Don Gutteridge - Turncoat

“My God,” Marc said suddenly, “it was your man who shot Connors. Would you stoop so low to protect your own hide as to involve John Collins in your crimes?”

Child ignored the remark. “My point is this: why are you going to the fruitless trouble of concocting such a report and presenting it, with all its flaws showing, to a lieutenant-governor who will have been in office for less than a week?”

“Until Elijah Gowan is caught and offers up his confession, I may not have proof enough to satisfy a court,” Marc said, with more spite than he had intended, “but the evidence I do have, at the very least in these politically sensitive times, will throw serious doubt upon your character and on your probity as a justice of the peace. You are finished as a magistrate and as a pillar of this community.”

“Francis Head will laugh you out of his office,” Child said, straining now to maintain his air of unconcern and suppress his rising anger.

“I have no alternative but to do my duty,” Marc said stiffly.

“Then you truly are a fool,” Child said.

Marc rose. He reached into his pocket and withdrew two letters. “I may know little of politics, sir, but of one thing I am absolutely certain. Joshua Smallman was no turncoat. I doubt even that he was a committed Reformer. What you didn’t know, and what you would have learned if you had not been obsessed with seizing control of his farm and had given the gentleman the courtesy of an interview, is that he was a commissioned informant for Sir John Colborne, the governor’s personal friend and a trusted confidant.”

Philander Child desperately tried to look amused. “Another bluff, Mr. Edwards?”

“Why don’t you take a moment after I’ve left to peruse the last report he ever sent to Sir John? I had it from the governor’s own hand, along with this detailed memorandum outlining the reasons why Sir John himself suspected foul play and chose me to come down here to investigate.”

Marc dropped the letters on the table beside Child. It took all the moral courage he could muster not to turn at the door and watch the magistrate as he read through the documents-whey-faced, stunned, all the pomp and pride leaching out of him as the contents of each successive page burned itself into his heart.

Marc was almost at the end of the winding lane that linked Philander Child’s estate to the Kingston Road when he heard sleigh bells. He brought the colonel’s horse to a halt and waited. Seconds later, Erastus Hatch’s Sunday cutter passed by the entrance to Deer Park on its way to Cobourg, where the rituals and ceremonies of the sabbath would be played out as they had for generations of millers and other ordinary day-labourers. Thomas Goodall manned the driver’s bench, cracking his whip above the ears of the horses and trying not to over-notice the erect and proper, but not unhandsome, figure of Winnifred Hatch seated at his side and looking quite ready to take the reins should he unexpectedly falter in his duty. Seated serenely in the sleigh itself, cheek by jowl, were the stout constable of Crawford Township and his one-time scullion, Mary Huggan.

Marc waved but they did not see him.

Well, he thought, there was at least one truly happy outcome of his week in Crawford’s Corners. Father and daughter had found someone besides each other to cherish and build a life with.

Marc left a brief note on the table for Erastus, took a last, fond look around, and left the house. He threw his bedroll and pack over the horse, secured them, checked the saddlebags, and mounted. He nudged the animal around to the mill, then trotted up to the rear of Beth’s place. A casual observer might have thought that the ensign, dressed for Sunday parade, was enjoying a leisurely morning ride along Crawford Creek. Not so. Marc’s mind had raced and seethed since the confrontation with Philander Child. There was much to sift, assess, decide.

As he led the horse up to the house, Beth appeared at the back door. She ran towards him, hugging a sweater to her small body. “Elijah’s gone,” she cried. “He never came home last night. I’m worried sick.”

Marc took her hand. “He’s gone for good,” he said. “Let’s go inside. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

How to tell Beth, and how much, had occupied a good portion of Marc’s thoughts since he had left Child. Even now, as they sat sipping tea, Marc was only half certain of what he needed to say. He had been brought up to believe that women were weaker than men, but more delicate, refined, and sensitive-and hence more vulnerable to poetry, music, art, the graces that make the world bearable. But the price of such sensibility was, alas, intrinsic frailty, the constant spectre of psychological disintegration. Here before him was a woman only two weeks into mourning the loss of a “father”; the shocks she had borne over the past year and those rude revelations of the last two days ought to have crushed her, left her emotionally maimed, utterly exhausted, dependent upon the strength of some consoling, masculine arm. And yet here she sat with a teacup on her knee, waiting patiently for Marc to say what she knew could not be kept from her, whatever her own wishes might be. (And, of course, though it would be much later when he had time and the predisposition to ponder the more eccentric aspects of his week in Crawford’s Corners, he would be forced to admit that few of the women he had encountered here-Winnifred, Lydia, Bella, Agnes, or Mad Annie-fitted the comfortable cameo of womanhood presented to him by dear Uncle Jabez.)

Marc began. “After I left here this morning, I went straight over to Hatch’s and told him my theory. But before I could set off for Stebbins’s place, Erastus showed me a document that completely altered my view of what happened to your father-in-law and why. I’m sorry to say that it pointed a finger at Elijah.”

“That can’t be so. He’s worked here without pay. He’s been kind to me and especially to Aaron.” She looked truly bewildered for the first time since Marc had met her.

He swallowed hard and looked away. “I found a bible in his cabin. It had his name in it: Elijah Gowan.”

“Gowan?” She drew out the syllables of the name slowly, as light dawned in her eyes. “Like Ogle Gowan?”

“He’s a second cousin, yes. And an-”

“-an Orangeman.”

“Apparently he believed that your father-in-law was about to throw his lot in with the annexationists. And to many Orangemen, that is an anti-monarchist act, an act of high treason.”

“But how?”

“How and why he came to believe Joshua had gone that far we’ll only know when we catch him.”

She nodded, still perplexed. Marc told her about the matching pieces of clay pipe.

Beth sat very still, as if absorbing more than words. “Elijah couldn’t have got Father out there in that blizzard,” she said.

“Yes, that is true. And that’s why I’m convinced that a second person was deeply involved in Joshua’s death. I believe Elijah was to be made the instrument of murder, but someone a lot more clever and knowledgeable planned it, with cold premeditation.”

“Who?”

“I’ve identified the culprit,” Marc said, releasing each word carefully, “but so far I don’t have enough evidence, and until I do I am honour-bound to keep the name to myself.”

“I understand,” she said, implying more than mere agreement.

“But as soon as Elijah is arrested, we’ll have the means to establish the whole truth, and justice will be fully served. Joshua’s murderers will not go unpunished.”

Beth smiled wryly, the hurt hidden in the humour: “It’s been some time in this province since justice has been served.”

Marc could find no words to deny it.