Don Gutteridge - Dubious Allegiance

Marc could empathize with that desire.

“You may search me and my bags if you like. You won’t find any weapons or coded messages.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Marc knew the truth when he heard it. He took a deep breath. “I must apologize, sir, in the most sincere way possible, even though I realize how weak my words will seem.”

“Please, don’t. You allowed me to laugh again. I can now greet my bride smiling. And remember, it has been you who have been shot at and nearly stabbed, not me, and Brookner’s killer is still on the loose. You did your duty in St. Denis. I have no quarrel with that. I have tried to remain a loyal subject, but doing so is getting to be either an impossible or an inhumane act. Allegiance has become a relative term.”

“Yes,” Marc said, rising and shaking Lambert’s hand. “We live in terrible times.”

* * *

Charles Lambert and Ainslie Pritchard left the Georgian Arms soon after. Adelaide Brookner remained in the care of the Dingmans. Percy Sedgewick took supper in his room and then went into the Dingmans’ quarters to offer comfort and support to his sister. Marc ate alone in the lounge, envying the roars and whoops of boozy laughter coming across the foyer from the taproom, now denuded of its legal trappings. Then he went up to his room and lay down on his bed. He had a lot of thinking to do.

If, as it now seemed, it was Miles Scanlon who shot Brookner, then there was still a stalker out there somewhere. While it was conceivable that Scanlon may have been the one to have climbed through Marc’s window in a case of mistaken identity, it had not been Scanlon back there in the Montreal hospital, and no-one could have mistaken Marc, in mufti, for the fulltunicked Brookner in the woods beside the St. Lawrence. He decided to err on the side of caution. He borrowed a hammer and nails from Dingman’s boy and nailed the window of his room shut. Once again he shoved the bed up against the door, then made himself a pallet of goosedown comforters on the floor well away from the door and window. He loaded his pistol and placed it on his chest. He lay fully clothed, waiting for sleep.

It did not come easily.

A strange new notion entered his head, triggered by something that had happened earlier on their journey. From that inkling, a train of thoughts-erratic, vague, but persistent-began to move towards some possible, if astounding, conclusion. He went over a dozen events, conversations, and gestures, putting the pieces together this way and that. If his theories were valid, was there any way to prove them?

Just as he was falling asleep, he thought of a way.

The Brookner coach, now missing three of its original passengers, left the Georgian Arms at 11:30 on the morning of January 21. A light snow was falling; the air was crisp; and the sleigh’s runners glided merrily. Gander Todd, none the worse for wear for having spent four nights sleeping in stables next to the horses, whipped his charges mildly and harangued them harshly. Earlier, the widow Brookner had emerged at last from the ministrations of Mrs. Dingman, clothed still in her mourning dress, though it now did double duty. Holding her right arm solicitously, her brother had led her unsteadily across the foyer and out to the waiting carriage. Murdo Dingman attempted to assist at her other elbow but was shrugged off curtly. Marc held the door open. From beneath her veil Adelaide bade him a polite “Good morning” and thanked him for his many kindnesses. Once inside the coach, Marc sat opposite Sedgewick, who took up the near seat by the window, facing ahead, and his sister was placed beside him.

As the coach pulled away, she fell back against a pillow and appeared to be staring out at the snow. She held that silent, solemn posture until they reached Prescott about twenty minutes later. Sedgewick gave Marc a rueful sort of smile, but had nothing to say, lacking the casual talk of Ainslie Pritchard or the need for it.

Unbeknownst to either Adelaide or her brother, however, was the fact that before coming down to the coach, Marc had deliberately remained behind in his room. It was only when he was certain that Sedgewick had finished packing his own things and those of both Brookners and had gone down to fetch Adelaide that Marc ventured into the hallway. He did not go immediately downstairs. The keystone to the theory he had developed before falling asleep lay in the room next door, and he had entered it with great anticipation. Five minutes later, he had found what he expected to.

As instructed, Gander Todd pulled up at the side lane of Doctor Mac’s residence, where his surgery attached itself to the grandiose country home. Two stout lads were waiting for them. Sedgewick and Marc got out, leaving the widow sitting stoically inside, and watched as the pine box containing the remains of Randolph Brookner was hoisted up onto the roof of the coach and secured thoroughly with ropes and a leather belt.

During this operation, which took just under ten minutes, Marc was hailed inside by MacIvor Murchison, who insisted on his taking a quick brandy to “ward off the morning chill.” They chatted briefly about the inquest, and would have continued further if Marc had not been called back to the coach. The coffin had been secured, and, if they were to make Gananoque by nightfall, they had to leave right away. Marc shook hands with Doctor Mac and left.

They rode on, the three of them, with the corpse above, in a silence that was increasingly uncomfortable. Marc closed his eyes and feigned sleep. Sedgewick stared ahead out of one window and Adelaide the other. There was nothing to see but the slanting snow and the ghostly billowing of evergreens through the haze. An hour later, Todd stopped the coach in front of a log hut that served grog and sometimes lukewarm soup to passers-by. The privy behind it was free.

When they made to depart again, Sedgewick, who seemed unaccountably nervous or perhaps merely embarrassed, announced that he was going to sit up on the bench with the driver for an hour or so. Adelaide nodded and got into the coach on her own before Marc could offer any assistance. They sat cattycorner to each other. Marc let ten minutes go by before he began.

“Like the coroner and everybody at the inquest yesterday, I concluded that, outside of Charles Lambert, no-one in our party could have committed the murder of your husband. I confronted Lambert before he left last night and came away convinced that he was not the killer. For a while I was even more compelled to accept the obvious: that Miles Scanlon had killed Captain Brookner to avenge the harsh treatment of his family. But just to play devil’s advocate, as I mulled matters over in my room last night, I started with the seemingly bizarre notion that one of us was the murderer. I didn’t do it. Pritchard was never a serious suspect. Lambert exculpated himself. That left you or your brother.”

Marc peered over at Adelaide. She had not turned towards him, but a perceptible stiffening of her posture indicated that she was listening intently.

“But how was it possible, I asked myself. First of all, I had to establish powerful motives for one of you or both. Your brother feared that Randolph would go through with his threat to have him charged with treason. Even if the charge were a flimsy one, in the post-rebellion atmosphere around here, Percy’s day-to-day life would be poisoned by suspicion. Your husband made the threat, I am convinced, because Mr. Sedgewick had in his turn made physical threats upon your husband’s person-in his laudable efforts to stop Randolph from beating you.”

Adelaide twisted her head slightly in his direction, but nothing could be seen behind the veil.

“I don’t know how often he has done so, but I’m sure he did it surreptitiously so that no bruises were visible. After all, he was a respectable merchant, a church elder, and a proud militia officer. But abuse you he did. I recalled how you flinched whenever anyone touched your left arm. Most probably he was an arm-twister, turning it in his iron grip until you cried out. Later, I noticed that you kept that crepe scarf curled well up under your chin-to hide more bruises, no doubt. The reason for his anger also seemed obvious: you are more intelligent than he was; you are proud; and you are independent. Your very presence, let alone any public correcting of his faux pas, was a rebuke to his vanity and his foolish ambitions.”