Don Gutteridge - Turncoat

“Maybe not-not until we run O’Hurley to ground anyway. But I don’t intend to wait for that to happen. If Stebbins himself didn’t kill your father-in-law, then he knows who did. The answers lie somewhere in Buffaloville. And, Sabbath or not, I’m riding out there as soon as I can get the horse saddled. I’m going to shake the truth out of that conniving weasel and then haul him before the magistrate!”

At the door Beth said, “Be careful. There’s been too much death around here lately.”

Marc had just finished saddling the colonel’s horse-which showed no sign of lameness, thanks to a temporary shoe and the ministrations of Thomas Goodall-when Hatch came puffing up to him. He had a piece of paper in his hand, but before he could comment on it, Marc launched into a sustained narrative of his theory of the murders of Jesse and Joshua Smallman. Thomas and Erastus stood wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

“So you see,” Marc concluded his tale, “it’s been about rum and politics all along. I’m going to tell Stebbins that you and I witnessed Connors’s deathbed confession, and that he admitted to Jesse’s murder and complicity in Joshua’s. That ought to shake him up!”

“My God, but you’re a devious fellow for one so young.” Hatch laughed. “I reckon you’ll be pleased then to see what I’ve dug up for you.” He held out the quarto-sized sheet of paper he had brought with him.

“What’s that?”

“All this talk about smuggling reminded me of one of them lists we found back in December. In fact, it’s the one we mentioned to you Wednesday night. I took it from Isaac Duffy before we packed him off to Kingston for smuggling. This one’s got names, places, and the kind and amount of booze as well. It was enough to nail the bugger in court.”

Marc was scrutinizing the information. It covered the full page. Under headings for “Rum: Jamaican” and “Bourbon: Charleston” appeared lists of names and what seemed to be townships or locales.

“It’s J. Smallman again,” Hatch prompted, with evident satisfaction. “And it’s been crossed out-real faint, mind you, but crossed out just the same. We saw it there in December, but with Jesse dead a year, I paid it no heed.”

When Marc continued to pore silently over the document, Hatch decided to press on unaided. “Don’t you see, lad? Jesse was definitely up to his ears in this sordid business. And Joshua found out! There’s the connection we’ve been looking for, eh?”

Marc was staring, transfixed, at the heading under which “J. Smallman, Crawford’s Cnrs.-6 casks” had been set and then very lightly crossed out: “Hunting Sherry.” The word “hunting” had been underlined. And the two names just below it were Nathaniel Boyle and Jefferson Boyle, the Yankee smugglers Hatch and Child had driven from the county. Were they all connected to the Hunters’ Lodges? Surely the reference was no coincidence.

Every ounce of blood drained from Marc’s face. “My God,” he whispered. “This is the second list I’ve seen with J. Smallman on it. I’ve had it wrong from the beginning.”

“Had what wrong?” Hatch said.

Marc didn’t reply, but climbed slowly onto his horse as if in a trance.

“Where’re you off to?” the bewildered miller asked.

“To flush out a murderer,” Marc said.

Marc’s first stop was Elijah’s cabin. He knew that he would not find the hired man in it, now or ever. He also had a pretty good idea where the old devil would turn up. But for the moment, it was the contents of the cabin itself he needed to examine, something he should have done long before this.

The door opened easily enough. The signs of a hasty departure were everywhere, and it was such haste that Marc was counting on. The table had been cleared of the incriminating newspapers with their religiously underlined accounts of the radical activities in the Cobourg area and beyond. Marc now knew the real reason why they had been singled out, and again chastised himself for having missed the obvious on his first visit here. But the clutter of spilled tobacco, broken quill pens, and pieces of clay pipe remained just as he had noticed them earlier in the week. In less than a minute he had found what he was looking for.

Not wishing to disturb Beth again (it didn’t appear she would be riding into Cobourg to church with the Durfees), Marc walked the horse back to the path beside the creek, rode down to the mill and then across the road into the bush that surrounded Deer Park estate. He would have to walk the last few yards, as he intended to approach the grand house from the rear. It was the magistrate’s cook he had to see next.

Marc left Ruby Marsden in tears, but Philander Child’s servant had told him what he needed to know, breaking down rapidly under his quick and intimidating interrogation. He walked around the stone house from the servants’ quarters to the porticoed entrance at the front with the confident stride of a man who has the truth in his pocket.

Squire Child’s cutter stood beside the porch. As Marc strode up to it, the great man himself came down the steps and boomed a hearty “Good morning” to the sleigh’s driver.

“Off to church, are you?” Marc said, coming up.

“Ensign Edwards,” Child greeted him, unconcerned and friendly as ever. “Do you wish to ride with me?”

“I wish to talk to you in the privacy of your study, sir, about a matter of some importance.”

“Indeed?” Child showed only mild suspicion. “But you can see, young fellow, I am about to set off for St. Peter’s.”

“The service will have to wait, then.”

Child, who had taken one step up into the cutter, halted. He turned a severe face towards the rudeness offered him, the kind he had occasion to practice often on the bench and at the quarter sessions, where his unappealable decisions could make or break a man and his family. “I beg your pardon?” The driver had dropped the reins and was looking on with amazed interest.

“I wish to speak to you, alone and immediately, about the death of Joshua Smallman. I know who killed him.”

Child blinked once. “Well, then, we had better find a warm place to sit.”

Coggins was haled from his midmorning nap to stir the fire and coax coffee out of a distraught cook. When he closed the door of the study discreetly behind him, Child poured out two snifters of brandy next to the coffee cups and raised his glass to Marc.

“To the truth,” he said. Then, “Well, don’t give me a long rigmarole about it, tell me what it is you have to say to me about poor Joshua’s accident that’s important enough to keep me from the Reverend Sinclair’s sermon.”

“Murder, sir. Joshua Smallman, like his son, was murdered.”

“Yes, Hatch told me about Connors’s confession. Puzzling business, that, but I’ve sat on the bench for twenty years and I still can’t fathom the serpentine convolutions of the criminal mind.”

“Jesse was murdered in a dispute with smugglers. Joshua was murdered,” Marc paused, eyeing Child intently, “by you.”

Child’s coffee cup slowed almost imperceptibly, then continued up to his lips. He sipped contemplatively. His brows arched as he said, “By me? Well, then, it’s quite a tale you have to tell.” He eased his bulk back into the leather folds of his chair. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just sit here and listen. It’s one of the things I do best.”

Marc was somewhat nonplussed at the magistrate’s calm response, but then he realized he had not laid out any of the pieces of the puzzle that, with Ruby’s admission and what he had found in Elijah’s cabin, now formed a complete pattern in his mind.

“The tale, as you call it, begins with motive. I surmised long before I arrived here that I would have to discover the motive for Joshua’s murder before anything else could come clear. I have already explained to you, on Wednesday evening, how I thought the killing took place that night-”