Death in the Age of Steam (5 page)

The portico under which he sat, like the building as a whole, followed the Italianate fashion as far as could be squared with Protestant parsimony. Inside, a compact entrance hall led straight to the police office. Neither the chief nor his deputy was there. Harris proceeded downstairs to Station No. 1, which because of the slope of the land towards the lake looked out on the courtyard of the fruit and poultry market. The only windows, at the far end of the prisoners' airing room, admitted a dulled but insistent odour of sun-ripened chicken guts.

The near end of the basement housed, on the one hand, the building's central heating apparatus in a closet of its own and, on the other, the policemen's room. Stretching roughly parallel to the west or right wall of the latter, an eight-foot-long table served as a counter. Behind it sat hunched a fair young constable, clinging to an unsteady steel pen and holding the tip of his tongue between his teeth. He did not look up. With painstaking deliberation, he was recording a woman's complaint regarding her neighbour's privy. She wore a bolt of cloth in skirts alone, which vied in splendour with the abundant plumes and ribbons on her hat. She insisted, in a voice both affected and familiar, that she was known to the lawmakers. Harris had more than enough time to look around.

Although the station was not five years old, cracks were already opening in the walls as the building settled into the wet clay and sand of the harbour beach. Some of these fissures had been whitewashed over but not filled. Others had been patched with a conspicuous grey-green paste. From a rack of guns on the west wall, an expensive padlock—one Harris knew to be pick-proof—hung open and useless. As for the pine plank floor, it was swept remarkably clear of dust and littered with cherry pits. Everything was halfway right. The place was fairly cluttered with good intentions.

Presently Constable Devlin with his one polished boot emerged from the farthest lock-up cell. Harris tried to catch his eye. Appearing not to recollect their morning encounter, the constable crossed the airing room to the table and seated himself in front of a pile of fresh cherries. These he placed in his mouth one after another, expelling the pits in the direction of a tin spittoon.

“Hi, Devlin,” Harris called with more energy than hope. “Is your sergeant around at all?”

Devlin looked up quizzically, but was spared answering when two other men came clattering down the stairs into the room. One was the melancholic lighthouse keeper from the peninsula. He wore a navy jacket and army trousers. The other was John Vandervoort, yesterday's bogus procurement officer, frowning as if he had just been found out.

The light keeper cleared his throat, presumably to make a formal charge of fraud before the constables. But what was this? A plainly unrepentant Vandervoort clapped him on the back, knocking the breath out of him before he could speak.

“Lock this man up, Devlin,” said Vandervoort, shoving his winded companion behind the table. “The charge is smuggling and trafficking in smuggled goods. Morgan, write it up.”

“Two Gs or one, inspector?” said the blond constable, turning to a fresh page in his book.

Inspector
. Harris wondered if he had heard correctly.

“It ain't smuggling, John.” The accused wiped the sweat from his forehead with a shaky hand. “On my word as a seasoned campaigner, we've got this treaty with the States now. A recip—reciprostity treaty.”

“You mean, ‘reciprocity,'” the female complainant corrected self-importantly. Haughty grey eyes cast icicles from under her hat brim in the light keeper's direction. “Now I really must ask you to wait your turn.”

Vandervoort reached inside his frayed check jacket and pulled a six-shooter from his belt. Everyone but the seated constables took a startled step back. Morgan's pen froze in the air with a
drop of ink quivering at its tip. Gunfire seemed imminent. As soon as Vandervoort had the weapon out, however, he let it swing by the trigger guard from his thick forefinger.

“Harvey Ingram,” he said calmly, “I ask you before witnesses here—Constables Morgan and Devlin—ma'am—ah! Mr. Harris—I ask you whether this item which I purchased from you is grain, coal, timber, pork, or any other product of the earth such as falls under the terms of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854? Just shake your head now. That's right. You all saw that?”

“I see nothing,” pouted the female complainant. “I didn't come here to be a witness to anything.” So saying, she decided to postpone her business to a quieter occasion, lifted her copious skirts and swept up the stairs out of sight. No one begged her to stay.

“This is—rather—a manufactured product,” Vandervoort continued, thrusting the gun under the lighthouse keeper's nose. “In point of fact, it is a thirty-six calibre Colt Navy revolver made in Hartford, Connecticut, and as such subject to import tariffs under the laws of Canada. Have you any proof that such tariffs have been paid? I didn't think so.”

“You'll never make it stick, John,” said Ingram in a vague, quite unthreatening voice.

Perhaps he too believed he had friends among the lawmakers. Otherwise, Harris thought, he was unlikely to be found at the Gibraltar Light for some time. Vandervoort was making a convincing case.

“This gun and its fellows didn't come ashore through the port of Toronto where tariffs are levied, did it?” asked the inspector. “Oh, no—no indeed! Instead it was landed Monday night at a signal from your light on the south beach of the peninsula. Why there and then? Precisely to avoid the attentions of Her Majesty's customs office. Think that over while you sit in your cell.”

Of course, if Ingram were a criminal, his opinion of Theresa's fate might have to be reconsidered. Perhaps, thought Harris, the lightkeeper had been speaking from something besides drunken morbidity.

“Now, Devlin,” the inspector went on, “this gun is evidence, so you're to keep it under lock and key.”

“Absolutely, John.” Devlin's shifty eyes went hard and serious with understanding of the necessity.

“We'll just let Morgan here copy down the serial number first—40099.” Vandervoort laid the pistol on the table and glanced over Morgan's shoulder. “Yes, two Gs. That's it.”

Harris continued to follow the proceedings closely, flabbergasted to find that the warty intruder from the funeral—who turned himself out like a dealer in second-rate horse flesh—was a senior policeman. To say that Vandervoort's present briskness contrasted favourably with the previous rhythm of Station No.1 was small praise.

Still, any evidence of official competence boded well for finding Theresa. Although Harris had disliked the man on first acquaintance, he readily presumed on that acquaintance in approaching him.

Vandervoort's willingness to be congratulated on his coup made him more approachable still. The business of the arrest concluded, he invited Harris upstairs, where fresh paint covered the walls, and poultry odours barely penetrated. The inspector had city-wide responsibilities, but no desk of his own, so he made free with the deputy chief's. Sitting on it, he waved Harris into the chair and railed against contraband. A flood of discount revolvers was of course a threat to public peace, but he expected no thanks on that score. What scared the politicians was lost revenue, for without the tariffs they could not subsidize their railways.

“I've saved the public purse ten miles of track,” crowed the inspector, “with the help of a certain sharp-eyed miss . . .”

Harris guessed the seamstress Marion Webster was meant. She was familiar with the peninsula and might have noticed any irregular flashing of the Gibraltar Light used to bring in the smugglers' ship. Why Miss Webster, whose clientele included the Cranes, should confide her suspicions to someone as disrespectful of her person as John Vandervoort was a mystery to Harris, but would have to remain one for now, as he had
more urgent inquiries to pursue.

“I came,” he said, “to see how the search for Mrs. Crane is progressing.”

Vandervoort at first resisted the change of subject. “Railway men in politics—nothing wrong with them. Not a thing. Her father was something more, though. I admired him, which makes me somewhat of an exception on the force—but then, as the only plainclothes detective, I'm an exception most ways. When is the last time you saw her?”

“The first of March, 1853.”

“You're amazingly precise.”

“I've had no communication with her since. I take it she has not been found.”

“Not by me, but then I've had other game to snare. Do you know where she is?”

“No, inspector, I don't. She may be at the mercy of kidnappers or lying hurt in the bush. It's seventy-five hours since, according to her husband, she left home. She may be facing her fourth night without shelter.” Harris cleared his throat. He felt the fears he had kept in check all day come crowding back. “It would be some reassurance to know what your department has discovered so far, what steps are being taken.”

Vandervoort opened a drawer in the deputy chief's desk, found a half-smoked cigar and lit it. “What steps would you take?” he asked.

“Circulate her likeness and description together with a description of her attire and mount to the railway, steamship and stagecoach offices, as well as to every hotel in and within half a day's ride of Toronto. The Home District, in short. Find out her favourite rides from Mr. Crane. Go over each one inch by inch. Apply to her friends, everyone she saw socially, and every domestic or tradesperson she had business with. Examine her personal effects to determine what she took with her.”

Vandervoort's heavy-lidded eyes were for once wide open. “I believe you would,” he said. “Do you happen to have a picture of her?”

“Of course not. Surely Mr. Crane can provide you with a daguerreotype from which an engraving might be made. Excuse me, Inspector. I feel I'm talking to a mirror. Every question is turned back on me. While I'm happy to assist you, I should like some answers too.”

From the floor below came a murmur of erratic singing, on which some municipal clock broke in with brief authority to sound the hour of five.

“I see you take a great interest in Mr. Crane's wife—but police work has its confidences, Mr. Harris, just like banking. You live alone.”

“That's no secret.” It was not, however, something Harris had mentioned.

“Do you have anyone in to keep house on a daily basis?”

“A cleaning woman comes on Thursdays. I bring in other help only when I entertain. In the past six days, no one but me has been in the apartment. You're welcome to inspect it.”

“Do you know any reason Mrs. Crane might have had to leave her husband?”

“None, but as I say I've had no communication—”

“Yes, yes, since that sad day in '53.” After a last mouthful of smoke, Vandervoort flattened the cigar end to the floor with his heel. “You had proposed marriage to her yourself. The sight of another man's ring on her slender finger would have galled you.”

In one flash of anger, Harris left his seat and strode to the door. There his brain cleared enough to frame the hypothesis that Vandervoort had agreed to see him from the sole motive of determining whether he and Theresa were adulterers. The policeman's latest crudeness might have been calculated to provoke an unguarded admission, or guilty flight.

“Gin a body kiss a body,” the inebriate below kept asking, each time louder, “Need a body cry?”

Harris turned. A sharp rebuke might work with tellers, but he saw no profit here in giving his feelings the run of his tongue. “Your information is faulty, inspector,” he said quietly. “I never proposed.”

“A great mistake.”

Would it, Harris silently wondered, have made a difference? Perhaps he had only spared himself the humiliation of a refusal. She had unnecessarily returned every book of which he had ever made her a present—not love poetry or sentimental novels either, but works of natural science, in which subject she had shown an early and tenacious interest.

“Forgive my impertinence,” said Vandervoort. “
Was
her finger slender?”

“Yes.”

“How would you describe her otherwise, as of the date named?”

“Five foot four inches tall—nearer eight stone than nine—eyes green, hair chestnut brown.” The trick was not to remember the details, but to keep them sufficiently objective. “Creamy, clear complexion.”

“Any distinguishing marks?”

Harris hesitated to mention the sweet, dark mole on her neck to the left of the nape, though it had been plainly visible whenever she wore evening dress and her hair was up. Asking himself what Theresa would say settled the matter. She would never have seen the point of withholding such information where a life might be at stake. Harris answered the question.

Vandervoort, who was neither taking nor consulting notes, heard about the mole with a smile. “Go on,” he said.

“Mr. Crane must have told you all this.”

“What about her nose?”

“Straight and strong.”

“Mouth?”

“Of course, she has a mouth. If it helps to know, there's a slight gap between her upper central incisors.”

“Have mercy, Mr. Harris. I only got three years of school.”

“Front teeth. The mouth itself appears to turn down somewhat at the corners.”

“Ah. A discontented expression.”

“It doesn't appear so. She's not conventional-looking, bu . . .”

“A beauty for all that.”

“By common accord, yes—a radiant, spirited one.”

“Impetuous?”

“Impatient at times perhaps,” said Harris, “like all of us. Have you any more questions?”

“No,” Vandervoort replied. “You're free to go.”

Harris stayed. “How many men are assigned to this case?”

“I'm not at liberty—”

“Are
any
policemen devoting their full attention to the search?”