Unholy Alliance (21 page)

Struthers frowned slightly but did not seem
threatened by the remark. “Oh, that. Big mix-up. I found the
missin’ bags of feed under some straw that Cal tossed over ‘em by
mistake.”

“I see. So you and Chilton agreed on the
total?”

“Not really. Cal told me about the problem
last night after supper, an’ I went an’ double-checked.”

Marc could not hide his surprise. “You’re
saying that Chilton did not come here yesterday afternoon?”

“That’s right. And if he did, we didn’t see
him. I was in the barn all that time.”

Puzzling, Marc thought, as it had been Bragg
who had served them coffee around two-thirty in the library, not
Chilton. Where had the butler been?

Marc thanked Struthers and began to walk back
to the house. It looked now as if Bragg had had access not only to
laudanum but to Amontillado as well. If Bragg and Giles Harkness
did plot the death of the butler, they knew that only an expensive
brand of sherry could be used as a gift, a “peace offering” and a
deadly bait. The exchange must have been made after church on
Sunday. And there were lots of places besides his room where a wily
servant could stash such a bit of contraband. Now, if Cobb could
just pinpoint Harkness’s movements on Sunday last, they could begin
closing the net over Bragg.

As he left the shelter of the cedar windbreak
twenty paces past the stables, Marc felt the icy nor’wester on his
face and pulled the collar of his greatcoat up over his ears. He
was glad it was Cobb who was braving the elements.

***

Mrs. Sturdy sat across from Cobb in an overstuffed
easy-chair and offered him what she took to be a lascivious smile.
Its effect, however, was somewhat dimmed by the smoking cheroot
that hung perilously at the edge of one thick lip and by the
tarpaulin-sized dress she had arranged to flatter her numerous
curves – its crimson and yellow tulips rippling and winking in a
most distracting manner. Her right hand lay plump upon the greasy
doily of the chair-arm, grasping and regrasping a glass of gin so
potent Cobb thought he could hear it sizzle. He had accepted a
glass of it from his enthusiastic hostess, but had not yet raised
it above waist level.

“I don’t often get company on a Friday
afternoon,” she was saying, “especially a handsome gentleman of the
law.”

“I’ve come on official police business,” Cobb
said with one eye on the precarious perch of the live cigar. “I am
looking for information on a boarder of yours, Giles Harkness.”

Mrs. Sturdy guffawed, and her cheroot landed
on the rag rug beside her chair. She stamped it out with one savage
blow of her leather slipper, as she said to Cobb, “I take it you’re
referrin’ to the
gentleman
who puked all over yer boots on
my verandah a coupla weeks ago?” She raised her gin-glass towards
her mouth, but snorted so vehemently at her own witticism she had
to stop it mid-way and watch it splash across her lap. “God damn
it!” she cried, still laughing. “I hate to waste the stuff on a
good dress!”

But Cobb was not eyeing the gin-stain seeping
among the tulips. He was reminded once again of that incident on
the verandah: not the vomit on his boots but the threat that
Harkness had made. Cobb could not remember its precise nature, but
he knew it was made against Elmgrove and that it had been uttered
in deadly earnest. It was clear now that Giles Harkness had to be
connected somehow with the murder of Graves Chilton. Even though
Harkness could not have known the man, he must have viewed him as a
usurper, and would have found a ready ally in Austin Bragg. But
when could they have met to collaborate?

“What can you tell me about Harkness?” Cobb
asked after a pause, in which his hostess found time to light
another cheroot with a nearby candle.

“Well, for one thing, he ain’t here,” she
said, finally getting the gin where she had been aiming it, and
capping the pleasure with a hefty puff on the cheroot.

“You mean he’s left yer place?”

“I do. The bastard skedadelled a week ago
Sunday. Up an’ left early in the mornin’, owin’ me fifty cents rent
money. If he ever shows his ugly mug here again, I’ll run his balls
through my sausage-grinder.”

Cobb sighed. Harkness apparently had
disappeared just two days after that Friday evening when Cobb had
dragged him out of The Cock and Bull and dropped him on Mrs.
Sturdy’s porch. This was not the sort of news Cobb wished to hear.
“Any idea where he went?”

“I know exactly where he went.”

“Outta town?”

“All the way to Burford, a hundred miles
outta my reach!”

“How do you know this, if he just up an’ took
off?”

“Found a letter in his room, didn’t I? Seems
some farmer down that way raises a few horses an’ heard our friend
was outta work. The letter invites him to come down an’ try his
hand at tamin’ them broncos. But the only thing I ever seen him
tame was a bottle of cheap sherry.”

“I’d like to see this letter, if I
might.”

“I’ll get it fer ya. Meanwhile, unbutton that
dreadful jacket an’ make yerself comfortable.”

She got up with some difficulty and lumbered
into one of the nearby rooms. Cobb tried not to watch her tulips
shimmy. A minute later she came out with the letter. Cobb read it
right through. It was definitely a job offer from one Simeon
Mortimer near the village of Burford.

“An’ you’re sure he left town on account of
this?”

“I’ve had two of his drinkin’ pals lookin’
out fer him. He ain’t appeared in any of his usual
waterin’-holes.”

Disappointed, Cobb realized there was little
more to be gained here. At the door, he tried one last question.
“Did Harkness ever have any contact, here or elsewhere, with a
fella named Austin Bragg?”

“Don’t know the name. An’ Mr. Harkness didn’t
entertain a lot.”

Cobb thanked her and headed down the porch
steps.

“Hey,” Mrs. Sturdy called after him, “you
ain’t touched yer drink!”

***

At four o’clock Marc could contain himself no
longer. He had spent a frustrating half-hour making notes on the
interview with Abel Struthers and then reading carefully through
the notes Cobb had left from his morning downstairs. It simply had
to be Bragg. The disgruntled Tremblay was a possibility, of course,
in that he could have taken the laudanum when he left the bathroom
about a quarter to ten, doctored the sherry he had cached in his
luggage, and slipped down to Chilton’s office after he heard
LaFontaine come back. But the motive was weak. There were many
other ways in which Tremblay might wreck the negotiations, short of
murdering the butler and risking the noose. Tremblay had been
through the wars, perhaps had killed even, but he had a needy
family back in Quebec and had ambitious plans for his own future.
Moreover, Marc did not want it to be him.

Marc decided he would not wait for Cobb with
news of a conspiracy between Bragg and Harkness: he would go to
Prissy Finch and break Bragg’s alibi. He met Macaulay outside the
billiard-room, looking frayed and anxious.

“We’re getting close,” Marc said. “I need to
find Miss Finch right away.”

Macaulay seemed desperate to ask for details,
but said evenly, “I sent her down to the kitchen for biscuits a
minute ago.”

Marc headed for the servants quarters. As he
went down the stairs and pushed open the door to the kitchen, he
almost knocked Prissy and her tray of sweets flying backwards.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said.

“Not to worry,” Prissy said quickly enough,
but she was obviously flustered.

But not by the sudden appearance of the
police interrogator: it was the scene behind her that had upset her
and sent her hurrying towards the stairs. Hetty Janes was sitting
in Mrs. Blodgett’s rocking-chair with a ten-fingered grip on its
wooden arms. She was rocking furiously up and down, like a child in
mid-tantrum, and tears were streaming down her face. Her sister
Tillie was waving ineffectually at the rocker as it whizzed back
and forth past her, and chanting, “It ain’t yer fault, Het, it
ain’t yer fault! You gotta stop!”

Before Marc could blink or say a word, Prissy
had scooted past him and up the stairs to the rotunda. In front of
him, Hetty Janes – startled by the abrupt arrival of a tall,
authoritative gentleman – stopped rocking. For several seconds the
only sounds in the room were the diminishing squeaks of the chair
and the ritual snuffling of the distraught young woman.

“Oh, Mr.Edwards,” Tillie cried as she reached
out and finally brought the rocker to a halt. “You’ve come just in
time!”

“I have?”

“Hetty has somethin’ she’s gotta tell you,
but we ain’t been able to quiet her down enough to have her utter a
sensible word. She keeps blamin’ herself, which ain’t right.”

Hetty choked back a sob far enough to say, “I
just hope we ain’t woke up Mrs. Blodgett. You mustn’t tell her,
Til.
Promise.
”

“She won’t blame you anyways, Het. You know
that, so there’s no need to carry on so. It ain’t the end of the
world.”

Marc took a couple of steps towards the
sisters, who had momentarily forgotten him. “What isn’t the end of
the world?” he said gently. “What is it you need to tell me,
Hetty?”

Hetty blushed extravagantly, but was already
so red and blotched from weeping that it made little difference to
her ravaged appearance. She looked at her sister: “Oh, I couldn’t,
Til. You gotta do it
for
me.”

“I’d like one of you to tell me,” Marc said a
little less gently.

“It’s embarrassin’ fer everybody,” Tillie
said, “but it’s gotta be said. Mr. Edwards, Austin was fibbin’ when
he told you he spent the night with Prissy. He couldn’t have,
because he never left Hetty’s bed, not fer one minute.”

Marc was speechless. The claim seemed
incredible. Why would Bragg coerce or wheedle his fiancée into
lying for him if he had a ready-made alibi in Hetty Janes? More to
the point, would the too-handsome fellow deign to spend a night of
passion with such a plain, thin little thing? Something was amiss
here.

“I know what you’re thinkin’,” Tillie said.
“But Prissy an’ Austin had a dreadful row – we both heard it – an’
Prissy went slammin’ inta her room. Hetty says Austin saw her door
open an’ her peekin’ out, an’ he just sidled up an’ eased her back
inside. He was mad at Prissy an’ he wanted to get even.”

Hetty began to snuffle again.

“He put his hand over her mouth an’ – an’ had
his way with her,” Tillie said in a tone that conveyed both
amazement and outrage.

Marc wanted to ask why Hetty had not cried
out, but suspected the answer would be too painful for everybody
concerned.

“It was me who let him stay,” Hetty bawled.
“I’m the one to blame. And I’m sure Prissy guessed what I done when
she seen me in such a state next mornin’.”

“She won’t blame you, even if she has,”
Tillie soothed. “If she hadn’t let that awful butler make eyes at
her an’ kiss her, none of this would’ve happened, would it?”

“So Austin Bragg never left your room after
ten o’clock last night?” Marc said to Hetty, though the answer to
that question had already been made clear.

Hetty nodded, and dropped her eyes to her
lap.

“But why would Austin and Prissy both lie
about what they were doing?”

Neither of the sisters answered, but in their
faces Marc could discern the reason well enough: Bragg had
regretted his haste, did not want the world – or Prissy – to know
what he had “stooped” to, and had convinced Prissy that he needed
an alibi because he had been “sleeping alone” in his own room.

“Thank you for being truthful,” Marc said
lamely, and slowly backed out of the kitchen. As he turned on the
stairs, he heard Hetty say in a plaintive voice, “But it was so
nice, Til,
so
nice.”

By the time he reached the rotunda a few
moments later, it struck Marc that, unless Cobb had discovered
something of significance in Toronto, these new revelations had in
all likelihood eliminated their prime suspect.

“Jesus Christ on a donkey!” Cobb cried when Marc
broke the news to him at quarter to five in the library. “Ya mean
to tell me we ain’t got the bugger by the short hairs no more?”

“Or any other hairs,” Marc said. “If the
crime was set up sometime between ten o’clock and midnight, as
we’ve surmised, then Austin Bragg is in the clear. But there’s
still Harkness, remember. Bragg could be part of a conspiracy.
Though it’s not likely, the Amontillado could have been doctored
with some other laudanum and given to Chilton long before last
night.”

Cobb sighed, and let his dripping helmet drop
to the carpet. “My news ain’t so good either.”

“Let’s hear it anyway. The only thing that
counts, alas, is the truth.”

Cobb proceeded to give a detailed account of
his visit with Mrs. Sturdy, leaving out only her allusion to the
vomit on his boots.

“Burford?” Marc said when Cobb had finished.
“It would take a day and a half to get there, check out Harkness’s
story, and get back here.”

“That’s the way I figure it too. But what
good would it do? If I find the bugger there, then he’s more or
less off the hook – bein’ absent from the scene, so to speak, fer
almost two weeks. And if he ain’t there, then that means he’s found
another hidey-hole in Toronto, an’ it could take us a month of
Sundays to flush him out.”

“Quite right on both counts. But we may have
to go after him regardless if we can’t solve the case by Monday at
noon. What interests me right now is that threat he made against
Macaulay or Elmgrove in general. What better way to get even than
by murdering the man he viewed as his usurper and causing his
master embarrassment or worse?”

“But when could Bragg an’ Harkness have got
together to dream up this plot? You said Struthers was sure Bragg
was kept too busy to be gallivantin’ off to the city.”