Don Gutteridge - Unholy Alliance

“I was tidyin’ up Mr. Bergeron’s room a fewminutes ago and I found this bottle stuffed inside one of his bigpillows when I went to fluff it up.”

Marc took the object from her. It was a litreof sherry, partially consumed and recorked.

“Thank you, Prissy. You’ve done well.”

“I gotta do a lot of things awfully well tomake up fer the mess I made downstairs,” she said, and turnedtowards the door so that Marc would not see her tears.

Erneste Bergeron was sitting peacefully in aneasy-chair in the parlour, smoking a pipe and taking in thesnowscape beyond the French doors. He glanced up as Marc came upbeside him with the sherry bottle in plain view.

“This is yours, I believe,” Marc said evenly.

Bergeron’s only response was a deep sigh. Hemotioned for Marc to sit in the chair nearest him and said with anembarrassed smile, “I feel so very foolish, Mr. Edwards. It was astupid thing to do — hiding my wine in a pillow — but I had amoment of panic when I heard the butler had been poisoned bydrinking sherry laced with laudanum.”

“But you must have soon learned it wasAmontillado? Everybody else seemed to know.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And this is a hunting sherry — one youbrought with you, I assume, because it doesn’t match the brandMacaulay has been serving.”

“That’s right. I have trouble sleeping, asyou know, and at home I take a glass of this sherry before Iretire. I knew Mr. Macaulay would have sherry in his stores, but Ithought my own brand would be better — for me.”

“I still don’t see why you hid it fromus.”

“That’s simple, or so it seemed yesterday.You see, I came here very uncertain of the kind of allianceLaFontaine was hoping for. I knew about the attempts here to keepUpper Canada a secular state and to veto any sort of establishedchurch. I am deeply religious, and I feared for my own church andits schools.”

“And then you got to observe the Anti-Christfirsthand across the negotiating table,” Marc smiled.

“Yes. Mr. Baldwin is obviously a devoutChristian, an Anglican even. I believed him when he said ourreligions would be protected. And I passionately wished to see theeconomic reforms proposed in our meetings come to fruition. So,when the butler was found dead, and a bottle of sherry withlaudanum in it suspected as the instrument of his death, I fearedthat my weakness for sherry and the bottle in my luggage — alongwith the access I had to the laudanum in the bathroom — would castsuspicion our way and, in the least, break the bonds of trust wehad so painstakingly established. I know it seems foolish inretrospect, but I went immediately to my room and hid my sherrywhere I thought no-one would find it — in a decorative pillow thathadn’t ever been used as far as I could tell. But the maid was tooconscientious. She insisted on fluffing up all the pillows in myroom whether they needed it or not.”

“That must have been her doing,” Marc saidcarefully, “because I assure you I have not asked that your roomsbe searched.”

“So you are now looking outside the estatefor the culprit?” Bergeron said hopefully.

Marc offered him a noncommittal nod.

“I do hope you’ll forgive my foolishfears.”

“I already have,” Marc said, then rosequietly and left the room.

Well, he thought as he headed down the hallin search of Macaulay, Bergeron could now almost certainly beeliminated as a suspect. His enthusiasm for the alliance wasundoubtedly genuine, as was his religious fervour. It was hard toenvision him poisoning the impostor, even if he somehow discoveredhe was a spy, making off with the three-page summary of theproceedings, and hiding an irrelevant sherry bottle ineptly in hisown room. LaFontaine — like Robert, Hincks and Macaulay — was noteven in the picture. And the servants likewise. Even Bragg, ifPrissy was correct, was more into petty revenge than deadlyconspiracies. That left Tremblay and Bérubé. Somehow before Cobbreturned on Sunday, Marc would have to develop a tactful strategyfor bearding those two.

Unless, of course, Cobb were to unearth freshand convincing evidence of another kind. And Marc had learned neverto underestimate his partner and friend.

***

It was pitch-dark when Cobb guided Ben and thetwo-man cutter out of Elmgrove and onto the Kingston Road.Fortunately the six-year-old horse that Struthers had introducedhim to outside the stables was a mixed breed that combinedendurance and reasonable speed. “Give him his head and he’ll getyou where you’re goin’ on his own time. He won’t need feedin’ an’waterin’ every five miles,” Struthers had advised. So Cobb did justthat. It was not often that he took the reins of a sleigh or acarriage, as in town he walked wherever he needed to go. Once in awhile the police would commandeer a vehicle from one of the locallivery stables or, on a rare occasions, a saddled mount. But Cobbhad been raised on a farm outside Woodstock, and although hisfather sometimes let them drive the Percheron team to church andback, he and his brother Larry (christened Laertes) would hitchthem up whenever Papa was off on an errand to the neighbours andrace down the back lane pretending they were Ben-Hur among theRomans. No such boyish temptation presented itself this day,however. Cobourg was about seventy meandering miles away, and hemight have a dozen stops to make before he got there late in theday. Instead, he tied off the reins and left his progress to Ben’sexperience and judgement. This stratagem allowed him to beginsampling the hamper of delectables prepared for him by Mrs.Blodgett and the Janes sisters.

A couple of miles out of town, just beyondScaddings bridge over the Don River, sat a rough log tavernoperated by Polonius Mitchum. Although it was unlikely that thereal Graves Chilton had got this close to Elmgrove before beingwaylaid and robbed of his identity, Cobb decided to stop there andtry out his cover story. At five-thirty in the morning, only theostler would be up with the animals, but that was the man he wantedto see.

As he anticipated, the ostler did recallevery occasion the Weller stage had stopped at Mitchum’s over thepast two weeks. Not often, of course, and only when some passengeror other insisted on stopping for reasons of thirst or intestinalemergencies. However, like most ostlers and stablemen, this fellowhad a keen eye for faces and eccentricities among stagecoachpassengers. Unfortunately, on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdayof the previous week, there had been no stops made. And before theTuesday in question, he was certain no-one fitting Chilton’sdescription (bald or otherwise) had been among the paying customerswho did stop.

Confident now that his pretending to be acousin of Chilton’s on the lookout for a butler who hadn’t arrivedwhen scheduled to, Cobb pointed Ben east along the Kingston Highwaythrough the snowbound bush of Upper Canada. The road itself, morelike an exaggerated lumber trail, weaved its way aroundimpenetrable clumps of hardwoods, stretches of stubborn evergreen,frozen swamps, and rigid outcroppings of rock. But as no snow hadfallen since Thursday evening’s brief squall, the roadbed waspacked flat and icy. Ben clopped along at a sprightly pace whilethe runners hummed behind him.

Just as the sun was rising above the treelineabout seven o’clock, Cob spotted a square-timber dwelling built tooclose 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 ricketydoor:

DЯINK amp; FOOD

Through an oil-paper window, he spied a flicker oflight.

A stout woman with a friendly face blemishedby the elements (or too much of the inn’s liquid product) came outto 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 herthroat.