“You’ve read my mind, love.”
“Sometimes it isn’t that hard,” she said, and they both smiled.
Robert, his normal colour returning, coughed and said, “Don’t you think we might be speculating a bit far here?”
“Maybe,” Marc said. “But it’s Beth who saw how devastated the girl is. And it was I who peeked into the cozy, curtained-off bedroom where Coltrane slept. The door to the anteroom is thick and was closed during my hour-long interview with him. A very private sort of arrangement, I’d say.”
“Then you’re suggesting that Almeda may have figured out a way to put a quick and permanent end to the affair? In her mind, even three or four more days might’ve proved disastrous for her daughter.” Without intending to, he glanced at the pregnant woman in the room.
Marc sighed. “We’ve got to find Bostwick at all costs. He was the jailer there except for the day of the murder. If anyone knew what might be happening day to day and who could’ve been sneaking in, it’s him. Perhaps Cobb will play truant long enough to set his snitches on the adjutant’s trail.”
“Good idea. Will you approach him?”
“As soon as I can manage it.”
Beth got up. “I must return to the shop,” she said. “We still have a ton of work to do before the ball tomorrow.”
Robert was about to advise her to take it easy but thought better of it.
It was about four o’clock that afternoon when Horatio Cobb, his fingers and toes numb and his snout two shades of red darker, came ambling along King Street towards the Court House to report to the sarge that, miraculously, no marchers had yet appeared either at Government House or Chepstow. Now he knew why: they had all moved back for another go at the jail. This time, though, there were no women among the dozen or so placard carriers milling about in the courtyard like army ants without a hill. In fact he recognized no one. The usual Orange-a-tans were absent, gearing up, he’d been informed by Nestor Peck, for a massive protest tomorrow. These people here appeared to be ruffians from the township, bored or mischievous or both. Their signs were predictably banaclass="underline" “Free Prince Billy Now!” and “McNair for Mayor!”
He strode through them with the disdain they deserved. Even though he himself was sympathetic to Billy and suspected that he might be innocent, Cobb disapproved of these bully tactics. Besides, he knew Marc Edwards (the major, as he called him affectionately), and if he were given time, the man would get to the truth. Deep down, he wished he could join him in the effort. Investigating sure beat freezing your toes off while traipsing up and down the same street like some donkey on a mill wheel.
Cobb was surprised to be met at the door by the chief, flanked by Constables Brown, Rossiter, and Wilkie.
“What’s up?” he said.
“The governor’s dander,” Sturges said angrily.
“When ain’t it?”
“Thorpe’s just come over to tell us we’re under orders to chase these hooligans away from the area,” Sturges said, indicating the protesters.
“But they’ll go away as soon as the sun goes down and their balls start conjellin’,” Cobb said. “Don’t Saint George know that?”
“He’s decided he’s had enough of protests.” Sturges sighed. “He’s got wind of the big march planned fer tomorrow. He’s called all the militia officers in fer a meetin’ first thing in the mornin’. Meantime, he wants the streets cleared of all riffraff.”
“Get yer stick primed,” Wilkie said helpfully, with a nod at Sturges.
Following their chief’s lead, the four constables took out their truncheons and, moving slowly towards the crowd a dozen yards ahead, began tapping them on their gloved left palms.
“You are commanded by the governor to disperse yerselves immediately!” Sturges shouted, trying to recapture the sergeant’s intimidating boom from his salad days on the Spanish peninsula.
The youths looked more puzzled than intimidated. The handles of their placards were as thick as cricket bats and longer than the constables’ truncheons.
“This looks like trouble,” Sturges said. “Let me try to talk them down.” He dropped his truncheon to his side, and his men followed suit. He walked towards a burly, pug-nosed fellow who appeared to be their ringleader. Sturges affected a smile. “We don’t want nobody hurt here, and there’s no reason why there need be. You’ve had all day to make yer point with nobody botherin’ ya. The governor’s in the process of callin’ out the militia, so there’s no call to provoke him any further, is there?”
Three of the toughs swaggered brazenly up to Sturges and the constables flanking him. One had a menacing grin on his face. “The army, eh?” he said, with much bravado before his chums, as if relishing the superior challenge.
“I’m afraid so, lads.”
It was at this point that Ewan Wilkie, never nimble at the best of times and downright clubfooted when he was cold and sleepy, stumbled and pitched forward. Thinking to break his fall with the prop in hand, he instead broke the latter resoundingly over the left knee of the ugliest tough. Assuming an ambush triggered by treachery, the mob behind him flew into action. Placard sticks were brandished and swung viciously in concert with primal cries of outrage.
Cobb barely had time to get his truncheon up to parry a lethal blow aimed at his head. The force of it stunned him momentarily, just long enough for a second stout placard handle to crack against the seam where his helmet met his forehead. He felt himself falling backwards into unoccupied space. Desperately he flung his left arm out to cushion his fall. A spasm of excruciating pain dazzled its way up to his elbow. Then the daylight vanished, and everything else with it.
Robert and Marc worked for another hour or so, writing up detailed notes on the facts of the case uncovered thus far, along with their current interpretation of them. Robert would take these up to Dougherty after supper, where the great barrister’s gloss would be added.
“Let’s take a step back, Robert, and get a grasp of the larger picture, shall we? There are several things that don’t add up in regard to the relationship between the colonel and Coltrane.”
“For example?”
“My sense of Stanhope is that he is a vain, pompous martinet, but I feel that his obsession with military protocol and honour are genuine.”
“So he’d need a powerful motive to murder the man he swore to protect?”
“True, but what’s puzzling me is the extent to which he seems to have gone in coddling the prisoner. It’s one thing to feed and clothe him properly, and even permit him nonhazardous reading material. But why grant visiting rights to journalists who then print inflammatory articles that disturb the very constituency who have placed the colonel on a pedestal and dubbed him patriot?”
“I see where you’re going here. And we’d have to include the lengthy visits with his own daughter.”
“There’s also the duel, remember, where all this started. To get that to happen, Coltrane must have procured Bostwick’s wholehearted cooperation. How? Bostwick owed his position and status to the colonel, not Coltrane. Did Coltrane have some kind of hold over Bostwick?”
“Or over the colonel. Remember, he might have known about the duel and merely looked the other way.”
“Exactly. I’m now convinced that it was the prisoner who was calling all the shots at Chepstow.”
“But what threat could he bring to bear on the colonel and Bostwick?”
“That is something that we will have to find out,” Marc said. “I’ll get to Cobb before morning. He can alert his snitches to look for Bostwick without compromising his duty, I’m sure. And when I get to that drunken lieutenant, I intend to grill him within an inch of his life.”
“That’s the spirit!”
Cobb came to in the outer room of the police station. He was lying on his back on Gussie French’s writing table. Around him, with faces so concerned that he became alarmed himself, were Chief Sturges, a white-cheeked Wilkie, Magistrate Thorpe, Doc Withers, and Gussie himself, peering anxiously at his toppled ink bottle.