Chapter 17

A QUESTION OF INSURANCE

Afternoon, November 4, 1884

Outside the Grey County Court Buidling, people were going about the essential acts of daily life -- activities of little importance on their own, but when tallied up become the glue that binds a community together. At the Toronto, Bruce and Grey Railway station, caretaker Josiah Ralston swept cigarette butts from the floor of the waiting room. Instead of depositing them in a trash can as usual, he swept them out a door and into the alley, perhaps because he was feeling rankled by a breakfast time argument with his wife. At the Owen Sound High School, vice principal Emma Cartwright finished her lunch of salad and a sausage, put on a sweater, and went outside to ring the bell that called students back to classes. At John Fry’s butcher shop on Front Street, Adele Ross, who lived in the largest house in Owen Sound on the town’s West Hill, was buying a fat turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. At Damnation Corners, a few stragglers huddled against a chill breeze as they headed into the Bucket of Blood, the most popular tavern at that intersection. On the hill behind the Grey County Court Building, the early snowfall had attracted a few adventurous tobaggoners.

The mayor of Owen Sound, Duncan Morrison, sat in the study of his home and made notes for a speech he would give that night to the Grand Lodge of the Masonic Order: “There are no more firm believers in a bright and prosperous future for our own magnificent Dominion, this Canada of ours, than among those whose names are enrolled in the register of the Grand Lodge of Canada.”

The Owen Sound harbour was emptied of shipping when the Canadian Pacific steamer Algoma became the last ship to depart for the season. It set out in early afternoon for Port Arthur, with a crew of nine and thirty-seven passengers. It would encounter a blinding snowstorm and run aground on an islet in Lake Superior. Most aboard would be lost.

When Leonard Babington returned to his seat after the lunchtime adjournment, he found the courtroom warm and stuffy and filled with the scent of damp scarves and sweaty parkas. On his way to his seat at the newspaper table, he encountered James Masson. “We’ll see the last of Mr. Frost’s witnesses today,” Masson told Leonard. “Then I’ll put Cook Teets’s sister and mother on the stand.” Leonard thought Masson was showing a friendlier tone since hearing his apology.

In the few minutes Leonard had with Masson, he gained considerable insight into the probems the lawyer was having in building Cook’s defence. Masson recounted how he and Cook had argued vigorously about their legal strategy. The lawyer had told Cook that he must have shared his strychnine with somone – Molly Leppard, Scarth Tackaberry or maybe even his brother, Nelson Teets. Cook denied it. Masson said he’d told Cook bluntly: “How can I defend you if you won’t cooperate? You’ll end up swinging if we can’t shift suspicion away from you.”

The lawyer hooked his thumbs in his vest as he leaned over Leonard. He spoke barely above a whisper. “Cook insisted they couldn’t convict him for something that happened when he wasn’t there. He told me that if I thought differently, he’d have to get another lawyer.” Masson added that when he threatened to quit, Cook backed down. “It would have been impossible for him to find another lawyer and the judge wouldn’t have allowed an adjournment.”

The two continued to whisper while the guards brought Cook in through the door opposite the jury. In a moment, Judge Armour entered and Alfred Frost called his first witness of the afternoon. He was Roger Purdy, an emaciated-looking man who ran the post office and general store in Eugenia. He’d spent years cultivating his political connections and the postmaster job was his reward, along with his appointment to issue marriage licenses. Between those jobs and the commissions he earned as an agent for the Canadian Mutual Life Association, he’d been able to put up a handsome brick house on a choice property upstream on the Beaver River.

Alfred Frost ambled to the witness box, folded his arms on his chest, and brushed a loose lock of hair from his forehead. The questioning began.

“Did the prisoner apply to you for a marriage license?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Is he able to write his name?”

“He just signed with an X.”

“Did he make an application for life insurance on Rosannah Leppard?”

“He came to me for such – he and her together. I sent them to Meaford for her medical examination. When they got back I wrote a policy for four thousand and four hundred dollars on Rosannah’s life. Teets spoke of getting some insurance on himself, in her favour. But he never did. I’ve always wondered why not.”

Leonard underlined his notes about the insurance. The fact there was a witness to Cook having taken out a policy on Rosannah’s life was important. He was not surprised when James Masson began his cross-examination on that very point.

“Mr. Purdy,” Masson started, “you will recall Cook told you he was in poor health, and the doctor in Meaford had said he should go to the company’s chief surgeon in Toronto for an examination.”

“I don’t remember anything of that kind,” Purdy declared.

“But you knew him as being blind a great many years?”

“I know he had the appearance of it.”

Judge Armour interrupted to ask a question. “Has the witness ever seen the prisoner without his guide dog?”

Purdy seemed to be embarrassed for having questioned Cook’s blindness. He didn’t answer the question but instead talked about how Cook learned to use other skills.

“I know boys used to put things in front of him to tell the colour. He said he could tell between light and dark. He would tell the colour of their clothing and caps partly by feeling.”

James Masson took four steps, putting him less than an arm’s length from Purdy. Hands on his hips, he resumed his cross-examination.

“So Cook Teets can do his own business and go about the country? He’s a pretty smart man in doing his own business?”

“I believe he is so,” the witness answered.

The exchange seemed to Leonard to have ended in a standoff. But there was hard evidence now about the insurance, and that could be taken to implicate Cook.

The next two witnesses were neighbours of the Leppards. They were sure to have known something about what had gone on during Rosannah’s last day.

Moses Sherwood testified to having seen Rosannah and Cook together outside the Leppard house between four and five o’clock that afternoon.

“What were they doing?” Alfred Frost asked.

“They were sitting on a stone together, talking. Rosannah had a piece of paper in her hand and she looked very steady at it. She looked up into his face and whispered and he made an answer. I cannot say what was said.”

“What was in the paper?”

“I couldn’t tell, looked like some kind of a powder, maybe medicine. She was folding it over and over, as if she was trying to get what was in it into a heap. I walked past lightly. I did not want to disturb them, I did not want to get into a conversation with Cook, he’s none too friendly. I just wanted to go on about my business.”

“And after that she went home?”

“Yes, and he went toward his mother’s house.”

James Masson told Judge Armour he had no questions for Sherwood.

The next witness was Scarth Tackaberry. He strode to the witness box, all legs and arms, and sat down with a flourish. Leonard thought he had an impudent look that showed contempt for Cook Teets and disdain for everyone else in the courtroom. On second thought, perhaps he was being unfair.

“You live opposite the prisoner, I believe,” Alfred Frost began. Tackaberrry said he’d been born right there, in the house on the Beaver Valley Road. He said it boastfully, as if the act of birthing had made him a real son of Vandeleur.

“As a neighbour, were you aware at any time of the prisoner having strychnine in his possession?”

“I was. He showed it to me one day in July of last year, 1883, on a visit to his house.”

“Where was he keeping it?”

“He took it out of his trunk. He showed me a revolver, too. The strychnine was in a small bottle, something like the one we’ve seen in evidence. That looks like the bottle.”

Leonard watched as Scarth Tackaberry pointed to the bottle on the evidence table.

“And Mr. Tackaberry, can you say, at the time you saw the bottle, how much strychnine there was in it?”

“I think it was pretty nearly full when he showed it to me. I asked him where he got it and he told me first in Canada. I told him he could not get it here and then he said he got it in the United States.”

“And is there as much in the bottle now as when you saw it?”

“There was more then than there is now. Yes, I am quite satisfied as to that.”

James Masson was up immediately to face Scarth Tackaberry. He put his hands behind his back, looked from the witness to the jury, and then back at the witness. Leonard thought he was signaling that he had a critical point to make.

“Mr. Tackaberry, I put it to you that you were a suitor for the hand of Rosannah Leppard.”

“I never was!”

“But you wanted her to marry you?”

“I never did. Never a word of that kind was said between us.”

“Did not you and the prisoner have words about your relationship with Rosannah?”

“He told me Rosannah said I wanted to marry her. I told him he lied, that I knew Rosannah couldn’t have said any such thing.”

“Admit it now, you had some hot words with each other, didn’t you?”

“We had some hot words.”

Before James Masson could pursue this admission, His Lordship broke in with a question.

“How long was this before her death?”

“It was before her marriage,” Tackaberry said. “I guess it would be a month before.”

It looked to Leonard as if Scarth was getting a bit frazzled. He kept running his hand through his hair and making as if he was brushing lint off his jacket.

“Now Mr. Tackaberry, were you in the habit of visiting Rosannah?”

“I saw her at her house two or three times.”

“And did you call on the Leppards the night before Rosannah’s death?”

“I stopped by there for a bit. I was on my way back from Flesherton. I heard Cook had offered Mrs. Leppard some strychnine to control varmints. I’d been having trouble with raccoons and rabbits and I calculated I might get some from her.”

“And did you?”

“As a fact, no. She said it was too late and I should come back another time.”

Leonard thought it sounded rehearsed, the way Tackaberry had answered that question. So, apparently, did James Masson.

“I put it to you,” Cook’s lawyer argued, “that you’d gotten some strychnine from Cook Teets, and you’d gone to Rosannah’s house because you wanted revenge for her having spurned you. You went there to kill her.”

“If I did, I didn’t succeed. She was still alive when I left. Ask Mrs. Leppard.”

“But for how long, Mr. Tackaberry?”

Judge Armour cleared his throat. “Where is counsel going with this line of questioning?”

“I’m trying to point out, Your Lordship, that Cook Teets was not the only person who may have had the means to carry out this crime. There were other people in the house that night. We should not forget that. The defence has no further questions.”

When Alfred Frost told Judge Armour he was finished presenting the Crown’s case, the judge called on James Masson to began the case for the defence. Masson’s first witness was Cook’s sister Sarah Ann Clark. Leonard wondered how Cook felt about her being dragged into this mess. No matter what she said, everyone would think it a lie, a cover-up for her brother.

“When did you first see your brother on the morning of Rosannah’s death?” Masson asked.

“It was when Mrs. Tackaberry and Bridget stopped at my house. They’d gone to mother’s place to get him. He’d been there all night.”

“Bridget has testified you drove her and Cook to the Leppard place that morning. Can you tell the jury what you found when you got there?”

“One of the girls, I think it was Mrs. Leppard’s daughter-in-law, was scrubbing the floor. She rose up to let us pass. I led Cook by the arm. The place is very small, just room to walk between the stove and the table. We passed through that space and Cook went and knelt by the head of the bed. He said to me, ‘Sarah, is she dead?’ I said she was. He said, ‘Poor Rosannah, just speak one word so I will know you are not dead.’ I said she will never speak any more. I turned around and Mrs. Leppard came and shook hands with Cook. I said, ‘How in the world has this happened, what is the cause of this sudden death?’”

Masson asked the witness if anyone had sent for a doctor.

“Nobody had,” Sarah Ann Clark replied. “I said to Mrs. Leppard, ‘When you first saw Rosannah was ill, didn’t you send for a doctor?’ She said no.”

Alfred Frost declined to cross-examine.

James Masson called Margaret Teets to the stand. Leonard considered it cruel to force such an old lady to testify in court. She’d raised her family and lived through a great piece of history, all the way from the War of 1812 to the Civil War and the Confederation of Canada in 1867. A woman her age, around ninety, deserved to finish out her life unmolested, Leonard thought.

Margaret Teets rose slowly from her seat and leaning on a cane, made her way forward. Leonard looked at Cook and saw he was dabbing both eyes with his handkerchief. At least he hasn’t had to watch his mother age, Leonard thought. He probably still thinks of her as she looked when he last had his sight, when he was a boy of twelve. Mrs. Teets was old now, her face wrinkled and worn. The one good thing about Cook being blind, Leonard thought, was that he didn’t have to watch his mother grow old.

Cook’s lawyer led Margaret Teets through Scarth Tackaberry’s visit to her home, the time he claimed Cook had shown him a bottle of strychnine.

“Do your recollect your son showing Mr. Tackaberry the bottle?”

“Mr. Tackaberry never saw that bottle to my knowledge,” Margaret Teets said. She spoke in a high-pitched but clear voice, and showed no hesitation in her answer. She waved her hand to one side, as if to dismiss both Tackaberry and the question.

“Did you ever give Cook the keys to the trunk to show the bottle to Mr. Tackaberry?”

“No, I never did.”

“Do you remember him having a little wooden box about the colour of that box?” He pointed to the one on the evidence table.

“Yes, he had a box. There wasn’t much in it. Just a little glass tube and a magnifying glass. It had a couple of pieces of glass with a flea between them. People could look at it and see what the flea looked like from real close.”

“One more question, Mrs. Teets. Was Cook at home with you the night Rosannah fell ill and died?”

Mrs. Teets gripped the sides of the witness box and looked directly at Masson when she answered.

“Yes, he was with me all night. We were just getting breakfast when Bridget and Mrs. Tackaberry came for him.”

Leonard wasn’t surprised that Mrs. Teets had stood up for her son. He was impressed with the firmness of her answers. Old people are often forgetful, he thought, but she knew what she was doing and saying.

Alfred Frost’s cross-examination took only a moment. “Did you know your son kept strychnine in his trunk?”

“I knew he did.”

“Is that the bottle?”

“It looks very much like it.”

“What did he keep the bottle in when he had it in the chest?”

“I don’t know as he had it in anything. Whenever I saw it, it was loose.”

Silence enveloped the courtroom when Margaret Teets stepped from the witness box. Leonard felt immense respect for this tired woman, faced with the burden of having to testify at her son’s murder trial.

“Are my learned friends finished with their presentations?” Judge Armour asked. James Masson and Alfred Frost agreed they had completed their cases. “In that event, I will adjourn for today. Be prepared to sum up your arguments for the court in the morning.”