his eyes.
In the hall, Marc joined Macaulay, and as they descended the stairs, Marc said, “I think we may have done our cause some good in that quarter.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Marc. Now it’s time for you to do some good for yourself. Go home to Beth and Maggie – this minute!”
***
Cobb estimated that there were fewer than two hours of daylight remaining as he left the village of Port Hope. He had been on the road for almost twelve hours, and had made five or six stops along the way. At three of them he had been given reliable information that confirmed the east-to-west progress of the red-headed impostor in Weller’s stagecoach on the Thursday afternoon of the week past. Exhausted as he was, and disappointed that the spot where the ambush and exchange of identities occurred seemed to be farther east than he had hoped, Cobb was determined to reach Cobourg before he gave up for the day. He debated urging Ben into a brisk canter, but the horse had been wonderful throughout the arduous journey, requiring only brief respites and two feedbags, and not once complaining – as long as he was permitted to set his own steady pace.
So, Cobb just closed his eyes and dozed as the cutter skidded and bumped along the province’s principal thoroughfare. He awoke with a start when the motion of the sleigh ceased abruptly, and was surprised to find himself parked in front of a commercial building on the main street of Cobourg. He persuaded Ben to go one block farther to the hitching-post beside the verandah of The Cobourg Hotel. In the foyer he was warmly greeted by the proprietor, who introduced himself as Seth Martin. It was clear from his effusive manner that he had interpreted the fine cast of Alfred Harkness’s overcoat, calfskin gloves and tooled leather boots as indications of affluence – despite contrary signs in the gentleman’s rough-hewn, weather-beaten face.
“Will you be staying the night, Mr. Cobb?” he enthused. “We serve a supper here that’s the talk of the county.”
“I’m sure it is,” Cobb said generously. “Whether I stay or not depends on the information you may have for me.”
“You’d like a rundown on the beauty spots of our region?”
Cobb went straight to the point. He was looking for his missing cousin, a young Englishman, lost somewhere en route from New York to Toronto a week ago. “Your hotel is where the Weller’s passengers from Kingston stop overnight before makin’ a run fer Toronto, ain’t it?”
Martin winced at the gentleman’s grammar, but did his duty. “It is, Mr. Cobb. That it is.”
“Think back to a week ago Tuesday. When the sleigh got here in the late afternoon, was there on it a well-dressed young gentleman of slim build with an English accent?”
Proprietor Martin squeezed his eyes shut to ponder the question. “That was the day the driver come in here with two frozen fingers, so I remember it well. No, yer cousin couldn’t’ve been on it because only one passenger got off an’ stayed over. A merchant chap from Montreal. Very talkative. I put him in the Queen’s Suite upstairs.”
“An’ the coach leaves fer Toronto the next mornin’?”
“It does. This gent got on by himself that particular Wednesday, I recall. Nobody from here was headin’ to the city, I guess.”
“What about the next coach, later on Wednesday afternoon?”
“Let me see. Four or five passengers, but they all live around these parts. None of ‘em stayed here.”
Cobb was puzzled. If the impostor had got off at Elmgrove late Thursday – and he was seen doing so – then he should have been among this group of arrivals on Wednesday afternoon and should have stayed overnight in the hotel in preparation for the Thursday morning run to Toronto.
“So you’re sayin’ nobody got on board here Thursday mornin’?”
“Not quite. Three of our locals boarded for Toronto, an’ then a few minutes before nine o’clock, a cutter comes racin’ up and a gentleman hops out. The driver of the cutter is big Brutus Glatt from the inn up the road. He hauls the gent’s luggage aboard, an’ the gent then gets in.”
“What did he look like, this gent?”
“Well now, it coulda been yer cousin. Slim fella with fancy duds. Youngish. Didn’t hear him talk enough to tell what his accent was.”
“Did he have a full head of hair? Reddish hair? Or was he bald maybe?”
“Normally I’d recall somethin’ like that, but he was wearin’ a tall hat an’ was all swaddled up against the cold. I couldn’t say one way or the other. Sorry.”
So was Cobb. Was this man Graves Chilton? If so, then the exchange of identities must have taken place somewhere between here and Port Hope, where the red-headed impostor had definitely been noted on that same Thursday stage by the innkeeper there (the impostor’s hat having fallen off far enough to expose that garish and memorable mane).
“You could always check with the driver,” Martin suggested. “He’ll be comin’ this way again on Monday.”
“I really need to find him before then,” Cobb said.
“Well, I didn’t ask Brutus – an’ he couldn’t answer if I did – about the gent’s sudden arrival, but if he drove him from the inn where he works, then I’d say the gent spent the night there an’ then dashed the five miles from there to here next mornin’ in time to catch the stage.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“And if he did sleep in the inn, then Mrs. Jiggins, who runs the place, would surely know if the chap mighta been yer cousin.”
Cobb felt a surge of adrenalin through his fatigue. “You’re right. I better go right there and ask, before it gets too dark or starts to snow.”
“You won’t take some supper, then?”
“If I find my cousin,” Cobb said smoothly, “we’ll both come back here an’ have a meal to celebrate.”
Seth Martin, with an eye on the prize, held the door open for the nattily attired, unlettered gentleman.
***
It was fully dark when Cobb drew his weary horse to a halt before The Pine Knot Inn. Seconds later, the double doors flew open, and a grinning, aggressively plump woman steamed out to greet him.