Desperate Acts (8 page)

“But we will bring the baby into
our
family as soon as we’re married,” Brodie had said gallantly.

Astonished that any young man would even
consider her a suitable bride in the circumstances, Diana was
driven to weeping, something she had determined not to do. But
Brodie himself had been the ward of a man who had been the victim
of sustained scandalmongering, here and in New York, and, of
course, he was very much in love. “Oh, Brodie, you are such a dear,
dear man. But we can’t.”

“What do you mean? Who will ever know?”

“My brother and sister-in-law have been
raising little Sarah now for almost a year-and-a-half. She is
their
child. I could never ask them to give her up.”

And though they had returned to the matter
several times since, Diana had remained adamant. However, while
each of them knew that they must wait some time before announcing
an engagement, its certainty was no longer in doubt.

Now this. Had someone actually got wind of
Diana’s secret? Surely not. It had to be a desperate and feckless
attempt at extortion.

“What will you do?” Celia said, handing the
note back to Brodie.

“This!” Brodie tore the letter to shreds.

“Good. And that’ll be the end of it?” Celia
smiled uncertainly.

“I promise. Don’t I always take care of
everything?”

But the end of it, Brodie had already
decided, would take place next Wednesday evening at nine-thirty in
the alley behind The Sailor’s Arms.

***

Nestor Peck was weaving his way along Wellington
Street, pleasantly inebriated, a state he prized above all others.
Added to his sense of well-being was the fact that for the first
time in years he had a fine wool coat to wrap around his shrunken
torso and a silk scarf to keep his wrinkled throat warm. A stiff
breeze had come up from the west just as he had left The Cock and
Bull, but the stars were still shining and the three-quarter moon
was gliding apace and lighting his homeward path, as if he had
ordered up such luxuries himself. It was near midnight when he
approached the stone-cottage beside the chicken hatchery. It was
the first genuine house he had occupied since he had drifted into
Toronto a decade ago. Not that it would be considered so by the
town’s finer folk, for although it had once been a sturdy farm
cottage with quarry-stone walls and a timbered roof, it had been
abandoned long before the city had reached out and encircled it. In
the interim, its roof had rotted out in three places (now patched,
thank you) and the glass in its windows disintegrated (now neatly
covered with oiled paper). Leather hinges now held the decrepit
door almost vertical and a welcome-mat had been placed on the step
by the proud new lessee (the hatchery-man having claimed
ownership).

Nestor stumbled over his welcome-mat and fell
against the door. It sprung open, propelling him into the main room
just in time to see his cousin sweep something off the table into
his lap and make a haphazard effort to snuff the nearby candle.

“Oh, hullo, Nestor,” Albert Duggan grinned.
“I thought you were out for the night. You give me a start.”

“Sorry, Bert. Had one too many at the Cock
and – ”

A pound-note fluttered out of Duggan’s lap
onto the wooden floor.

“I thought you was broke,” Nestor said, more
puzzled than annoyed.

“That I was, cousin. Indeed I was. But I
opened a letter I got from the lawyers in Montreal this afternoon
and found these crisp banknotes tucked inside.”

“Yer
legacy
?”

Duggan reached down, picked the stray bill up
with two fingers, and proffered it to Nestor. “Just another
installment, they say. A tidbit, really. But it means I can pay you
back and give you this week’s rent.”

“I ain’t never seen a lawyer’s letter,”
Nestor said, taking the money.

Duggan improved upon his grin. “Oh, I tossed
it in the stove a while ago. No need to keep it, eh?”

“I guess not.”

“Not like it was a personal letter or
anything. Just a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo.”

“No.” Nestor pulled up a rickety chair and
settled down opposite his cousin, his gaze fixed on the whiskey-jug
beside the candle on the table. “You go out tonight?”

The grin froze on Duggan’s face and slowly
reconstituted itself as a grimace. “I went to The Sailor’s Arms for
a drink.”

Something in his cousin’s face alarmed
Nestor. “Ya didn’t cause any trouble there, did ya?”

“The only trouble was that ape, Budge. We had
a bit of run-in – and he got the worst of it.” But the bruise on
Duggan’s cheek suggested his “victory” had not been a clear-cut
triumph.

“Jesus, Bert, you’re gonna queer it fer me
down there.”

“Don’t sweat, Nestor. The bastard may’ve
heard my name from one of the tars in the place, but he don’t know
who I am or anything about the two of
us
. I made damn sure
of that.”

“Well, I hope so. This is the first payin’
job I’ve had in this town. It ain’t much, but it let’s us live in
style, don’t it?”

Duggan guffawed, but the shadows thrown up by
the candle exaggerated the sharp edges of his features, and for a
moment he resembled a gargoyle chortling at some grotesque joke.
“Nestor, if this is style, I’d hate to see a hovel!”

Nestor looked stricken. “Then why’d you agree
to move in here with me?” He grabbed the jug and tipped it up to
his lips. It was, incredibly, almost full.

“No need to get your balls twisted,” Duggan
said. “I threw in with ya because you’re kin, my mother’s sister’s
boy. And I knew we weren’t gonna be here for very long.”

“Whaddya mean?” Nestor let his fear show. He
didn’t take well to change as it invariably meant a change for the
worse.

“We’re gonna be rich, Nestor. Rich as
Croesus. It was all in that letter. And very, very soon.”

“In the letter you burned?”

Duggan gave Nestor a searching glance, and
said, “There was only the money and the good news in it – no
details, yet. But they’ll come. And when they do, you and me are
goin’ to open up a public house of our own and put that
son-of-a-bitch Budge out of business!”

His brain already fuzzy with drink, Nestor
tried to take this startling news in. “But it’s Missus Budge that
owns the place,” he said. “An’ she’s a nice lady. Tough, she is,
but nice all the same.”

“I’m not interested in the lady. But I got
that husband of hers by the short hairs.” The fierce, gloating joy
in Duggan’s huge, black eyes gave Nestor a further fright.

“You ain’t plannin’ on doin’ nothin’
stupid?”

“Only stupid people do stupid things. And I’m
not stupid. No, sir. You should’ve seen me there tonight. Remember,
last week, when you told me you thought Tobias Budge might be
cuddling that barmaid of his?”

Nestor paled. He had only a hazy recollection
of that conversation, fuelled as it was by a jug of whiskey not
unlike the one he was now fingering. But he recalled enough to be –
suddenly – very, very anxious. “Fer God’s sake, Bert, you won’t go
tellin’ the missus! I only seen him give the girl a pat on the
behind.”

“He’s been pattin’ her in places other’n her
ass,” Duggan leered.

“Whaddya mean?”

“I smooth-talked her again this evening when
Budge was busy. Then when she was least expecting it, I asked her
how her sweetheart was doing and whether or not he knew about the
bun in her oven.”

Nestor dropped the jug onto the table, and
Duggan deftly stopped it from tipping over. “Holy Jesus – ”

“And it worked, cousin. Oh, how it worked.
She went all red, which you’d expect, then she went white as a
ghost and looked over at Budge behind the bar. It was as clear as
day. I’d struck the mother-lode!”

“But if you go breathin’ a word of this,
Budge’ll sack me an’ come gunnin’ fer you! He’s a gorilla when he’s
riled up!”

“Quit your worrying and have another drink.
You don’t get it, do you? Now that we’ve dug up this dirt on Budge,
even if he’s smart enough to figure out who we are, it’s
him
that’s got to be afraid of
us.
Your job was never safer than
it is now.”

“So you’re not gonna tell on him?”

Duggan did not directly answer the question.
He wiped the mouth of the jug on his sleeve, took a sip of Swampy
Sam’s bootleg whiskey, and placed the jug back in front of Nestor.
“You’re a snitch for the police, aren’t you? You know the value of
information – to the penny. You might say that I’m learning the
game from my cousin, eh?”

Nestor couldn’t quite follow the logic of
this remark, but he was so relieved that Duggan was not about to do
anything rash in the way of petty revenge that he relaxed visibly
and took another gulp of hooch.

“In The Blue Ox yesterday some fella told me
you were the best snitch in Cobb’s stable,” Duggan said after they
had consumed several more draughts. “And that’s not the first time
I’ve heard it!”

Nestor grinned, exposing his gums and a
single, blackened tooth. “You bet I am. That Itchy Quick goes
around braggin’ about how great
he
is, but that kinda
boastin’ can get a fella’s legs broken. I still got both knees
workin’ ‘cause I know when to talk and when to shut up.”

Duggan made as if to drink, paused, and said
quietly, “You happen to see Cobb in The Cock and Bull tonight?”

Nestor blinked several times, a sure sign
that he was preparing to lie. “No, I didn’t.”

“Hadn’t got anything new to tell him, eh?”
Duggan said in what he took to be a light, teasing tone.

Nestor bridled. “I always got somethin’ to
tell him. But there’s things I know I don’t tell to nobody. I know
right from wrong.”

Duggan grinned. He was recalling a similar
scene as far back as September, when he had coaxed Nestor into a
state of near-inebriation and taunted him in the very same way . .
.

“So, cousin, you’re forever bragging about
the dozens of secrets you’ve dug up on your own, but you don’t ever
say why I ought to believe you,” he had said then, pretending to
take a great swig of liquor, as he had done this evening.

Nestor, never overly astute even when sober,
had taken the bait. “Think I just make things up, don’t ya?”

Duggan had become instantly conciliatory.
“I’m your
cousin
, Nestor – the guy who’s goin’ to share his
legacy with you and haul you out of this shack and get you what you
deserve.” Duggan’s words appeared to be somewhat slurred by the
whiskey, but no liquor could dull the man’s cunning.

“That’s true,” Nestor sniffed. “You’re the
only livin’
relalive
I’ve got in the whole wide world.”

“So, if you’ve got onto something juicy, you
oughta be able to tell your sole, living blood relation,
right?”

Nestor had smirked, a look he had few
occasions to exercise. “Itchy Quick told me this in his cups
yesterday. He was up at that Oakwood place burnin’ some stumps fer
that fat English lordy-dah – this was back in the summer – an’ he
seen the Lady What’s-her-name in the flower bed with her legs
spread an’ one of our local gents pumpin’ away between ‘em.”

“Nice an’ juicy,” Duggan had agreed with an
appreciative smile that warmed Nestor more than the whiskey had.
“But hardly news any peeler would pay for.”

“Ya never know. That’s my point. It’s the odd
bits an’ pieces you gotta keep collectin’ – till they turn out to
be useful, to somebody.”

Duggan had nodded sagely. “Did this Itchy
fella happen to mention who the local gentleman was?”

“He did. But that’s one name I’m keepin’
under my hat,” Nestor had said almost primly. “I ain’t in the
home-wreckin’ business, am I?”

“Of course you aren’t. Here, you might as
well finish off the booze.”

Nestor drank, and a mellow feeling of
fellowship and good will coursed slowly through him, rendering him
wonderfully drowsy. But before he had fallen asleep upon his arms
at the table, Albert Duggan had wheedled out of him the name of the
naughty local gentleman . . .

That little tidbit had been dropped in
Duggan’s lap more than a month ago, and he didn’t see why tonight
should not prove just as productive.

FIVE

Marc Edwards was as busy as he had ever been in his
life, and twice as happy. Another strategy meeting was slated for
Friday afternoon out at Spadina, the country home of the Baldwins.
Marc was charged with fleshing out some of the arguments raised at
the earlier meeting in a form suitable for various letters to the
newspapers, ones that could be assigned to sundry sympathizers
(suitably reworked, he hoped, to reflect the submitter’s own style
and views on the union question). At the same time, Beth’s
announcement of her pregnancy compelled them to sit down and
seriously discuss the expansion of Briar Cottage. They would need a
lot more room, that much was certain. They had the money to do
whatever they wished: Marc had an income from his adoptive father’s
estate in England, Beth had inherited money and property from her
former father-in-law, Joshua Smallman, and her ladies shop and
dressmaking operation were thriving. But they liked the cosiness of
Briar Cottage enough to dismiss any thought of building a grandiose
residence farther up Sherbourne on one of the park-lots there. So,
while one or the other used a spare toe to rock Maggie in her
wooden cradle, Beth and Marc sat at the kitchen table and drew
sketches – verbal and otherwise – of an addition to the rear of the
cottage.

Nothing could be done until spring, but once
the decision to build had been made, it was impossible to pretend
that they could postpone the pleasures and anxieties of planning
and replanning. Their servant, Charlene, and her beau, Jasper Hogg,
were equally excited. Jasper was a talented carpenter and all-round
builder, but he worked intermittently and not often enough to feel
comfortable proposing to Charlene. When Marc suggested that Jasper
be engaged to do the lion’s share of the construction, using
whatever assistance he deemed necessary, the couple were
understandably ecstatic. And more helpful than was absolutely
necessary. Marc was not unhappy that he was often “called away” to
attend the fall sessions of the Court of Queen’s Bench in order to
observe the several trials going on there and learn as much as he
could about procedures in that august chamber – in the event that
Baldwin and Sullivan called upon him to represent them in a
criminal proceeding. Both Robert and his partner were too involved
in politics to take on serious cases, and Marc figured it would be
sooner than later when the call came for his services.