Don Gutteridge - Turncoat

“I quit thinking an hour ago,” Hatch replied.

Marc had willed himself to wake at dawn, and he almost did so. Certainly it was no later than seven o’clock when he slipped into Jesse’s clothes and padded out to the main room. Mary had the stove going and was humming some Gaelic ditty. In the hearth in the parlour, a fire was starting to warm the air.

“We’re to let the mistress stay abed,” Mary said. “She worked alongside Major Barnaby until the wee hours. And such a ruckus, eh, among Christian men who oughta know better.” The apostasy of Christian males did little to dampen the girl’s spirits, as she resumed her ditty with scarcely a missed beat.

Just as Marc finished a hasty meal of bread and cheese, Hatch opened the front door and came in. He set down an armful of parcels on the writing table and brushed the snow off his coat. He and Mary exchanged glances, the latter blushing nicely.

“I got some unsettling news,” he said to Marc. “Durfee tells me one of the couriers sent back in the night from Perry’s Corners reported that O’Hurley has flown.”

“Damn!”

Mary giggled.

“It seems his jailer got overly interested in some of O’Hurley’s liquid wares. O’Hurley got clean away. But he left the donkey behind.”

“They’ll never get him,” Marc said. “He’ll be in Lewiston by noon.”

“There’s worse news,” Hatch said, with a very unserious twinkle in his eye. “Durfee says MacLachlan’s constables came riding up at daybreak and rousted him out of his wife’s arms to tell him that Mad Annie and her litter had broken out of their escape-proof jail.”

“I can’t wish them ill,” Marc said, surprising even himself at his sudden sympathy. Last night’s brutal raid had left a sour taste in his mouth.

“You heading over to Beth’s later?”

“Right away.”

“But it’s the Sabbath, she’ll-”

“I don’t want any of this news to reach her before I do.”

“Didn’t see any smoke up that way.”

Marc pulled on Jesse’s Mackinaw and the fur cap, still encrusted with Connors’s blood. “I’ll be back soon. We both have a lot of deep thinking to do.” He paused at the writing table. “What are these parcels?”

“The big ones are clothing for the Hislop children. Winnifred collected them at the church yesterday. She’s going to drive the cutter out to Buffaloville after the service this morning to deliver them. The others are letters for some of the folks out that way. Durfee gets Winnifred to take them along whenever she can.”

Marc was staring, incredulous, at one of the letters. It was addressed to Miss Lydia Connors, Crawford’s Corners, Upper Canada.

“Lydia Stebbins … is a Connors?”

Hatch’s face lit up, then turned a slow, rosy red. “By God, that’s right. I remember Winnie telling me something about that last year, but as usual I was only half paying attention. Something about Lydia’s mother down in Buffalo refusing to admit the girl had gone and married a fool like Stebbins.”

Without a word of farewell, Marc whirled and left the house.

He ran along the path beside the creek and into the rear of the Smallman farm. No one was up or about. Several cows were lowing, as if in distress. Elijah’s cabin was sealed and smokeless. Marc hurried by and, rapping once on the summer-kitchen door to announce his arrival, he stumbled inside.

At the door to the big room stood Aaron, surprised and still rubbing sleep out of his eyes. The house was as cold as a tomb.

Five minutes later Beth emerged in a nightshirt and shawl. Her eyes were wide with expectation. Marc had seized the opportunity to change back into his uniform, which Beth had brushed and laid out for him.

“It’s all right, I’ve brought good news,” he said immediately to quell the rising anxiety in her face.

“Then we’ll have time to make a fire and have a decent cup of tea.”

After the tea had been poured, and Aaron had left to split wood in the summer kitchen, Marc sat down beside Beth and tactfully recounted the remarkable events of the evening past.

“Murdered?” she whispered, as if the word itself were tantamount to the deed. “But I saw him there in the barn-alone. I’d watched him grow more troubled and heartsick every day. No one, not even me, thought it was anythin’ other than what it seemed to be.”

“I understand. You hadn’t the slightest cause to think anyone would want to murder your husband. But Hatch and I heard a dying man’s confession. He mistook me for his priest, remember. There can be no doubt about it. And when we find O’Hurley, we’ll know all the facts.”

Beth said nothing for a long time. Marc watched her intently, wanting so much to lay a comforting hand over hers, but knowing there were more questions to come, brutal ones that had to be answered.

It was Beth who finally reached out and folded both of his hands in hers. “You don’t know what solace you’ve brought me this mornin’.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I can get on with my grieving for Jess now.” She squeezed his hands fiercely, but he knew the passion in the gesture was not meant for him. “And then maybe I’ll be able to get on with my own life.” A fresh thought seemed to strike her. “I’m only twenty-three years old.”

Marc went over to the fireplace and poured more hot water into the teapot. He gave Aaron a salute through the open doorway, and walked back to Beth.

“I think I know why Jesse was murdered,” he said. “And it may also help me to find your father-in-law’s killer.”

She looked up politely, her mind elsewhere.

“You will need to know why, won’t you?” Marc said.

“Yes. I think I will.”

“It may be painful.”

She smiled ruefully. “I’m growin’ used to that.”

“I’m convinced that Jesse had some kind of dealings with his murderer in the weeks before his death. We know that Connors and O’Hurley were peddlers of rum and possibly other contraband from New York State. We found Jesse’s name on what we’re assuming to be one of their lists.”

Seizing on the word “assume,” she said, “Could there be some mistake?”

Marc placed his hand very lightly upon her wrist and looked straight into her eyes. “Please tell me: could Jesse, in his desperation to save the farm and show his father he could make it on his own, have thrown in with smugglers to get the money he needed to keep up the mortgage?”

Beth did not turn away, but she dropped her eyes as she said, “Yes.”

“Did you suspect anything like that at the time?”

“Only that he started behavin’ rather odd, comin’ and goin’ at all hours. He told me he was doin’ carpentry work out on the Pringle Sideroad. I asked him about the cask in the barn, and he said Hislop or somebody’d given it to him as payment for a corncrib he built. But why would they want to murder him over a bit of smuggled rum?”

“I’m not sure they did.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was told on Wednesday evening that sometimes these peddlers are used as couriers and go-betweens for seditious activities. A secret society called the Hunters’ Lodges may have been imported here from the United States, with a view to providing support for Mackenzie’s more radical proposals, maybe even insurrection or an invasion in aid of one.”

“That’s just talk,” Beth said. “I’ve heard nonsense like that for years. Nobody really believes it. You heard what Mr. Mackenzie said at the end of his speech last night.”

“If Jesse were even toying with the notion of linking up with these lodges, he could have learned vital and dangerous information. He may even have discovered it inadvertently while participating in rum-running, since the two activities are often combined.”