Don Gutteridge - Dubious Allegiance

“I was warned that the colonies lacked many of the civilities it has taken the mother country centuries to accumulate and refine,” he was saying to Marc through his cigar smoke. “But I never expected to be accosted by hooligans on the Queen’s highroad or discover a travelling companion brutally slaughtered a few paces from his hotel. I haven’t stopped trembling since I came upon that gruesome sight.”

“You and Sedgewick found the body together, I understand.”

“Yes. I was no more than a step behind him, but it was I who had the misfortune to first look down into the creek.”

That confirmation, as Marc had suggested to the coroner-magistrate, appeared to let both Pritchard and Sedgewick off the hook, unless they had, improbably, conspired together to kill Brookner.

“I would go easy on those brandies, old chap,” Marc said, getting up. “The inquest begins in less than two hours.”

“So I’m told,” Pritchard said, “in the tap room!”

After lunch, Marc took it upon himself to interview the kitchen staff, who might have seen something or someone from one of the windows facing the stable and woods. But no-one had noticed Brookner or his stalker on the path about 9:15 or later. The stable-hands had all been indoors at the critical time and could not help. Nor had anyone, inside or outside, seen anyone lurking about the premises last night or earlier this morning. Marc re-examined the footprints between the woods and the back and side of the inn. No clear pattern emerged. He sat down and prepared a written report for the coroner and had it sent off to Mac in Prescott. Perhaps the inquest itself would turn up some useful information.

Dr. MacIvor Murchison arrived before the porticoed entrance of the Georgian Arms like the potentate of some far-flung pocket of empire. The one-horse sleigh, ribald with bells and jangling chains, glided to a graceful stop at the behest of a rail-thin gentleman, who set the reins down with a silky gesture, stepped smartly to the ground, then held out a suede-gloved hand to assist the magistrate out of his elevated seat. Although no general notice of the proceedings had been broadcast, somehow word had leaked out and the big tavern-room had begun to fill up with gawking, dry-throated devotees of the court shortly after opening time at two o’clock. The presiding justice, however-much to the chagrin of the gathering crowd-ordered the bar closed until the inquest was concluded, in keeping with the dignity and sanctity of British jurisprudence. The presiding official himself, of course, had taken on sufficient quantities of fortifying liquors well before his ostentatious arrival.

Murdo Dingman bellied his way through the considerable throng outside the inn to greet Doctor Mac and welcome him to court, as it were. “I have arranged everything just as you constructed me, your honourable,” he boomed, acutely conscious of the gallery watching. “There’s plenty of chairs in neat little rows and my best table up front with the big, padded captain’s chair for your gracious to be seated upon.”

His Honour nodded in curt acknowledgement of these amenities. “And a chair for my clerk here, Mr. Digby Parsons, with pen and ink?”

Parsons stared at Dingman with his long, horse-like face.

“Already done, sir. You’ve brung your own paper?”

“We have, Mr. Dingman. We have.”

And without further clarifying dialogue, the cavalcade of three swept through the awed crowd into the foyer, where they made a right wheel into the re-rigged tavern.

By three o’clock, when Digby Parsons rapped the gavel on behalf of the coroner upon the deal table before him, the makeshift courtroom was jammed, with a standing overflow crowd in the foyer beyond the opened double-doors. As many women as men were in attendance, a fact that invariably puzzled and appalled new arrivals from the more proper domain of Her Majesty’s kingdom. What they would have observed on this particular afternoon was a spacious taproom from which all tables but one had been removed and the orphaned chairs set up in respectable ranks facing the official dais at the front. Behind it, his bulging bulk having been shoe-horned into its padded chair, sat the coroner-magistrate draped in a tattered red cape with furred collar and sporting a moth-infested wig, which teetered on the random tufts of his delinquent hair. To the right the clerk sat with poised pen and parchment before him. To the left was the witness chair, a spare bar-stool. Farther left, beneath the tavern windows, a bench had been cleared for the assembled witnesses, who looked on anxiously.

MacIvor Murchison opened the proceedings by announcing that what followed would be a preliminary and a summary hearing: to wit, without a jury. And the findings, should there be any, would be tentative and non-binding.

The clerk then swore in the first witness, Ainslie Pritchard.

Any notion, previously held, that these proceedings would be marked by a foolish and dismissible country-bumpkinness quickly evaporated, as Pritchard seated himself on the edge of the stool and turned to look into the sharp intelligence of the coroner’s eyes. As Doctor Mac closely questioned the initial witness, the murmurings and whispers in the room died away and were replaced by a silence that was part awe and part reverence, but principally the intense curiosity of the disinterested in other people’s miseries.

“How long had you known the victim?”

“We met five days ago in Montreal. We were staying at the same hotel. We met at breakfast. Captain-”

“I believe you’ve answered several questions I haven’t yet asked.”

“Sorry, Your Worship.”

“You yourself are newly arrived in Canada?”

“Yes, I’ve been here less than a month. I came up to Quebec City from New York. I’m in the wine-importing business.”

“Yes, yes. That is all very interesting, sir, especially to those with a fine palate, but I am trying to determine whether or not you had any conceivable motive for doing away with Captain Brookner.”

Pritchard was aghast. “Good gracious, no! I merely agreed to help share the costs of a private carriage that Brookner hired to take us as far as Kingston.”

“Thank you for your forthrightness, Mr. Pritchard. It is certainly hard to imagine a motive for murder on your part, unless the carriage-ride was inordinately bumpy.”

The gallery reacted with appreciative titters and one muted guffaw. The coroner glared at the offenders, but couldn’t keep an acknowledging smile from curling the corners of his lips.

“Tell the inquest, if you would, the exact circumstances of your discovery of the body.”

With the spectators glued to his every word, Pritchard told the inquest of the morning’s events, beginning with Brookner’s boisterous entrance in the side hall just before 9:15 (there was a chiming clock in the foyer striking the quarters) and concluding with the ill-fated pursuit that culminated in the “hideous sight” in the creek-bed. From his seat on the witness bench Marc noted that, although nervous, Pritchard gave what seemed to be an accurate and credible account. It was Marc’s view that Pritchard, without motive or opportunity, was an innocent in the case.

“Did you see any blood flowing from the wound?”

“No, sir, though I didn’t really get too close to the body.”

“Any sign of the victim’s brain-matter on his forehead or cheek?”

A collective gasp seized the gallery.

Pritchard blinked and gulped. Finally, dry-mouthed, he said, “There was icy water running down his entire face. He was. . washed clean.”

“Thank you, sir. I do not mean to be overly gruesome, but I need to know whether or not Captain Brookner had been shot just before your arrival or a little earlier. But it appears as if the cold spring-water into which he tumbled has wiped away much potentially useful evidence. I take it that you did not hear a shot, then?”