Death in the Age of Steam (56 page)

Perhaps he would try a local sporting house,
un bordel estcanadien
. Why not? He left his room and started downstairs.

In truth, Esther's smooth contours represented but a fraction of her appeal. The smooth immodesty of her caresses and endearments expressed an imperviousness to feminine convention Small found as sublime as a sunset or a storm at sea. Precepts, slights and warnings had not tamed her. The cant phrase “fallen woman” simply did not do justice to the courtesan's strength.

The mauve-gowned imp who moments later approached Small in Rasco's lobby—before he could get out the door—necessarily partook of that strength, for if she had borne herself in the slovenly, defeated manner of a common streetwalker, the hotel porters would promptly have put her out. There was vigour certainly in her small, square jaw, and her startling golden eyes impressed him with their predatory gleam. She said she had heard of Mr. Small's courtroom skills. She had a matter
of business to discuss, if they might go somewhere quite private. She called herself Nan Hogan.

Small didn't unreservedly believe a word she said, but she piqued his curiosity as nothing lately had, and he doubted that she could do him any serious harm. She might do him good, one way or another.

He could comfortably have taken on extra work, but it was in the end he who employed Nan. As soon as they were alone, she threw herself in his arms. Small enjoyed the novel feel of a woman who was all bone and sinew, with no need of stays, the novel taste of tobacco on female lips. She tried first to exchange her favours for information regarding how Sibyl Martin had died. Small regretfully declined. By midnight Nan, wearing nothing but Small's white shirt and black morning coat, lay sprawled across his bed having her vulva licked and nuzzled to her audible satisfaction, and it had been agreed that for a further consideration she was to infiltrate Crane's Montreal establishment and report back on his doings.

“You had better put on an apron to attract his notice,” Small advised as she arrayed herself in her own violet finery. “Crane is keen on women in service.”

“I'll be an active and useful boy,” she retorted, cracking her knuckles. “Whether through his landlady or through his secretary, I'll wheedle my way into a position. Depend upon it.”

“As you wish, Master Hogan, but might I have my pocketbook back with the rest of my clothes? Much obliged.” Small counted the bills inside and, finding all present, tucked one into her bodice. “Here's something on account.”

In subsequent days, Small refrained from setting great store by a bargain concluded under such circumstances. He naturally did not mention it to Theresa. For more than a week, he saw nothing more of Nan.

Then on Thursday, 11th September, as he was sipping his
dessert wine in Rasco's emptying dining room, a waiter intimated that a lad calling himself N.H. was waiting for Mr. Small at the desk with a supposedly urgent message. Small found Nan trousered, covered in dust, and fidgeting impatiently with an inkpot. To the desk clerk's relief, Small sent the monkey to the stables.

“Engaged him to exercise a horse,” Small explained with an amused shake of the head, “and he presents himself in the middle of the night. Suppose I had better see him all the same.”

The clerk commented sympathetically on the fecklessness of youth and lapsed into bored silence. Once satisfied that he was of no greater interest to anyone else in sight, Small ambled off, his show of indifference facilitated by the cushion of Sauternes on which he continued to float.

In truth, he expected no emergency. To see Nan again made his wine-thinned blood sparkle with remembered delight. To see her for the first time in boyish disguise—her hair bundled up under a worn and dented shako, the nape of her neck bare—spiced memory with novelty and made delight fresh. Might Nan's excitement not reciprocally derive from seeing him? Small liked the way she rushed towards him as soon as he entered the stable yard.

“She's in Crane's hands,” Nan began in a quick, husky whisper. “He means to have her seen by a medico and locked up as a madwoman.”

“Locked up where?” Small said coolly, but floating no longer. “When?”

“Grey Nuns, the lunatics' wing. A living tomb, from what I hear. Now she's in a flash boarding house across the street, but she goes to the other after dark.” The words leaped from her narrow mouth. Her breathing was accelerated, her yellow eyes unusually round and steady.

“It's dark
now
.” Small tilted his watch face towards the gas lamp in the deserted stable yard. “Five to eight. Has she gone already?”

“Not likely. They were cooking her supper ten minutes ago when I left.”

Nan was credible enough so far, thought Small, and so agitated that she must have had a hand in the capture. When she lied, it would be to minimize her rôle. Small would want to believe her.

“How did you get away?” he said.

“My job was done, wasn't it?” An edge came into Nan's voice. “I was set to watch the priest's house.”

“And kidnap Mrs. Crane from there?” Small couldn't imagine that Henry Crane, a killer careful of appearances, would have ordered an action this reckless.

“From the lane behind, and not for my own pleasure either.”

“You might have told me beforehand. No—never mind.” Small knew she would say something about being watched every minute, and he didn't want to lose time hearing it. Having a problem to solve made him calmly practical, but he was distressed too that a woman he had enjoyed should have helped deliver Theresa to Crane, albeit for the purpose of bringing himself to the captive's aid. None of this should have happened.

“What was Mrs. Crane doing in the lane?” he asked.

“She didn't confide,” Nan retorted. “Guess she wearied of being shut up, which is what she'll be now, poor wretch. I had never set eyes on the lady, and when I did, the last thing I wanted was to lay an ungentle hand upon her.”

“Was she injured in the abduction?” Small's voice became stern enough to suggest that all future friendliness between them depended on the answer to this question.

“No more than winded, and for certain not by me.” Nan laid her boyish, grimy right hand against the left side of her flattened chest. “Rough-and-tumble has never been my game, I swear, and kidnap never would have been either except so that I could tell you where they took her.”

She sounded as if she truly wanted Small to think well of her—think of her, that is, as a peaceable whore and cutpurse.

“Were you followed here?” he asked.

“Me? Never!” This slur on her elusive stealth offended Nan worst of all. “You waste precious minutes doubting me,” she
chided. “The question is what will you do?”

“Aha. Her husband sent you to ask me that.”

“Sweet Jasper, no! You know why his missus left him, and I don't, but I'm sure she had her reason. The man is all for show. Henry Crane is never as pure as he pretends, with his scented soap and his ‘can't smoke here.' I wouldn't spy for him for love or money.”

Small thought he believed her. “You're working for the police then.”

“I was curious is all.”

Small didn't believe that. “The first thing you ever asked me, remember, was about a serving woman's death—no affair of mine, but one that greatly interests a certain Inspector John Vandervoort.”

“I admit nothing.” Nan dropped her eyes and kicked a pebble against the wooden gate into St. Claude Street. “Still, as to police, I know a good Montreal constable if you need one.”

The clock on the Bonsecours Market was striking eight. Theresa's supper might now be ready. If, as seemed likely, she were too upset to eat, she would perhaps be delivered to the convent immediately. Small continued to deliberate.

“Tell me, Nan. Were there two doctors to examine Mrs. Crane or just the one?”

“One is all was mentioned. What does she know that her husband has to muzzle her?”

“Let's find your constable,” said Small, stepping towards the gate.

“I'll have my money first.”

“You'll have it soon,” he promised. “Come on.”

A single medical certificate, he was thinking, plus a close relative's statement would suffice in an emergency to get a patient confined—but if either document proved defective, Crane would have no backstop and Theresa would go free. Under those circumstances, the presence of a uniformed official would deter any extra-legal interference with her.

“Come on yourself,” said Nan, tugging at his sleeve to quicken his gait. “If they get her walled up in the nuns' asylum,
she won't walk out again so easy. Mr. Isaac Harris will have your hide for it, he's that wild about the lady, and all my pains in coming here will go for nothing!”

This unexpected mention of Harris stopped Small in his tracks with a new idea. Isaac was due back any day, any evening.

“Get your policeman to the Grey Nuns' front gate right away,” the lawyer instructed. “I'll meet him there.”

Before the doctor had finished examining Theresa, she was able to repeat her accusations against Henry but not marshal in any cogent or coherent form the particulars that would give them plausibility. If only she still had her letter to Isaac. It was all set down there. She tried to think, but was distracted by the fact of her captivity, by her need to speak convincingly, and by her simultaneous conviction that speech was feather-weak to derail her settled fate.
Should
she even be fighting a finding of lunacy? It might be the sole condition under which Henry would let her live.

As she once more lost the thread of her narrative and fell silent, the doctor leaned forward, tenderly stroking his coal-black beard.

“Would you like to be revenged on your husband?” he asked in tones no less tender. It sounded like an invitation.

“All I've ever wanted is to be free of him,” said Theresa, confident for once she was making the point she intended. “Let his Maker be his judge.”

The doctor took Theresa to a room where a supper table was laid and left her there. The only cutlery was a spoon. She ate in the same utilitarian spirit as she had lunched that last Sunday at Queen Street East. Each laborious mouthful fortified her against an uncertain future. She tasted only to satisfy herself she was not being drugged or poisoned.

Presently Henry and the ample medical man returned from their own meal. They seemed to be in dispute as to whether Theresa would have to be removed by force.

“No, no, sir,” said the doctor, gesticulating with a silver toothpick. A shred of pork flowered from behind an upper cuspid. “We call this a reasoning madness. Her speech has been wild and incoherent to be sure, but see how quietly she sits now.” The speaker's tongue located the food morsel, and—after pointing to the docile patient with his toothpick—he turned that implement to its proper use.

More than words, this unabashed display impressed Theresa with the verdict passed upon her. She was judged unworthy of courtesy, perhaps insensitive to it.

“Despite her delusions regarding her great father's death,” the doctor continued, “and despite her fixed idea that God will smite you for the crimes she falsely imagines you to have committed, she has enough understanding to hear that we are taking her somewhere for her good.”

“I trust,” Crane murmured, “you have restraints in your bag in case of trouble.”

“Yes, of course, to be sure, but we have only to speak gently and keep her from sharp objects, and I vouch for her docility. Now, Mrs. Crane, you must know that you are sick. Will you not come with us to the hospital where you may be made well?”

With the courage of the condemned, Theresa rose and accompanied them. Henry did not try to touch her. When the doctor offered his arm across the street, she took both it and the opportunity to point out to him that the word “smite” had not passed her lips.

“You should know,” he said, calmly ignoring her, “how much good I heard of your late father, and not just on account of his fine words either. No, indeed. When Montreal was last provincial capital, the House of Parliament used to stand on this very square, right there.”