Don Gutteridge - Bloody Relations

“Yes. She’s at the Court House now. But I must, as a deputized constable, ask you to sit down until my interrogation is completed.”

“But your accusations are preposterous! You’ve spun a fantastical tale that would be more pertinent to The Mysteries of Udolpho than to Toronto. You haven’t offered a shred of proof-”

“Ah, but I have the proof, sir. Hard-and-fast evidence that you did lead Ellice to the murder scene and did hire Badger to invade the premises. That should be enough to get an indictment from the magistrate.”

“I don’t believe you.” Hepburn glared at his accuser but stayed in his seat.

“First of all, we have testimony from your stable hand and barouche driver that you did have a third party in your carriage, one fitting the description of Ellice.”

“But I know for a fact that Willy Falmer did not give Constable Cobb that version of events.”

“True, at least not yesterday. I’m sure that out of loyalty or other more tangible considerations he backed up Mrs. Hepburn’s version, but he has since changed his mind.”

Marc hoped this lie would be sufficient to unnerve the suspect. Instead, Hepburn smiled tightly and stared hard at Marc. “That is not possible, sir. Willy Falmer left town at dawn this morning. He is on his way to join his brothers somewhere beyond the Mississippi River.”

Good God, the man was more cunning than Marc had anticipated. It was time to play his second trump card. He drew out the note he had plucked from Badger’s pocket. “I have here, sir, all the proof I shall need to link you to the paid assassin. This note, foolishly signed by you, was found on Badger’s body, along with a stolen key to facilitate his entry into the brothel.” Marc dropped the letter on the table and Hepburn glanced at it, looking puzzled.

“This is my letter to Michael,” he said. “And?”

“And it accompanied thirty dollars, also found on Badger, the money he earned by entering the brothel and stabbing a girl to death. Mr. Hepburn, you have a clear motive for leading Ellice there, and here is incontrovertible proof that you hired a bruiser to cause some kind of mayhem that night.”

Hepburn paused to gather his emotions and his thoughts. He stubbed out the cigar. He flushed and then paled. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. “This is all too much. I am overwhelmed.”

“Do you wish to confess, then?’

Hepburn smiled wanly. “I’m afraid not.”

“But you’ve just admitted that the incriminating letter is your own!”

“It is. But the money was Michael’s, not mine.”

“Surely you can come up with a more plausible explanation than that.”

“It’s true. You see, sir, Michael was in many ways a good man, a sort of gentle giant. He was not in the least violent, though he knew how to intimidate if he had to. He was more of a conniver and would-be confidence man, a charmer of gullible ladies. I don’t believe for a second that he was capable of murdering anyone in cold blood. His principal weakness was gambling, and it looks as if it led to his death. He was a hard worker whenever he needed to earn money to feed his vice. I paid him well, and both his sister and I tried to get him to save money and straighten his ways. We were both upset when he went to work for Madame Renée.”

“I am not a fool, sir. I suspect you were quite happy with that particular employment when you began hatching your little plot.”

“Then in January he came to me and asked me to deposit his wages in my bank, wages from Madame Renée and from the odd jobs he was doing for me. The account was set up so that only I could withdraw the money or both of us in person. It was the only way he knew to stop himself from squandering his earnings in the dicing dens. If you wish proof of this arrangement, you’ll find all the relevant and notarized documents at the Commercial Bank.”

“But what else would he need savings for? He merely wrote worthless promissory notes and got himself into serious trouble at the Tinker’s Dam.”

“Incredible as it may seem, he was planning to go off to the Iowa Territory and try his luck at farming.”

“So you’re telling me that this note was in response to Badger’s written request for his own money.”

“I am. Una Badger brought me that request Tuesday at luncheon. I recognized Michael’s handwriting, as I’m sure Una did when she surreptitiously read it.”

The man was ingenious and abominable. His alternative explanation provided a foolproof cover story for the dastardly transaction that had resulted in Sarah’s death. “But you did not go back to the bank to get his money, did you?” Marc said, trying to hide his desperation.

“No, I didn’t. Una described how scared and distraught he had been that morning and begged me to help him immediately. According to our long-standing arrangement, I was to send him his money-in a dire emergency-by messenger to the post office on George Street, where he would pick it up. I assume he feared his pursuers would be watching this house. So I got the cash from my own safe here and had it delivered. I can give you the name of the lad who took it there.”

Marc sat down at last. It was all coming unravelled. He could see no way to challenge Hepburn’s devious account, especially if the notarized documents existed and Una Badger became his unwitting corroborator.

“I know you and your wife gave Mr. Ellice a ride to town, and I know you led him down to the brothel. And I’m equally certain that your whist-playing chums are co-conspirators. I am deeply grieved that, for the moment, I cannot prove these things. But I am warning you that I will not stop trying.”

“You cannot prove what did not happen.”

Marc sighed. “What still baffles me, though, is why your wife would lie for you. Perhaps when the grisly facts of what happened at Madame Renée’s come out, as they must, she will change her mind.”

Hepburn’s withering look said, Don’t count on it.

Suddenly Marc had another inspiration. “I think I can guess why she lied for you. I’ll wager she knows all about your addiction to the girls at Madame Renée’s, a squalid obsession that could potentially ruin your standing in the community. You’re a banker and a pillar of your church and, alas, an habitué of Irishtown stews.” For a split second Hepburn looked abashed. Marc pressed his advantage. “She is probably ashamed and afraid. I pity her,” he said, without pity.

“Are you quite finished? If so, I have grieving of my own to do.”

Marc showed himself out.

When Marc reached the station, he found only Gussie French scribbling frantically at his table, heedless of spattering ink and ravenous flies. “Has Cobb come back?”

“Gone off home,” Gussie muttered without dropping a stitch. “Lucky bugger.”

“And Sarge?”

Gussie appended an extra period for emphasis to the sentence he had just finished, and looked up. “Chief Sturges went off to find Sir George and tell him to call off the fox hunt.” He nudged a sheet of paper with the feathered end of his quill. “Cobb left you that,” he said, and resumed scribbling.

Gussie had taken down from Cobb a summary of Angus Withers’s comments after he’d examined the body of Michael Badger in the ditch where it lay. The bullet appeared to have entered the chest in a slightly upward trajectory. The shooter must have been shorter than Badger. The lead ball had struck bone-a rib or vertebra-and thus had barely exited the body: Withers found its misshapen remnant in Badger’s shirt. He concluded from its size and the probable force of the entry that it came from a small-bore pistol, the kind easily concealed and deadly only at close range. The debris found on the victim’s shirt front included gunpowder, bits of grass, and wisps of dry straw. Thirty dollars had been wadded in one of his pockets. Estimated time of death: between one and four in the morning.