Owen
Well, old friend, Marc thought, I can’t look forward and backward at the same time. But Monsieur Lambert would soon receive a face-to-face surprise, for Marc could not afford to wait much longer. Still, though it was possible that Lambert had taken a shot at him back near Cornwall-and now seemed to have a motive for assassinating him-Marc was inclined to think it had not been him. That didn’t mean that Lambert wasn’t looking for such an opportunity. It just meant that there could be more than one person out to kill him. And why would Lambert bother with a death-threat against Brookner? True, Brookner was a Tory bigot and a miles gloriosus, but he hadn’t been involved in the carnage at St. Denis or St. Eustache. His principal offense, beyond his swaggering arrogance, had been against the Scanlon brothers, one of whom could well be stalking him.
Marc decided that the coming night would be critical for any assassin, for by this time tomorrow the Brookner party could be in Kingston, where it would break up, leaving Brookner on home ground and Marc, Pritchard, and Lambert to arrange their own unpredictable schedules. He walked slowly and pensively up to his room.
Supper was delayed fifteen minutes while the group waited, somewhat anxiously, for Captain Brookner to return from his obligatory walkabout, in full military regalia “Daring young Miles Scanlon to make him a martyr,” Sedgewick muttered for all to hear.
Murdo Dingman, too, was beside himself with worry: the roast chickens were cooling and the gravy with kidneys congealing on the table. But Brookner did arrive unmartyred, stamping the snow off his boots at the side exit in clear view of the diners seated across the foyer around a single, large table. He came across to them, pulling at the sleeve of his magnificent greatcoat. He was flushed and excited.
“I saw the bugger!” he cried. Then to his lady, “Pardon my French.”
“Scanlon?” Sedgewick asked, wide-eyed.
“I couldn’t be sure. But it was the shadow of a man-not a big man-moving through the trees to my left as I strolled along a little path beside the creek back there. I was admiring the scenery, especially a spring with the dark water bubbling up through the ice.”
It was obvious that the captain was enjoying himself.
Dingman broke into the narrative: “Were you insulted, sir?”
“No, I was not. At the first flick of movement, I opened my coat and surprised the the miscreant by flourishing my sword.”
Which would certainly have frightened an assassin with a pistol, Marc mused.
“Do you not think you are taking the threat from this Scanlon chap a bit too lightly, Captain?” Pritchard asked with some hesitation.
“I would turn your question around, sir: Miles Scanlon may well be taking me too lightly. At any rate, no Scanlon shall prevent me from executing my morning walk or enjoying the local scenery.”
“Hear! Hear!” Pritchard cried, then blushed when he realized he was alone in the sentiment. Marc was sure he heard Adelaide utter “Fool!” under her breath. If Brookner heard, he did not let on nor allow it to modify the pose of lofty valour he had assumed and then maintained throughout an awkward, jittery supper.
It had occurred to Marc that the shadowy figure Brookner claimed to have seen-if it had been real and not imagined for dramatic effect-was just as likely to have been stalking him as the captain. After all, there had been two actual attempts on his own life and a mere threatening note to Brookner who, in his vainglory, may have concocted it himself. Reluctantly, for he was once more extremely fatigued, Marc took out the pumpkin and set up the dummy-form in his bed. Then he rigged several noisy objects against the unlocked door. There was no wardrobe in his room to curl up inside, but a dressing-screen set in front of an improvised bedroll against a far wall provided a suitable vantage-point. He loaded the pistol and laid it on his chest. He kept his clothes and boots on, prepared for pursuit and capture if need be. He was just about to blow out the candle when the first sounds of argument in the room next to him made him pause.
It was the Brookners. Though muffled by the plaster-lath wall between Marc and them, their angry words were decipherable. It appeared that they were well into the altercation, the tone and temper of which had been steadily rising.
“-didn’t even have the decency to wear a mourning band!”
“At least I didn’t make a spectacle of myself weeping and wailing over the coffin!”
“Keep your voice down! Do you want the whole house to hear?”
The next exchange, though vehement, was conducted in tones too low for Marc to determine the tenor or topic. But soon the voices rose again in pitch and volume.
“Don’t you ever-ever, you hear-contradict me in public one more time. I won’t have it!”
“Don’t you know what a strutting peacock you’re making of yourself? For God’s sake, Randolph, you were once such a proud man, such an intelligent-”
“Shut your mouth this instant! I won’t stand for much more of this! When are you going to start acting like a proper wife?”
“When you stop playing the fool!”
“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!”
Marc got up, lamp in hand. He was waiting for the slap or the woman’s cry.
“Take your hands off me!”
Marc eased his booby-trap aside, cursing himself as he did so, and slipped into the dark hallway that ran along the width of the upper floor. He had lost a precious minute, was not even sure what he was about to do, but he reached the Brookners’ door out of breath but reasonably alert. He put an ear against it. Silence. There had been no slap, no outcry or gasp of pain at a hurtful male grip. He could hear nothing for a while, then, finally, a sequence of what sounded like snores: the deep-throated kind that interrupt themselves. Brookner had apparently fallen asleep. Marc continued to listen for another minute. The snores subsided. The swishing of sheets or clothing suggested that Adelaide was slipping quietly and safely into bed. She may have been weeping.
Marc made his way back to his room, re-established the booby-trap, poked at the dying fire, re-arranged himself in his place of observation, and prepared to watch and wait for his assassin.
Outside the rear window, the snow continued to fall softly and persistently. In the peaceful quiet of the room, Marc’s thoughts turned to the revelations about Lambert. Beyond the remote possibility that Lambert might be gunning for him, Marc considered the larger question of who he was and what he had been up to for the past several weeks. It seemed doubtful he had ever visited Cobourg, even though his wife was reputed to be there waiting for him, let alone lived in the town for four months. Was the Cobourg story he told merely a cover for secretive and seditious actions he had been carrying out for some time now? Perhaps he was a close aide of Papineau or Nelson, who had tried to establish an English identity (or had one) for some nefarious purpose. Was he possibly en route to Toronto to execute mayhem of some kind or to Buffalo to rendezvous with Mackenzie and the Patriots, as the exiles threatening invasion liked to call themselves? Whatever was going on, Marc was determined that he would get to the bottom of it before they reached Cobourg.
As he lay thinking thus, he began to realize that the element of excitement and danger, which had beset him since his miraculous awakening in the hospital, was actually helping his rehabilitation by constantly bringing him back to his senses, to a quickness of thought and decision that could easily have mouldered under the strain of coping with Rick’s death, facing his own precarious mortality, worrying about Beth and whether there was any future for them, or raging futilely against the inordinate injustices he detected everywhere about him in the world. Then a more profound thought asserted itself: Could a visceral revulsion against such grim realities have been part of the reason that Rick Hilliard had courted danger all his brief adult life? Did it explain Rick’s willingness to step into the path of a bullet meant for somebody else?