Death in the Age of Steam (29 page)

Taggart's grandmother said nothing of gout, complaining only of sore feet. Paul had done the heavier housekeeping. She had a tired, sallow face, yellowed white hair, and enough bulk to hold down a chair in any wind. Harris had eventually found her ensconced at the apothecary's. Fever had laid up her son, Paul's father, so the family had not been represented at the execution. Mrs. Taggart was catching her breath and awaiting news.

Harris made a somewhat tongue-tied report. The farce of the broken rope was difficult to reconcile in one narrative with the gravity of a broken neck. He found, notwithstanding, that the effort to do so helped him to put some order into his own nightmarish impressions and to steady his mind for the contemplation of Ruth Nagle. Mrs. Taggart deprecated the incompetence of county hangmen and gave thanks that the world was now safe from Crusher Martin. Harris understood her sentiments and said so. Then he asked about the nurse.

Mrs. Taggart had needed help caring for Paul, but had been wary. This Miss Nagle who presented herself was so young and slight, her costume so garish and soiled. She had no luggage. She claimed, however, to come of a Montreal medical family and to have nursing experience. She gave references. Rather than waste time checking them, Mrs. Taggart simply sniffed her breath for
liquor and examined her on the properties of various pills, poultices and fumigations. In a plain linen gown lent by the apothecary's wife, Ruth Nagle was admitted to the sickroom.

Harris glanced at the woman behind the counter. Yes, he thought the dress sizes comparable. Mention of the Montreal medical family didn't discourage him, for Theresa would quickly have recognized that whatever story she told would require too much effort to verify. It made no sense for her to stop here, and yet . . .

“When she left you, Mrs. Taggart,” he entreated, “was there
any
indication at all where she might have gone?”

“The warden sent us a fancy doctor—all paid for, mind—a Kingston man.” Mrs. Taggart's lips pursed sourly. “Did my grandson no good that I could see. No more than my poultices. Anyway,
he
wanted her to go work at the City Hospital there, but whether she did or not I couldn't say. She left in the middle of the night, you know. No note or notice. I never found out where to send her wages.”

Ruth Nagle had been quiet, hard-working and respectful enough, if Harris were wanting her in any professional capacity. What she lacked, to Mrs. Taggart's mind, was resignation.

Martin's attack had cut Mrs. Taggart up badly. Nevertheless, when she saw how her sweet boy was afterwards—confused at best, barely ever awake at all, day after weary day—she had started preparing for the Good Lord to take him. His nurse had refused to look at this possibility. Ruth Nagle always thought there was something more she could do in the way of cleaning the room, changing the ventilation, varying the diet, rearranging the pillows. Busy, always busy, and then—she couldn't accept God's will.

“How do you mean?” asked Harris.

“Why, the way she grieved!” The fat old woman twisted irritably in her chair. “She, who never saw Paul when he was properly himself. Strong he was, sir—but gentle, trusting to a fault. Oh, I had cause to moan and howl more than any stranger. Then the way she bolted! Took only the gaudy clothes
she came in and—” Mrs. Taggart seemed to see Harris's green waistcoat for the first time. “I must say, the shade improves on acquaintance. If you're of the girl's family, sir, I meant no offence. What with the strain of recent events . . .”

Harris hastened to assure her he appreciated her frankness.

“No one could have saved my grandson,” said Mrs. Taggart, “excepting the wretch that's hanged. Without your kinswoman, Paul's end would have been harder and meaner, no question about it.”

Customers were arriving from the place of execution in search of stomach medicine. Other spectators came to gloat and gossip. While grateful for Mrs. Taggart's tribute, Harris was able to get nothing more of value from her or anyone in the village.

At this point, having missed breakfast, he should have stopped for lunch. His own appetite had somehow survived the hanging. He had noted, however, that cabs were scarce in Portsmouth, so when he saw one jogging past he promptly engaged it for the drive into Kingston. If no moments were lost, the kitchen at Irons Hotel would still be open.

His head rocking against the horsehair seat back, he reckoned again the hours he had to make up—so many fewer than he had dared hope. Finding Theresa had become feasible. He wondered what stroke of fortune could have caused the interval between her and him to narrow so dramatically.

For her attendance on Paul Taggart, he simply could not account. She had not surely left Toronto for this. At the same time, if her object had been to disappear, stopping two weeks in Portsmouth, under a relatively transparent alias, represented a substantial risk. A risk, moreover, for someone there was no evidence that she knew at all.

And what of her letter to Crusher Martin? Her leaving that communication till after Taggart succumbed seemed no accident. Her attempt to save the keeper might all along have been an attempt to save the convict. If Taggart lived, his assailant's sentence might be commuted. If Taggart died, his slayer would swing. Harris wondered, though, how Theresa could possibly
have incurred so heavy an obligation to the Martins.

How she must have had to mortify herself to live under Mrs. Taggart's roof! Terms like
quiet
and
respectful
fit the fugitive Harris was pursuing as ill as they did the captivatingly lively woman he had once known.

The detective picked drying mud from the seam of his boot. He felt steeped in death. Martin's abrupt fall from man to corpse re-enacted itself unbidden in his fancy. As for Sibyl, he shied away from speculating on the circumstances of her end, because he didn't want to think that Theresa might have had a hand in it. He knew she couldn't have, unless perhaps accidentally.

Enough. The point was to find her, as he soon would if she were in Kingston. On a full stomach, he would turn over every last block of grey limestone to do it.

Out the cab window to the right, the lakeside prospect included up ahead a squat, round Martello tower that marked the entrance to the harbour. Harris was entering familiar territory. At the same time, in a park to the left stood a three-storey public building he wasn't sure he recognized. An ochre-haired young woman coming from it was waiting to cross the street.

Her glance met Harris's. She raised thick eyebrows, half smiled, and was lost to view. Harris reacted slowly. He didn't stop the cab, thinking she must have mistaken him for someone else. He would have remembered her eyes. Only blocks later did he suspect she might be the passenger with gold opera glasses from
Triumph
. Tawny, those eyes looked, and sly.

Eyes that knew him, yet that he didn't know. The eyes, like as not, of a police spy.

On alighting, he asked the driver what the building opposite the Martello tower housed. It was, he learned, the City Hospital.

Stopping only to buy a loaf of bread, which he gnawed in the cab, Harris returned to the hospital. Theresa wasn't there and never had been, as either nurse or patient. He made sure. His tongue had become a machine for asking questions, stamping them out like tin trays. He interviewed Taggart's fancy doctor. He tried the Roman Catholic hospital as well. He looked without success for Vandervoort's tawny-eyed agent. Then he started in on his regular inquiries, which kept him several days in Kingston and its vicinity.

The gravestone-grey, monolithic city was handsome enough, built up as a provincial capital in the forties, but deserted now by Parliament, bypassed by the Grand Trunk, emptying of business, and most particularly devoid of people who had seen Theresa. As of Wednesday night, Harris had fallen sixty more hours behind her and into a state approaching automatism. His feet found their own way back to his hotel room. He didn't want to think. Having felt his forehead fanned by the wind from her heels, he would only be thinking how he had lost her again.

He didn't want to feel. He had telegraphed Toronto to forward his mail, then delayed opening the envelopes that came until he judged himself too exhausted to be much distressed by their contents. Midnight was now approaching. Without loosening his cravat, he sank onto a chaise longue and lit a cheap cigar.

The letter signed, “Yours ever, Jasper” was—those words apart—distressing first to last. Apropos of their most recent meeting, Small said “that piece” had solemnly sworn to stay in the bedroom until Harris had left, but perhaps it was just as well for Harris to know he had been overheard. Besides, to
make a whore behave would take an engineer cleverer than any the age had yet produced. In this and all departments, Small confessed himself quite helpless.

“Since the Old Man's defection,” he wrote, “I have so much to do I can begin nothing, except another bottle.”

Clients were going elsewhere, which simply demoralized Small further. Important documents had been misplaced. As for selling Harris's properties, he didn't know what he could do, but would mention them to Esther, who was always looking for investments.

Harris hated use of the word
piece
to refer to a woman. He turned the page down in his lap and squinted through cheroot smoke at the ceiling.

The rasping tobacco scent plucked him back to a billiard haunt of Small's. “One more game, Isaac?” Jasper would ask lazily. And one more after that. Harris's eyes were smarting. Not a brilliant player, Jasper, but elegant as a prince—a challenge to beat and a pleasure to watch. Formerly at least.

Damn.

Harris wondered, though, if Jasper had really changed, or if his friends had simply failed to understand his character. Take Sheridan, for example.

As he had other of his employees, Sheridan had overestimated Small. The young lawyer worked well under direction. His greater command of his temper had saved Sheridan embarrassment, and worse, time and again. Sheridan's mistake lay in taking Small as his only partner, in leaving him no one to rely on but Sheridan himself.

This mistake magnified the impact of Sheridan's death. If his clients lost thereby, someone else's clients must correspondingly be winners. Wondering not for the first time who these winners might be, Harris glanced down and found writing on the letter's back.

P.S. As yet have lost only some business while you appear to have thrown yours up entirely. Sincerely hope you're not
going quite to pieces. Rumour here is Theresa killed the servant out of jealousy and fled. All twaddle of course.

P.P.S. No need to worry about Crane's testifying against her. Under present British (hence Canadian) law, husband and wife considered one flesh, therefore not competent witnesses when spouse put on trial. There's comfort anyway. Coroner's inquest into arm etc. now set to proceed. You'll be subpoenaed if found.

Harris changed hotels instantly. Gladly as he would have given evidence two weeks ago when the inquest should have been held, he had no intention now of being found by some paper-server and dragged away back to Toronto. The move took little time. He had just bought a change of linen, but had no other luggage. He found himself sweating all the same.

To read the letter from his mother, he had to light an oil lamp. It was too hot really, but his inexpensive new room above a Princess Street coffee house had no gas or other luxuries—just a few sparse furnishings and a view of the hind-side of a brewery. All there was black and quiet now. Harris left open the sooty curtain so as not to discourage the least current from stirring the soupy air.

Then he slit open the envelope from Holland Landing. Paper money tumbled out.

Some notes were crisp as starched cuffs, most cobweb soft and veined. They bore promises of payment by banks, governments, railways and assorted other commercial ventures, including the Niagara Suspension Bridge. A vignette depicted the tangle of wires and cables.

Harris scarcely recognized them. He was too amazed. The family sometimes commissioned him to buy in the city a tool, a book, or a pair of shoes, but this looked like enough to outfit an arctic expedition.

Denominations ranged from five shillings to fifty dollars. A few bills were better tinder now than tender, their issuers bankrupt. Others to Harris's knowledge would be subject to
ruinous discounts if presented anywhere but at a head office in Sarnia or Halifax. The ragtag collection nonetheless represented something close to thirty pounds.

1 Aug.

My dear Isaac,

I deliberated all of fifteen seconds as to whether to tell Father of your letter. The enclosed treasure is from him. He either has been calling in old debts or had this tucked away in odd corners. Of the mill, not the house. My establishment's dusting and scrubbing would not have missed it. I am instructed to tell you he is most anxious you not sell any of your assets so long as prices continue to climb. (Whether he thinks it better to wait till they have fallen I dare not ask.)