Don Gutteridge - Death of a Patriot

Shad’s voice shook, but he managed to say haltingly, “Membership List of Hunters’ Lodge, Michigan Branch.”

The crowd’s excitement had turned now to expectant silence.

“Very good. Now, sir, read aloud the first decoded name on the list.”

“Lucius Bierce.”

“The so-called general of the Windsor raiding party, was he not?”

A ragged chorus of assent from the galleries supplied the answer.

“Now, read the one below it.”

“Caleb Coltrane.” Shad’s voice was a mere whisper.

“And the second last name on this selected list?”

Shad started to tremble all over. “Absalom Shad.”

The buzz in the room took an angry turn. The judge gavelled it down.

“Would you please answer my original question, then. When did you join the Hunters?”

“I have no idea how my name came to be on that list! I’ve been livin’ here for years.”

“Mr. Shad, I submit that not only are you a bona fide member of the heinous Hunters’ Lodge, but you have been acting as a secret agent on their behalf, and that-as the defense will show when we present our side of the story-you were ordered by another high-ranking member of the Lodge, one Ephraim Runchey, to poison Caleb Coltrane so that he could not be elected in absentia president of the state branch of the Lodge.” Dougherty delivered these accusations in a steady, rumbling basso, devoid of theatrical dudgeon.

“That’s a lie!”

“Milord!”

“You, sir, had the readiest access to the victim, you-”

“I was never a member of the Lodge!” Shad shouted to the agitated spectators. “My brother Simon was; he got caught stealin’ guns from the Detroit armoury and General Brady put him in jail. He had no money for a lawyer and my mother was desperate. Runchey come to me and said the Hunters would help him, but only if I cooperated with ’em.”

“Mr. Shad,” the judge said kindly, “there’s no need to-”

“But it had nothin’ to do with murder. I was to vouch for him so he could get in to visit Coltrane, and when the time come for him to escape, I was to help them. I didn’t know they put my name on their list!”

“And so you helped Runchey, then?” Dougherty said.

“He come to visit the prisoner on the Saturday, five days before the murder. I told the colonel that he was a friend of mine I knew from Detroit. But that was all. I wasn’t asked to help with any escape plan, and I wouldn’t’ve done it anyways. I despised Coltrane and all he stood for-”

“Enough to poison him?”

“No!” Shad’s eyes were wild with fear, outrage, hurt. “I wouldn’t do a thing to harm the Stanhopes or bring shame on their house! Mrs. Stanhope took me in when I had nothin’, when I was a hopeless drunk. She brung me here and give me a job in her own home. She saved my life!”

“Are you quite through, Mr. Dougherty?” the judge said sternly.

Thornton was on his feet, teetering with feigned rage. “Milord, is Mr. Dougherty going to prove that every witness for the Crown is independently guilty of murdering Caleb Coltrane?”

The simmering anger of the crowd was now turning slowly towards sympathy for the abused and loyal butler.

“The witness is dismissed, and this court is adjourned until ten o’clock Monday morning!” the judge said, with a fearsome rap of his gavel.

And none too soon, Marc thought. It was going to be an interesting interval.

Robert ordered Marc to spend Saturday evening and all day Sunday at home. The two-hundred-mile trek from Detroit to Toronto, followed by an exhausting day and a half in and out of court, had left him visibly fatigued and mentally drained. “If we need you, we’ll send for you, though you’ve already done yeoman’s service. Now leave the lawyering to the lawyers.”

So, that night Marc and Beth curled up in front of a blazing hearth and read to each other, while Jasper Hogg-putatively present to chop kindling and top up the cistern in the water closet-talked nonstop to Charlene in the kitchen. Early Sunday morning, Marc and Beth harnessed Dobbin and went for a leisurely drive into the countryside. Two hours later, with Charlene and Jasper, they strolled through a goose-feather snowfall to the new Congregational Church on Hospital Street at Bay. It was only on the way home that Marc began to wonder what tactic Richard Dougherty might work on poor Almeda Stanhope, who had been, as expected, added to the Crown’s witness roster. Would he not be better off laying out the defense case, rather than badgering the Crown’s witnesses to the point where the jury felt sorry for them and thus more likely to accept their version of events? Brilliant as he was, Dougherty seemed to have forgotten that he was an outsider with a checkered past, and physically off-putting to boot.

It was just past suppertime on Sunday evening at the Cobb residence on Parliament Street, and Cobb was snoozing in his favourite chair. With a splint no longer needed, his sprained wrist was healing steadily. He could flex it without pain, but it still had little strength in it, certainly not enough to make a two-handed collar of some wriggling miscreant. The half-read newspaper, resting on the fulcrum of his nose, rose and fell with his contented breathing.

“Dad! Wake up!”

Cobb blinked awake, scattering all four pages of the Constitution . It was Fabian, looking more excited than usual. “Where’s yer mother?”

“Out on a call. But come see! Somebody’s prowling about the chicken coop!”

Cobb was up in a flash and, with one foot fast asleep, hobbled into the summer kitchen towards the back door. “Stay in here,” he ordered, then stepped warily onto the stoop. The skies had cleared, and the partial moon on the fresh snow threw enough light for him to make out the silhouette of the coop thirty feet away. The chickens by the sound of it were in turmoil. A fox or coyote? No, Fabian had said some body. Cobb reached down and picked up a stout walking stick he kept beside the door. He quickly spotted the shoe prints. They seemed to indicate that a single person had been moving back and forth across the yard, perhaps casing the house for an attempted burglary.

Just then the rooster let out a fierce squawk, and Cobb trotted towards the sound. As he got to the henhouse door, he heard a yip, then a yelp, and a second later a dark male figure came staggering out into the moonlight. Cobb lashed at it, aiming for the bare head, but the cudgel smacked against one of its lurching shoulders.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!” The figure howled like Poor Tom on Lear’s heath. “Ya’ve gone and busted my back!”

“Jesus Christ and a donkey!” Cobb shouted. “What in hell are you doin’ rummagin’ about in my henhouse?”

Nestor Peck ignored the question, vigorously rubbing his throbbing shoulder with one gloveless hand.

“You’re damn lucky Shanty-clear didn’t pluck yer pecker off! He don’t appreciate competition.”

“I was just comin’ to see ya, and I thought I might borree an egg whilst I was here,” Nestor said, and added, “I need a cup o’ tea, Cobb. I’m frozen right through to the nub.”

Ten minutes and two cups of tea later, Nestor got to the principal point of his house call, a risky move for a known snitch. “I had ta come here ’cause you’re not out where you oughta be,” he whined. “So what I’ve come ta tell ya oughta fetch double the usual.”

“I’ll let ya know after I hear it. Them’s the rules.”

Nestor smiled, exposing a mushy set of blackened gums. “I know where Lardner Bostwick is.”

Cobb did his best not to look elated. “And where would that be?”

“He’s been drinkin’ up at the Tinker’s Dam, drinkin’ steady fer a week. Right now he’s holed up in Tipsy Dan’s shack.”