Sowing Poison (10 page)

Should he straighten the coverlet, return the white material to the trunk?
He decided against it. It appeared that someone besides himself was very curious about Clementine Elliott's activities. Maybe if she knew that, it would be enough to scare her away.

He left the room as it was and went to wait for the Orangemen to stop singing.

Whenever Clementine was not occupied with whatever it was she was doing in the upstairs rooms, she would go out. She and Horatio would breakfast early, and they were almost always the first to come down. Then they would retire to their rooms again to await the procession of visitors that continued to solicit her services.

On afternoons when she held no sessions, she would don her cloak and one of her stylish hats and go out for the afternoon. Had Lewis thought about it at all, he would have assumed that she had gone to the Elliott farm, perhaps to sit with the old man while Reuben attended to the business of the household. He couldn't imagine her doing much more than that. No one as elegant as Clementine could be pictured bathing a frail old body or changing soiled linen, administering whatever medicine was needed, or spooning broth into an insensible mouth. No, she would read to the old man perhaps, or sit quietly, ready at a moment's notice to call someone else should he require something.

Sometimes she took Horatio with her when she went out, but not often, confirming the statement she had made when she first arrived, that she disliked the notion of exposing him to a sickroom. Although the boy was certainly small for his age, which he said was nine, and white as a January snow, Lewis could see no signs of this reputed delicacy. He certainly had no difficulty keeping up with Martha — no mean achievement in itself — and now that Sophie was queen of the kitchen and the edibility of the fare had improved to such an extent, he consumed rather a lot of food for such a small boy.

After the discovery that someone had been in her rooms, Lewis took more note of Clementine's comings and goings. He quickly realized that the mysterious Mr. Gilmour's schedule coincided with hers to a surprising degree. Both would leave the inn at more or less the same time every morning, Gilmour always just a few minutes behind.

He had not previously been sure when either of them returned; he was not curious about the guests in the same way Daniel was, and had no basic interest in who they were, or where they were from, and seldom ventured any personal inquiries. He had hoped for an opportunity to prove that Clementine's self-proclaimed talent was nothing more than deceitful illusion, but this intention had sprung from ethical and moral objections, not from curiosity about the woman herself. But now he was convinced that Gilmour was spying on her, and he doubted that it had anything to do with moral conviction.

One late afternoon a few days after the Orange Lodge meeting, when Sophie had chased him from the kitchen and Francis was taking care of other chores, Lewis suddenly discovered that he had nothing to do. He decided once again to indulge himself with newspapers, with the justification that he was “keeping an eye on the front door.” This sounded, he knew, like a feeble excuse, however true he knew it to be himself, but in any event, he suspected that staying out of everyone's way was perhaps the most useful thing he could do at the moment. So he settled himself happily on one of the stuffed chairs in the sitting room, which for once was free of guests.

He noted in a front page article that politicians in London were continuing to agitate for repeal of Britain's Corn Laws. He, like every other Upper Canadian, hoped they would fail. The Corn Laws gave Canadian wheat preferential treatment, and a move to free trade would be devastating to the new province's fledgling economy.

In the United States, the agitation over the boundary of the Oregon Territory continued to attract high-flown rhetoric and some alarming sabre-rattling. America insisted that it had the moral right to expand its territory all the way to the Pacific Ocean and as far north as they could get away with. Lewis had no expectation that Britain would make much effort to protect its claims on the west coast of the continent and would probably agree to continue the border along the 49th parallel to the sea.

He read these articles as a matter of principle, but soon turned to the stories of new wonders, which seemed to be popping up everywhere. Samuel Morse's system for sending messages over a wire was being adopted widely, he noted. He had no idea how this astounding invention worked, but it was a marvel to all.

The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
, a serial by the English author Dickens, was provoking howls of outrage from American readers who felt that he had cast them in a very unflattering light. Lewis had not read any of Dickens's works — he had not ever had the time to delve into fanciful tales — but he found the descriptions of the book intriguing and wondered if he might be able to find it somewhere.

He was deeply absorbed in an article about a new process that promised to make rubber more useful, when he heard the front door open. He glanced through to the hall and realized that it was Mrs. Elliott and that there was no need for him to rise. To his surprise, instead of continuing up the stairs, she came into the sitting room and took a chair close by the stove, removing her gloves and holding her hands to the warmth.

“Good afternoon,” he said, prepared to leave it at that and continue reading.

“I can't get used to this climate,” she said ruefully. “Cold as a miser's heart one day, nothing but mud and damp the next. Is it always like this?”

She seemed to want conversation, so Lewis put his paper aside. “Well, at this time of year, yes,” he said. “In the summer it's sometimes so hot you can hardly bear it, and it's damp then, too. The only time it ever seems dry is in the winter, but then of course it's
too
cold and
too
dry. It's a place of extremes, that's a fact.”

“I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. It's nearly always hot there, so that's something I'm used to.”

So he had been right. She was from the southern regions of America. It wasn't an accent one heard often in Canada. Southern Americans were scared away by the climate. He wanted to ask her where she had met Nate Elliott, but he realized that the inquiry would be insensitive under the circumstances.

Then, as if she had read his thoughts, she said, “It's a funny old world, isn't it? Who would ever have imagined that someone who was born in South Carolina would fall in love with a man from the Canadian wilderness? The chances of us ever meeting must have been remote. Of course, Papa moved us all to Philadelphia when I was sixteen, so I reckon the chances improved then, but still ….” She sighed. “It must have been fate that brought us together and now fate has wrenched us apart.”

“God willing, you'll be together again,” he said. He didn't like this mention of fate, as if lives were preordained. That was more along the lines of the way Calvinists thought, and he had always believed that actions counted for something. After all, why bother otherwise? He knew that in all conscience he couldn't offer this woman any hope that her husband might still be alive, but perhaps this was an opportunity to talk to her about the true meaning of eternal life. He doubted that he could persuade her to give up her table-rapping with argument alone, but felt obliged to at least try.

“Oh, that's right,” she said, “You're a preacher, aren't you? I must say you have more forbearance than others of that profession I've met. Most of them would have had me thrown me out of the hotel by now.”

“I must admit, if it had been my inn, you'd have been gone long ago. But it's not, it's my brother-in-law's, and there's little I can do about you while he has the say of it.”

To his astonishment she began to laugh, and the timbre of her voice, which had been so high and irritating to him, changed with her amusement. It became deep and throaty and altogether not what he expected.

“I admire forthrightness in a man, even when it's one who is so disapproving,” she said. “However, I will conjecture that you and I are not so different — we're both concerned with the state of the soul, aren't we? The difference is that you talk to God, while I talk with those who are with Him.”

“It's not the same thing at all,” he said sourly.

“But wouldn't you like to know for sure that all of those you have loved are truly in Heaven as you expect? Would that not be a confirmation of your faith, to know that they are well and happy and in God's grace?”

This was sophistry, and worse, near to heresy. “My faith needs no confirmation,” he said, but even he could hear the slight hesitation in his voice. His belief had been fed all these years by his wish to see his daughters again, to know that they were in a better place and all suffering had been extinguished. It was something he had clung to, this trust in the mercy of God. It was why he had given up farming and taken up the call.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts. No, this was nonsense, what she claimed to do. Even had he not been a man of God, he would have known in his bones that there was something not quite right, something spurious about her claim, and it seemed to him that this must be the Devil's tongue at work. He was sure that this woman was a charlatan. He was certain that the parade of visitors who came calling every day were receiving false hope in exchange for their money. He just had no means to prove it.

Just then he caught the sound of the front door opening again, but there was no accompanying ring of the bell. Clementine's eyes slid toward the doorway. She had heard it, too. Whoever had entered had taken care to do it quietly.

“Well,” she said rising. “It's nearly time for supper, isn't it? I must say, the food has improved considerably. Please give my compliments to the cook.”

With that she strode briskly from the room. Lewis scrambled after her, and as they entered the hallway, they both caught a flash of Mr. Gilmour's extravagant orange cravat as he slipped through the doorway that led to the kitchen.

“It appears that I'm not the only one who wishes to compliment the cook,” Clementine said, and she swept up the stairs.

Lewis wondered if he should follow Gilmour, confront him about why he had sneaked into the hotel in such a strange way, and why he appeared to be following Mrs. Elliott. Daniel had been curious about the man from the start. As far as he said, he had gained no insight from his many questions, meeting with a polite but intransigent refusal to share any personal information. The man must have put something in the register, though, and maybe that would reveal some line of inquiry.

Lewis opened the heavy leather-bound book that was kept on the table in the hall, shaking his head, not for the first time, at the things his brother-in-law spent money on. A simple ledger would have sufficed to record the names of guests, but Daniel was convinced that more substantial trappings were necessary to attract a better clientele.

There it was:
H.R. Gilmour, New York
. They were no strangers to American travellers, even here in Wellington they would see a number every year, but ordinarily these visitors would stay but one night on their way to some other destination. Gilmour had now been here for several weeks and there was very little reason for him to linger. It was unlikely that he had relatives in the area. If he had family here, surely he would stay with them, not at the inn; it would be viewed as a gross dereliction of the rules of hospitality to let a relative stay in a hotel if there was a bed available for them in the home. In fact, oftentimes, enormous efforts were made to ensure that there was, sometimes to the extent of sending children to sleep at the neighbours' houses. It was one of the things that made inn-keeping such a difficult occupation. Yet, Clementine had chosen to stay here, as well, hadn't she? Perhaps the two decisions were related; Clementine because she needed a place to conduct her business, Gilmour because he needed to keep an eye on Clementine.

Had Gilmour been attempting to eavesdrop on their conversation in the sitting room? Lewis wasn't sure, but he suspected that if he were to go running after him, he would interrupt only some innocuous inquiry about the menu. It would serve no purpose; and besides, he could ask Sophie about the conversation later. He waited for few moments, then wandered into the kitchen as if in search of a cup of tea. There was no sign of Gilmour or of Sophie, although a delicious aroma filled the room — the bread had been sliced and wrapped in a cloth, a pot of soup simmered on the stovetop, and something in pastry was browning in the oven.

The teapot was on the table with warm tea still inside, so he helped himself to a cup. Then he heard laughter, and followed the sound to Susannah's bedroom; he was surprised to find his entire family clustered around his sister.

“No, no, sit,” he said, when Daniel jumped up. “It smells like supper is well on the way and there's nothing else needed at the moment.”

Betsy was in the comfortable chair by the window, Martha on the floor at her feet, and Daniel on a stool beside her. Sophie and Francis had parked themselves side-by-side on the end of Susannah's bed, although they now shifted away from each other, Sophie blushing slightly as they did so. Lewis supposed there was no other place for them to sit, but it was clear that the current arrangement presented no hardship to the pair. He leaned against the bureau and sipped his tea.

Susannah was looking much better, although she still appeared somewhat flushed. She was sitting up in bed, and Lewis noted with approval that Betsy was knitting, something she couldn't do when her joints ached. It looked as though the womenfolk might be on the mend.

Daniel, as well, had found time for newspapers, and was reading aloud from one, an article about the Cuban “banana,” a strange tropical fruit that was selling in New York City at the astounding price of twenty-five cents a finger.

“Did you eat anything like that when you were in New York, Francis?” Martha asked.

“No,” he replied. “To tell the truth, I didn't eat a lot of anything in New York.”

“You may not eat anything tonight either if I don't get a move on,” Sophie said, jumping up. “That pork pie should be done by now.”