“I have to believe you’re right,” Hatch sighed as they turned west onto the Kingston Road and headed back towards Crawford’s Corners. “Someone, a smuggler or an insurrectionist, was standing up there when poor, unsuspecting Joshua came up the Indian trail. There doesn’t seem to be any other reason for a man to stand on that exposed ledge and puff on a pipe except to get a view of the trail and anybody on it. And if he didn’t intend to kill Joshua, then he left him in the snow to die, which amounts to the same thing in my book.”
“And His Majesty’s,” Marc said.
“How do you plan to proceed with this?” Hatch said, alluding to the lieutenant-governor’s warrant that Marc had shown him. “I gather you don’t intend to involve Sheriff MacLachlan in Cobourg?”
“Not right away,” Marc said. “Now that we’re almost certain we have a crime of some sort here, wouldn’t it be wiser to let people think everything’s all right as is, especially those with something to hide?”
“But you’ll have to question folks, won’t you?”
“When I know a lot more than I do now.”
“You’ll have to tell Beth Smallman,” Hatch said, in a tone halfway between command and entreaty.
“Probably. I’ll work that out when I see her.”
“You can walk over there in the morning, if you like. And tomorrow being Wednesday, I can just cart you along to the weekly meeting of the Georgian Club, as we call it. You’ll get all the background information you need there. In the meantime, it’s getting late, and a man of my girth and wit requires a regular intake of his daughter’s cooking.”
“Better than army rations?”
“What isn’t?” Hatch laughed. “And you’ll be wanting to meet my Winnifred. She’ll be back from the quilting bee by now and wondering where the hell I’ve gotten to.”
The not-unhandsome daughter, Marc mused. Would she prove handsome enough to account for the prolonged stay of a visiting ensign-perhaps one of her dead mother’s distant cousins from the Old Country?
On their right as they passed the intersection of the highway and the Pringle Sideroad, Hatch pointed to a quarry-stone house just visible through a screen of trees. “That’s Philander Child’s establishment. He’s a county magistrate, but most folks just call him the Squire. We’ll be going up there tomorrow night.”
“And that must be the local tavern.” Marc indicated a square-log cabin of considerable size, gabled like a true inn. Nearby were several semi-detached sheds and one rambling livery stable.
“One of them. The respectable one. Run by James Durfee and his wife. You’ll meet James tomorrow night.”
“He’s the postmaster?”
“That’s right.”
“Then I’ll need to meet him now,” Marc said.
After introducing Marc to Durfee simply as a visiting gentleman from the garrison and a protégé of Sir John Colborne’s, Constable Hatch took his leave and rode across the intersection, or “corners,” towards the mill and his house next to it. If James Durfee was meant to be impressed by Hatch’s remarks, he restrained himself admirably. He was a plain-speaking man, born in Upper Canada but of Scots extraction, with a ready smile qualified only by a pair of watchful dark eyes.
“We don’t get many soldiers on furlough this far from Muddy York, as we used to call Toronto before she took on those citified airs,” he said. “Despite the obvious attractions hereabouts.”
Marc smiled as he was expected to. “I’m here on official business,” he said, accepting with a nod the wee dram offered and seating himself on one of the wooden chairs scattered about the outer room, which no doubt served as the principal drinking quarters of the inn. A plank bar and tapped keg of beer stood nearby. At this moment, Marc was the only customer.
“Business of a pleasant sort, I trust,” Durfee said.
“I’m not at liberty to say much about it at the moment, but Hatch is bringing me to your club meeting tomorrow night. I’ll have a lot more to say then.”
“Ah,” Durfee said, downing his whisky. “You’ll be most welcome. But it’s not been the same club without Joshua Smallman.”
“You knew him well?” When Durfee gave him a quizzical look, Marc said quickly, “Hatch told me about the tragic accident.”
“I see. And tragic it was. Joshua and me grew up in the Cobourg area, you know. Joshua went off to York when he was twenty, married, and did well in the dry goods trade. Then when his son, his only child, turned his back on the business, there was a falling out of sorts. Jesse, poor bugger, came here when this township was first opened up-to become a farmer and show his father he could make it on his own.”
“Hatch mentioned that the young Mrs. Smallman is a widow.”
Durfee again seemed puzzled by how much information this casual visitor had managed to cajole out of the usually discreet miller. But there was an openness, naïveté even, about the beardless young man before him that begged his confidence and trust.
“Jesse died a year ago December,” Durfee said. “That’s why Joshua came back. And why we done all we could for him and Beth these past months.”
Marc waited quietly until Durfee whispered, “He hung himself. In the barn. His wife found him.”
Emma Durfee pressed Marc to stay for supper, but he assured her that Winnifred Hatch was expecting him to dine at the mill within the hour. Mrs. Durfee, as round and plump as her husband was spare and gnarled, smiled as if she were privy to some mutual conspiracy. “Ahh,” was all she said, but it was meaning enough. When Marc failed to take the bait, she added with feigned reluctance, “Well, there ain’t a man in the district brave or foolhardy enough to ignore the wishes of the handsome Miss Hatch.”
Marc was beginning to wonder if “handsome” was part of Miss Hatch’s Christian name, in the manner of the pilgrims’ “Goody.”
When Emma Durfee left the room to tend to her own cooking, her husband leaned forward and said to Marc, “You must’ve had some other reason for droppin’ by than to say hello and sample my finest.”
“Hatch tells me you have a safe.”
Which turned out to be an understatement, for the iron box that governed the otherwise modest space of Durfee’s office (itself adjoined to the taproom by a sturdy oak door) was roomy enough to have housed a successful brood of chickens and intimidating enough to have kept them safe from a regiment of foxes.
“It’s been in the wife’s family for years. We sledded it over the lake last February.” Durfee fiddled with the dial and then drew the door open slowly, like a proud jailer who has no doubt about his dungeon’s impregnability. “What’ve you got that needs protectin’?”
Marc dropped the leather pouch he had taken from the Yankees’ saddlebag onto Durfee’s rolltop desk. Then he gave the innkeeper the same abbreviated and carefully edited version of his encounter with Connors and O’Hurley he had given Hatch.
“I’m surprised to hear that,” Durfee said, letting his breath whistle through the pair of wooden teeth on the left side of his jaw to emphasize his point. “Them two’ve been sidlin’ about the province for several years now, and they’re like most Yankee peddlers we get here-quick with the lip and about as trustworthy as a bull in a field of heifers. But they’ve never been known to do violence to anyone: all bluster and no delivery.”
“I kept their saddlebag as security,” Marc said. “As an agent of the Crown, I’d like you to witness my opening it, and then keep it in your safe until I can deliver it personally to Government House or the sheriff of York. I’m going to write up a description of the two renegades and have you send it off to Toronto tomorrow.”
“I’ll put it on the special courier comin’ out of Cobourg at noon,” Durfee said, and he stood beside Marc while he unbuckled the pouch and shook its contents onto the desktop. A wad of papers secured by a lady’s pink garter fell out.