Death in the Age of Steam (36 page)

Harris was subpoenaed to appear and give evidence “on behalf of our Sovereign Lady the Queen” touching the death of a person or persons whose remains had been found near the village of Highland Creek and at the mouth of the Rouge River. The inquest would be held at the dwelling house of Edward Wilson in the first concession of Scarboro Township at one o'clock in the afternoon of Thursday, the 14th day of August instant. Christopher Hillyard, M.D., Coroner, County of York, had signed the summons.

“To avoid a charge of contempt,” said the constable when Harris had finished reading, “I am to advise you that you will have to take passage on a westbound steamer sailing no later than noon today.”

“To be paid no doubt from public funds,” said Harris grimly, though the expense was not at the top of his mind. Did the police, he wondered, now know where Theresa was? Was that why the axe had been allowed to fall?

“Public funds, sir? Not that I've heard.” Constable 8 touched his stick to his hat brim and turned on his heel.

“Smart, ain't he?” Nan Hogan followed the man—or perhaps his uniform—with covetous glances. “Says he used to be a fireman. Oh yes, it's all one department here. And—for your information, Mr. Isaac Harris—it's quartered in the market right across the street!”

Harris heard just enough to realize he had been careless, dreadfully so. He would have to go. Cat and mouse with Vandervoort was all very well, but to refuse a summons issued under the authority of the Crown would, he feared, quite destroy his credit and impair his usefulness to Theresa in the legal battles to come.

Nan Hogan was still at his elbow. “I could take that annoying paper back,” she said, “convince him we got the wrong gent after all.”

“And why,” asked Harris, “would you do that?”

“Save you travelling all that way to tell the world where and when you last saw Mrs. Crane. You might tell me instead.”

“And if I said it has been three years?”

“An innkeeper outside Kingston says otherwise.”

Nan Hogan's gravelly chuckle irritated Harris, but her efficiency exasperated him.

“Why should Mrs. Crane's name even come up at the inquest?” he demanded. “The remains are Sibyl Martin's.”

“That's for the jury to say, ain't it? Now don't be coy. If you're in Montreal, the lady's stowed here somewhere. Beneath a veil perhaps. I've remarked your interest in the Church of Rome.”

“Travel is no hardship to me,” said Harris bravely. She might, after all, be referring only to his passage through the cathedral in Kingston. “You're welcome to look where you please.”

She tried again. The girl in violet and man in tweeds formed one of several conversational groups standing about the oak-panelled lobby of the large hotel. The province's police departments, she said slyly, were swapping little favours all the time. Toronto's wanted the credit for finding Mrs. Crane. The alternatives offered Harris were, one, to reveal Theresa's hidy-hole on the spot and be permitted to stay in Montreal or, two, to keep mum now and be forced to tell all in Toronto.

Without terminating the interview, Harris continued to affect indifference. Inwardly, he was torn. If he left, he risked missing any letter from Theresa. Suppose that tomorrow, while his steamer carried him every moment farther from her, she had conveyed to Rasco's Hotel an urgent appeal for him to remove her from the convent. Harris's stomach knotted at the thought. On the other hand, if he accepted Nan Hogan's offer, police surveillance would complicate any such removal. Moreover, the sooner Vandervoort knew where Theresa was, the sooner Crane would know, and the sooner he might interfere with her.

But the decisive defence against temptation was remembering the character of the temptress. While this thieving, coquettish, tomboy spy showed initiative far surpassing what Harris had
regretfully come to expect of the constabulary, he had no confidence that Nan Hogan would honour her bargain if she could.

In her presence, he took care not to register at Rasco's. He would have a telegram sent back from Lachine. He would have to count on Theresa to weather the few—he hoped—days of his absence.

The lobby tall clock struck the half.

“I've almost a mind to come home with you,” said Nan, wistful, then brightening, “but there's sport and duty here.”

If the duty was looking for Mrs. Crane, Harris tacitly wished Vandervoort's agent ample occasions for the other, even at some cost to property and morals.

To be quite certain he left, she walked him to the docks. She waved him off from the top of the harbour's vast limestone revetment wall, and was quickly lost in the port traffic. Vessels from as far away as New South Wales choked the river. As the quays fell astern, Harris could barely see the city's forest of church and convent steeples for a screen of schooner masts.

He thought of Theresa with a blank page before her. “My dear Isaac,” he mentally dictated.

The Grey Nuns he picked out at last from its location alone. He could not say he recognized the lantern, high tin cone and cross, having seen them first through such different eyes. Earlier, the spire had seemed poised to puncture his hopes. Now it was beckoning him back.

The frame house on Parliament Street north of Duchess appeared to have started life in the Georgian style, compact and symmetrical, but to have sprawled and rambled over its lot since. Every part, however, had been kept up. An active-looking man was applying a fresh coat of serviceable blue-grey paint even as Harris approached to confirm the name on the gatepost. A brass plate was discreetly engraved, “E. Vale.”

Since disembarking, Harris had looked in vain for Jasper Small at the lawyer's office and then his rooms. It was now ten thirty on an overcast Thursday morning, the day of the inquest.

The painter looked down from the ladder.

“There's an electric bell,” he bragged, “right side of the door.”

If the door had no slide in it, there were plainly other ways to inspect callers. Harris pushed the bell control and knocked for good measure. Batteries could run down.

The serving woman who opened was in conversation with Mrs. Vale herself, on this occasion fully dressed. She wore a burgundy skirt and jacket, trimmed with braid and businesslike. On her head she was placing a wide-brimmed straw hat grotesquely loaded with feathers, ribbons and artificial flowers. She was speaking of cosmetics.

“Lard, rosewater and coconut milk—that's all it is. I never wash my hands without applying it. Mr. Harris! I was just on my way to the bank, but you are not there.”

“No, I'm here,” said Harris awkwardly enough, but with no time today for embarrassment. “In which room will I find Mr. Small?”

“It's too early to disturb him,” she protested, “but some of the girls are up. There's a Mexican
señorita
I'm sure you would—”

“Your own apartments?” Harris had noted costly lace curtains at the upper windows of one of the additions. He started past Mrs. Vale towards the stairs.

The servant had not shut the outside door. “Shall I call Sampson, ma'am?”

“No need.” Her mistress's larded and rosewatered hands deftly disarranged Harris's cravat. “
This
way to sugar lump, if you please.”

At the risk of being led astray or into an ambush, Harris followed Mrs. Vale's over-ornamented bonnet down a back passage, past a pantry full of empty wine bottles and oyster shells, down two steps, through the kitchen and the middle of a dispute in two languages on the proper preparation of cocoa, up two steps, and around a corner. He was beginning to fear, as
if sleeping in a bordello were not humiliation enough for his friend, that Small had been lodged in the servants' quarters, or in the woodpile. Then Mrs. Vale led the way into another wing. She crossed a card room with four tables, its own wine cooler, and its own door to the yard. At the far side she opened without knocking the door to an office.

Small, in evening dress, lay asleep on the ottoman. His left arm shielded his eyes from the daylight, while his right trailed to the floor. He looked, with one knee slightly bent, surprisingly graceful in his abandonment.

Without preamble, Esther Vale slapped him hard between the legs. A whimper escaped him, more like a maimed rabbit's than anything human. Harris couldn't speak. He lifted Small in his arms and carried him as from a fire out of the office and out of doors.

“Hallo, Isaac,” Small said thickly. “What is it then?”

Behind them, Small's assailant had thrown up the sash of the office window.

“Until tonight, little sprout,” she laughed. “No later than ten.”

“What is that she's saying?”

Harris didn't answer, nor did he set Small on his feet until they were on Parliament Street in sight of a cab.

“Jasper, I've found her.”

“You've changed your tie knot.” Small's pale eyes blinked away most of his stupor. “Found whom?”

“Theresa. I need you to come to the inquest this afternoon.”

“I'm sorry,” said Small. “I wish I could feel it as I ought.”

“No, no,” Harris corrected, “she's alive, or was two days ago.”

Small looked dubious, saw that this time there was no misunderstanding, and clasped Harris's hand.

“By God, that's wonderful,” he declared wholeheartedly, “the first good news all summer—but then—”

“The inquest doesn't concern her. Jasper, that's why I want your professional advice—today, right now—to keep Theresa out of it. Your old friend Hillyard is presiding.”

“Professional?” The word seemed to stir a distant memory, to recall—if only one could concentrate . . . “Dash it, Isaac, I'm sore. Have I been horseback riding?”

“Forget what you've been doing, and hear what's to be done.”

Harris's problem was how not to tell the coroner's court where Theresa was. He asked this simple question in the cab, which he directed first to Jasper's building, and asked it again as they climbed the two steep flights of stairs to Jasper's door. From Sheridan's partner he kept nothing back. By the time Small had shaved and changed into morning coat and striped trousers, he seemed to grasp that the secret of Theresa's refuge must be kept. What strategy he contemplated, however, Harris failed to discover. Small insisted on dozing away the drive out Kingston Road, while his companion counted off the fifteen miles with foreboding.

No sooner had their cab turned in between Wilson's unpainted gateposts than Harris recognized the austerely prosperous farm as one he had stopped at on July 21 when looking for the burned shack. He had not on that occasion been invited into the kitchen, which he now found to be large, clean and plain. A room, he thought, to preclude prevarication. To accommodate the inquest, high benches had been improvised from rough planks supported by barrels. Each of the fourteen jurors was on arrival warned against splinters, and not a man of them was able when seated to touch the soles of his boots to the floor. Spectators were obliged to stand, the few chairs being reserved for the witnesses and the coroner.

Dr. Hillyard looked frail and forlorn seated by himself behind the enormous kitchen table, on which rested two wooden boxes he was doing his best to ignore. On entering, Small went to speak to him. Harris couldn't hear what passed between them, but noticed the old man start and scratch his head.

Next to arrive were Professor Bernard Lamb in his antiquated green frock coat and John Vandervoort, who spied Harris immediately and insisted on wringing his hand.

“Well done, Mr. H., I knew we should find her. Where is it
Mrs. Crane is stowed? You'll soon be telling the jury anyway, and under oath.”

“Have ‘we' discovered,” asked Harris, “how Sibyl Martin died? I thought that was the subject of today's proceedings.”

Before Vandervoort could reply, Small came and took him off Harris's hands. Jasper Small, barrister and solicitor, a pleasure to see the inspector again, and would he favour the coroner with a word?

Harris meanwhile greeted Lamb, whose good news somewhat cheered the reluctant witness. Supported by the Hon. Robert Baldwin, the chemistry professor's request had been approved, his salary to increase before Mrs. Lamb's confinement. Here was one situation saved.

Farmer Wilson was by now getting impatient. He had crops to harvest, he ringingly let it be known, and so did his neighbours on the jury. No one contradicted him. He was a hard, proud-looking man with a black fringe of beard and a permanent scowl as if he were being photographed. Arms folded, he sat in the middle of the room waiting to give his evidence. Family members approached deferentially if at all.

Shortly after one, a rattle of hoofs and wheels announced the arrival of the last participant. Tall and florid, serious but not severe, Henry Crane became the centre of attention from the moment he entered Wilson's kitchen. The rural patriarch was superseded, his dampening spell broken. The harvest was set aside in a buzz of talk about the railway and steamship baron. Was it not true, a spectator leaned over to ask Harris, that Mr. Crane was involved in the laying of a transatlantic telegraph cable?