Don Gutteridge - Death of a Patriot

“And the way Brodie Langford was ogling the Baldwins’ maid, I don’t think you need worry there either.”

The moonlight, playing with a set of fickle clouds, shimmered and shied on the coverlet. Though sufficiently warm by now, Marc and Beth made no move to separate.

After a while, Beth asked, “So the murder of Coltrane had nothing to do with adultery?”

Marc’s thoughts had likewise returned to the courtroom drama and its enigmatic central players. “Not directly. The truth turned out to be a lot less romantic. Stanhope had spent most of his sparse capital outfitting himself with uniforms and expensive horses and subsidizing the regiment he had created in order to feed his vanity. The Commercial Bank was threatening to call his loans, so that not only his four warehouses but Chepstow itself was at risk. Broderick Langford gave us the gist of this over the noon hour. Together with the decoded ‘love letter,’ it pointed straight to Stanhope’s desperate need of cash to stave off bankruptcy and carry on soldiering.”

“But how did he actually convince Almeda to write to Coltrane saying she loved him?”

“I’m guessing here, but when Coltrane’s offer of money was agreed to by the colonel, he needed a safe way to confirm the transaction. The map itself was vague enough unless you knew the context. Billy, for example, thought it was a battle plan when he saw it. But I suspect that while the colonel was pondering this problem, Almeda received Coltrane’s letter to her.”

“And she had problems of her own.”

“Four to be exact. One, her three-day fling back in May had apparently prompted Caleb into declaring his lifelong commitment. Two, he was drawing her into his treasonous conspiracies. Three, he had already approached her husband with a scheme that sounded like extortion. And four, Caleb claimed her husband already knew of their affair. I’m sure she went straight to him, partly because she knew Caleb had a letter or two from her that could be interpreted as confirming her adultery, and partly because she is a strong and intelligent woman who realized her best bet was to try to limit any damage already done.”

“Confess to a little indiscretion before it starts to grow hairs?”

“Precisely. Now when the colonel sees that letter, he realizes he must explain the nature of the ‘proposal’ mentioned by Caleb. He can’t confess to his having agreed to treason and doesn’t want to admit his desperate need for money. But he knows that if he agrees with his wife that nothing more than a flirtation has taken place in May, then he can play the hero-his favourite role-by pretending to reject what he tells her was a blackmail threat, not a treasonous deal for arms.”

Beth said, “And she was happy enough to copy that code letter and go along with his plan to supposedly expose Caleb.”

“I don’t know how much each of them knew or guessed about the other’s dissembling, but they carried it off just the same.”

“But then she goes and tucks Caleb’s letter away as a keepsake.”

“And Caleb hangs on to the coded letter and the map, for later use.”

“The message hidden in it is the one thing in the whole wide world the colonel had to keep secret.”

“At any cost,” Marc agreed. “Alas, Stanhope was no match for his adversary, even though later he was the jailer and Coltrane the prisoner. The threat of his treason’s being exposed must have left Stanhope in a panic. At the same time, he was compelled by his own boasting about protocol and courtesy to appear totally in control and regimentally dignified at all times.

“What about the duel? Do you think the colonel hoped Billy would kill Coltrane?”

“I don’t think so, but Bostwick is such a hopeless drunk he could have set up those pistols either way. We’ll never know. It’s even conceivable that Stanhope hoped Billy would be killed.”

“Why?”

“I think he was so paranoid by that time that he might have misread Billy’s melancholy as having to do with Billy’s possible perusal of the letter or sudden insight into the meaning of the sketch he found in Coltrane’s kit near the fort. I don’t want to believe that, but I do think that Stanhope’s behaviour in the days before the murder can only be understood by focusing on his obsession-bordering on madness-with his appearance at the Twelfth Night Ball. Despite the increasing demands of his cunning captive and the people marching on Hospital Street to protest the colonel’s mollycoddling, he wanted Coltrane alive at least until his honours were bestowed that Saturday night.”

“But in spite of all that, he poisoned him anyway. Do you think he was telling the truth about the escape business on Wednesday evening?”

“I’m certain of only two serious lies he told on the witness stand. One was his seeing Billy put his hand in one of those coat pockets on the hall tree, as we know Billy did no such thing and Stanhope had given me a different version when I first interviewed him.”

“I guess he figured now that Coltrane was dead and the coded letter hadn’t shown up, he needed to make sure Billy was convicted instead of himself. That’s what I can’t forgive in the man.” Beth sighed.

“There’s a good reason for that, my dear, because the other lie he told was a whopper. He did not poison Caleb Coltrane.”

Beth sat up, allowing the chilly air back into the bed. “What do you mean?”

“He did not kill Coltrane, and he was pretty certain for a long while that Billy did do it. By lying about the packet, perhaps he assumed that he was merely helping to expedite matters.”

“But Billy didn’t do it!”

“No, no, of course he didn’t. It was-”

“Mrs. Jones!”

“Yes. Though I can’t prove it, and I doubt if anyone but God gives a damn.”

“But we don’t know who she is.”

“Hell hath no fury. .” Marc prompted quietly.

“Almeda,” Beth breathed, scarcely countenancing the word she had just uttered. “Jilted for her own daughter.”

“Something like that. It was, in the end, a crime of passion and love rejected. I think she had fallen deeply in love with Caleb a second time. But it was more than physical desire. Consider her situation. She was over forty and married to a vain, shallow, and controlling man who had suddenly entered a crisis of his own. His obsession with the militia must have come close to destroying any intimacy they had left, and he was risking bankruptcy and even their home for his own selfish ends. Then along comes a swashbuckling freebooter in the guise of her girlhood lover. She is still a beautiful woman, and he appears happy to rekindle their former passion.”

“Aren’t you laying this on a bit thick?”

“I think not. Remember, she kept that letter in her ball gown, a letter that, however indirectly, alluded to treason and openly to their renewed love, going so far as to suggest that she shared her lover’s republican ideals. She kept it, even though it was a bomb waiting to explode. And then, when he is fortuitously imprisoned in the same house with her, one floor below her sitting room, he spurns her and seduces her daughter-laughing at them both as he does so.”

“How awful. But do you really think she would have run off with him?”

“No. I think she was committed to her home and her daughter. She knew what Coltrane was. But there was a hidden part of her-like the letter she prized-that believed she was still worthy of being loved with his kind of passion. It was this illusion that he shattered by seducing Patricia.”

“So she knew.”

“There is no doubt she did. And given Patricia’s age and Coltrane’s predatory zeal, she must have considered it an act of rape.”

Beth’s breathing had quickened. “But wait,” she said. “Almeda couldn’t have done it without the butler’s help.”