Marc decided to avoid Baldwin House and go straight home, for there seemed little use in meeting Robert for further discussion of the case as they had apparently agreed to disagree. Anyway, the trial would finish tomorrow or Thursday. He was also hoping to get some sympathy from Beth after his bitter clash with Cobb in the wig-room. Beth, however, had other ideas. She shipped Junior and Maggie off to the kitchen with Etta and directed Marc to sit down with her on the chesterfield in the parlour.
Marc took one look at her face and said, “Not you too, darling?”
Beth smiled. “I take it yer friends have not been impressed with the way you conducted yerself today?”
“That’s an understatement,” Marc said, and took the opportunity to unburden himself of the day’s tribulations. Beth listened intently, as she always did, but there were no sympathetic nods except when he repeated Robert’s maxim about the supremacy of the law itself. But she did offer a tiny smile at Cobb’s reappearance to fetch his helmet.
“I’m real sorry you and Cobb had it out,” she said when he had finished, “but I can see why he was so angry. This was a big investigation fer him. And on his own, too. You made him look bad today. I hope to Heaven you don’t have to put him on the stand.”
“So do I.”
“Still, I’m surprised you lost your temper.”
“When he questioned my motives, I lost all patience with the man. And I just struck back, somewhat blindly, I’m sorry to say.”
“Well, dear, I saw somethin’ in you today that I hadn’t seen before.”
“Oh?”
“And I don’t mean just yer grit and determination and downright stubbornness.”
“Well, thanks for those anyway.”
Beth frowned. “I hate to say it, but I thought you were unnecessarily cruel to Jake Broom.”
“Why ‘unnecessarily’?” Marc said with more sarcasm that he intended. “Wouldn’t ‘cruel’ do nicely?”
“Now don’t get in a huff, luv. I meant what I said. I know you have to be cruel sometimes in a courtroom where lives are at stake. The greatest cruelty is to hang a man who is not guilty, I know that. I just thought you went further than you had to. You accused the lad of bein’ a rapist when you knew he wasn’t. And Cambridge showed the jury that was so when he went on about the young man not returnin’ to do himself in with a cock-and-bull story.”
Marc was duly chastened. He had gone further than he had planned to. Showing the jury that Broom was fanciful and could have misinterpreted or wrongly described the scene in the stall was all he needed to do. Broom’s testimony had been impeached long before Marc had got carried away, Dougherty-like. “I don’t know why I did that,” he said. “I so wished to see this thing over, for the sake of that suffering old man.”
Beth looked so serious that Marc was sure another accusation was coming, but she said quietly, “What are yer motives, luv?”
“Cobb accused me of toadying up to the Baldwins and fighting for my own self-interests in regard to the Reform party, and I suppose he was close enough to the truth to have me respond in anger. But what drives me, in addition to friendship and party loyalty, is justice. I believe Seamus Baldwin is incapable of that crime or even of paying for a botched abortion, and I desperately want to get an acquittal.”
“So you have no doubts about his innocence?”
Marc was startled by the suddenness of Beth’s query. “Of course not. Don’t tell me that Neville Cambridge is getting to you, too?”
Beth laughed. “No, he’s not. You’ve fought him blow fer blow. I’d say the jury is still out.”
“What worries me deeply, win or not, is that I may have jeopardized my friendship with Cobb and with Robert, the two men I admire most in this world. To lose the case and my friends would be too terrible to bear. All my effort would have been for nothing.”
Beth patted the back of his hand:
“Nothin’ is never fer nothin’, luv.”
***
Sixteen-year-old Edie Barr, the Crown’s final scheduled witness, was first up on Wednesday morning. She was both nervous and excited. She was aware of her blond good looks and of the fact that they were being appreciated by the packed galleries. Her employer’s son, Robert Baldwin, had taken her aside earlier and told her she was to tell nothing but the absolute truth when standing in the witness-box. There would be no recriminations as a result of her testimony and, under no circumstance was she to feel that she ought to tell less than the truth in order to protect the Baldwin family. She had nodded dutifully, but had already mapped out what she was going to say and why.
“Miss Barr, do you know the defendant well?” Cambridge began.
“I do, sir,” Edie said in her most adult voice. “Mr. Seamus came to Spadina on the first of July of this year. I seen him many times a day ever since.”
“In your capacity as an upstairs maid at Spadina?”
“That’s right. I’ve worked fer Dr. Baldwin fer two years.”
“And Betsy Thurgood worked with you?”
“Betsy was the tweenie – ever since August. She worked a bit up and down. We shared a room.”
“Please describe your relationship with Seamus Baldwin, beyond servant and master.”
Edie blinked, then understood what was wanted. “Oh, we both called Mr. Seamus our uncle, Uncle Seamus. He said we had to.”
“Isn’t it odd for a gentleman of some sixty years to be so chummy with the hired help?”
Edie winced at “hired help” but said, “Yes, it is. But Uncle Seamus was like a big kid. He loved to tease and play pranks, and he let us tease him back – as long as we didn’t do it in front of visitors. Then it was all ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir.’” Edie did not once look up at Uncle Seamus in the dock. In fact she kept her wandering gaze everywhere but on that side of the courtroom. For his part, Uncle Seamus seemed for the first time to take a steady interest in the proceedings, leaning forward on the railing of the dock.
“So he liked to tease, did he?”
“Not always,” Edie said with a glance at Robert seated behind Marc. “He was our tutor, too. He had us read to him and helped us with our writin’ and sums.”
“Taking an inordinate interest in two young maids, was he?”
Marc got up, but it was Justice Powell who barked, “Do not put words into the witness’s mouth, Mr. Cambridge, especially ones she herself would never utilize.”
Cambridge apologized. “Tell us, Miss Barr, what form the teasing would take.”
Edie blushed prettily. She loved that “Miss Barr.” “Well, Uncle Seamus liked to bounce up behind us and give our ribs a tickle. And we’d all laugh.”
“I see. Up and down the ribs, eh? What else?”
“He’d bring us a sweet in our room and then make us answer a riddle to win it.” Edie frowned. “Betsy always won.”
“Now tell the court about your being a ventriloquist’s dummy.”
Edie happily recounted sitting on Uncle Seamus’s knee and flapping her jaw in synch with his words. Her pretty eyes widened as she told of the response they got at several soirées at Spadina, and she lingered over potentially salacious details, which seemed to please Neville Cambridge greatly. Marc, however, thought this testimony was redundant as earlier witnesses, including Beth, had already established Uncle Seamus’s eccentric, elfin habits and his attraction to children and young women. But there was more to come.
“So it would be fair to say that you and Miss Thurgood liked and admired Seamus Baldwin, referring to him affectionately as your ‘uncle’?”
“Yes, sir.”
Cambridge now drew from among his notes a sheet of paper. “I am holding here a letter, Milord, which I would like to introduce as Exhibit B. It was found by the police among the effects of Betsy Thurgood in her room at Spadina, as the attached affidavit will attest to.”
The clerk took the letter and attestation to the judge, who perused them carefully. Marc had seen the letter and had a pretty good idea what was coming. The letter was now taken over to the witness.
“Miss Barr, please read this letter aloud to the court.”
In her best singsong voice, Edie read aloud with the confidence that Seamus Baldwin had given her:
Dear sweetest one:
I know how impossible it is to love someone
so far above one’s station. I know also the pain of watching you
close up every day of my life. I see your beautiful, manly face
and your shining hair and your glinting eye as you walk ever so
elegantly down the stairs each morning. I follow you through the
day with my heart aflutter and my breathing stinted. I swoon at
the sound of your voice, as pure as poetry, as lilting as an Irish
tenor’s. Your laugh turns me giddy and one glance from your
sea-blue eyes is enough to carry me through an entire week. O
my precious and unattainable knight!
Your faithful admirer
Betsy
The effect on the courtroom was electric. Gasps of disbelief. Sighs of disappointment. Tuts of revulsion. Here at last was the direct connection between Seamus Baldwin and the love-struck teenager. Perhaps it hadn’t been rape after all. It had been worse, much worse. The brute had seduced her in that ugly horse-stall, and she had not resisted. Surely they had been carrying on their illicit affair for over two months! Ending tragically in abortion, death, and now disgrace.
“Is this Betsy Thurgood’s hand as you know it?”
“Yes, sir, it is. And I saw her write this letter. She asked me to look over and check her spellin’ and commas and the like.”
“I see. So even though there is no date on this letter, you can tell us when it was penned?”
“Yes, sir. About the middle of September.”
So, Marc thought, Edie had known about the letter and had deliberately left it where Cobb could find it. But why?
“Do you have an opinion as to who this person is? The one whom Betsy admired ‘faithfully’?”
“Milord!”
“I’m going to allow it, Mr. Edwards. Miss Barr knew Miss Thurgood well. They shared a room and much else, it appears.”
“It has to be Uncle Seamus, doesn’t it?” Edie said.
“Why would you say that?”
“Well, it says here it’s someone she sees in the house every day. And that ‘shinin’ hair’ could only be Uncle Seamus’s big white hair, couldn’t it?”
“Why, then, would she call him a knight?”
“Oh, Betsy was always livin’ in a dream world, seein’ knights in shinin’ armour and all that sort of nonsense.”
“Did Betsy ever confide in you that it was Seamus Baldwin she admired and was in love with?”
“No, sir,” Edie, mindful of Robert Baldwin’s admonitions, said with some reluctance. “I did ask, but she wouldn’t tell.”
“Did you ever see Betsy and Seamus Baldwin in a romantic embrace?”
“No, sir. Just the teasin’ and stuff. And it was a crowded house. There ain’t any secrets in it.”
“What about outdoors? Could they have met on the grounds?”
Edie pushed out her dainty lower lip, reflected a moment and said, “They could’ve, though Uncle Seamus only went outside to play his pipes at picnics or to go fishin’ up by the mill in the little ravine there. Sometimes he told us he’d go up to the other pool, past the dam, but Mr. Whittle liked to fish there even though he was forbidden to, and Uncle Seamus liked his privacy.”
“Privacy, eh? At the trout pool below the mill? The one we’ve already heard about? And the same mill where Betsy took her father’s lunch every day?”
“That’s right.”
With images of forbidden rendezvous in soft grasses beside still trout pools floating through the minds of the jurors, Neville Cambridge sat down, much pleased.
Marc stood up. “Miss Barr, that is a love letter you have in hand, is it not? A love letter to a white knight?”
“Sounds that way,” Edie said, curling her lip. She did not appear apprehensive, but rather looked as if she were anticipating yet another scene in the drama she had envisaged.
“Did you ever write a letter like this?” Marc said sternly.
Edie hesitated.
“May I remind you that you are under oath.”
“Might have.”
“More than one?”
More curling of lip. “Maybe. I guess so. Yes.”
“You have several lovers, then, do you?”
There was a collective intake of breath at this abrupt accusation.
Edie flinched but held onto the railing. “No, sir, I do not. I’m a proper lady.”
“Then why and under what circumstances would you have penned a love letter like the one written by Betsy?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember. You’re confusin’ me.”
“Did you and Betsy read romances? Fairy tales?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.” Edie had pushed her lower up and over her upper one.
“Don’t young girls when they’re learning to write, often practice penning letters, letters they have no intention of sending to anyone?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Edie scowled at Marc, her jaw set.
“Milord, I’d like Miss Barr declared a hostile witness.”
The galleries were shocked. After all, Edie was only sixteen and very blond and, surely, innocent.
“Granted,” said the judge. “Miss Barr, you must answer Mr. Edwards’ questions if you know the answer.”
Edie hung her head, uncertain of what was to come but braced for the worst.
“I suggest, Miss Barr,” Marc said with a sharp edge to his voice, “that you and Betsy, as young girls will do, sat together in your room and wrote many letters of this nature, practising the epistolary lessons that Seamus Baldwin so kindly offered to you girls. Isn’t that not so?”
Edie nodded gloomily.
“Please answer yes or no,” the judge said.
“Yes,” Edie mumbled.
“And you two did read romance novels generously supplied to you from the Baldwins’ extensive library?”
“Yes.”
“And you talked about and fantasized a white knight in shining armour who, like those in the fairy tales, would come and rescue you from your daily toil?”
“Yes.”
“And I put it to you, Miss Barr, that you and Betsy sat together and composed this letter, and that you did more than read it over for errors. Is that not so?”
Edie began to tremble. “I did read it fer spellin’!”
“But you also helped to write it, didn’t you? You made suggestions as you went along?”
Edie hung her pretty head. “Yes,” she breathed.
“You may even have had Uncle Seamus in mind, eh? Not because Betsy was romantically attracted to him, but because you yourself were! It was you who were in love with Uncle Seamus, wasn’t it? And when he failed to return your love and seemed to be grieving overly much at Betsy’s death, you gave this letter to the police to spite him.”
“No! No! Stop! Please.”
The cry came not from the witness-box but from the dock, and Uncle Seamus. The courtroom was stunned. The judge looked up sternly, but did not have to speak. Uncle Seamus had slumped into the arms of the deputy bailiff, all passion spent.
Edie Barr burst into tears, devastating her blond prettiness.
“Counsellor, that is enough,” cried the judge. “You’ve overstepped your bounds. And you’ve made your point.”
“No more questions, Milord.”
Cambridge glanced over at Marc, then peered over at the jury. They did not look pleased with the defense counsel’s performance, having been moved, like the spectators, by Uncle Seamus’s heartfelt cry.
“I have no further questions of this witness,” he said.
Behind him, Marc heard Robert whisper, “Marc, you cannot keep doing it this way.”
“We’re almost there, Robert.”
But where was there?
***
Just as Marc was expecting the judge to adjourn the court until the afternoon, when the defense would begin presenting its case, Justice Powell called the two attorneys to the bench. It was Neville Cambridge who spoke, however.
“Milord, some new evidence pertinent to the Crown’s case has just been handed to me. I’d like to look it over and make a decision as to whether to call another witness.”
“Is that witness available?”
“Yes, sir. It would be Dr. William Baldwin.”
Marc paled. What on earth was Cambridge up to? Was he calling Dr. Baldwin deliberately to blunt Marc’s intention to use him as a character witness? But Cambridge could go at him at leisure in his cross examination. Character testimony was wide open. More importantly, what was this new evidence?
“I’d like to see this evidence,” Marc said.
“Of course,” Cambridge said cheerfully. “But only after I’ve assessed its probative value. Its precise use, I’m afraid, will only be made clear when Dr. Baldwin responds to my questions concerning it.”
“Then, as it may affect the presentation of my case,” Marc said to the judge, “I’ll need extra time to prepare.”
“If you do, sir, we’ll postpone defense witnesses until tomorrow morning.”
With that, Marc was left to fret and stew over the long, long lunch-hour.
***
Horatio Cobb was still steaming. He had had a near-sleepless night as his conscience fought with his indignation for supremacy. To make matters worse, he had had to sit through the morning session and watch Marc Edwards further dismantle the Crown’s case. The Chief had ordered Cobb to attend the entire trial, feeling that Cobb as a future detective ought to sit and observe what happened to evidence when barristers got hold of it. It was not a pretty sight. The only positive thing to come out of the morning, though, was the fact that Marc had gone too far, had been hoist on his own petard.
Still, Marc’s accusation in the wig-room rankled, not so much the charge that he was driven by ambition (because he simply was not) but the claim that he had not done his job properly. After a night of arguing with himself, he had started to accept, grudgingly, the possibility that he had indeed begun his investigation with a prime suspect in mind and had set out merely to prove or disprove that assumption. What if he had ignored Jake Broom and started with the opposite notion: that someone other than Uncle Seamus had committed the rape? Would he still not have eliminated the six-foot Sol Clift, the slicked-down redhead, Joe Mullins, and of course Jake Broom himself who was not stupid enough to get himself hanged by going to the police and accusing a prominent gentleman of a crime no-one had reported.
Nonetheless, at noon, he returned to the Chief’s office – Sturges was home ill – and sat there for half an hour going over all his interviews and the testimony he had, as was his custom, automatically memorized. When the solution came it struck him like a tornado on a house of straw. He shouted, “I’ve got it!” so loudly that Gussie French’s pen jabbed into the document he was writing on and its ink spurted up onto his chin.
Cobb was now sure how the crime had been committed. And he knew what he had to do – quickly.
***
At three o’clock the Crown called Dr. William Baldwin as its final witness. At Baldwin House there had been much discussion and more speculation about what the Crown was up to. Dr. Baldwin, perhaps the city’s most illustrious and beloved citizen, seemed as puzzled as anyone else. And, Marc noticed, there lurked in him some uncharacteristic unease, anxiety even.
Dr. Baldwin was sworn in. If it was possible for the onlookers to be any more riveted than they had heretofore been, it was now.
Cambridge began by waving a sheet of paper in the air. “Milord, I have here a letter which I would like to enter into evidence as Exhibit C.”
The clerk brought the letter to the judge, who had already read it. He nodded and it was returned to Cambridge. Marc, too, had read it a few minutes before, and could not yet see its relevance. But he was certainly worried.
“This letter,” Cambridge continued, “is dated a month ago and is addressed to Bishop Strachan of this city. It lay unopened for over a week, having got lost among the Bishop’s many papers. It was read by the Bishop only this morning. He has kindly attested to these facts.”
“Carry on, then,” said the judge.
“The letter was written by one D’Arcy Boylan, a prominent barrister in the City of Cork, Ireland.”
The Baldwin clan, including of course Uncle Seamus, were from the Cork region of Ireland. Marc held his breath.
“It is addressed to Bishop Strachan. I would ask the witness to read aloud only that part I have marked with a pencil.”
The letter was taken to Dr. Baldwin. The look of concern on his face had deepened. He read:
Some disturbing news, Bishop. The story about Seamus Baldwin
retiring because of a nervous breakdown turns out not to be true.
It seems the fellow was entangled in some sort of scandal that
was hushed up by his law partners. I shall keep probing for the
details, which you might find useful in the future.
Dr. Baldwin finished and stared hard at the prosecutor. But the letter was quivering in his hand.
***
Cobb walked up to Frederick Street and knocked at the door of Wilfrid Sturges’ house. His wife showed Cobb through to the little den, where the stricken man lay suffering. However, what Cobb had to tell roused him considerably. He readily approved Cobb’s absenting himself from the trial and gave him carte blanche to carry out the further investigation he had sketched out for his mightily impressed chief.
Cobb rented a buggy from Frank’s livery and drove straight up to Whittle’s mill. Neither the miller nor any of his crew had been in the courtroom this morning, so Cobb was certain they would all have returned to work. He found Whittle in his office. He came right to the point.
“Sir, did you ever employ Tim Thurgood, Burton’s son?”
“What’re you doin’ pokin’ about in this business now?” Whittle said, his natural cheerfulness disrupted by this unexpected visit from the police.
“That’s fer me to decide, sir. Please answer my question.”
“That’s easy. He never worked here.”
“Where did he work, then?”
“At Getty’s farm. It’s just up the road. You passed it on your way here. But he ain’t there now. He run off to get married.”
“I see. And he never come back here to visit?”
“I don’t like tellin’ tales outta school,” Whittle said, indicating that he never missed a chance to do just that, “but father and son didn’t see eye to eye. It’s common, alas.”
“Thanks fer yer time.”
At the door, Cobb turned and said, “How’s the fishin’ up at the trout pool there above yer dam?”
Whittle looked puzzled but replied happily enough. “Tryin’ to catch me out, are ya?” he laughed.
“Catchin’ you out at what?”
“Poachin’, of course.”
“Ya mean ya can’t use them two great trout pools no more?”
“Not since the old uncle come last summer. I been forbidden on pain of losin’ my lease.”
“I always thought the Baldwins were easygoing?”
“Oh, they are. But that uncle loves his anglin’ and he prefers to angle alone.”
“Well, Whittle, that uncle may not be around much longer, eh?”
Whittle gave a wary chuckle and watched Cobb head for his buggy. Cobb had got what he had come for, and more. He headed off now to find the Getty farm. He found it exactly where Whittle had directed him. A young fellow was repairing a snake-fence on the driveway into the farm. Cobb hailed him.
“What can I do for you, constable?” The lad had a kind, generous face but looked wary just the same.
“You was a good friend of young Tim Thurgood, I hear,” Cobb said, stretching the truth a little.
“We were mates, yes. But Tim’s married now and nobody’s seen him since.”
“So I was told. What I need to know is where he is now.”
“He never told me where he and Marian were goin’. He doesn’t want anybody to know.”
“Didn’t get along with Papa, I hear.”
“That’s right. Tim just wants to be left alone.”
“I can’t imagine he’d not tell his best friend where he’d got to.”
“Well, he didn’t.” The Getty lad glanced down just enough for Cobb to be sure he was lying.
“Son – ”
“Will. The name’s Will Getty.”
“Will, a man’s life depends on me findin’ Tim Burton before tonight. If he’s anywhere near Toronto, you’ve gotta tell me.”
“But he made me promise. I can’t let him get into any trouble.”
“He’s not in any trouble, son. You have my word on that. But he has information in a life-and-death trial now goin’ on in the city. Without his help an innocent man’ll perish in prison.”
Will Getty hesitated but, in the end, he gave in.
***
“What do you make of that paragraph, Dr. Baldwin?” Neville Cambridge said with disingenuous relish.
“Sounds like rumour-mongering to me,” Dr. Baldwin said forcefully, but the unease showed plainly in his eyes. “The Irish have been known to indulge from time to time.”
A slight ripple of laughter went through the jury. They were hanging now on every word, every nuance. Here before them was one of the first citizens of the colony, a gentleman among gentlemen, on a witness-stand defending as best he could his reprobate Irish brother.
“That may well be, doctor, but I believe you know otherwise.” Cambridge stared hard at Dr. Baldwin, holding him gaze for gaze.
“I don’t know what you are implying, sir.”
“I’m not implying anything other than this: tell this court exactly how much you know about why and how Seamus Baldwin came to leave his law firm in Cork, Ireland. And remember, you have sworn an oath before God to tell the truth.”
Dr. Baldwin bridled. “I know what an oath before my God is, sir.” Then he paused and looked slowly up at his brother slumped against the bailiff’s man in the dock. A great sadness overwhelmed him. He dropped his gaze, struggling with some deep, insurgent emotion. “The truth is this. I’ve had it from Seamus’s law partners in correspondence and from Seamus himself.”
The courtroom was silent. A crow cawed in the distance.
“John McCall, the senior partner, discovered that Seamus was paying court to his daughter.”
“And how old was the daughter?”
“It was his youngest child. She was almost eighteen.”
“Thus still a minor. And Mr. Baldwin was fifty-nine or sixty?”
“Sixty, then.” Dr. Baldwin spoke in a monotone, the better perhaps not to hear the treachery his words were effecting.
“You say ‘paying court,’ but that covers a multitude of peccadilloes, sir. Please be specific. You are under oath.”
Dr. Baldwin cleared his throat but his words could barely be heard. “McCall caught them in bed together – in his own house.”
Sensation one more time! For here was surely the final nail in Seamus Baldwin’s coffin. The man had seduced a minor before in Ireland. And how many had preceded that offence? If the man himself heard the accusation, he gave no sign.
As the judge banged his gavel in a fruitless attempt to restore order, Marc thought for a moment that his heart had stopped.
***
It was two-thirty in the afternoon when Cobb pulled his buggy into Ogden Frank’s livery on Colborne Street at West Market Lane. He now had to do one of the few things he genuinely feared: hire and ride a horse. The oslter’s lad chuckled as he helped Cobb wobble into the saddle of an elderly and sedate mare of various brownish hues and a crooked star on her forehead.
“If ya speak soft-like, sir, she won’t buck – too hard.”
Cobb was beyond irony or humour. He twisted the reins in his fists.
“How far ya goin’?”
“Thornhill,” Cobb said bumpily as the mare stepped forward. Then he gritted his teeth and aimed the beast at Yonge Street.
On Yonge Street Cobb pulled on the right rein and the horse kindly obeyed and turned north. Thornhill was a hamlet a dozen or so miles up Yonge Street. Not far. But renting a buggy had been out of the question, for the road above Gallows Hill was rutted and near-impassable this time of year despite the recent stretch of Indian summer. And time was of the essence as the trial would likely finish up in the morning or early tomorrow afternoon. If new evidence were unearthed, then it had to be made known before this evening. Hence this horse, a beast that was incompatible with all things Cobb. As a lad he had ridden old draught horses a few times on his father’s farm near Woodstock, but he had never taken to the activity as his brother Laertes had.
Above Queen, where the traffic and houses thinned out, he felt obliged to urge the mare beyond a walk. But its teeth-jarring trot became unbearable by the time they reached the Bloor crossroad. The Red Lion Inn on his right looked awfully tempting, but he put one hand on his belly to stem its jigging and carried on manfully. With Gallows Hill in sight, he tried spurring his mount on to a gallop, but quickly lost one foot from its stirrup and was damn near pitched into the mire of a pig-yard beside the road. When he pulled back on the reins, the horse magically reduced its speed to a leisurely canter, and to his surprise he found that he could move his squat body in some sort of rhythm to match the mare’s. So this was how it was done!
At Eglinton he passed through the toll-gate with a cheery wave of his horseman’s unreined hand, glanced once at Paul Pry’s inn, and cantered on. A mile or so father on he swept by the Golden Lion Inn, then Finch’s Inn – his thirst now monumental – and finally the Sickle and Sheaf. Only three or four miles to go, with bush now closed in on both sides, separating the partly cleared farms.
At five o’clock he cantered past the Thornhill Hotel, yanked back on the reins, trot-jiggled back to the inn, and gingerly dismounted. When his feet hit the ground, his knees buckled and he collapsed onto them, panting and parched.
“You look like ya could use a drink.”
It was the proprietor of the hotel, aproned, red-cheeked, and smiling.
***
Cobb finished his ale, nodded gratefully to the innkeeper, and asked his first question: “I was told a Seymour Kilbride lived here at the hotel. Is that so?”
“Well, no. He does work here on Saturdays when we’re busy. But he don’t live here.”
“You know where I can locate him?”
“In trouble, is he?”
“Not at all. He has important information we need fer a trial goin’ on in Toronto.”
“We don’t pay no mind to the shenanigans goin’ on down in Toronto. But, yeah, Seymour works a little vegetable farm just east of town. You take this crossroad and ride fer about two miles. On yer right you’ll see a huge chestnut tree beside a pond. Follow the trail around it inta the bush about a half-mile. You can’t miss it.”
With his rump feeling as if it had ridden through Whittle’s grist-mill, Cobb made his way to the designated tree and pond, and then moved carefully along a rugged bush-trail until he came to a log cabin, flanked by a chicken-coop and a hay-barn. The ruins of several summer and fall garden-patches were plainly visible. It looked as if the new owners had plenty of work to occupy them for some time to come.
Cobb tethered the mare, went up to the rickety door, and knocked. It was half a minute and several further knocks before the door was eased partway open.
“Yes?” The single word emanated from a young man whose face was just visible in the shadows of the ill-lit interior. “Whaddya want?” Then when the fellow realized Cobb was a police constable, he tried to slam the door shut. It jammed on Cobb’s boot.
“I ain’t here to cause trouble,” Cobb said. “But I got some information you oughta hear about, and you got some I need to hear. You are Seymour Kilbride, ain’t ya?”
At the sound of his name, the young man pulled the door away from Cobb’s boot. “Sorry, sir, but we don’t trust strangers much around here. I am Seymour Kilbride. What’ve ya got to tell me? I’ve done nothin’ wrong in Toronto ‘cause I ain’t set foot there fer months.”
“I’d like to come in.”
“I prefer to talk here.”
But Cobb was too quick for the lad. He brushed past him and entered the murky interior. Two women sat at a deal table, peeling potatoes. In the dim light afforded by a nearby window, Cobb could see that one was young and pretty. The other was of indeterminate age. She might have been under thirty but life had scrawled its stress and strain across a sunken face with pale, frightened eyes set deep in bruised sockets. Her auburn hair hung down her back like frayed strands of hemp.
“And this must be Missus Kilbride,” Cobb said with a slight tip of his helmet towards the pretty one.
“That’s my Marion,” Kilbride said, looking dismayed.
“So it is. And this young lady would be yer sister – Lottie Thurgood.”