Marc summarized his interview with Beth Smallman, omitting only his subsequent speculations. Then he recounted his successful subterfuge of the afternoon when, to establish his cover story, he had ridden east along the second concession to the farm of Jonas Robertson, a loyal Tory whose grandfather had once represented a rotten borough in Shropshire before the family’s fortunes had declined. Ensign Edwards had gone through the motions of examining the surplus bags of the finest maize in the county and confirming their producer’s own assessment. During this exchange of mutually flattering pleasantries (even now, Marc marvelled at his guile and the ease with which he had been able to prevaricate), Robertson had disembowelled the reputations of several “republican” farmers along the Farley Sideroad, whose seditious behaviours apparently threatened the political stability of the province and even the health of the local grains. Marc had begun to realize why Sir John had placed so much trust in level-headed men of goodwill like Joshua Smallman. Could such qualities, as valuable as they were rare, provide motive for murder in and of themselves?
Hatch had spent the afternoon in Cobourg, where he had given Sheriff MacLachlan the names and description of the Yankee peddlers. As agreed beforehand, he had mentioned Marc’s presence without revealing the real purpose of his visit, as, after all, the sheriff had supported the magistrate’s finding of death by misadventure. Hatch told Marc that no one had admitted seeing the Irishmen since the autumn. Hatch himself, on his way home, had stopped at several of the taverns that Connors was known to frequent on his sojourns in the district and had learned nothing of importance.
“I think it’s safe to say that your assumption about Connors and O’Hurley hightailing it across the nearest ice to the home state was the right one,” Hatch said as they swung a little to the south towards several columns of smoke visible above the treetops. Marc had raised a chuckle earlier when he’d described the pot-rattling donkey skittering up the Kingston Road towards Toronto. “That pair of weasels won’t linger a minute longer on the King’s ground than they have to,” Hatch continued. “The roll of banknotes, though-that may be of real interest to Sir John or his successor. I don’t like the smell of foreign money.”
“At the moment I consider it merely a distraction,” Marc said. “It’s hard to make any connection between a couple of scoundrels like that and Smallman’s misadventure.”
When Marc finally felt constrained to mention his standoff with Elijah, Hatch found the episode more amusing than suspicious.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “you won’t have to put the screws to him. I questioned him very carefully myself, and MacLachlan had a run at him as well. After a lot of coaxing and a little threatening, he admitted that he had not been with his employer to do the rounds that evening, nor had he seen him since supper at six, because right after he’d eaten he’d beetled off to raise a glass with Ruby Marsden, the squire’s cook. Ruby backs him up. And, of course, everybody in the township knows the old codger slips up there every chance he can get. Why do you think this path is so easy on the feet?”
“So Smallman was out of the house and alone for at least half an hour before he came back in with the news that he had been called out, as it were?”
“I’m afraid so, with no way for anyone to find out who he might’ve seen or talked to.”
“None of the guests coming to the New Year’s gathering saw or heard anything?”
“We questioned them all before the inquest. Nothing. And Emma Durfee didn’t arrive until well after he’d ridden off.”
“Well, we know for certain he got a message from someone,” Marc said, with an effort to hide his disappointment.
Hatch stopped. He placed an avuncular hand on Marc’s shoulder. “You have to remember, lad, we’ve only got Beth’s word on that.”
Marc had seen nothing in upper Canada to match the opulence of Deer Park-not at Government House, nor even in his illicit glimpses, from anterooms and vestibules, of Family Compact residences in Toronto like Beverley House, Osgoode Hall, or the Grange. Dozens of trees had been hacked down to allow those entering the estate by carriage to appreciate the Georgian proportions and Italianate façade of the manor house itself. Even now, in midwinter, the terraced gardens and housebroken shrubberies undulated elegantly beneath the snowdrifts. In the foyer, lit by an ornate candelabrum, Marc thought, for a sinking moment, that he was back in the entrance hall of Hartfield Downs in Kent, or that he had merely dreamed his secondment to North America and was just now waking up. When a pretty parlour maid took his hat and curtsied, another, more stabbing memory intruded. He quickly suppressed it.
“Maybe you should’ve stuck to the law,” Hatch said, chuckling at Marc’s open-mouthed amazement, just as Philander Child, King’s Counsel, trundled forward to greet them with a great welcoming guffaw.
Hatch had prepped his new young friend for the evening at hand. Only charter members of the Georgian Club would be present on this occasion, at Hatch’s request: he and Marc would be joined by their host, Philander Child, and by Major Charles Barnaby and James Durfee. Joshua Smallman had been among this number, though, understandably, his attendance had been irregular during the harvest season. Occasionally associate members or invitees were added to make up two whist tables or, when ladies were included, to enliven the card games and provide a pretext for music and dancing.
Winnifred Hatch, brushing Marc’s freshly steamed frock coat earlier that evening, had winced at her father’s reference to lancers and galops, prompting Hatch to add, “You’d think you’d never kicked up a heel or hopped to a jig, girl, but I know better, don’t I?” Then he’d winked at Marc.
“You spend too much time living in the past,” Winnifred had snapped with more impatience than anger.
“Well, all I know is a person shouldn’t spend all their days doing good deeds.”
“Like taking care of them who can’t help themselves?” She paused, then shot him a telling look.
When she pulled Marc’s coattails down, it was with a brusque, dismissive gesture: he felt the steel in her touch, the merest hint of contempt.
“She’ll never find a husband,” Hatch had said as soon as they’d left the house. “God knows there’ve been many who’ve tried.”
“I’m surprised,” Marc said graciously. “Your daughter is a handsome and … efficient young woman.”
Hatch glanced warily, hopefully, at Marc. “That she is,” he said.
That hers was also a cold beauty did not need to be uttered.
“You’d be alone, would you not, if she were to marry?” Marc said, probing gently.
“I’m afraid that’s how she looks at the matter.” Hatch sighed. “But then, I’ve been alone since Isobel died.”
Philander Child was an englishman who had arrived in Upper Canada as a youth of eighteen, and in his subsequent thirty years in the colony had not permitted a whit of his God-given Englishness to be weathered away. His prosperity was evident in the layers and folds of his corpulence, and though he had grown fat upon the land, his mind had not forgone its lean and hungry motive. Having reaped a modest but irritatingly slow profit from farming (more accurately, from instructing others how to farm for him), he had turned to the law. The reliable flow of conveyancing fees bestowed by grateful associates and confederates of the ruling clique and the magic of compound interest had made him rich. Finally, appointment to the Legislative Council by the former lieutenant-governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland, yeoman’s service to the fledgling Bank of Upper Canada, and eventual retirement to Deer Park as magistrate for Northumberland County and superintendent of its quarter sessions had secured him a well-earned and affluent old age.