Solemn Vows (28 page)

“You’re mad.”

“And you’re repeating yourself, Lieutenant. But I’m not mad, you see, only angry. And twice as clever as you, you who’ve set yourself up as regimental know-it-all. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here listening to you whine and beg. You’ll be astonished to learn that I’ve known every pathetic move you’ve made in your so-called investigation—sometimes before you yourself did. You made it particularly easy for me to have Crazy Dan killed: it was you, remember, who failed to give the proper order, not me.”

Marc’s mind returned to that horrible episode and to the
events that followed. Willoughby certainly had been in a position to clarify the order, and had chosen not to—a deliberate scheme to have Dan blamed for Moncreiff’s murder and then conveniently silenced. When Rumsey was fingered, Colin must have been in quite a panic, even though he’d taken pains to disguise his identity in his dealings with him at the Tinker’s Dam. But with Rumsey dead and the governor happy, Willoughby would be in the clear. Only Marc stood in his way. And all that “remorse” he’d suffered had been for the inadvertent murder of Moncreiff, not the mangled corpse of the innocent and harmless Crazy Dan.

“You’re the fool,” Marc said, realizing that his only hope of survival was to keep Willoughby talking until some plan or other suggested itself to him. “I hadn’t the slightest suspicion it was you who hired Rumsey. I even had evidence from Rumsey that seemed to point to the governor as his target. You’ve risked this charade for nothing!”

Willoughby merely laughed. “So you think that’s what this is all about, do you? I can’t for the life of me see why the governor chose you to investigate a murder.”

“Why am I here, then?”

“Because I hate your guts, that’s why. I hired Rumsey to blow your brains out, and when he failed I thought of nothing except how to do the deed myself. But first I had to make sure I wasn’t found out. Then, when the chance of taking your job for a week came up, I thought, well, perhaps I can show Sir Francis Bonehead that I am your superior in every
way after all, perhaps I’ll even get what I was promised when the old fart took me on back in London: I was to be his aide-de-camp! He made a promise to my father! A solemn vow! And he reneged on it.”

“You cannot blame Sir Francis—”

“I blame you! That’s why you’re trussed up like a capon for the pot! I want you to know exactly why I hate you, what I have suffered at your hands, and why I need to watch you cringe and cower and beg like a dog for your miserable life, and then watch you die slowly like a fly in porridge.”

The odour from the vat that Marc was resting against was suddenly overpowering. He felt his stomach heave. “All this just because I was commanded to take your job—against my will?”

Willoughby did not answer. He pushed the lantern forward into Marc’s face so that his own features were obscured. Only his voice—bitter, enraged, irrational—now carried his venom to its target. “You really have no idea, do you? Well, then, sit back and listen while I tell you a story. It’ll be the last one you’ll ever hear.”

“But I’ve tried to be your friend, I—”

“Quite true. My anger over the governor’s betrayal was intense when I arrived with him in January. He told me you were recommended by Sir John and his hands were tied, and so on. But I was already suffering, and it took little to drive me back to drink and whoring. It was you who kept me from going under when you got back from Cobourg.”

“And I knew you’d had a bad love affair in—”

The lantern was drawn back marginally so that only the sleep-deprived, whisky-slitted, bloodshot eyes could be seen. “But you didn’t know, Mr. Investigator, did you, that the woman who jilted me was here in Toronto?”

“That’s impossible, you came—”

“I came out here, four months after she abandoned me and left me to perish in the sewers of London. She herself came out here in November—to escape me!”

Marc could hear the maniacal chuckle deep in Willoughby’s throat as he watched the truth register in his victim’s face.

“You can’t mean Eliza?”

“She might’ve been Eliza to you, but she was Rosy to me—always.”

“You’re making this up, you’re—”

“—mad. So you’ve said. But it was Miss Dewart-Smythe, my darling Rosy, my dear, dear pink rose.”

Eliza, who was forever surrounded by flowers, by pink roses, Marc remembered with a start.

“You will be amazed to learn—arrogant fool that you are—that she was besotted with me even when she suspected me of being dissolute and unfaithful, even when I came to her bed stinking of other women. It was her meddling uncle who undid me, who found out what I was up to in the stews and opium dens—and that my father was threatening to disinherit me. Well, that news put paid to
the engagement, after the second banns had been publicly proclaimed! I was ruined.”

“That’s why your father arranged for you to come out here.” Marc continued to twist at the rope binding his hands, as he strove to keep Willoughby talking. The pain in his ankle prevented even the slightest attempt to loosen the bonds around his feet.

“He didn’t know, but I did, that Rosy was heading this way also.”

“But why did you—”

“Because I still loved her, you fool! You insensitive fool! And as soon as my feet hit the wharf here, I made straight for her house.” A chilling, brutal tone took over the voice and its twisted narrative. “You can’t begin to imagine how that cold bitch treated me! She made me stand on the porch in the snow, she ordered me to stay five blocks from her house or else she would go directly to the governor and destroy any hopes I had of advancement here.”

“And you managed to keep away, even though—”

“I had to! But, Christ Almighty, how I hated and loved the bitch at the same time. I wouldn’t expect an egotistical bastard like you to understand, but I loved her from afar more than ever, even as I plotted ways to avenge her snub.” He chuckled softly and added, “I found a couple of scoundrels at the Tinker’s Dam only too willing to burgle St. Sebastian’s precious wine cellar.”

Willoughby had no idea just how closely Marc could identify with the remark about loving from afar.

“Then back you come, taking my job away from me, and then, suddenly, in April I see you with my Rosy, and I see the looks you give each other, and I can’t believe my eyes: you rob me of my rightful appointment and then you steal the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

“But I didn’t know, you should have—”

“Shut up! I don’t want to hear another word from you or I’ll dump you into this vat right now.”

Marc said nothing, but his mind was racing. Willoughby could be no more than three or four feet away. He had been crouching low so as to stare his victim down and reap the rewards of his slow, mental torture. If Marc could get him talking again, perhaps he could use his bound legs as a battering ram—painful as that might be—and topple Willoughby off the catwalk. It did not seem likely that he could free his hands: already he could feel blood trickling down his palms.

“Taking my Rosy was the last straw. I began to plot my revenge. I heard about this Rumsey fellow at the Blue Ox and I sent a note to him in a roundabout way, and we met at the Tinker’s Dam. He had no idea who I was, but when he saw ten dollars in his palm, he came on board. I sent him the information about the governor’s trip to Danby’s Crossing. A murder on the hustings, I calculate, will throw everything into confusion: people will naturally think the governor was the target. Who’d want to kill a no-account like you, eh? And the beauty of it is, I will be standing near the platform when the shooting takes place, so I can’t be suspected. I’ll even get to turn around and pretend to be shocked at your
face blown apart, while I’ll be laughing inside. But you always find a way to bugger things up, don’t you? You even managed to get your buggy tipped over on King Street and that foolishness got the governor all sweated up about Angeline—who’s no angel, by the way—and that got me assigned to guarding the little ball-breaker for a week instead of leading the governor’s guard and showing him I was better at the job than you, the incompetent that got Crazy Dan killed. If you hadn’t tried to play Sir Lancelot on King Street, I might have gotten what I truly deserved. I might’ve even tried to forget about Eliza. So, you see, in your own blundering way, you ensured your own death.”

Willoughby started coughing. And Marc noticed that some of his words were slurred: he had doubtlessly been awake since yesterday, and had probably been drinking rotgut whisky in some dive. That meant he was beyond exhaustion and, most likely, in that state of final euphoria just before the mind and body collapse around each other. If only …

“And here’s the best of it, you conniving, immoral bastard. Angeline’s driving me crazy with her juvenile chittering, and she won’t let me near her, so I go looking for solace elsewhere, and I remember Lady Maxwell batting her lashes at me in February at the Grange, so I sneak into her bed and she goes off like a bombshell, and I’m feeling so mellow I even begin to think maybe you’re not a hypocritical arse-hole after all.”

“But you tried to club me to death!”

“I got myself drunk at some blind pig and went a little crazy. And I damn near got caught—it gave me quite a fright. I discovered a button missing on my tunic when I got home. But not before I snuck back to Lady Lascivious, and she wraps those fat stumps around me and lets me stay till morning. I begin to feel generous again, the world doesn’t seem so bad when you’re getting it regular—I even have thoughts of replacing Hilliard between Chastity’s thighs. But then you go and do it again—seal your own fate. For what do I find when I slip back into Somerset House last night after everybody’s gone and the master’s tucked away with his own doxy, but a hot-blooded woman already primed for her lover. Except when I wake up in the morning, there’s something interesting on the floor beside the bed—”

“My shako …” So it had been Willoughby at Prudence’s door, not her husband. “But, Colin, I was only—”

“I told you to shut up and listen! What I want you to know—to take with you as the muck clogs your throat—is that the hardest part of all this was not outfoxing you. That was easy because your arrogance knows no bounds and blinds you to what’s right in front of your nose. No, the hardest part for me was having to pretend, day in and day out, that we were friends while the very thought of having to smile at you made me want to retch.”

Marc braced himself for the one chance that remained. He heard Willoughby begin to stand up, so he swung his
legs together in a vicious arc, hoping to catch Willoughby behind the knees. They cracked into the vat, and Marc screamed with the pain of it. Willoughby had leapt nimbly out of the way.

“Nice try, Lieutenant. There’s no use struggling. You’re a dead man. But if you beg a little, I might let you live a minute longer. If you’ve got a final prayer, you’d better start saying it now.”

Marc said nothing. His prayer was fervent but wordless. His hands went up to his shirt, where he had tucked away Willoughby’s note. If he was to die, so be it, but when the brewers fished him out of the vat, they would find the murderer’s incriminating message.

Willoughby laughed, and there was nothing human left in it. “Looking for this, Lieutenant?” He dangled the note between his thumb and forefinger in the patch of light from his lantern. Then he set the lantern down and tore the paper to shreds. “It’ll make a fine addition to the brew, won’t it?” And he laughed again: an hysterical cackle. “And so will you. I’m going to get away with the whole thing. As soon as I’ve seen you suck in your last breath, I’m going down to the warehouse and roll a few casks off the dock, so when they find your body contaminating their beer, they’ll think you surprised the booze burglars and got surprised yourself. And who knows, some people may even think you died a hero!”

Marc felt Willoughby’s powerful, vengeful arms begin
to lift him up, as one does a cripple. He twisted feverishly, and even tried to bite his tormentor. He felt his injured foot strike the iron edge of the open vat, the wort bubbling and lethal just below.

“Stand where you are, sir! You’re under arrest!” The voice was loud, coming from somewhere in the darkness below.

Cobb’s commands struck Willoughby with the force of a truncheon, and he dropped Marc in a heap onto the catwalk. Willoughby wavered as if he had been stunned, or perhaps the effects of sleeplessness, rage, and drink were taking their toll. Marc rolled away towards the vat. He didn’t relish tumbling on his own off the catwalk and cracking his skull open on the stone floor of the brewhouse. Cobb was climbing the ladder with the aid of a lantern, making him an easy target for Willoughby, who, seeing exactly who the challenger was and that he was alone and unarmed, staggered towards the spot where the ladder met the catwalk floor. On his way, he knocked over his own lantern, and it shone upwards, allowing Marc to see that he was drawing a pistol from his belt and cocking it.

Marc could hear Cobb’s feet clumping on the rungs of the ladder as he climbed bravely and foolishly upwards. In desperation, Marc started rolling over and over towards Willoughby. At any moment he expected Colin to wheel and put a bullet into him, but he seemed fixated like a snake, waiting for Cobb’s face to rise up above the ladder before shooting him point-blank.

Marc struck Willoughby just behind the knees. He toppled instantly: first forward, then, in trying to right his balance, sideways—kicking the lantern as he did. There was a short, pathetic shriek, a splash, and then silence. Marc hauled himself up—two-handed—to the rim of the vat into which Willoughby had pitched. He reached down for the lantern, fumbled with it, got its handle between his hands, and held it up over the surface of the vat. He could see nothing. Cobb could be heard huffing up the final few steps of the ladder.

Suddenly there was a whoosh and a frantic splashing, as Willoughby broke through the murky surface and began flailing in the froth. Marc could make out only the hollows of his eyes and mouth.

“Reach your arm up this way!” Marc cried, realizing as he called out that he could not raise his bound wrists above the iron edging of the vat. However, the sound of Marc’s voice—the familiar ring of its command—seemed to cut momentarily through the absolute shock that had gripped Willoughby, and he stopped thrashing about for a second and stretched out his right hand—still gripping the pistol—towards the safety of the vat’s rim. At the same moment, Cobb thumped up beside Marc. In the unsteady gleam from Marc’s lantern, the constable thrust his arm out over the bubbling wort. As he began to sink back down, Willoughby managed to clutch Cobb’s wrist in a death-grip, and the pistol plopped harmlessly away. Cobb grunted, and then started to haul Willoughby slowly but surely towards him.
Willoughby’s head and shoulders rose up out of the yeasty mass, like a stag out of quicksand.