Bloody Relations (17 page)

Durham smiled broadly. “He was my choice, too—for the same reason.”

“How do you propose to raise the topic of your nephew and their time with him in the card room on Monday?”

“Ah. Over port and cigars I shall mention that Handford, who has been ‘ill' since the gala, is worried that he has lost a monogrammed, silver snuffbox given him by Lady Durham, and thinks that one of the whist-playing gentlemen may have picked it up by mistake. This will give me the opportunity to ask each of them when and where they last saw Handford and when and how they left that room. They don't know that Wakefield has already mapped their movements for us.”

“You hope to catch them in an inconsistency?”

“In a lie, you mean. Indeed. And while I'm entertaining them and continuing our dialogue, I'd like you to visit each of their residences with a view to interrogating their wives.”

“Their wives?”

“Yes. Each of them brought a spouse to Spadina, which means that each of them either left with said spouse or made alternative arrangements.”

“I see. If Mr. Ellice rode in one of their carriages, then one of the wives is bound to know.”

“Or will remember being asked to arrange a ride with others while our villain went off with Handford on his own.”

“The trick will be to question them without letting them know about the murder and Mr. Ellice's involvement. I take it that no word has yet leaked out?”

“Not yet. Only Withers, Sir George, Cobb, and Sturges are in the know, besides Lady Durham and us. I'm leaving it to you to find a way to approach the wives without giving the show away.”

“I'll start immediately.”

He thanked Durham for the rare privilege of sitting in on one of his colloquies, then whirled and left Government House.

By the time he reached the King Street exit, he had already thought of a plan to win the confidence of the whist players' long-suffering wives.

C
obb had contacted the last of his snitches by eleven o'clock and then stopped for refreshment at the Cock and Bull. The tapster there mentioned that Nestor Peck would not likely be available for a day or two as he had been spotted staggering in last night with a bump on his noggin “the size of his brain.”

“That tiny, eh?” Cobb replied, and ordered another flagon. With both his thirst and his curiosity sated, he set out for Irishtown and some real investigating.

While too polite to say so, he felt deep down that Marc Edwards was out of his depth in a place like Irishtown. The people there were con artists and natural liars: without such finely tuned capacities they would not survive a month. A part of Cobb admired them, especially the ones who were supporting a family by eking out a livelihood in the only ways left to them by the ruling clique, the grasping merchants, the hypocritical church, and the customary cruelties of fate. But someone at Madame Renée's had stepped over the line. A young woman had been brutally murdered with “all her sins upon her head.” And a very important person had been implicated.

What Cobb was thinking as he picked his way along the hawthorn path towards the shanties of Irishtown was that he had to
catch Mrs. Burgess or one of the girls in a lie or a patent contradiction. Once one lie was exposed, others would soon fly up into the light. But so far the women's story tallied with everything else they had learned about the events of Monday night. Five minutes later, with his generous nose twitching at the cumulative stenches along the way, he reached Madame Renée's.

The shutters were closed over the windows. Cobb padded all the way around the house. It was sealed up like Pharaoh's tomb. Either the women were out or still abed. Well, either suited his purpose. Glancing several times up and down the seemingly deserted pathway that served as a thoroughfare, he drew out of his jacket pocket a cumbersome key. It was a skeleton key that Sarge had issued to him and the other three constables when the force was inaugurated in 1835. What he was expected to do with it he was never quite sure. This would be its maiden run. He moved adroitly to the rear of the house once more but was brought up short when he encountered a pair of young ruffians wrestling in the dirt beside the scruffy bush in front of the escape hatch.

“Get outta here, you scamps, before I kick yer arses inta yer teeth!” he hissed, hesitant to deploy his fearsome stentorian tones.

The boys stopped instantly, untangled their limbs slowly, sat back on their haunches, and stared at the intruder as if he were some freak of nature materialized out of the dust, like Adam.

“That yer real nose, buster?”

“Does it glow in the dark?”

“Let's hear ya honk it!”

Cobb glowered and put one hand on the butt of his truncheon. Laughing in mock fright, the boys scampered off.

Cobb had to stand perfectly still for a full five minutes to determine whether the ruckus the boys had raised would disturb the women inside or attract attention from neighbouring abodes. But
all was quiet, so he proceeded to squat down before the hatch. He eased the skeleton key silently into the opening of the lock. Then infinitely slowly he turned it to the left. There was a sharp click. He held his breath. Then he pushed the hatch inward about an inch. Satisfied, he closed and relocked it.

It was just as he had thought. This lock was simple enough to be opened by a run-of-the-mill skeleton key. And that meant that almost anyone in Irishtown who knew about the hatch (who wouldn't? was an easier question) and possessed such a key (anyone who cared to buy or steal one) would have access to the inner sanctum of Madame Renée's. And that meant finding someone with both a key and a grudge.

Cobb had already worked out the answer to the latter part of the equation: Madame Charlotte, the competition. To Cobb it seemed inconceivable that two such houses of prostitution, whatever their particular intentions and clientele, would not be rivals. From that premise it was logical that if Madame Charlotte wished to do harm to Madame Renée's business, all she had to do was hire the nearest hungry thug, supply him with a key, and send him on his way. She may even have suborned Badger himself, who already had a key. Whatever the details—and Cobb intended to get to them—the crime was connected to rivalries and animosities entirely within the boundaries of Irishtown. Whistling softly, he walked a hundred yards up the road to the rambling clapboard house of Madame Charlotte. It too was shuttered and barred. But this time Cobb took out his truncheon and rapped smartly on the paint-peeled door.

Soon after, Cobb sat in the parlour of the brothel on a stiff chair watching the two women across from him, both seated on a battered settee embroidered with roses and a number of random, greasy petals whose provenance Cobb cared not to reflect upon.
The contrast between this room and its counterpart at Madame Renée's was striking. Here, not a stick of furniture or wall surface had escaped being stained, gouged, or otherwise abused. Putrid pools of spilled wine—neat or regurgitated—festered here and there on the softwood floor, whose boards had not been swept or scrubbed since leaving the mill. Cobb couldn't decide which was worse: the stink or the frantic perfumes used to subdue it. Undaunted, he soldiered on.

“I'm here to question you concernin' an incident at Madame Renée's on Monday evenin',” he said, trying for the exact pitch between authoritative and invitational that the Major used in these situations.

“That slut!”

This assessment was offered by Marybelle, the only one of the inmates who was not “indisposed,” according to Madame Charlotte. Marybelle was perched on the edge of the settee, clad only in a floppy robe and a jangle of hair curlers that looked as if they were trying to escape. She was of indeterminate age but undoubtedly well travelled. She had made a half-hearted attempt to remove the caked powder, waxy lip rouge, and brow-black from her evening face, but had managed only to smear them together. With her dark pop-eyes and sagging chin, she reminded Cobb of a circus clown who'd put his makeup on without benefit of a mirror. Her voice scraped at the air like a rusted handsaw.

“Ya mean the murder, don't ya?” Madame Charlotte demanded, staring at Cobb with bold, hardened eyes. Unlike her “girl,” Charlotte was dressed for the day or night in a brash, flouncy frock sporting bluebirds and some sort of exotic fruit and cut low enough to display her well-upholstered breastworks. Her considerable makeup had been applied with a trowel and worked to perfection: vermilion lips, rouged cheeks, kohl-sculpted eyelids
and brows, topped by a powdered wig that one of Shakespeare's boy-women might have blushed to wear.

“So you've heard what happened?” Cobb said.

“Nothin's kept secret in Irishtown for more'n ten minutes!” Marybelle rasped.

“I was speakin' to Madame Charlotte.”

Madame Charlotte frowned. “The name is Char
-lotte
,” she said with proud emphasis on the ultimate syllable. “And, yeah, we saw the body bein' carted off yesterday mornin'.”

“Poor Sarah got herself topped, in her own bed!” There was more mockery in Marybelle's voice than sorrow.

“By some nob, we hear,” Charlotte said. “Which means nothin'll be done about it, so why're you here disrupturin' an honest woman and her business? It don't look good to have the law lurkin' about in daylight.”

“P'raps he's come fer a good time,” Marybelle cackled.

This time it was Charlotte who laughed.

“If you know what's good fer you, Madam
Char-a-lot
, you'll answer my questions and answer them truthful, or I'll bring the sheriff down here with a dozen torches to rid the town of—”

“All right, all right, there's no need to get testy. We ain't got nothin' to hide, have we, Marybelle?”

“I ain't ever been accused of hidin' much,” Marybelle giggled grotesquely, and to demonstrate her point she let the robe drift open to expose the tops and inner curves of her breasts.

“Someone broke into Madame Renée's about one-thirty Tuesday mornin' and stabbed Sarah McConkey to death,” Cobb said.

“They couldn't've got through them oak doors,” Charlotte said. “Norah seals that place up tighter'n a heifer's cunt.”

“I don't believe the intruder used either door,” Cobb said carefully.

“Ya mean the little hatch?” Marybelle blurted, and got a warning glance from her mistress.

“Ah, so you know about that, do ya?” Cobb said, pleased with his probing thus far.

“Everybody that lives within three hundred yards of the place knows about the booby-hatch,” Charlotte said levelly. “Just ask.”

“But you'd need a key to get in, wouldn't you?” Cobb said quickly.

“The way I hear it,” Charlotte said just as quickly, “that little hatch was fer gettin' out, not in.”

“Maybe so, but we think it was used by the killer.”

“So what's this got to do with us anyways? I was here Monday night and Tuesday mornin' pullin' sailors offa my girls when their time was up. You figure I sneaked out and headed down to Madam Pompadour's?”

“I'm not accusin' you of anythin', madam.”

“If I'd've kilt anybody down there it would've been the fat hooer who runs the place.”

Cobb pounced. “So you two aren't friendly?”

“You could say that.”

“You believe her business is hurtin' yer own?”

This remark produced prodigious mirth in both women, which triggered much jiggling of exposed and under-rigged flesh. Cobb felt himself redden.

“I'm not fond of Norah Burgess, but I ain't jealous. Here, we cater to real, honest-to-goodness men: sailors and lumberjacks and teamsters who don't powder their hair or perfume their pricks.”

“And Madame Renée takes care of the other kind?”

“Poofs and nobs and old fellas who can't get it up but enjoy watchin'.” Charlotte spat out the next words: “The perversions
that go on down there'd make Marybelle blush, and she ain't done that since the midwife whacked her backside.”

“So you're sayin' you'd have no reason to hire some tough or bruiser to break in down there and stir up trouble—maybe damage or beat up the star performer?”

Charlotte guffawed so gustily her dentures popped halfway out of her mouth. “Sarah McConkey a star performer? That little slut wasn't here six weeks before she got herself knocked up! She didn't know one hole from another!”

As the women howled at this witticism, Cobb's puzzlement deepened. Without forethought he asked, “Sarah McConkey worked here?”

“ 'Course she did. Everybody in Irishtown knows that.”

“ 'Least them that poked her,” Marybelle added. “Couldn't've been more'n a hundred, could it, Char?”

But the look on Cobb's face immediately dampened their mirth and Charlotte required no prompting. She told the tale of Sarah McConkey straight out. According to her, Sarah had been spotted by one of the madam's scouts, alone and desperate on Lot Street, in late September. When brought to the brothel to be fed and coddled (“I spoil my girls rotten!”) Sarah informed Charlotte that she had left her home in Streetsville earlier in the month because her father had insisted she marry a religious zealot, who happened incidentally to be old and ugly. (“Them religious buggers is the randiest,” Marybelle added here, “they get so pent up!”) Sarah then found work as a housemaid in the home of some city preacher but, she claimed, he made advances and his wife kicked her out bag and baggage, accusing her of being a harlot. Distraught and friendless, she ended up at Madam Charlotte's. So grateful was Sarah that after a week of
recuperation she consented to earn her daily bread as her sisters in the house did.