Stanhope glared defiantly at his tormentor, his frame still rigid, but it was all show. Something inside him could be heard crumbling.
“Did you, sir, visit the Commercial Bank on the morning of November the first and deliver five hundred dollars to Mr. Farquar MacPherson in order to forestall the bank’s foreclosing the mortgages on two of your four warehouses?”
A denial was on his lips, but the colonel seemed to recognize its futility. “I did,” he said.
“And was this the ‘reward’ referred to in your letter to Coltrane?”
“The source of the witness’s income is not relevant!” Thornton cried.
“Leave that for the moment,” the judge said to Dougherty, but his avid attention had been gained, and he gazed down at the witness with some of the same incredulity as the ordinary, hero-worshipping citizens in the room.
“Colonel Stanhope, I submit that, given the evidence already before this court, the meaning of the coded sentence you just read aloud is unequivocal. We have been told that Sergeant McNair’s rage against Coltrane was rooted in the ambush at the redoubt near Windsor. Two crates of ordnance were left buried there by a detail you were in charge of. I subpoened the field reports of the Battle of Windsor from Fort York, one of which includes a close description of the pursuit of Coltrane’s escaping squad and his eventual capture. It is signed and verified by you. In that report, it is stated that no more than ten minutes elapsed between the time Coltrane reached the redoubt and the militia’s arrival on the scene. As Coltrane’s men were already hiding in the nearby bush with fresh ammunition, we must assume that the major, in the space of ten minutes, chanced upon the useless, crumbling fort, flailed through the mounds of earth there, happened by a stroke of good luck to stumble upon just what he needed to save his troop, and instantly improvised a deadly ambush. Do you expect anyone in this room to believe that you did not mail Major Coltrane a map showing him the whereabouts of the arms cache, for which the Hunters’ Lodge paid you the five hundred dollars you needed to forestall bankruptcy and continue to command your regiment? And that this coded letter was not your confirmation of the deal?”
Kingsley Thornton knew he ought to intervene on several counts, but he seemed as mesmerized by the sudden turn in the proceedings as everyone else.
All the stuffing abruptly went out of the colonel’s pomposity. His gaunt body collapsed into his suit.
Merciless, Dougherty moved in for the kill. “Now, what has all this got to do with the poisoning of Caleb Coltrane? Well, sir, I submit that it was this letter that so terrified you, that was secreted by Major Coltrane and used to blackmail you into treating him more like a minor potentate than a captured criminal. And that, weary of his demands, you initially used the duel to try and have your sergeant do away with him and take the blame. And when that failed, you yourself poisoned him!”
Thornton had finally found his feet. “May I remind Mr. Dougherty that the witness has not admitted to actually composing the letter. We have only his wife’s testimony to that effect.”
“Mr. Thornton is right,” the judge said.
“Well, then, let me ask the question again,” Dougherty said. “Did you write out this letter as we now see it, and then ask your wife to copy it exactly as written? Because, if you didn’t, then we must assume that your wife did it on her own and that, in conjunction with the letter we found hidden in her dress, she could very well be charged with aiding and abetting treason.”
Stanhope raised his head with agonizing slowness, but it was not to stare down his accuser. He peered past Kingsley Thornton until his eyes found those of his wife. In his face was a look of infinite regret.
“Did you compose the letter, sir?”
“I did,” Stanhope said with surprising force.
“And did you decide to murder Caleb Coltrane to end the torment of his increasingly outrageous demands?”
Some of the old regimental fire leapt back into Stanhope’s eyes. “He deserved to die. He was evil incarnate. For the first week or so he behaved as if he were a gentleman and an officer. Then, as soon as his books and snuff boxes arrived, he announced that he had the coded letter somewhere nearby, that his agents would know where to find it in the event of his death. He was then confident of rescue by the Hunters, but in the meantime he expected me to supply everything he asked for. I had no choice but to give in. He was insufferable, a braggart and a liar. He alienated the affections of my beloved daughter and drove a wedge between her and her mother.”
Dougherty spoke over the growing murmurs of the astonished onlookers. “So when the idea of the duel surfaced, you tried to turn it to your advantage, hoping Billy, with a live bullet in his pistol, would do Coltrane in?”
“Of course not. I didn’t want either of them hurt at that time.”
“Not until after the Twelfth Night Ball anyway.”
“Coltrane told Bostwick he wouldn’t harm the boy, just give him a proper scare. And Billy had never fired a pistol in his life. The odds were he couldn’t pot Coltrane if he’d been given five free shots. But I took no chances. Bostwick was supposed to supply two blank pistols, but the drunken fool got my instructions confused.”
“So when did you decide to resort to poison? And why, after suffering his demands for so long?”
Stanhope’s voice was now eerily calm, as if a decision long delayed had been taken at last. “It was Wednesday evening. Bostwick was nervous about being arrested for his part in the duel, so I gave him his back wages and he left. Farquar MacPherson came to complete the financial rearrangements that would save my business. Just before Lardner left, however, he slipped me a note from Coltrane. It demanded my immediate presence below. I went down and let myself in with the master key. What he wanted was for me to let him escape. He seemed to suspect that his mates in Detroit had forsaken him, and my help was now essential if he were to avoid the noose. I stalled by saying I might be able to rig up something by the next Monday.”
“That is, after your triumph at the gala on Saturday?”
“More or less.”
“During which escape attempt you might be given the opportunity to shoot him with impunity?”
Stanhope’s expression confirmed that such a serendipitous notion had entered his mind. “But he insisted that it be arranged for the next day or Friday at the latest. I demanded the letter. He said he would tell me where it was when he was free and clear. I did not trust him. I could not release him and have him retain that damning letter. Bostwick and I had searched his chamber three times while he was asleep: he was a heavy sleeper. But the next day he would laugh at our futile efforts. I came to believe it was in the hands of a Hunters’ agent in the city. I also knew he was too wily to let me shoot him in the back. He was more likely to shoot me with the pistols he demanded.”
“So he had to die, even if it meant tarnishing the honours expected Saturday.”
“Yes. I felt then that I would be doing my fellow citizens a favour. I would say he committed suicide. It was all I could think of. I was distracted and desperate.”
“How did you get the poison in the snuff box?”
“As I said, he was a heavy sleeper. Bostwick, who often slept in the anteroom, was gone. I got strychnine from the gardener’s supply in the summer kitchen and put it in an empty packet that had contained my sleeping draft. He usually didn’t take snuff until an hour or so after his breakfast. He snorted it like a horse, not a gentleman. I figured he would be dead by ten o’clock, before Alderman Tierney arrived. But he wasn’t.”
“So putting the blame on Billy McNair was just a chance opportunity?”
“I didn’t think he would be convicted, he was a popular-”
“But you did slip the packet into his coat?”
“I–I had it in my tunic, I really just forgot about it, and-”
“Mr. Dougherty,” the chief justice broke in finally, “I don’t really think we need to go on. This is not Mr. Stanhope’s trial.” He looked pointedly at Kingsley Thornton.