The Bishop's Pawn (31 page)

“Jesus Murphy,” was Cobb’s succinct response
at the conclusion of Marc’s story. “That’s some motive. We got the
bugger, ain’t we?”

“Not quite. But we certainly have enough to
beard the lion in his den.”

Cobb turned, looked at his friend and
investigative associate, and grinned: “An’ we’re only three blocks
away!”

***

Whatever song and dance Marc used to seduce Hudson at
the front door of the McDowell residence on George Street, it was
working because the giant manservant gave him a welcoming smile,
left Marc momentarily standing in the vestibule, and returned
shortly with a positive reply. To the butler’s astonishment – and
chagrin (the grinding of his teeth being audible) – Cobb had
slipped out from behind a forsythia bush and popped up behind the
gentleman he was leading towards the master’s study.

Mowbray McDowell greeted Marc with a
ready-made smile, which withered dramatically when he spied the
impudent constable.

“You told Hudson you wished to see me
regarding a political matter,” he said coldly to Marc. “Do you
require police protection to do so?”

“What we have come to discuss, sir, may very
well affect the politics of the province in the coming months,”
Marc said. “I have been asked by His Excellency to pursue further
the investigation of Richard Dougherty’s death, in which we have
good grounds to suspect a conspiracy. Constable Cobb and I wish to
ask you a few questions in that regard. That is all.”

McDowell paled, though with his alabaster
complexion it was not easy to see him do so. But an anxious
tightening around the eyes was clearly visible. He managed a small
smile. “Well, then, if Sir George wishes to pursue such a matter,
however frivolous it might appear to be, then I am happy to
cooperate. But he mentioned no such operation to me when we last
shared a carafe of Amontillado.”

He directed Marc to a chair opposite his own.
Cobb remained standing, helmet in hand. Hudson, who had already
taken Marc’s coat, stood outside the half-open door for a moment,
then discreetly retreated. The study itself was lavishly furnished
in the French manner. An elegant escritoire took pride of place
beneath a bay window of exquisite leaded-glass. A bowl of Dutch
tulips graced a swan-legged table. Several sombre paintings of the
Flemish school brooded on the interior walls. Here was a man of
substance unashamedly proclaiming his worth.

“The reason we have come here so many days
after the fact,” Marc began, “is that we have just recently
discovered that Reuben Epp, the man who did the actual stabbing of
Dougherty, is a cousin of Mrs. McDowell.”

“Your henchman here has already made that all
too clear,” McDowell said. Any initial sag in his confidence at the
abrupt arrival of the police had quickly been corrected. McDowell’s
eyes, a translucent blue, had the capacity to contract amazingly,
giving the impression of fierce concentration and cunning
intelligence. Breaking through this barrier would not be a simple
task. “In addition, Cobb insulted my wife and uttered a series of
preposterous accusations.”

“I do apologize, sir, for any
over-zealousness on the part of Constable Cobb. I assure you that I
shall be discreet and respectful of your privacy and of your
position in the legislature.”

“Well, then, why don’t you proceed with
whatever it is you feel compelled to ask me.”

“First of all, sir, did you know your wife’s
cousin?”

“Not really. We were never actually
introduced. I’ve only been here for a couple of weeks. Mavis told
me of his past visits and the few shillings she had given him out
of pity. She pointed him out at St. James, of course, and I might
have seen him leaving this house one day through the back
door.”

“So you have never spoken with him?”

“What would I have to say to such a man?”

“Did you approve of your wife giving him
money to keep him at bay?”

The blue eyes flinched ever so slightly. “I
wouldn’t phrase her charity in such a manner. Until this sorry
business with the Yankee lawyer, I considered Epp harmless. Mavis
thought his uncontrolled drinking might prove an embarrassment to
me as a political figure, but I have
real
enemies to worry
about. If she wished to indulge him, that was her concern.”

“But I understand that you and Mrs. McDowell
are partners in your political career.”

“We are,” he said with obvious sincerity. “We
have no children, you know, and so we have decided to work together
and combine our talents. Mavis is very intelligent, a talented
organizer, and equally ambitious for the future well-being of our
troubled province. We are committed to the cause of stopping
republicanism in its tracks.”

“You are conscious no doubt of the
extravagances and corruption that too much freedom has unleashed
among our southern neighbours?”

“Aren’t we all? That’s why we put down the
recent rebellions.”

“And you yourself would have observed such
moral and political turpitude in places like New York City?” Marc
said, as if he were merely nudging the dialogue along a natural,
and innocent, track.

But McDowell’s expression narrowed. He paused
before saying, “You are referring to the shenanigans of Tammany
Hall?”

“I’ve been told that you visited the
metropolis on behalf of your family’s business in Kingston.”

“That is so. I have had occasion to go there
a number of times in the past. But over a year ago, when my
father’s health began to decline, I decided to devote myself
entirely to my family and to politics. Mackenzie’s revolt was a
wake-up call for me. My brother took over the business and I began
to work for the Tory cause in Kingston. As you know, I won a recent
by-election and made the decision to move to Toronto permanently –
following my father’s death.”

Marc nodded sympathetically. Cobb had
remained standing, apparently bored by this gentlemen’s palaver but
actually studying every move that Marc was making in the chess
match of the interrogation.

“Then it is conceivable that you may have met
Richard Dougherty at some time?” Marc said amiably.

But there was nothing amiable in McDowell’s
reply: “I never met the creature, in New York or anywhere else. If
you had any idea of the outrages he committed that got him tossed
out of that state, you would not have the effrontery to ask me such
a question. I heard all about his malodorous exploits before I last
left New York, and I had no inkling that the vile degenerate had
landed in Toronto until I heard that Epp had dispatched him
straight to Hell.”

“You didn’t hear about the trial here in
January?”

“Of course not. I was immersed in my family’s
affairs in Kingston. And I do not appreciate the deteriorating tone
of your remarks. I have given you too much of my valuable time as
it is. I never met Reuben Epp and I never knew Richard Dougherty.
Surely that is all you need to know.”

Just as Cobb assumed that his partner was
about to give up – for the moment – Marc said, “Epp left his dagger
in Dougherty’s back, pinioning a note with the word ‘sodomite’
scrawled in red ink upon it. Everybody in town knows about that
word, but only the police know that it was written on a rare type
of bond-paper, manufactured in New York – the very brand that you
yourself happen to use.”

McDowell rocked back in his chair. He glared
at Marc as he might an opponent across the aisle who had callously
interrupted his speech. But behind the politician’s stare he was
feverishly reassessing Marc and this sudden turn of events. A slow,
gelid smile crept back into his face. “You come into my home, sir,
to accuse me of somehow being connected to the heinous actions of a
lowly verger on the grounds that a piece of notepaper,
allegedly
my brand, was found attached to the corpse?”

“Your complaint against Constable Cobb here
was written on Melton bond,” Marc said evenly.

McDowell almost laughed. “A brand of paper
that my father’s company has imported for several years, a brand
that I have begun promoting here in Toronto, numerous samples of
which my dear wife has been distributing gratis among my political
colleagues since November. Are you planning to accuse each of them?
You must be mad.”

He started to get up, but Marc’s next burst
of speech knocked him back, dazed:

“I believe, sir, that you knew Richard
Dougherty or that, in the least, you realized that he knew who you
were and what despicable things you had been up to on your visits
to the Manhattan Gentleman’s Club, and that, as you said, you
didn’t know he had come to Toronto. But what a shock you got when
you spied him in the foyer of the legislature two days before his
death. You must have panicked, and then started to cast about for
some way to silence him. He hadn’t seen you, but you knew it was
just a matter of time before he figured out who you were and what a
corrupt hypocrite you’d turned out to be. By chance, your wife’s
cousin was prompted by Dr. Strachan’s sermon that Sunday to do away
with the so-called sodomite alluded to by the Archdeacon. Somehow,
you got wind of his intention and not only helped him plan the
crime but provided him with that scurrilous note and fifty American
dollars, which we found in his shack. You even tore off the bottom
half of that note so it might look as if some escaped lunatic had
killed in a mad frenzy. You, sir, are an accomplice to murder!”

Cobb was almost as amazed as McDowell. Marc
had played all his cards at once. McDowell sat open-mouthed,
flushed, unable to speak, his anger poorly camouflaging the fear in
him. His lips moved, trembled, but shaped no words of rebuttal.
He’s gonna confess, was Cobb’s thought. Marc kept his gaze locked
onto McDowell’s face.

Finally McDowell was able to speak, in a
shaky voice that would not have carried over the front benches of
the Assembly. “Your temerity is as outrageous as your accusations.
They are nothing but wild speculation. You have not a shred of real
proof.” The high colour was draining from his face as he began to
get control of his emotions. His voice had regained some of its
arrogant presumption. “And if you so much as whisper a word of
these foul claims abroad, I’ll have you dragged into court and sued
within an inch of your life. Furthermore, when I apprise Sir George
of this Reform-inspired plot to publicly disgrace me and thus
cripple our opposition to the Durham proposals, you will be lucky
if you are not horse-whipped and placed in the stocks.”

There was as much bravado in the retort as
bravura, but the accused, within a hair’s breadth of capitulating,
had weathered the storm. The major, Cobb had to admit, had led with
his trump, and lost.

McDowell got up, still trembling but buoyed
by a surge of adrenalin and a renewed confidence. “Hudson! Show
these
gentlemen
out!”

But it was not Hudson who now stood in the
open doorway. It was Mavis McDowell. And the look upon her face
would have made a stone weep.

TWENTY SIX

She walked past Cobb and then Marc as if they were
not visible, and stood before her husband.

“Why, Mowbray?” she said in a hollow, pinched
voice. “I need to know why.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” he
said. “I was just – ”

“I heard everything. I’ve been standing at
the door for ten minutes.”

“Then you heard a lot of nonsense from these
– ” He stopped in mid-sentence and stared at her,
uncomprehending.

Her face was devastated, cadaverous – the
more so because she was not able yet to force out an ameliorating
tear. “I thought we were in this together, saving the province from
our enemies, getting you elected, setting up house here in the seat
of power. It was all we shared,
wasn’t it
?”

“But – but we still do!” he stammered,
looking much less sure of his ground now and not certain how he
should handle this crude interruption. “You don’t for a moment
believe – ”

“I resigned myself to having no children to
comfort me in your many absences,” she continued, as if he had not
spoken, in a toneless voice devoid of any passion and all the more
terrible and pitiable for that. “I got used to sleeping alone. I
pretended not to know of your unspeakable cravings because I loved
the good things in you, the things that needed nurturing, that I
thought would flourish when we agreed to start again, as partners;
when you made those promises to me on your mother’s grave.”

McDowell’s head bobbed and snapped back as if
his wife’s words were a prizefighter’s blows. He tried to tear his
eyes from her remorseless gaze. Desperately he shouted to Marc,
“Pay no attention to her. She’s been ill with a fever for two days
now. It’s made her delirious. Hudson!”

Mavis McDowell had already turned to Marc. “I
have the piece of torn paper you’ve been looking for,” she
said.

“The bottom half of the note?”

“She’s
crazy
! You mustn’t listen to
her! Hudson! Muriel!” McDowell tried to grab her hand, but she
jerked away in disgust.

“I keep every tidbit of cloth and paper I
find about the house, and Muriel does the same. I keep it all in a
basket in my sewing-room. When it gets full, I give it to the
Sunday school at St. James, for the children to make religious
crafts and toys out of. I remember Muriel emptying that waste-bin
over there, as she does every Monday morning. That little piece of
paper will be in my basket.”

She turned to leave, and staggered. Cobb
caught her by one arm.

McDowell had collapsed in his chair. He let
his head drop into his hands, and he began to sob. “I’m so sorry,”
he mumbled into his fingers, but he did not look up.

“Cobb, please take Mrs. McDowell to her
sewing-room and fetch Muriel to her,” Marc said. “And have a peek
in that basket.”