Don Gutteridge - Minor Corruption

“But I still don’t get the business about thehair,” Sturges said. “Thurgood ain’t old and he’s got black, curlylocks.”

Cobb looked at Marc, who said, “I managed,inadvertently, to suggest the answer during one of my frantic andmisguided cross-examinations. I speculated that the mill-handscould easily and naturally come by whitish hair. After all, theywork in the midst of wheat chaff, wheat dust and milled flour. Andthe morning of the rape, all of them had been kept busy shovellingup a spilled load of grain. Thurgood’s black curls were dustedgrey-white. None of the men bothered washing until the end of theday, so Thurgood’s hair – in the tricky light and shadow of thatstall and with his curls sprayed wide in his exertions – lookedmuch like the whitish halo around Uncle Seamus’s head.”

“I see,” Sturges said. “And Thurgood is awiry, slim fella who could’ve looked old to an excited JakeBroom?”

“I feel terrible about Broom,” Marc said,glancing at Cobb. “The poor devil really was in love with Betsy,and all kinds of thoughts must have gone through his head as hecame upon that scene – with Betsy apparently accepting the physicaladvances of a sixty-year-old. Why he ran and why he decided not toreveal what he’d seen, only he really knows. But I was dead wrongto accuse him of rape. It was the last thing he would ever havedone.”

“And if I’d’ve done a proper investigation inthe first place, there wouldn’t been a trial for SeamusBaldwin.”

“But it was your brilliant work that exposedthe culprit,” Sturges said forcefully. “And without the trial youwouldn’t’ve heard about the ban on trout fishin’ from Edie.”

“Well spoken, Wilf,” Marc said. “But I’d liketo know from the horse’s mouth, Cobb, just how you put togetheryour second and successful investigation.”

Cobb beamed. “I own it mostly to you,Major.”

“How so? Surely it wasn’t my losing my temperand making false accusations against you?”

“Well, that put a bee on my bottom, allright. But, no, it was you always tellin’ me not to acceptcoincidences.”

“I do recall saying that more than once.”

“Well, when you told me to do my job, I gotto thinkin’ that maybe I had started out with only onesuspect in mind. But I really didn’t fancy any of the youngmill-hands. Then I remembered. In the last week of July or so,three things happened, three things that might be connected. BetsyThurgood gets a steady job at Spadina, and I know from the trialthat she did not ever return home until her ma got sick in Octoberand she come back to help out.”

“And two or three days later, Tim Thurgoodelopes and vanishes,” Marc said.

“Right. That’s number two. And number threewe all know about. On the very next Saturday, Betsy foolishlyleaves her pa an openin’ and he takes it.”

“So you assumed that her brother Tim haddeliberately waited to leave until he was sure Betsy was away fromhome?”

“It seemed possible. And why would afifteen-year-old girl not go home once to visit her ma – not ahalf-hour away? Could it be she was afraid of her pa? Likely, eh?But then lots of terrible fathers beat their kids. Maybe that wasall there was to that.”

“But you recalled the older sister leavingand not returning?”

“Right again. But I had one big problem withthis theory.”

“Thurgood had a perfect alibi,” Sturges said,happily getting into the act. “Sworn to by the miller, who seemedto have no reason to lie.”

“But then I remembered Edie tellin’ the courtabout Whittle bein’ forbidden to fish in the trout pools, andsuddenly the miller had a reason to lie.”

“And the bugger’ll just say he misrememberedand avoid perjury,” Sturges muttered. “But when he asked Thurgoodto lie fer him and say he was at the weir all along, Thurgoodmust’ve been mightily relieved. He was home free.”

“Well, then, the first move I made aftergettin’ permission from you, Sarge, was to drive up to the mill. Iwanted find out if Whittle’d been anglin’ instead of fixin’ thedam, and I also figured him or one of the hands would know if TimThurgood had any friends in the area. ‘Cause it was Tim I needed totalk to, to find out if his pa was a pervert.”

“And you succeded both ways,” Sturges saidproudly.

“I did. Whittle spat out a deny-all about poachin’, but his eyes were lyin’. Then I went to the farmwhere he sent me, and Tim’s friend, Will Getty, finally told me Icould find Tim at the hotel in Thornhill, usin’ the name Kilbride.I knew I had to get up there and back before nightfall, so I renteda horse.”

“The supreme sacrifice,” Marc said, muchamused.

Reminded of that harrowing journey, Cobbunconsciously adjusted the pillow he had been sitting on. “And whenI finally found Tim and his wife, there was a second lady seated atthe kitchen table. I knew right off it was Lottie Thurgood and I’dhit the bull’s-eye.”

“You had no trouble persuading them to comeinto town and do their duty?”

“None at all. They were as mad as could be,both of ‘em, though Lottie looked awful frail. I hired a carriageand we drove back, slowly, to Toronto. My rear end still recollectsevery bump.”

“Cobb took them home, reported to you, thencame to me,” Marc said. “Early in the morning Robert and I workedout our new defense. Fortunately we had to use only part ofit.”

Also, at Marc’s the previous evening, the twofriends had fallen over each other with apologies for their sharpexchange in the attorneys’ wig-room. Marc readily admitted that ifhe had not been so eager to become Doubtful Dick Dougherty, hemight have done some investigating on his own and discovered thetruth. He had relied solely on Cobb’s recorded interviews when hecould have been out at Spadina quizzing the servants and spendingmore time with Uncle Seamus. He had visited the crime scene once -but that was all. While he couldn’t tamper with the Crown’switnesses, he could have walked over to the cluster of workman’shouses and played investigator. But he hadn’t. For his part Cobbhad confessed to focussing solely on whether or not Uncle Seamushad committed the crime and, having once determined the case, toclinging to it at all costs. Still, their deeper accusations aboutmotive went undiscussed, and it might be some time before theirfriendship came fully back on course – if it ever did.

“Well,” Sturges said, summing up, “there arereally only two completely positive things to come outta thiscase.”

“What are they?” Marc said.

“First of all, I got word an hour ago thatMrs. Trigger was found dead up in Newmarket. Fell down in a drunkenstupor, I’m told, and struck her head on somethin’ sharp.”

“Good riddance,” said Cobb.

“And the second thing?”

“We’ve found ourselves a bona fide detective, ain’t we?”

And he looked admiringly, imploringly atCobb.

***

In bed that night, after she had heard all of thepertinent details of the case and accounts of Cobb’s brilliance,Beth said, “Do you think Thurgood went after Betsy while she wasnursing her sick mom?”

“Thurgood told the magistrate that the girlslept beside her mother the whole time – ostensibly to nurse herbetter.”

“It seems that Betsy did lie to get the fivepounds to procure an abortion. Why would she herself have nothinted that a midwife would be a good idea that evenin’, knowin’ itwould be the notorious Mrs. Trigger?”

“She knew her father, eh? He’d never call adoctor. Who else, then, but Mrs. Trigger? And remember, Betsyplayed ignorant of the facts of life when it’s obvious now that sheknew the trouble she was in and, vaguely, who might help her out ofit.”

“The poor girl probably only knew that amidwife would know what to do.”