Unholy Alliance: A Marc Edwards Mystery

By Don Gutteridge

This locked mansion mystery is set in 1839 at a country estate north of Toronto. Marc and Robert Baldwin have been working tirelessly to effect responsible government in Upper Canada (Ontario). In a few months, Upper and Lower Canada (Quebec) will be joined in a single legislature, and savvy political leaders see this as an opportunity to forge a solid alliance with like-minded Quebec representatives to facilitate democratic reforms. The secret meeting with visitors from the Quebec Rouge Party includes the great Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine.
Enemies of responsible government are the ruling class known as the Family Compact who foresee their power and commercial advantage diminished. Spies are everywhere. When a butler is murdered, everyone at the meeting is a suspect. Marc and Cobb have three days to solve it and save Canada for democracy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Jul 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649698568

Don Gutteridge

Don Gutteridge is the author of forty books: fiction, poetry and scholarly works. He taught high school for seven years and then joined the Faculty of Education at Western University in the Department of English Methods. He is now professor emeritus and lives in London, Ontario.

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TWO

You’re looking a mite peaked, my friend, Oliver Bracken said to the other occupant of the coach as it slid nicely over the packed snow of the Kingston Road. Perhaps a nip of brandy might rekindle the blood?

It was late on a Tuesday afternoon and, despite the generally smooth passage, they had been travelling since daybreak from Kingston en route to Toronto. They had been a company of five at the outset, but three of their fellows had been dropped off at various crossroads along the way. Ever a garrulous man, Bracken had talked ceaselessly with everyone aboard except the prim and pale gentleman now seated across from him, who had merely mumbled during initial introductions and said nothing since. He was impeccably dressed but for the fact that he had wrapped several scarves around his throat and tied another below his chin so that it swaddled his ears and the top of his head underneath his hat. Despite the cold, which tended to redden the most reluctant cheek, the man had the pasty, disoriented countenance of someone far from home and weary of arduous travel.

Bracken held up a silver flask, and was gratified when his companion, without looking him in the eye, reached out, took it, tipped it daintily up to his lips, and drank.

Most kind of you, sir, he said.

The accent was English, and certainly a long way from central London. You’re welcome. Travel can be a most tedious business, Bracken said, taking the flask back and returning it to his coat pocket. And my surmise is that you have been journeying some distance beyond Kingston. All the way from the mother country, perhaps?

His companion nodded, but whether he was acknowledging the general point of Bracken’s surmise or the specific one was not clear. But Bracken, an important functionary with the Hudson’s Bay Company, was not easily put off. I don’t believe we were properly introduced when you joined us at Kingston, he said, and those who have recently left us, I’m afraid, tended to dominate the conversation. I am Oliver Bracken, from Montreal. I’m in the fur business.

Either the brandy had done its work or the pale gentleman had realized he had no choice but to enter the dialogue, for he managed a tight smile and said, I am Graves Chilton. And you have guessed correctly. I have come all the way from London.

My word! An ocean voyage at this time of year! No wonder, sir, that you appear, ah, under the weather. But let me assure you that we are only fifteen minutes away from the next stage-stop, and from there less than half an hour to the Cobourg Hotel, where a hot bath, good whiskey, a decent supper and a feather-bed await you.

I look forward to all four, then, Chilton said with just the slightest hint of irony in the remark. How Bracken knew where they were situated was mystifying, as this so-called highway was a single-track trail that meandered though the densest, snowbound bush imaginable. For mile after mile they had been weaving their way through a virtual tunnel of evergreens and black-branched hardwoods – with an equally primitive crossroad here and there at intervals along their route.

English gentlemen are received well in this part of the world, Bracken said effusively. My company, the Hudson’s Bay, is chartered by the Crown and has its headquarters in the grand old city of the Empire.

I am merely a gentleman’s gentleman, Chilton said carefully.

Ah, but a gentleman nonetheless! Bracken chortled, determined to be impressed.

A butler and a gentleman’s valet, to be precise, Mr. Bracken.

I see. And what brings you all the way from London to God’s country, if I may be so bold as to inquire?

What indeed! Three months ago he had been a very important person in a very prosperous household in fashionable Belgrave Square, fawned upon by his master’s lady, feared and respected by a staff of eighteen. Now he was freezing in the middle of a wilderness even God wouldn’t acknowledge as His, and heading for what was laughably called a city on this Indian-ridden continent. If Toronto were anything like New York or Syracuse, then he was doomed to a punishment wildly incommensurate with his crime.

And what manner of peccadillo had brought upon him such instant and unforeseen calamity? A weakness for whiskey, yes. But he had sworn off that devil’s brew, and had kept his vow for over five years. Surely a single tumble off the water-wagon deserved clemency, if not outright absolution. But, alas, that tumble had led him recklessly into milady’s boudoir, and thence into the bed of her handsome new upstairs maid. How was he to know that the girl was the daughter of milady’s destitute half-sister, and a virgin to boot? It had all been a sordid mistake. His affairs and liaisons and quick encounters with the kitchen help had heretofore gone unremarked upstairs and downstairs, for he was by common consent a superior butler: intelligent, deferential and authoritative. Moreover, he possessed exquisite manners and a gracefulness of movement that might have been envied by a ballerina or a mortician. But milady, who had discovered him and the deflowered niece aglow, so to speak, had been in no mood for understanding or compromise. He was dismissed, summarily and without reference. And only the threat of scandal prevented her from having him charged with corrupting a minor.

His master, however, had taken him aside and suggested that if he were willing to go abroad immediately, references could be supplied and a position arranged somewhere in the colonies. His master knew several prominent gentlemen in Toronto, Upper Canada, for instance, and was willing to write there on his behalf. What choice did he have? While he waited anxiously in a cold-water flat, wasting his precious savings on life’s necessities, inquiries were made and answers received. By the end of the first week in January, he was aboard a steamship bound for New York.

I’m on my way to become the butler in the household of a Mr. Garnet Macaulay of Toronto, Chilton said in response to Bracken’s question.

Ah . . . I’ve heard of the gentleman. Lives in Elmgrove. Fine manor house and old money: you’ll fit right in.

To Chilton’s mind that hardly seemed possible, given what he’d seen so far of the manners and habits of North Americans. After a two-week sea voyage in which he had rarely raised his head above a chamber-pot, he had spent eight days in a New York hotel shivering from a fever and exhaustion. And when he was finally fit to travel, he found himself repelled by people professing to be ladies and gentlemen – on the street, in dining-rooms, or crushed closely in coaches and sleighs. They were loud, boastful, coarse- mannered, ignorant, and blithely unaware of their monstrous shortcomings.

However, Chilton had been bred to politeness, so he said to Bracken, What line of business did you say you were in, sir?

Bracken’s face lit up. Furs! he beamed. Furs! The only business for a man of means and ambition to undertake in the Queen’s colonies. Let me tell you why, sir! There followed a flood of information about the glories and virtues of the mighty Hudson’s Bay Company, most of which succeeded in enthralling only the speaker himself. However, as consolation to the listener, he brought out the flask and passed it freely back and forth between them. Chilton had sworn off liquor ten seconds after being surprised by milady in her boudoir, and had managed to drink nothing but water and tea since. But that first medicinal sip of Bracken’s brandy had proved fatal. He drank greedily. What did it matter now anyway? He wouldn’t be arriving at Elmgrove until tomorrow afternoon. He had a whole night in which to sober up and reconfirm his vow.

Right now, believe it or not, sir, Bracken was saying, I am on route to Toronto to discuss some very important property transactions. Despite what you may have heard down in the States, this colony is about to go places. We’re on the move. Any gentleman with a nose for business and a little political pull can make his fortune. He chuckled and added, Even butlers’ve been known to get rich!

At this point the coach began to slow down.

Are we in Cobourg? Chilton asked, seeing only snow and trees on either side.

No, no. As I said, we stop to change horses at The Pine Knot, a wayside inn where we can get a cup of tea and a biscuit, and where the best coach- horses in the province are kept. We’ll only be there about half an hour, but I guarantee you’ll not forget Mrs. Jiggins once you’ve met her!

Mrs. Jiggins?

She runs the inn, does the cooking, and coddles her customers. And does most of the talking. Bracken’s cheeks blushed a deeper scarlet as he added, "A remarkable woman. Bessie’s got more tales than The Arabian Nights, and most of ‘em are twice as naughty!"

Chilton was ready to believe almost anything about this outpost of civilization. Surely she doesn’t see to the horses as well?

Not that she couldn’t, mind you, but she has Brutus to do that. Big fellow. Can’t say an ungarbled word in English, but just give him a horse to talk to!

Chilton shuddered, and glanced at the flask in Bracken’s hand. But he himself had drained it not five minutes before.

The coach slowed further, lurched to the left, and stopped. Without bothering to tuck in his silk scarf, the Hudson’s Bay gentleman opened the coach door and stepped eagerly onto the snow-packed clearing before a ramshackle, two-storey, half-log building that, to the English butler’s eye, might had doubled as a hog-barn. But it was not The Pine Knot that held his attention. Trundelling towards the coach at an alarming speed came a woman of generous girth and flamboyant attire, whose zeal to welcome weary travellers threatened to overtake her tiny pistoning legs. A tatty raccoon coat, unencumbered by buttons, flapped out behind her like a vulture’s wings, and left her tightly swaddled bosom to fend for itself against the winter chill. And no bonnet, by the look of it, had ever deigned to tame the wild spray of stiff orange curls that haloed the round, pink, unpowdered face.

My dear Bracken, she boomed just as she succeeded in decelerating and came to a nimble halt a foot in front of him. How delightful to see you once again, she added with a dainty leer. The coffee’s hot and my scones, as you know, are always warm.

Good to see you, too, Missus, Bracken said with a blush, and before he could blush again he found himself wrapped in Bessie’s arms – smothered in fur and squeezed perilously bosom to bosom. Thus pinioned, he was rewarded with a long, luscious kiss – lip to lip.

By this time Graves Chilton had stepped, hesitantly, out of the coach, but had moved no step closer to the inn or the clenched couple. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a shambling giant of a man come across the clearing to join the driver beside the lead horse, who was stamping and fretting at the harness. The big fellow was distinguished only by a burn-scar that disfigured the entire right side of his face. The driver smiled and shook his hand, then stood back as the fellow leaned his cheek against that of the horse and began murmuring to it, his wordless mumbo-jumbo instantly calming the beast.

When Chilton looked back towards the inn, he saw – too late – that Bessie Jiggins had released Bracken and was starting to move towards him. "And who’s this handsome devil?" she said, her blue eyes prancing in their pretty sockets.

Mr. Graves Chilton, Bess – a gentleman’s gentleman, from England.

As she launched herself in the butler’s direction, she noted the scarf holding up his chin, and cried, Got yourself a toothache, have you? Well, Aunt Bessie’s got just the cure for that particular ailment!

Just before the moment of impact, Chilton had time for one brief thought: perhaps he had made the right decision after all.

---

During the week before the secret conference was to begin, Marc Edwards, Robert Baldwin and Francis Hincks kept themselves busy in ways that would not raise the suspicions of their political opponents. They knew that the Tories and the Governor’s people were watching their actions closely, for even though the act uniting the two provinces was not expected to pass the British Parliament until June or July, its adoption was now certain. Some time in the autumn of this year or early in 1841 a new order was going to be declared. What then? Whose political might would prevail? Rebellion and its contentious aftermath in both provinces had left all the traditional alliances shaky and vulnerable. Would the French Bleus stick to their own conservative kind or throw their lot in with the radical French Rouges to forestall domination by les anglais ? In Upper Canada, there were now conservatives who were uncomfortable at being labelled High Tory, and the rump group of these latter reactionaries was increasingly wary of being yoked to the Orange Order, whose propensity for violence and extreme measures in defense of the British monarchy were alien to true