Death in the Age of Steam (55 page)

They were no longer climbing. Theresa was pushed through a door which locked behind her. As soon as her hands were free, she tore the hated pad from her face.

From what she could see, she was alone. The room was square and high-ceilinged, with one fireplace and only one door. A Brussels carpet in a floral pattern covered the middle of the floor, while a few thinly upholstered chairs and a sofa stood with their backs to the walls. A parlour then, but with two peculiarities. On the one hand, it was quite bare of movable ornaments or other small objects such as vases, table lamps, busts, books, mirrors, sewing boxes, fire-tending implements or
even hanging pictures. On the other hand, and this darkened the room considerably, an armoire had been dragged in front of the only window.

To prevent the casement's opening, thought Theresa. The ton of oak defeated her utmost exertions to budge it.

A vertical ribbon of glass remained uncovered. Theresa peered through it and blinked, for there across Foundling Street rose the stone walls, tin roof and spire of the Grey Nuns' convent. The sight of her former refuge did not wholly reassure her. Of greater promise was the traffic passing just below her. She must attract someone's attention.

With the key to the armoire, which by some oversight had been left in its door, she began tapping on the window glass. One or two pedestrians glanced up. Apparently unable to see her in the darkened room, they shrugged and hurried on. Theresa tapped harder till the window cracked, then hammered a hole in it with her shoe, sending shards of glass down onto the sidewalk. She listened a remorseful instant for the cries of the injured. Hearing none, she put her mouth to the opening and set about yelling “Help!” and
“Au secours!”
for all she was worth.

But no, her cries would alert any enemies in the house. Better to throw out a note. She took the white cotton blindfold as her paper and carefully cut open her finger on the broken glass.

“H,” she traced out, “E.”

It was a small cut, and the blood came slowly. She was attempting to knead it down the arteries towards the wound when the door opened and closed.

Henry Crane was in the room. He advanced slowly. From where Theresa crouched, her husband looked menacingly tall and broad-chested, although his florid face expressed for the moment bemusement rather than intimidating purpose. His eyes weren't yet used to the semi-gloom.

“Theresa?” He stepped closer. “What are you doing?”

“Stop there!”

“Oh, you're bleeding.” He stopped with a shiver. “Do you want attention?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder as if to
assure her that the attention would not come from him.

“No, thank you, Henry.”

Never had she spoken with such icy contempt. Her blood, she realized, was her surest protection against her weak-stomached antagonist. She stood up, but stayed pressed to the wall by the window so as to keep something sharp within reach.

Determined to guard this advantage, she didn't altogether listen to what Henry said next. By his tones of sincerest tenderness, she knew some trick was intended, and she heard as through a benign mist.

“. . . overjoyed to see . . . so many weeks of not knowing . . . dreadful weeks . . . your crushing bereavement . . . shared bereavement . . . I too . . . I—” Something here about his still not understanding why she had run away. Pain in his voice, then promise. “. . . agree to forget . . . dispense with explanations . . . all I ask . . . consent to return quietly with me.”

Through the mist, a warning bell. If her consent was sought, she had better attend.

Crane moved a chair into the middle of the room and held it invitingly.

“You won't have to plan any dinners, Theresa,” he announced in an expansive voice. “You won't have to pay any visits or play hostess at any entertainments. All that is over. You'll have peace and seclusion just as you would in the country. You know how sheltered from neighbours our villa is. You'll be at liberty to read soothing books and to enjoy your orchard. The fruits are at their loveliest ripeness now. I know you won't want to miss them.”

His pose of providing for her welfare, convincing once, had become clownish. Why did he bother? It didn't take Theresa's educated eye to see that what Henry intended was an Edenic prison, justified before the world by his wife's feeblemindedness.

“You're welcome to all the apples you can eat,” she coolly replied, still standing her ground. “All I ask from you is to be left alone.”

“Will you not live with me, wife?”

“No, Henry, I won't. Now that's understood, I should be obliged if you would permit me to leave.”

Silence hung between them.

“My friends will be anxious,” Theresa added self-consciously. “Your messengers gave their servant a scare.”

“Are you sure you're quite well?” asked Crane. “You don't sound like yourself.”

He's determined, Theresa thought with a shudder, to have me confined as a lunatic, a prisoner in his house or somewhere worse. Disdain gave way to apprehension.

“Please let me go,” she asked meekly. “Forget me. I am not the woman you married.”

These simple words seemed to appal Crane. His eyes flickered uncertainly. He stepped towards her, and his voice, almost theatrical before, dropped to a hoarse whisper.

“Hush! Don't ever say that.”

“Stay back,” Theresa cried. “Oh, why need I say anything at all? Just call me inconstant and let me go, and I swear I'll never do anything to harm you.”

“You've already hurt me a great deal,” Crane pronounced with a show of sorrow, and at his former volume. He turned away from her and stood mournfully contemplating the empty mantel shelf. “You left our conjugal home eight weeks ago without a word of warning,” he went on. “Can you tell me why?”

Theresa judged it safer not to answer.

“When I came all this way to Montreal, you would not see me.” Henry shot her a glance. “Why is that?”

Theresa said nothing.

“You have set your friend Isaac Harris snooping into my affairs.” Henry gestured towards her in some agitation while he played this trump, although his voice continued clear and even. “What reason can you give me?”

So he knew. A foolish venture from the start. Not that she was about to utter a word in blame or praise of Isaac before this creature.

“Your refusal to answer,” Crane observed, “does your understanding little credit.”

Her resolve wavered. Maybe she should speak, she thought. Dumbness betokens illness. Theresa felt like a mouse lying with one paw held in a trap while the cat with all deliberation unsheathes its claws above her.

“Why can you not bear me, Theresa?” His voice pushed at the walls of the room. Once again he stepped forward. “Why do you cringe at my approach? Have I ever so much as raised a hand against you?”

The genteel parlour was shrinking as evening closed in, Henry's provokingly smooth pink face growing larger and larger. No ravages of conscience there. His thin lips gleamed waxily, as if smeared with some anti-chapping salve.

“Have I?”

Theresa jumped at the emphatic repetition. Fear jolted her into speech.

“Against me, never.”

“Against whom then? Speak up.” Crane stepped closer.

“You killed my father in his bed,” Theresa spoke up and said. “You killed his housekeeper Sibyl Martin.” The cut in Theresa's finger had closed. To open a fresh and more alarming wound, she dragged her right hand roughly across the edge of the hole in the window and thrust her lacerated palm into Crane's looming face.

He recoiled at her touch as if stung by acid.

“Why do you flinch, Henry? My family's blood is already on you, and you'll never get it off!”

Crane all but tripped over his boots, then over the chair he had placed, as he backed quickly away. His eyes never left Theresa's. His chin and nose bore red smudges. His hand went up as if to remove them, but could not be brought to touch them. Theresa pursued him to the door, which he flung open to reveal a stout, bearded gentleman with a medical bag.

“Examine her, dress her wounds,” Crane commanded as he pushed past into the upstairs hall.

“The man you killed was no such coward,” Theresa flung after him. She was a hair's breadth from tears.

The unsqueamish doctor took her right arm in both his thick hands, elevating her hand to slow the bleeding, and conducted her back into the room into the chair. Behind them the door closed again. Theresa turned at the sound and saw that Henry was not inside. They would bully her one at a time, she perceived. Choking sobs shook her.

“Be still, Mrs. Crane,” said her new gaoler, “quite still. I am here to see that you are treated as your condition warrants, so if you'll comport yourself like a rational woman . . .”

For some time, she heard no more. She was now beside herself with grief and fear and rage. The checks imposed on her by one muscular man after another made her too frantic to marshal her thoughts. The accusations she had flung at Henry had stimulated in her the most corrosive memories and passions. It was too much. It had gone on too long. She knew she was not mad, but awareness of her husband's villainy, George MacFarlane's part in her family's woe, her own galling remorse as regards Sibyl, Paul Taggart's protracted death, the ague, the isolation and the strain of endless waiting had so torn at her nervous organization that she could not now collect herself for this inquiry into her sanity.

That's why the doctor was here. Plainly, he had been listening at the door. Above it, she saw, the transom window was tilted open, so he must have heard nearly every word that passed between Crane and herself. Between the baron of steam and his lunatic wife. Even if the diagnosis had not been bought in advance, what other inference could be drawn? Ghastly moans issued from her throat.

Finally, she understood the doctor to say, “Mrs. Crane, how did you come by these wounds?”

The doctor had a kind Irish voice, she noticed as her hand was being turned and held to the light, the fingers gently straightened. She winced. She could feel the self-inflicted cuts but not explain them. A danger to herself. Even if she forced her tongue to utter human sounds, what could she say? That self-mutilation was her only defence against a public benefactor?

The doctor had finished looking at her hand and was wrapping it in a clean linen bandage. Although he did well, she supposed, it tormented her to be so utterly in his power, scared her that he did with her what he would.

“I must warn you,” he said in his considerate, methodical way, “that obstinate silence creates an unfavourable impression of your state of mind, most unfavourable. Not too tight, is it? Now, the examination I am to perform requires me to ask you certain questions. Try to answer, do.”

Theresa stared at him helplessly.

“For a start,” said the doctor, “what are your feelings towards your husband?”

Bored and ill at ease in Montreal, Jasper Small one fine Tuesday night took a woman to his room. His quixotic friend Isaac Harris had been gone ten days exactly. Duty and inclination alike made Small Theresa's interim protector, and he was keeping an eye out for her decidedly dangerous husband. That task, however, left many hours unoccupied.

With no attempt at secrecy, Henry Crane had arrived from Canada West by the 8 p.m. steamer on Saturday, 30th August. This was the earliest he could have been expected following the conclusion of the Scarboro bones inquest. The jury there, Small read, had pronounced the bones those of Sibyl Martin, but had been unable to say at whose hands she had died or why her arm had been disguised as that of Theresa Crane.

On his arrival in Montreal, Henry had taken a suite of rooms on Foundling Street for the space of a fortnight. Possibly he had arrived under the impression that Theresa was still with the Grey Nuns. In the three days since, he had written to but not seen her, nor yet—to the best of Small's knowledge—called upon either church or state to restore her to him. Was he indifferent or simply playing a close game? He most definitely did have other business in town. The
Herald
had reported, and
Small independently confirmed, that Henry Crane was spending much of his time with officials of Hugh Allan's Montreal Ocean Steamship Company, to whom he was representing the advantages of steel-hulled vessels for carrying the mails between Canada and Britain.

All very innocent, Small mused as he tied and retied his neckcloth. Good. Small wasn't burning to do battle with his partner's murderer, who had too much law on his side. Better to wait and see what Isaac turned up—and if it was nothing, as Small was realist enough to expect, then to pack Theresa off to foreign parts and trust William Sheridan's patriotic ghost to understand. Small could wait. He thought of himself as a patient man.

His face in the mirror looked anything but. A grimace of irritation compressed his lips and creased his forehead. Having dallied over bathing and dressing as long as possible, he was wondering how to get through the rest of the evening. So long as Theresa was not threatened, there was little for the lawyer to do but think about the quantity of hard work and soft flesh awaiting him in Toronto.