Death in the Age of Steam (22 page)

They more or less did. In what seemed short order, he found himself opposite the abandoned Fort George.

With the fort's crumbling earthworks still between him and the docks, he heard something like a piano's low A played on a steam whistle. The sound sucked the wind from his sail, or that was how his impatience made it feel. The departure signal boomed again.

When he finally cleared the headland, the ship was churning the river white to either side. She was gleaming white altogether, except for the black H of her side-by-side stacks and half a dozen large and brilliant flags. A ribbon of water already stretched between her and the quay.

There was no speed to her yet. Harris was able to pull abreast—but not approach. With practically no keel, his dinghy slipped sideways when he tried to come up wind. He struck sail and manned the oars.

The collision of Lake Ontario with the Niagara River chopped up the water here. To make any headway, Harris had to pull facing astern. He tried to steer by a church spire on the American shore, but whenever he glanced over his shoulder the white ship had accelerated beyond his calculations. The Greek-looking name painted on her paddle housing in black-outlined gold capitals flashed across his bows. Passengers under her rear saloon-deck awning waved him a cheery adieu.

A final, muscle-searing burst of rowing cracked the right oar and brought the dinghy's nose in contact with the steamer. It would have been no more than a brief tap that left Harris and his boat bobbing far astern—would have been, that is, but for the overhang. The ship's superstructure was built out from the hull and flush with the outer surface of the paddle housing. In the trough of a wave, Harris's prow slid beneath this projection and caught. Dragged lakewards, the dinghy pivoted on her mast. There was an instant before she shook free, an instant when the thwart on which Harris sat came within jumping distance of the steamer. He managed when he landed to catch hold of one of the long wooden fenders.

Belatedly, the paddles slowed. The one-man boarding party, it seemed, had at last been remarked.

Relieved of the urgent necessity for action, Harris found himself recalling the custom inspector's green felt slippers. Might that slighted official, he wondered, have telegraphed the steamship company?

Without haste or enthusiasm, he climbed over the main-deck rail, to which a curious throng had by this time gathered. Among them he first distinguished two individuals. One was a pained-looking purser in a jacket trimmed with gold braid. The other, wearing his usual tweeds, was John Vandervoort.

“One cabin passage to Toronto,” Harris told the purser, “and could you ask the captain to pick up my dinghy. I'm afraid I let her get away from me.”

There was never any question of the gleaming
Cytherean's
turning back. Harris himself was lucky to have, in the purser's words, “been taken” aboard. His little tub with the broken oar and the red sail trailing overboard shrunk away astern to a speck and then to nothing. From Table Rock on, his morning had cost him more than any two average months.

He would consequently have settled for deck passage rather than pay the 150 per cent cabin premium had it not been for the advisability of reassuring the purser that he wasn't quite the floating vagabond he appeared. If he had dared to hope also that Vandervoort would not be admitted to the cabin, he would have been disappointed. Not even a stateroom would have ensured privacy. Vandervoort was admitted everywhere. Gratis.

That last week in Toronto, he had eluded Harris. He had regretted perhaps speaking so freely on the evening of their visit to Sheridan's kitchen. Harris regretted his not speaking of Sibyl Martin. The opportunity to corner Vandervoort aboard ship would in those trackless days have been jumped at. At the present moment, however, Vandervoort threatened to be very much in the way—and this was of course when he had chosen to make himself available.

The detective inspector would keep Harris company throughout the four-hour crossing. No trouble in the world. The drama of the banker's arrival had, friendly considerations apart, sufficed to pique his interest. On the bright side, Vandervoort seemed to have no formal complaint to bring nor any knowledge of Harris's earlier difficulties with an officer of the Crown.

Harris washed and combed himself in one of the steamer's lavishly mirrored bathrooms. Vandervoort watched. Harris entrusted his morning coat to a steward for cleaning and pressing. Vandervoort recommended he purchase cigars. Harris, who may have had water in his ears, strolled to the bow rail and watched for the smoke of Toronto's factories to climb above the horizon. The day had been grey and was growing cool, more like the end of August than the beginning. In his shirt sleeves, he felt it.

Vandervoort stuck close. “Yes, Mr. H., you showed determination in boarding this lady.”

“I've business across the lake,” Harris curtly replied.

“Took her by force, as it were. Not your way normally, is it?”

“Have you found Mrs. Crane, inspector?”

“There have been developments.”

Harris looked at him sharply. “In Niagara?”

“No, this was a family matter. I believe I told you I'm from the region.” Vandervoort drew from inside his crumpled waistcoat a silver medal. “Look,” he said, “I took the pledge.”

Irony edged his voice, but his hooded eyes rested with something approaching paternal affection on the shiny disk all the time it was in Harris's hand.

“Sons of Abstinence,” Harris read. “Lincoln County Lodge. Be sober and watch.” The full text of the pledge, including a promise to discountenance intemperance in others was stamped inside a cross on the reverse.

“A moving ceremony,” said Vandervoort, “held at my mother's bedside.”

Harris began to wonder if the insistence of Vandervoort's attentions had not sprung from his need to impart the momentous news of his conversion. No one could fault him with reticence on that subject.

“A new police is on the way, Mr. Harris. You'll see spit and polish and a board of commissioners, so dead wood will no longer have the aldermen's skirts to hide behind. Your temperate, businesslike officer will reap the rewards.”

“As one such,” Harris jumped in, “you may care to know that Mrs. Crane did sit for her photograph, at No. 4, City Buildings, King Street East.”

“It must have slipped Mr. Crane's mind. Now
there
is a gentleman of whom it is said that he has never used tobacco, intoxicants, or an immodest word—and look where he is today.”

“In Chicago, is he not?”

“Being honoured for his contributions to North American transportation.”

“It would not surprise me,” said Harris, “if he never showed his face in this province again. To what developments regarding Mrs. Crane were you referring?”

“I marvel, sir, that
your
eyes aren't green. Just think what pangs of jealousy you would have been spared if you had been as bold three years ago with her as you were today with the
Kith 'n' Kin
.”

“The which?”

“This floating palace. Glorious, isn't she? And spanking new.”

Harris followed Vandervoort's pointing arm back and up to the gracefully carved nude that surmounted the eight-sided pilot house. Even without sun, her tresses glittered. Their sweep followed Botticelli, Harris believed, though the clam shell she balanced on had been scaled down.

“To see that waist of hers, Mr. Harris, you would never guess she gobbles up over a cord of wood per hour. Did you notice the crystal chandeliers? She has got them. Damask curtains. Potted plants. Wood panelling. Brass thingummies—enough of them to keep a dozen cabin boys polishing their hearts out. She's perfect in every way, except for her damned name, which not one of her crew, let alone her two hundred passengers, can wrap his tongue around.”

“Have you found her horse?” said Harris.

Vandervoort was still smacking his lips over the lofty image of Aphrodite, as if she were sculpted in butter.

“Excuse me, Inspector, but do you even have a description of her horse? It's bay, not black.”

That seemed to get Vandervoort's attention. “Shall we take lunch in her dining saloon?” he asked. “Oil paintings on the walls. You'll pay more than at the bar, but the—uh—the tone—”

“We were going to work together, John, if you'll recall,” Harris broke in impatiently. “You were going to call the tune. Well, what's it to be? Polka, jig or reel? You said you were damned if you knew what had become of William Sheridan's housekeeper, and now I hear she spent a night in your lock-up.”

“What of it? No one questioned her.”

“Oh?”

“It was the Glorious Twelfth, remember,” Vandervoort added. “You can bet your granny's wooden leg no one with any authority was frequenting the poultry market. I believe they even let the sergeant out for the evening . . . Hell, you know where
I
was—stalking smugglers on the peninsula.”

Vandervoort was grinning but moving away as he talked. The other change Harris noted, with a satisfaction he did his best to conceal, was that his questions were now being parried rather than ducked. He followed the red-haired policeman astern.

“And in the morning?” he asked.

“In the morning, we heard from the doctor how the death certificate would read.”

“I'm so glad it didn't come to that, sir!” said a girl in a short blue cape as she stepped from a cabin doorway directly into Harris's path. “It's too romantic the way you were plucked from the waves. It was you, wasn't it? Sissy, this is the shipwrecked sailor they plucked from the waves.”

Excusing himself, Harris caught up with Vandervoort under the scalloped awning that covered the rear third of the deck.

“You say, ‘would read.' Had Dr. Hillyard made out no death certificate by Sunday morning?”

“Can't be done for twenty-four hours—a precaution against premature burial. He sent word, though. No murder, no murderess, and no earthly reason to see where the drudge ended up once we let her go.”

Harris considered mentioning the brown dress he had found in the burned shed, but persuading Vandervoort to keep looking for Theresa no longer seemed worth the effort. As soon teach a puma to eat oats. Besides, no longer bound to Toronto by work, Harris needed the police less. All he wanted from Vandervoort was a free hand plus whatever scraps of information he could shake loose.

“What have you heard from Professor Lamb?”

“Lamb? That mad wag would take a thermometer reading before he would venture to say his pants were on fire.” Vandervoort was
again drifting away, this time towards the bar concession.

“You must,” said Harris, “have had a report since the evening we were at his laboratory.”

“What are you buying me?” Vandervoort shouted to be heard above voices made loud by whisky.

“There's no point making a secret of it,” said Harris.

“I suppose it had better be buttermilk.” Vandervoort's fingers were in his waistcoat pocket, clinging no doubt to his temperance medal.

“I could always ask him myself.”

At this point a weedy man in the tallest stovepipe hat Harris had ever seen grabbed his hand and wrung it.

“You're the gent whose vessel was run down in the river mouth,” cried the stranger. “It's shocking, sir, the high-handedness of these steamship captains. Sue the company, that's my advice. I'll gladly represent you in court. My card—”

“So
this
is the party everyone has been talking about,” broke in the barman. “Your health, sir—no charge. What will you have?”

Bewildered as he was by the attention, Harris was also being reminded by his stomach that he had put nothing in it for the past six hours.

“Buttermilk,” he stammered.

“Two,” said Vandervoort, with a flourish becoming to the proprietor of the freak on display. “I'll say this for Lamb,” he added aside. “He has changed my mind.”

“How's that?” Harris forgot about being a menagerie exhibit.

“Buttermilk, sir? I'll send to the kitchen for some. Can you just tell us what happened?”

“Had his vessel sliced in two,” said the emaciated lawyer. “I've never seen a clearer case of negligence.”

As other drinkers bellowed competing theories, Harris pulled Vandervoort to the port rail and insisted he explain himself.

“Palm of the hand,” said the police detective as if the thing were obvious. “Three and a quarter inches. Too wide for Mrs. Crane, as her glove-maker can confirm. More likely the drudge.”

“Sibyl?”

“Quite likely—though we can't hope to find a record of
her
glove size.”

Here was a revolution in thought. For practically two weeks Harris had heard no whisper that anyone but himself believed Theresa still drew breath. That isolation now ended—just when his freedom of movement made it matter less. Chagrin embittered sweet relief.