Don Gutteridge - The Bishop's Pawn

Burchill glared at the door to theworkroom.

“I just asked the lad – an’ bein’ an honestson of his father, he told me the truth. You gonna beat him ferthat?”

“I don’t beat my son! I don’t have to!”

“So why did you not mention you was chummywith Epp?”

“I wasn’t chummy with him! He came and didhis work and went home or off to the bootlegger’s to squander hisearnings. We spoke not a dozen words the whole time. And Icertainly didn’t persuade him to murder Dougherty.”

“You paid him in cash?”

“A few shillings. When he was finished – andhe was a good carpenter – I walked up to Irishtown and paid off hisdebt to Swampy Sam.”

Well, Cobb thought, they may not have beenchums, but Epp was clearly in a position to be manipulated byBurchill. And he had lied, however he chose to rationalizethe matter. Cobb now recalled an item in the notes Marc had made onthe case: Burchill could have had a purely personal motive. If so,that possibility and his outright lie might be sufficient to get awarrant to turn this place over.

“I believe you had a personal reason ferkillin’ a man you already hated,” he said, staring straight atBurchill.

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“The fact that young Matthew was secretlycourtin’ Mr. Dougherty’s ward, Celia, must’ve driven you near mad.”Cobb stepped back and waited for the effect of this bombshell.

He didn’t have to wait long. “What in hell doyou mean? My son never leaves this shop without my permission!”

“Well, he snuck out last Sunday while you wasin church. Celia Langford met him – alone – in a little shed up on- ”

“Jumpin’ Jesus! I’ll kill theson-of-a-bitch!”

Cobb thought Burchill’s eyes were going topop out of their sockets. His lips began to quiver and his beardshook like Jehovah’s in a righteous rage. Ignoring Cobb, he spunabout and lurched into the workroom with a thunderous slamming ofthe flimsy door.

Cobb waited. There was no immediate violence.Not even a raised voice. But the low murmuring was fraught withpaternal anger and filial shame. Cobb slipped out onto King Street.On the plus side, he had proven to himself that BartholomewBurchill did not have a personal motive for having Doughertymurdered. On the negative side, he had complicated young Matthew’salready complicated life and unthinkingly interfered with Celia’swell-being to boot.

Maybe there was something to thisbusiness of tact after all.

***

On Thursday morning Cobb hitched a ride up YongeStreet to Potters Field, beyond Lot Street at the city limits,where Reverend David Chalmers spoke a few simple words over thepine coffin of Reuben Epp who, until the double tragedy of Mondaylast, had served His Maker humbly and without complaint. More thantwo dozen people were there to witness the interment, having bravedthe rigours of a mud-slicked road with ruts as deep as agentleman’s boot. Whether all were there to mourn was a mootquestion, but Cobb could see no-one who didn’t belong. Nomysterious, long-lost relative stepped forward to claim kinshipwith the disgraced verger.

Later that day Cobb got around to checkingout Everett Stoneham’s alibi with the cousins he had claimed wouldback him up. And they did, cheerfully. Too cheerfully? Well, howcould one tell without the rack or a decent thumbscrew? Afterdictating his notes (kept in his head) to Gussie French, Cobb wentinto the Chief’s office and reported that he had run down all theleads they had developed and had thought might be productive, andhad drawn a blank. Unless Marc and Brodie came up with somethinguseful in New York City or unless Nestor Peck produced newinformation about Epp’s movements on Sunday afternoon and evening(he had not appeared at Evensong, Marc had been told by MyrtleWelsh), the search for an accomplice was headed for a dead-end.

“Maybe the bugger did it on his own,” Cobbmuttered to himself on the way out.

But he didn’t believe it.

It was late Sunday afternoon when the steamer Constitution approached Manhattan Island, urged on by theHudson River current and the first tug of the ebb-tide from the seabeyond. Marc and Brodie stood at the railing of the foredeck.Despite their fatigue and days spent without a decent wash, achange of clothes or palatable food, they were excited, taut withexpectation. The setting sun on their right was washing across thewide, rippling river and bathing the cityscape – which rose up fromthe island like a natural extension of its splendour – in a golden,gently purpling glow. By languid degrees through the low sea-mist,its form and detail materialized: wharves, piers, docking berths,and dozens of ships, boats and barges idling amongst them.Bright-sailed or funnelled, they rocked and sidled as complacent aswaterfowl in their element. Behind them, the silhouette of thecity’s buildings and churches stretched upward, as if to seize thelast radiance of the day. To Marc the scene was reminiscent of aTurner painting that he had seen in London years before – seducingthe viewer with its mysterious, form-dissolving luminosity.

Beside him, Brodie said, “It’s not thisbeautiful close-up.”

***

Their journey along the Erie Canal had been long andarduous, but nonetheless had produced its own share of wonders.Marc and Brodie had reached Buffalo just past noon on Thursday.They were assured that, if they wished to wait for a few hours, acraft with accommodation suitable for two gentlemen could be had -for ready cash. But as every hour was critical to their plans, theytook passage on the first available vessel, a well-travelled bargehauling cowhides that had originated in Chicago and were destinedfor France. The single cabin in the middle of the barge had severalcompartments, and one of these was assigned to the payingpassengers. Food and refreshment could be picked up on the go.Drawn along the twenty-foot width of this engineering marvel bymules and horses – changed at intervals – the barge made all offive miles per hour. But it never stopped, except to be loweredlike a de-levitating table down one of the several dozen locks onroute to the Hudson River three hundred and seventy-five meanderingmiles away. Marc and Brodie slept in the cabin, bought their mealsat a makeshift inn or tavern beside a lock, and took their exerciseby occasionally getting off and treading the muddy towpath, oftenat a faster pace than that of the pitiable beasts of burden.

Beth had given Marc her copy of ThePickwick Papers to amuse him, with instructions to read thechapters on the behaviour of barristers in Mr. Pickwick’s trial forbreach of promise. But Marc had found little time for reading. Thescenery on either side of him was awe-inspiring and ever-changing.Virgin forests, rolling hills, near-mountains, impressively-clearedfarms, dazzling lakes, and burgeoning towns sprung up to feed onthe wealth that DeWitt Clinton’s canal had wrought: Syracuse, Rome,Utica, Troy. Here, rugged woodlands and pastoral farms abruptlygave way to smokestacks and warehouses and shantytowns and thehilltop mansions of the freshly, deservedly rich. For the firsttime Marc was seeing the miracle that was America: the fruits ofits republican fervour, its jettison of the cumbersome andcrippling past.

And over the course of thethree-and-a-half-day journey, Marc and Brodie exchangedconfidences.

With utmost tact, Marc had asked Brodie whathe remembered of his guardian’s public life in New York City. Hehad been just seventeen at the time of the sudden decampment, theyoung man replied readily, even enthusiastically. He wanted, itseemed, to keep his uncle alive in his life by talking about him.Uncle was scrupulous, Brodie said, about keeping his courtroomantics, with their attendant notoriety, separate from the quiet,domestic life he led at home – with them. When Dennis Langford’swife had died giving birth to Celia, Langford invited his lawpartner to live with him and his children. A new wing was added tothe family home on the corner of Broome and Mercer Streets, a blockaway from Broadway. The barristers’ offices comprised the threerooms facing Broome Street, but Celia and Brodie rarely set foot inthem. The law practice of Langford and Dougherty began to thrive asnever before.