Desperate Acts (38 page)

This bludgeoning was what Tobias Budge had
witnessed on his second peek through the cellar-window. As Marc had
surmised, Budge’s recollection of
what
he saw was accurate
enough, but
when
he saw it had always been suspect. It must
have been closer to ten o’clock when he witnessed the actual
clubbing because Sir Pergrine had already left and Brodie had fled
the scene. As well, Sir Peregrine had exaggerated his own
importance by stretching out the time it took him to pack up his
papers and depart. He must have trailed Crenshaw by no more than
two minutes. So it was Fullarton whom Budge had observed doing the
deed.

With the confession signed and notarized,
Cobb was asked to take Fullarton over to the jail, wake up the
watch, and see that the wretched banker was incarcerated. As far as
James Thorpe was concerned, the case – tragic as it might be – was
now closed. It was left to Marc to seek out Bernice Fullarton and
break the news to her.

***

Brodie regained his freedom at ten-fifteen Monday
morning. Horace Fullarton’s confession was presented to Justice
Powell and the Crown’s prosecutor, and deemed to be
incontrovertible (as it was uncoerced and consistent with the known
facts). A charge of manslaughter would be laid against the banker,
making the trial of Broderick Langford moot. Kingsley Thornton,
swallowing his amazement, came over and shook hands with Marc.

“Welcome to the fraternity,” he said.

***

Robert Baldwin was elated, and doubly so. His good
friend and legal protégé had somehow contrived to find “another
way” of getting young Brodie acquitted (and nabbing yet another
murderer in the process). Moreover, before Monday afternoon was
half over, the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada passed the
entire Union Bill, encumbered only by several harmless attachments,
by a vote of forty-four to eleven. The merging of the two Canadas
into one dominion was now inevitable, and responsible government
became a distinct possibility. To celebrate these achievements,
Robert arranged for a late supper and an evening of music and
entertainment at Baldwin House. As Dr. Baldwin had already planned
a more formal political celebration out at Spadina, Robert was able
to invite a smaller and more intimate group of well-wishers to his
gathering: Clement Peachey and his wife, Francis and Mrs. Hincks,
Marc and Beth, Horatio and Dora Cobb, Celia Langford and her
headmistress, Miss Tyson (a staunch Reformer), and, of course, the
liberated hero and his companion, Diana Ramsay.

The food was tasty and the drink flowed
freely. A string trio played Handel, Mozart and Vivaldi, before
breaking into an improvised jig. After which a flushed and
exuberant Brodie stood on a hassock and, with his raven-haired
beauty beside him, announced their engagement. Some time later,
Mister Cobb was cheered to the echo when he donned a donkey’s head,
waggled its ears and recited Robbie Burns’ “John Barleycorn,” his
dead father’s favourite poem. (The donkey’s head, alas, was all
that remained of the dismembered Shakespeare Club).

“It don’t take much fer a man to make an ass
of himself,” Dora was heard chuckling to Diana Ramsay near the
punch-bowl. “Girl, you don’t know what you’re lettin’ yerself in
for.”

Marc and Beth had left before this and the
more exotic performances that followed. Marc was exhausted: the ups
and downs of the past week had left him emotionally drained. He
just wanted to slip off home and tuck in beside his wife – with
Maggie purring contentedly close by. Beth felt the same.

***

“So, while Cobb went off to fetch James Thorpe and
Wilf Sturges,” Marc was saying to Beth as they snuggled down under
the comforter, “I was left alone with Horace for over half an hour.
He showed no resentment at the way he had been deceived and
entrapped. And he sensed immediately that I was aware of his
infidelity, and much more. But I assured him that no-one ever
needed to know, if that’s what he wanted.”

“So he talked to you before he confessed to
the magistrate?”

“Yes. I think he was relieved to be caught.
All along I’ve been convinced that his major concern was keeping
Bernice from finding out that he had been unfaithful. He told me he
was sure the news would kill her.”

“When did Duggan start threatenin’ him?” Beth
said, more awake now than she had been an hour earlier.

“As early as September, soon after Duggan
learned of the adultery from his cousin. Fullarton had everything
he valued in life to lose: his wife and his reputation as a loyal
husband, a trustworthy banker, and a proud usher at St. James. He
paid up – every week. But by October, he told me, he had decided to
confront his tormentor. Twice he tried to do what Brodie did – lie
in wait for Duggan to pick up the parcel of banknotes. But both
times Duggan outfoxed him.”

“He must’ve become desperate,” Beth said. “I
wonder he could carry on with his life as if things were normal. He
even joined that silly club.”

“I thought that too. I asked him about it,
and he told me that his years as a banker and steward of other
people’s money had conditioned him to keep his emotions in check
and always present a calm face to the world. In fact, he felt that
until he somehow managed to put a stop to the blackmail, he deemed
it imperative that he go out of his way to appear unperturbed.”

“But he must’ve been churnin’ inside?”

“I’m sure he was. So, after the second
failure to entrap Duggan, he took one of the extortion-notes – the
fellow, as Brodie learned, liked to continually torment his victims
with weekly reminders – and scribbled a death-threat on the back of
it. He tucked it into that week’s parcel along with the banknotes,
and left it in the usual place. He swore to me that he never
intended to carry out his threat. He hoped it might be enough to
scare the fellow off. Luckily for him, Duggan seems to have
destroyed the returned note after foolishly showing it to Nestor.
Horace admitted that the existence of the note gave him so much
concern that he went looking for it in the stone-cottage as soon as
he learned who Duggan was and where he lived. When he didn’t find
it, he felt certain Nestor had taken it with him when he fled the
city.”

“So that’s why yer plan to trap him worked so
quickly?”

“Yes. Horace thought, as I hoped he would,
that twenty-five pounds and Nestor’s low standing in the community
would be enough to keep the police from his door. He leapt at the
opportunity as soon as he read Nestor’s note.”

“I’d like to feel sorry for the man, I really
would – all those years livin’ with an ailin’ wife, an’ no
children.”

“I’m afraid that’s what caused him to give
into Madeleine Shuttleworth’s lethal charms – they had a brief and
loveless affair last summer. Ironically, Bernice Fullarton may be
wasting away, but she is not weak of heart or spirit. When I went
there last night, her sister answered the door – she’d arrived on
Friday for a long visit – and took me into Bernice’s room. Bernice
was stunned by what I had to say, tactful as I was, but I could
sense the steel in her will, and her determination to support her
husband, come what may.”

Beth, who was ever wiser than Marc in affairs
of the heart, shocked him by saying, “I’m sure she won’t be
surprised if she does happen to learn her husband give in to
temptation like that. What might surprise her more would be the
fact he’d waited so long an’ did it only once.”

“Maybe she’d already guessed, eh? Anyway, I
heard her tell her sister to arrange for some transportation to
convey her to the jail today.”

Beth nuzzled her husband’s chest, while
Maggie’s sweet breathing perfumed the room.

“Will they hang him?” Beth said.

“I doubt that very much. A good lawyer will
try and argue self-defense because in his statement Fullarton
claimed that Duggan struck him first, with Brodie’s walking-stick,
and he reacted by seizing the weapon and striking out blindly.”

“Sounds like a
lawyer’s
statement to
me.”

Marc smiled, quite accustomed as he was to
Beth’s gentle, and very lovable, sarcasm. “Well, Cobb did tell me
he saw Fullarton limping when he first went up to Oakwood Manor. An
experienced barrister could make much of that.”

“But not enough to get his client off?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“There’s the wee matter of that second blow
to the back of Duggan’s skull, while he was lyin’ near-dead on the
ground, isn’t there?”

“I see I’m not the only lawyer in this
household.”

Beth drew her husband’s hand across the
smooth bevel of her abdomen.

“You said a minute ago,” Marc said before
talk itself became redundant, “that you
wanted
to be
sympathetic.”

“I did, but I can’t.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, Horace was supposed to be Brodie’s
friend. Brodie was startin’ to think of him as he did Dick or his
own father before that. I can’t understand why the man would let
Brodie suffer for weeks on end, and even go on trial fer a crime he
himself committed. You saw how distressed the lad was this mornin’
when he found out how he came to be acquitted. Only the joy of
Diana’s bein’ there an’ lovin’ him kept him goin’ through the
day.”

“I know what you’re saying, luv. Still, I got
the distinct impression that Brodie is prepared to forgive
him.”

“Do you think he would’ve let Brodie go to
the gallows?”

“No, I don’t. He said as much to me. In fact,
he said emphatically that the days since the murder were the
hardest of his life, including the days after he got the news that
Bernice was slowly dying of some wasting disease the doctors didn’t
even have a name for. But for all his worry and fear and despair
over the crime itself and the secret he’d killed to protect, in
spite of the minute-by-minute stress of trying to put a normal face
upon the world – the one thing that did
not
concern him was
the thought that Brodie would be convicted. He agonized over
Brodie’s suffering, but felt he was young and strong enough to
survive a trial.”

“A trial that was headin’ straight towards
findin’ him guilty!”

“Ah, but even after the Crown had rested its
water-tight case on Friday, he assured me he remained
unconcerned.”

“I don’t believe it. He couldn’t be
that
callous!”

“It was the
reason
he gave that I
found most intriguing.”

“Oh,” Beth murmured, drawing his hand
lingeringly down, “an’ what was that?”

“He said he had complete faith in Brodie’s
attorney, that somehow the clever fellow would find a way to free
him.”

Beth looked up. “An’ he was right, wasn’t
he?”

Nestor Peck looked gloomily about the
stone-cottage. He saw nothing here to raise his spirits or give him
hope, elusive as that phenomenon had always proved to be. His
stomach was full, that was true. Dora Cobb had seen to that before
she wished him well and walked with him to the street in front of
her house. Cobb, too, had not been unkind, donating a suit of
clothes, giving him a pound-note from Marc Edwards (and a dollar
from his own reserves) so that Nestor could buy food and pay his
overdue rent.

But the main room of his home was dark and
damp and very, very empty. The mess and disarray seemed to be worse
than usual, but he couldn’t be sure because his memory had not been
working well for some time now. He considered lighting a candle,
but was afraid of what it might choose to reveal. He thought of
poor Cousin Albert lying alone and unbefriended up in Potter’s
Field. He would find some way to put up a proper grave-marker.

What he needed to do right now was find
himself a drink. There would be money enough left from his meagre
store of cash to pay the rent and still allow him to buy a jug of
cheap whiskey from Swampy Sam in Irishtown. But the half-hour walk
from Cobb’s place to the stone-cottage had exhausted him. He knew
he’d never make it to the bootlegger’s shack.

It was then that he recalled how cagey Albert
thought he’d been about keeping his own whiskey supply secure. But
Nestor had quickly spotted the loose floorboard in Albert’s
bedroom, and had routinely helped himself to his cousin’s booze,
never taking enough to arouse suspicion. On shaky legs, Nestor
groped his way to the precise spot, and was pleased to see that a
beam of moonlight conveniently illuminated the cache he was about
to plunder. Down on his hands and knees, he felt around until he
got a grip on the loose board. He tried to pull it up. It jammed
partway out of its grooves, and Nestor winced at the sliver that
sliced into his middle finger. He gave a more determined yank, and
the board popped up into his hands. Painfully, he reached down into
the black space below and, to his delight, suffered the satisfying
sensation of a cold whiskey-jug in his grip. He pulled it free of
its hiding-place. It seemed awfully light. He gave it a shake. It
was empty.

Disappointed but undeterred, he scrunched
farther down, pushed his hand and arm fully into the rectangular
slot, and began feeling about under the floor as far as he could
reach. Knowing how sly his cousin had been, he was sure there would
be more hooch somewhere nearby, the empty jug being a too-clever
decoy. His own cleverness was promptly rewarded, however, as his
fingertips struck something other than wood or dirt – something
soft, flexible, skin-like. For a heart-stopping second, he
shuddered and jerked his hand away. But soon he felt a smile
creasing his face. He reached in again, and this time drew out a
leather-pouch.

With trembling fingers he held it up into the
beam of light and pulled back the flap that kept its contents
secure. The dazzle of banknotes almost blinded him.

Nestor Peck stared up into the collaborating
moonlight. Perhaps there
was
a God after all.