Don Gutteridge - Turncoat

“I was in this room until two hours past midnight.”

“I’m sure you were, with many worthies to testify so. Your plan was to make some plausible excuse to retire early-a touch of indigestion perhaps-and then sneak out and ride undetected up the lakeshore to the cove at the foot of the ridge. But you did not have to. When you ‘stepped out for some air,’ say, around ten o’clock, Elijah himself was waiting for you in the stables. He told you that Joshua Smallman had indeed been lured out to Bass Cove but had never reached the cave. The God who anoints and protects monarchs had steered the turncoat into a deadfall trap meant for deer or bear, and thus meted out His own brand of retribution. And that’s most likely how you viewed what happened out there, though I strongly suspect that Elijah directed Joshua into the deadfall trap or, in the least, deliberately left him there to die. A personal trial of the man’s honour out there would have pleased you perhaps, but it was not to be. Higher powers had intervened and done the dastardly work for you.”

“The Lord moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform,” Child said with deliberate irony.

Marc didn’t notice, for he was riding the crest of a rhetorical adrenaline rush, soaring along on the wings of his own argument. “At first I thought Joshua had been tempted out there by a note from one of the political radicals suggesting knowledge about Jesse’s apparent suicide.”

Child was fussing nonchalantly with his snuffbox.

“But that was wishful thinking. Joshua may have been obsessed with his son’s inexplicable death, but I don’t believe now that he would have been foolhardy enough to venture up there in a blizzard unless he recognized the handwriting on the note delivered to him by one of your servants, who doubtless thought he was the bearer of an invitation, perhaps a peace-offering. Joshua read it in the barn while making his nightly check, a message from a man he had no reason to fear, even if he did quarrel with him over politics and land acquisition. After all, this man was a justice of the peace. What you put in that note I do not know, because the note was destroyed by Joshua or, more likely, removed from his body by Elijah after the fact. Joshua was knocked unconscious: alive but dying. Leaving a man to die and not reporting it is tantamount to murder. And those who seduced him out there under false pretenses are equally guilty. In the least, you are an accessory.”

“At the inquest, as I recall, even Beth could not swear to the existence of a note.”

“But her brother Aaron will.”

A minor twitch of the left eyelid. “I see. So you’ve been browbeating helpless cretins, have you?”

“The boy is as sharp as you or me. His testimony will stand up in court.”

“Perhaps. But you have nothing but a falsified alibi for evidence. You could not bring this within a mile of any court.”

Time to play his second trump card, Marc decided. “At this moment, I have your accomplice incarcerated in the miller’s office. He has confessed to the salient details as I’ve outlined them. Moreover, he has implicated you.” This devastating fabrication was delivered with such élan that Marc almost believed it himself.

Child rocked back, but not from shock or the onset of fear. He was laughing. “Well now, this time you’ve been too clever by half,” he roared. “For a second there you had me damn near convinced that you knew what the hell you were talking about. You might even have swayed a gullible jury envious of the gentry’s innate superiority.”

“My duty is to report everything I find to Sir John or his successor.”

“It’ll have to be to Francis Head, I’m afraid. Your mentor and protector is on his merry way to Montreal and obscurity.” He let a chuckle ripple to a halt, heaved his bulk forward in his chair, and fixed Marc with a look that blended contempt, complacency, and aristocratic anger. “You are a brilliant fool,” he said, “a meddling tyro whose vanity is exceeded only by his vocabulary. You do not have the hired hand in custody at Hatch’s. You appear not even to know his last name.”

“What do you mean?” Marc snapped.

“Elijah Gowan left the district right after the donnybrook last night, with his own kind.” The magistrate smiled his patronizing, judiciary smile. “The man is second cousin to Ogle Gowan, grand master of the Loyal Orange Lodge, whose lunatic apostles broke up the rally last night and tried to tar and feather the leading light of the Reform party. Elijah’s a more fanatic Orangeman than his notorious cousin. He can track republican sentiment like a hound on the spoor. The Orange Order see any suggestion of annexation or democratization as tantamount to treason against the British crown, which in turn they revere as a bulwark against popery.”

Marc was momentarily thrown off stride by the sudden failure of his trump trick and this revelation of “Chown’s” true name, but he quickly regained his momentum. “I admit that I do not have him in custody. However, he will not be very far from his cousin; we’ll have him apprehended within a day.” Marc did not feel obliged to confess that he had inferred from Elijah’s obsessive interest in radical newspapers that he was a sympathizer, not an implacable opponent.

“We shall see, shan’t we?” Was there a flicker of doubt before the resurgence of confidence? “Anyway, Elijah Gowan is long gone from Crawford’s Corners. And I have good reason to believe he will be found only if he wants to be found. You’ve played your bluff, I’m afraid, without a deuce to support it.” The smugness in Child’s face was galling, to say the least.

“We’ll find him. And when we do, he’ll talk. In fact, I see now that you did not really need a hold on the man. All you had to do was convince him that Joshua Smallman was a turncoat who had thrown in with the Hunters’ Lodges and arch-republicans. He would have throttled Joshua in his own bed.”

“That is quite true. But even if you should somehow find him, he’ll never say a word against me or any other loyalist. You could put him on the rack and crack every rib and he would remain steadfastly silent. You see, for fanatics like Elijah, this isn’t a game of politics or conflict of ideologies, it’s a holy war, a crusade carried forth with God’s own connivance.”

“And what does that make the man who uses such fanaticism for his own ends?”

“It depends on the ends, doesn’t it?”

Time now for the ace up his sleeve. “I think he’ll talk,” Marc said, “because I have irrefutable evidence that places him outside that cave in a position that gave him an unobstructed view of, and snowshoe access to, the deadfall trap.”

Child maintained the smug expression he had no doubt cultivated on the bench and in the counting house, but his gaze was fixed on Marc as he reached into his jacket pocket and drew out two halves of a clay pipe.

“Hatch and I found this bit of stem on a ledge near the cave. I picked up this other piece a few minutes ago in Elijah Gowan’s cabin. As you can see, they are a perfect fit. This evidence and his fabricated alibi will be enough to loosen his tongue. He won’t fancy hanging or rotting in prison for a man whose motives had as much to do with greed and personal power as political sentiment and loyalty to the Crown.”

“You have no direct proof of my involvement.” Child’s voice had gone cold.

“But I do have a case: a motive, a plausible scheme of events, a suborned servant, a man in flight without explanation, testimony that a message was received by the victim, and a summary of this conversation.”

“You would take all that rubbish to Francis Head?”

“I intend to. Without delay.”

Child uttered a world-weary sigh and sat back in his chair. “You are a sterling young man, Ensign Edwards. You showed us incredible courage and a selfless devotion to duty yester-evening when you rescued Mackenzie from that lunatic lot. You are a credit to your regiment. Your actions could well earn you promotion, even in these post-Napoleonic doldrums when such preferment is hard to come by. I observed your kindness out there at Mad Annie’s, and the calm and solicitous way in which you dealt with the dying Connors.”