The End of the Line (23 page)

Moberly opened the door to his cabin. “Please come in. I'll see that Mr. Jimmy brings us cakes as well as the tea service.”

The interior was bright, and Durrant realized that the man had a functioning window in his domicile. A small bed was pressed against one wall, and on it a heavy pack, still bursting at the seams with winter gear, sat as though he really had only arrived back in Holt City that very hour. A small table was positioned against the wall on the opposite side of a warm, efficient looking woodstove. Where most of the cabins in Holt City had potbellied stoves or improvised ones made from upended barrels and jury-rigged tin cans as stovepipes, Moberly's seemed to be of the finest quality and perfect for keeping a small space warm in the worst conditions. Two small, folding camp chairs were set out by the stove. The room was cozy and smelled clean and fresh. Durrant would not have been surprised to see flowers on the windowsill.

“Sergeant Wallace, please, take a seat. Let me step next door to see to Mr. Jimmy, and make a swift return. I am anxious to hear your stories of adventure and learn what progress has been made in apprehending Mr. Penner's executioner.”

With that, Moberly took his leave, and Durrant sat down in front of the stove. He opened his coat and let his numb right hand rest on his leg. He had a chance to look about the room. Next to the overstuffed pack rested a Martini-Henry breech-loading rifle, and beside that a pair of twin Webley revolvers. Durrant twisted in his chair to regard the rifle better. It appeared to have suffered heavy use; its barrel had several nicks and gashes, and along the shoulder stock was a long deep score. Mr. Moberly, it seemed, was a soldier.

Durrant let his eyes drift further. A stack of books rested by the bed on an antique table. Next to the books was an exotic figurine with the head of an elephant and the torso of a man. Most interesting to Durrant, however, were the spear, shield, and ball club that adorned the wall above the bed. Nearly five feet in length, the shield was tan, black, and white in colour. It appeared to be made from a hide, reinforced with a richly coloured wood. The spear was short with a broad tip and a thick shaft. The club was nearly as long as the spear, and looked both dense and deadly. Durrant thought about Penner's ruined face and head.

“I see you're admiring the spoils of war, Sergeant.” Again, Moberly was there before Durrant had become aware of him. A cool gust of wind from the open door seemed to reach the Mountie after Moberly's words.

“You were in Africa?”

“And elsewhere.”

“You fought in the Zulu war?”

“Not so much a war as a slaughter.”

“For who?”

“Well spoken. The Empire had the last laugh, I dare say, but not before suffering serious losses.” Durrant looked at the long scar across the man's face. “Indeed, Sergeant. We all carry our burden.” Moberly then laughed and said, “I can't be certain if that spear is the assegai that took my eye and cleaved this line down my face, but it might well be.”

“Eye?”

“Indeed, sir, this bobble,” he said, pointing to the left eye, “is nothing more than a trinket, courtesy of Her Majesty.”

Durrant made an effort not to regard Moberly for too long, conscious as he was of such an intrusion.

“And the club?”

“The Zulu call it a knob-kerrie. It simply completes the set, Sergeant.” At that there was a knock at the door. “That would be our tea,” said Moberly, turning smartly.

The gentleman opened the door and a dark-skinned man entered the room with a tea service that he placed between the two chairs before the fire. Durrant regarded the man Moberly called Mr. Jimmy: he had hair shorn very short and the almond-shaped eyes of the Orient, but his skin was darker than the Chinese that Durrant knew worked on the western section of the railway. Durrant guessed that the servant was East Indian. The man set the tea service: there was a pot of tea and cups, all of the finest china, along with a plate of cakes and biscuits. Milk and sugar were in matching bowls.

“Thank you, Mr. Jimmy.” Wordlessly, the man left the room. “May I pour for you, Sergeant?”

“Go ahead,” said Durrant, and immediately felt bad for assuming Moberly was asking because of his game hand. This might be the only cultured man in this corner of the North West Territories, thought Durrant.

Moberly poured the tea. “Milk or sugar?”

“Black is fine, thank you.”

Moberly poured his and added a little milk from the service. “I'm afraid that the cakes may not be the freshest. Mr. Jimmy has been with me, of course, on the Columbia, and has had to dip into our stores. I think you'll find them favorable to the hash served in the mess tent.”

Durrant took a small round cake in his left hand and bit into it. Indeed, it was very good. He nodded appreciatively.

“You're curious about Jimmy?”

Durrant sipped his tea and made eye contact with Moberly. “He's Indian?”

“Tibetan.”

Durrant put the teacup down and regarded the man.

“I
was
in India for some time, Sergeant. This was more than thirty years ago now. I worked out of Calcutta on the rail lines running north towards Delhi and into the mountains. I left this employ after the rail reached Allahabad, and went north, with an interest in exploring the cultures and landscapes of the Himalaya. That is when I met Mr. Jimmy. He worked for me while I was employed by the High Commissioner in Rawlinpindi. We've been together now these twenty-five years . . .”

Moberly paused a moment. “They are little-known, Sergeant Wallace, the people of the Tibetan Plateau. They are among the last people on earth yet untouched by the clutches of progress. Mr. Jimmy is a Buddhist. They are a very peaceful people.”

“But surely there are more interesting mysteries afoot, sir,” Moberly added.

Durrant took a sip of his tea. It was simply the finest tea he had tasted since arriving in the west eleven years ago.

“First, Sergeant, I am anxious to learn something of the man himself. Tell me about yourself before we sink into the banalities of this prosaic crime.”

“There is very little to tell,” said Durrant, suddenly uncomfortable.

“I simply do not believe that.”

“You may have to.”

“No man would take an assignment at the end of steel in the deepest winter and arrive on one leg and with one hand and have only a mere lad in his employ, and a mute at that, and not have a story to tell.”

“There may be a story, but it's not for the telling.”

Moberly laughed. It was not the bark that Durrant had grown accustomed to in Fort Calgary or here at the end of steel; it was a cultured laugh, one that came in consort with the subject, not at the expense of him. It put Durrant at ease and he forgot for a moment that
he
was the investigator.

“Come now, you won't deny me the opportunity to hear of your travels across these great North West Territories, will you? I doubt very much that I shall have such an opportunity to hear first-hand of the March West and other adventures again.”

“What leads you to believe I was on the March West?”

“Were you not?”

“I was.”

“So tell me something of it.”

“It's already been romanticized in the eastern press,” Durrant found himself saying. “The reality, however, is somewhat different. How quickly we like to forget.”

“I can only surmise,” laughed Moberly.

Durrant found himself enjoying the sound of the man's voice. It was the first civilized tongue he'd heard in the year since leaving Regina, with the exception of his friend the doctor.

“Tell me, Sergeant, what made you join the force in the first place? You seem to me an educated man, one at least with a decent upbringing. Not a farm boy, for certain.”

Durrant looked down at the teacup in his hand. “No, not a farm boy. My father was a merchant; he owned an import and export company and a warehouse complex on the Quay in Toronto. He was born in that city when it was still York Town. I was destined to take over that business, it seemed. I studied the law and was preparing for the bar, in fact. My father had raised me for that; I learned to read and write and do mathematics and to think: he sent me to school for several years at Upper Canada College and also the University of Toronto.”

Moberly watched him. “A prestigious school, for certain, Upper Canada. The royal family has a stake there.”

Durrant just nodded, his face suddenly pale. His left hand clutched the teacup tightly.

“But something happened,” Moberly said after a moment's silence.

“I signed on with French in 1874 is what happened. I decided the city wasn't for me. It was many years ago now. A decade has passed,” Durrant said, seeming to grasp the passage of those years for the first time.

“The secrets men keep,” said Moberly his eye dark and piercing. Then he straightened and said, “So tell me, do you have a suspect for the murder of Mr. Penner?”

Durrant remained lost a moment, his own eyes not seeing the confines of the room around him but instead searching the far reaches of his memory for something now long gone—the motivation for the sudden about-face in his life. Then he said, “I have a number of suspects,” without much conviction.

“Ah, indeed you must. Do each of these men have a motive, a means, and an opportunity?” Moberly inquired, leaning forward in his chair.

Durrant stiffened. He considered both the question and the man seated eagerly before him.

“Sergeant, I do hope my prying isn't considered inappropriate. You see, in addition to my time spent in Her Majesty's service overseas, I have spent a fair amount of time in the service of Her Majesty Queen Victoria on the home front. I am, after all, Moberly, and as such have a long history in the service of the Royals. Some of that time, Sergeant, has brought me in close contact with New Scotland Yard. You may have heard of them?”

“Yes, in fact, several of our Mounted Police have spent time there.”

“Not yourself, sir?”

“I'm afraid not. My posts have lacked such sophistication. I've been more aligned with the Cypress Hills than Cypress Way, London.”

“Touché! Well, nevertheless, I will admit a fascination with the investigative procedure that New Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police Force have been, I dare say,
pioneering
.”

Durrant became aware of the precarious position he found himself in. As of yet, the North West Mounted Police's role was to bring law and order to the Dominion Territories. They did not employ a dedicated squad of investigators as the police force in Toronto and Montreal did. The Mounties' role was to make peace and enforce treaties with the Indians and to disrupt the illegal trade in whiskey and rum. While they had a strong presence in places like Fort Calgary and Winnipeg, as yet the limit of their investigative process was to unhand an assailant from his smoking gun at the scene of a crime. In short, thought Durrant, he was in uncharted ground here at the end of steel, in more ways than one.

“Let me clear up a few matters, first, if you don't mind, Mr. Moberly.”

“Of course, Sergeant.”

“How long have you been away from Holt City?”

“It's been three weeks and a day that Mr. Jimmy and I, along with my survey team, have been down in the Columbia,” he answered matter-of-factly.

“And there are those who would testify to that?”

“Yes, including our Mr. Wilcox.”

“Very good. Now, about Mr. Penner. Did you know him?”

“I'd say better than most.”

“When did you meet the man?”

“I arrived at The Summit on December 1 of last fall. I was asked by Mr. Van Horne to assist in the proving of the survey down through the Kicking Horse Canyon, where it meets with the Columbia; it's to be one of the most ambitious sections of the rail, you see, and very treacherous. Mr. Charles Aeneas Shaw, a proud Scot like you, Mr. Wallace, completed the trial line down this section in the summer. The lads back in Montreal sent him on a wild goose chase up to the Howse Pass in the fall. They were still hoping to find a line where the grade was more reasonable, and the cost per foot of steel wasn't so steep. The Howse provided them with an option, but the distance was much too far, and believe it or not, there is more snow in
that
country to the north than there is here on the Kicking Horse! The decision was made to stick with Roger's original route, as improved by Shaw. My work has been to complete the location survey for the sections that Shaw didn't finish before being sent north.

“As Mr. Penner was the foreman for the contract handling all the explosives work both on the Big Hill and in the Lower Canyon, he and I made a trip all the way down the Kicking Horse shortly after work ended here on December 8. We spent two weeks together assessing the munitions requirements of various grades and routes. I found him to be a very knowledgeable professional, as well as a decent fellow and an affable travelling companion.”

“That's saying a lot, I would imagine. What struck you about the man?”

Moberly took his teacup in his hands, and Durrant noticed for the first time that the man was missing the small finger on his left hand. Moberly sipped his tea thoughtfully and finally said, “His honesty.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. Penner was as honest as the day was long. He was loyal to his employer, but never once did he suggest a course of action where the intent was to enrich his own self or those whose charge he carried. For example, there are many places on the Big Hill, and down through the lower Canyon, that even small changes to the survey of the line would mean hundreds or thousands of extra cubic yards of material being blasted and removed from the grade. The contractors get paid by the yard and by the type of material they are removing. Deek Penner would never entertain that as a consideration for a change in the location survey. If it meant compromising the safety for the men who would be doing the blasting, or an increase in the cost to the public purse, he would hear nothing of it.”