The Drowned Man (42 page)

The mobile rang again. “How's Jasper?” Maddy said. Her voice was raw.

Peter glanced at the doctor, who was bandaging the dog's right leg. Peter said, “She'll be perfectly fine. I'll be up tonight, maybe. There's a lot of blood but . . .”

The vet glanced at Peter. The “famous” Chief Inspector Cammon was afraid of a little blood. His daughter-in-law and the vet seemed to achieve a form of psychic connection at that moment. The silence at Maddy's end and the look on the vet's face were judgemental in the same way.

Peter reverted to his fatherly persona. It was the best he could manage. “How frequent are the pains?”

The vet shook his head, with the opprobrium of a man telling another man that he didn't know what he was talking about.

Maddy shouted at him, so that he had to hold the mobile away from his ear; even the vet could hear her. “I'm at the door of the delivery room. Peter, if you abandon Jasper to come up here I will never talk to you again. I have to go.”

“Wait! What are you calling the child?” the vet shouted back from his side of the operating table.

“Joseph Peter Tommy Cammon,” Maddy called back through the line.

John Wilkes Booth travelled to Montreal in October of 1864 and conspired with the blockade runner Patrick Martin. This much is known. Whether he also made contact with British officials or the Confederate “commissioners” from Richmond remains a matter for speculation, and perhaps further historical research. One of the best academic studies of Canada's reaction to the “War of the Rebellion” remains
Canada and the United States: The Civil War Years
by Robin W. Winks (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1960).

DAVID WHELLAMS
spent 30 years working in criminal law and amending the Criminal Code in such areas as dangerous offenders and terrorism. His first novel in the Peter Cammon series is
Walking into the Ocean
. He lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

Copyright © David Whellams, 2013

Published by ECW Press

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M4E 1E2

416-694-3348 /
[email protected]

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Whellams, David, 1948–

The drowned man / David Whellams.

(A Peter Cammon mystery)

ISBN
978-1-77041-148-7 (
BOUND
); 978-1-77041-043-5 (
PBK
)

ALSO ISSUED AS
: 978-1-77090-366-1 (
PDF
); 978-1-77090-367-8 (
EPUB
)

I. Title. II. Series: Whellams, David, 1948– Peter Cammon

mystery.

PS
8645.
H
45
D
76 2013
C
813'.6
C
2012-907518-3

Cover images: Stain © Panupong Roopyai / iStockphoto.com,

man illustration © 4x6 / iStockphoto.com

Cover and text design: Tania Craan

Author photo by Jennifer Barnes JB Photography

The publication of
The Drowned Man
has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, and by the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit. The marketing of this book was made possible with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation.