Don Gutteridge - Bloody Relations

“You saw Michael on Tuesday?”

“He came here about ten in the morning. He looked terrible. I never seen him so bad.”

“What did he want?”

“Usually he comes for money, but he knew I had no more to give him. He said he was in real trouble and had to get out of town before the day ended. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about, but I guessed it had to do with his gambling.”

“He was in debt?”

“He always was. But there was something about him this time that seemed different. Even when he was on the run, and that was more than once, he always kept a bit of a twinkle in his eye. He would be scared, of course, but I knew him well and I knew he thought it was all a game-a dangerous game he was willing to play.”

“A born gambler.”

“Yes. But there was another side to him.”

“There usually is. But you say this time seemed different.”

“That’s right. He looked like he’d had the fright of his life. He told me he had to see Mr. Hepburn right away.”

Marc leaned forward. This was what he needed to hear, the connection between the paid assassin and his sponsor. “Michael knew Alasdair Hepburn?”

Una seemed momentarily puzzled. “Of course. He worked here quite often.”

“I see,” Marc said, and he did, his mind racing ahead.

“Michael did odd jobs around the town; he’s real handy with a hammer and saw. But lately he’s worked only for Mr. Hepburn. He helped plant the vegetable garden over there in April and May. But. . ”

She looked down, and despite her mannish figure and plain face, she was suddenly fragile and abashed. “He kept going back to that wicked place and that wicked woman in Irishtown.”

“So you knew about his being Madame Renée’s bruiser?”

“He couldn’t help himself. He had to go back there, whatever.”

After a pause, Marc said, “Getting back to Tuesday, then, tell me: did Michael see Mr. Hepburn?”

“No. Mr. Hepburn was at the bank. I told Michael that, and he was terrified and trembling. Then he told me to fetch pen and paper, and he wrote out a note, which he said I had to give to Mr. Hepburn when he came home for his luncheon at half past one. He swore me to absolute secrecy, saying his life depended on it. Then he left without another word.”

“Would he have left town, do you think?”

“Only if he had money. We got cousins in Port Sarnia. He’s run off there before. But a steamer costs money.” She brushed aside a tear and said, “I haven’t heard a word from him since Tuesday morning and there’s an awful rumour going ’round about him being wanted by the police.”

Marc waited until Una Badger stopped running her fingers through her already thoroughly ruffled hair. “So you heard about the funeral of Sarah McConkey?” he prompted.

“That harlot from Madame Renée’s? Yes. I heard that a girl from there had been killed. I thought that Michael. . ”

“Might still be in town and attend the funeral for one of the girls he must have known?”

She hung her head.

Marc noted the bright sun glancing through the leaves upon her thick auburn hair, and said, “And you went there in disguise this morning?”

“Yes. He wasn’t there.”

Marc resisted mentioning the chase and its misinterpreted results. The important point here and now was that Michael Badger might not be in the city after all. He was probably hundreds of miles away, heading for his cousins in Port Sarnia.

While Marc was contemplating the implications of this development, Una said, “He told me not to, but I peeked at the note.”

“The note he wrote for Mr. Hepburn?”

“Yes. I gave it to him right at one-thirty on Tuesday, but I read it first. I was beside myself with worry.”

“I’m glad you did. It may explain a lot of things and help me to find your brother.”

“You think so?”

“I do. So please, if you can, tell me precisely what it said.”

“Oh, that’s easy, sir. It was very short and I have no trouble reading my brother’s writing. It said, ‘Send help now, as arranged.’ ”

In deference to this caring and distraught woman, Marc checked his elation. But here was proof of a direct link between Hepburn and Badger. The “help” was no doubt of the financial kind, for homicidal services rendered. Even if Badger was as far away as Port Sarnia-where it would take a day by steamer or express rider to order his capture and at least another day to have him brought back-he now had enough evidence to secure a warrant. He and Sturges would interrogate Hepburn until he confessed, search his house for further clues, and with luck implicate the other three. Whist club indeed!

“You’ll let me know as soon as you find Michael, won’t you?”

“Yes. I’ll come and tell you myself.”

“There’s a good, sweet side to Michael, you know. We grew up in a decent family and went to a proper school.”

But it hadn’t kept him from becoming a gambler and a cold-blooded killer.

Marc’s instinct was to barge into the card game at Hepburn’s and wreak havoc. But reason soon prevailed. His first duty was to inform Chief Sturges that Cobb’s sighting and pursuit of their quarry had been misguided. Then he would ask Sarge to go up to Government House to convince Sir George to dispatch a party to Port Sarnia to check out the Badger cousins. At the same time, the hunt for the villain would have to be broadened again to include the surrounding townships. Marc was also concerned about the rumour mill, which Una Badger had alluded to. While those involved in the manhunt had been told that Badger was wanted for killing a woman and that Lord Durham himself had taken a special, but unspecified, interest in the matter, such a facile and patently incomplete explanation had fuelled local speculation. Even now such rumours could be doing Durham as much harm as the truth about Ellice’s involvement might.

Chief Sturges took the news about Badger with stolid resignation, a legacy of his Cockney upbringing and long service in Wellington’s army and Robert Peel’s London constabulary. While not commenting one way or the other on Marc’s claims regarding Hepburn, he readily agreed to send Gussie upstairs to fetch Magistrate Thorpe. Grumbling about having his mid-day meal disrupted and about a “lot of bloody fuss over a common hooer,” Gussie trotted off to the adjoining chambers. The chief then left for Government House.

Marc sat down at Gussie French’s table and, pulling rank, consumed the clerk’s bread and cheese. Moments later, Magistrate Thorpe came in, shook hands with Marc, and sat down opposite him. Gussie was left cooling his heels in a hallway.

In as concise terms as he could manage, Marc outlined his theory of the murder. Michael Badger, in debt to the dicers up at the Tinker’s Dam and fearing for his safety, arrived on Monday morning at Madame Renée’s to tap his favourite source for cash in order to preserve his knees and perhaps his life. As it turned out, most of Irishtown, including Mrs. Burgess’s girls, were at the Queen’s Wharf welcoming His Lordship to the city. Luckily he found Madame at home, alone. When Mrs. Burgess refused to give him a farthing, the desperate Badger somehow got word to Alasdair Hepburn that a plot, which the latter had hatched in anticipation of the earl’s arrival and to which Badger had been till now an unwilling party, was suddenly operative. Hepburn, in possible collusion with other Tory sympathizers-Marc did not yet name them-got young Handford Ellice drunk and possibly drugged, and drove him to Irishtown after the gala. From there he was dropped off at Madame Renée’s. The plan was for Badger, who had stolen a key for the hatch, to slip into the brothel when the house was quiet and the couple were fast asleep, and cause some kind of mayhem in order to have Ellice found in a low-life stew-producing a sex scandal to discredit Lord Durham and his already morally tainted entourage. Initially in the plot purely for money, Badger agreed to carry out his part, but once inside that room, his rage against Mrs. Burgess and his abnormal fear overwhelmed him. He stabbed Sarah McConkey with the dagger he knew lay under her pillow. Perhaps horrified at his own actions, Badger went to Hepburn on Tuesday morning looking for his blood money and, finding him out, and afraid or forbidden to go to Hepburn’s bank, he left a secret note, which Una Badger fortuitously read and whose incriminating contents she could attest to.