They rode on, the three of them, with the corpse above, in a silence that was increasingly uncomfortable. Marc closed his eyes and feigned sleep. Sedgewick stared ahead out of one window and Adelaide the other. There was nothing to see but the slanting snow and the ghostly billowing of evergreens through the haze. An hour later, Todd stopped the coach in front of a log hut that served grog and sometimes lukewarm soup to passers-by. The privy behind it was free.
When they made to depart again, Sedgewick, who seemed unaccountably nervous or perhaps merely embarrassed, announced that he was going to sit up on the bench with the driver for an hour or so. Adelaide nodded and got into the coach on her own before Marc could offer any assistance. They sat cattycorner to each other. Marc let ten minutes go by before he began.
“Like the coroner and everybody at the inquest yesterday, I concluded that, outside of Charles Lambert, no-one in our party could have committed the murder of your husband. I confronted Lambert before he left last night and came away convinced that he was not the killer. For a while I was even more compelled to accept the obvious: that Miles Scanlon had killed Captain Brookner to avenge the harsh treatment of his family. But just to play devil’s advocate, as I mulled matters over in my room last night, I started with the seemingly bizarre notion that one of us was the murderer. I didn’t do it. Pritchard was never a serious suspect. Lambert exculpated himself. That left you or your brother.”
Marc peered over at Adelaide. She had not turned towards him, but a perceptible stiffening of her posture indicated that she was listening intently.
“But how was it possible, I asked myself. First of all, I had to establish powerful motives for one of you or both. Your brother feared that Randolph would go through with his threat to have him charged with treason. Even if the charge were a flimsy one, in the post-rebellion atmosphere around here, Percy’s day-to-day life would be poisoned by suspicion. Your husband made the threat, I am convinced, because Mr. Sedgewick had in his turn made physical threats upon your husband’s person-in his laudable efforts to stop Randolph from beating you.”
Adelaide twisted her head slightly in his direction, but nothing could be seen behind the veil.
“I don’t know how often he has done so, but I’m sure he did it surreptitiously so that no bruises were visible. After all, he was a respectable merchant, a church elder, and a proud militia officer. But abuse you he did. I recalled how you flinched whenever anyone touched your left arm. Most probably he was an arm-twister, turning it in his iron grip until you cried out. Later, I noticed that you kept that crepe scarf curled well up under your chin-to hide more bruises, no doubt. The reason for his anger also seemed obvious: you are more intelligent than he was; you are proud; and you are independent. Your very presence, let alone any public correcting of his faux pas, was a rebuke to his vanity and his foolish ambitions.”
She turned back to stare out the window, as if to underline the very traits he had just ascribed to her.
“What puzzled me was why you might have chosen this particular time to lash out. But the death of your dear sister and Randolph’s callous flouting of the traditions of mourning may have been the last straw. Or, by the same token, these insults may have driven your devoted brother to some sort of precipitate action on your behalf. Thus, it turns out that you both had motive and immediate provocation. Still, I was sitting next to the pair of you when the fatal shot was fired. While it was logical to enlist Miles Scanlon to do the job, neither of you appeared to have had the opportunity to arrange it.”
Marc paused until the coach had finished jouncing over a rough patch of rutted road, then continued. “How could either of you have fired that shot? For some unexplainable reason, a picture popped into my head. Back at Morrisburg, when I was supposedly out for a walk airing my uniform, I was actually assisting some friends to cross the river. One of them, a man, not wanting to be recognized, had dressed up as a woman, wig and all. Then a second image leapt up beside it: you and your husband as I first saw you, when I mistook you for your husband’s sister, not his wife. Percy remarked that such a mistake was not uncommon. You and your husband are both tall, walk erect, and have similar fair features.”
Adelaide turned again to scrutinize him through her widow’s veil, but said nothing. Her breathing seemed more rapid though.
“The question, then, of a possible disguise entered the equation I was trying to work out. Certainly neither you nor your brother was in disguise at breakfast. But what if the murder did not take place at nine thirty but earlier, say at seven thirty or eight? The body was found submerged in ice-water. There was no way to determine when the fatal wound might have been suffered. If so, then the killer, if it were one of us, had perhaps two hours to play with, to cover his or her tracks, and to establish a foolproof alibi. Moreover, I found it hard to believe, right from the outset, that Captain Brookner would sleep in until nine. I believe he got up at seven or so and immediately prepared to promenade himself down that scenic path for Scanlon or anyone else to try taking a shot at him. But it was not Scanlon. Someone from our group followed him. It was easy to come up behind him undetected and blow his brains out.”
“I could ask Percy to stop this coach,” Adelaide said, in what was meant to be a cold and intimidating tone but came out more world-weary than menacing. Marc simply continued his narrative.
“While Scanlon would be the obvious suspect, none of us had any real idea where he might have been yesterday morning. Perhaps he had escaped to New York. So rather than leave it to such unpredictable and potentially incriminating possibilities, a more practical and ingenious deception was devised. If those at breakfast could be witness to the captain leaving the inn-very much alive-at nine fifteen, then alibis would be established and the entire investigation of the murder sent askew. The risks were minimaclass="underline" if the body were discovered before nine, then the planned ruse could simply be abandoned with no-one the wiser. But the risk seemed worth it.”
Marc paused, took a deep breath, and plunged towards his denouement. “I remembered that your husband was obsessively vain about his uniform. Two parts of it appeared to be brand new, as if he had bought them specifically to show himself off during your days in the big city, among the regulars from the Royal Regiment. Your brother suggested in court that the greatcoat was acquired recently: it almost glistened in the sunlight, as did his boots. I believe both were purchased in Montreal. And the hat he wore was much like mine or Pritchard’s or your brother’s. All this meant that an extra greatcoat and an extra pair of boots were available, both older and somewhat tawdry, but that was a chance the killer or killers had to take if the ruse was to work. I say killer or killers because I still do not know whether it was actually you or your brother who pulled the trigger. But one of you certainly did.”
Again, Marc waited in vain for a direct response.
“I soon realized that it would take both of you to execute the deception. For if Percy had not been in on the game, he would have seen right away that you-dressed in your husband’s old greatcoat and boots and wearing your brother’s hat-were not Captain Brookner. We might have been fooled, but not Percy. I suspect that you planned it together. In any event, you brazenly clumped down the stairs, having waited anxiously, I’m sure, for me to wake up and go down to breakfast. I was to be your most incontrovertible witness, wasn’t I? You must have been puzzled and not a little frightened by my bizarre movements, but at last I did go down, and you were able to follow, disguised as your husband. All those at the breakfast table were aware of the captain’s departure. Once outside, you did not go down the path to the creek, but just wheeled behind the inn, mounted the fire-stairs, and returned to your room, doffing the coat, hat, and boots, and then coming down to breakfast as yourself, no more than four minutes after your husband had apparently left on the twenty-minute trek to his death. You joined us to secure your own alibi, and adroitly explained away your dishevelled state as grief over your sister’s death. The only real risk here was that one of the stablemen or maids might see you back there, but, as it turned out, they didn’t.