Minor Corruption
Authors: Don Gutteridge
Tags: #toronto, #colonial history, #abortion, #illegal abortion, #a marc edwards mystery, #canadian mystery series, #mystery set in canada
A Marc Edwards Mystery
by
Don Gutteridge
ISBN: 978-1-927789-49-0
Published by Bev Editions at Smashwords
Copyright 2015 Don Gutteridge
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Other Books in the Marc Edwards Mystery
Series
Toronto: September 1840
“So you’re finally gonna let me have a peek at the
legendary Uncle Seamus?” Beth said to Marc as the brand-new
brougham veered off Brock Street north onto the bush-path that
meandered its way up to Spadina House.
Marc gave eighteen-month-old Maggie an extra
dandle on his right knee and responded to his wife’s remark in a
similar bantering tone: “It’s not as if we’ve been hiding him under
a bushel, and the dear fellow can’t help it if his antics have made
him notorious in the stuffy drawing-rooms of Tory Toronto, now can
he?”
“Would anyone be paying attention at all if
the man wasn’t a Baldwin?” Brodie Langford called back from his
perch on the driver’s bench. He was able to turn only partway
around, not because he felt obliged to keep an eye on the pair of
spirited horses in front of him but because he did not wish to
remove his arm from the willing shoulder of his fiancée seated
beside him.
“Possibly not,” Marc laughed as he held
Maggie up so she could see the forest flowing past them and marvel
at the goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace that bloomed flamboyantly
along the edge of the path and in the beaver meadows here and there
along their route. It was Maggie’s first trip out of town, and she
was wide-eyed with wonder.
“Well, he’s been here since July, hasn’t he?”
Beth said without turning her own gaze away from the view on her
side of the carriage or disturbing the baby asleep against her
breast. “And he hasn’t shown up at Baldwin House or anywhere else
that I’ve heard.”
“Seamus Baldwin emigrated here for the sole
purpose of retiring to the bosom of his family. Why should he wish
to leave the company of his brother and nephew and his nephew’s
children and the delights of Spadina-in-the-woods and brave the
urban ruckus of the city?”
“What I’d like to know,” Diana Ramsay said
from under Brodie’s left arm, “is what exactly makes him
notorious?”
Diana was governess to Robert Baldwin’s sons
and daughters, and although stationed in the Baldwin’s town-house
at Front and Bay Streets with her charges, she had accompanied them
often out to their country retreat, Spadina.
“But surely you of all people would know?”
Marc teased. “You’ve seen the great man up close more than any of
us.”
“I have, and as far as I can see, he’s a
jolly elf of an Irishman who loves a jig, a sentimental song and a
good joke. What’s more, he’s become the darling of Mr. Baldwin’s
children, especially little Eliza.”
It was to celebrate nine-year-old Eliza’s
birthday that Marc, Beth, Maggie, baby Marcus Junior, Brodie and
Diana were jogging along towards Spadina on an early September
morning in full sunshine under a cloudless sky. Brodie had just
taken possession of the brougham – with its elegant, retractable
roof, Moroccan leather seats and oak trim – and although he could
afford to have several servants (and did), he had not yet
relinquished the reins to anyone but himself.
“Ah, but what songs! What jigs! What antics!”
Brodie laughed as he gave Diana a discreet squeeze.
She gave him in return a gentle elbow in the
ribs. “You’ve only seen him once,” she chided, “and that was in
July just after he came.”
“It’s you two who are going to be notorious,”
Marc said with mock solemnity. “Perhaps you should shorten your
engagement, eh?”
The young couple laughed, as they were meant
to, but the date set for their wedding, more than a year off, was
not really a laughing matter. Although now a wealthy young
gentleman and budding banker, Brodie was not yet twenty-one and
Diana, several years older, had accepted his proposal only when he
promised to wait until all four of Robert Baldwin’s children were
comfortably settled in school and she could, in good conscience,
leave them in the hands of another governess.
Maggie squealed and clapped her hands as a
scarlet tanager flew up out of a pine tree ahead of them and
fluttered in surprise over the horses’ heads.
Marc sat back with his daughter in his lap
and let her excitement play itself out. How much more content could
a man get? he thought. Last April Beth had presented him with a
son, Marcus Junior (now purring away in his mother’s arms). Soon
after, work began on the five-room addition to Briar Cottage, more
than doubling its size, and by midsummer it was completed. Maggie
had a nursery to herself, Marc a study and library, Beth a
sewing-room (also used as an office in her capacity as owner and
manager of
Smallman’s
ladies shop on fashionable King
Street), and their new live-in servant, Etta Hogg, had a small but
satisfactory bedroom. And for all of them, a spacious parlour with
a fieldstone fireplace. Their long-time servant, Charlene Huggan,
had left them in June to marry Etta’s brother, Jasper. The couple
took up housekeeping next door in the Hogg family home, caring for
Jasper’s sickly mother and doing their best to expand the Hogg
dynasty.
Whenever he was not supervising the
construction – carried out by Jasper and his new business partner,
Billy McNair – or keeping watch on an unpredictably mobile Maggie,
Marc found some time to assist his friend Robert Baldwin in his law
chambers and to confer with Robert, Francis Hincks and other key
members of the Reform party. Even politics, against all odds,
seemed to be moving in their favour as both Reformers and Tories
continued to lobby and plot in the run-up to the new order of
things: the union of Upper and Lower Canada in a single colony with
a common parliament. The Act of Union had been passed in the
British Parliament in July, and it required only the Governor’s
official declaration to become an irreversible reality, a move
widely expected early in the new year. After that, of course, fresh
elections would be held in each of the constituent provinces, and
then it would soon become apparent whether French and English,
Catholic and Protestant, Tory and Reformer could resolve their
ingrained differences and make the unified state prosper where its
individual parts had so glaringly failed. Unbenownst to the Tories,
however, the Upper Canadian Reformers, last February, had concluded
an accord with the Quebec radicals, and their hopes were high that
together they could effectively dominate the new parliament. And
that alliance had held and been kept secret now for over six
months.
“You aren’t gonna talk politics today, are
you?” Beth said as they rounded a bend and came in sight of
Spadina. It was not really a question.
“I wouldn’t think of it,” Marc said. “We’re
here to celebrate a little girl’s birthday, aren’t we?”
A skeptical tittering from the driver’s bench
seemed the only comment required.
***
It was a glorious late-summer day, and the
festivities were organized to take full advantage of its blessings.
A picnic luncheon was to be served on the broad, sweeping lawn
behind the grand Georgian manor-house that Dr. William Warren
Baldwin had designed and had had constructed out here northwest of
the city proper. Extra servants had been commandeered just for the
occasion; the fruits of the season – snow-apples, melons, grapes
and several species of sweet, ripe nuts – had been gathered and
prepared; and three trestle-tables had been set out in
white-clothed splendour beneath a towering elm. For Robert Baldwin,
a widower now for four years, this birthday celebration was both a
homage to the absent Eliza and a joyous, grateful day of
thanksgiving for the one still alive and thriving.
Before being ushered onto the picnic grounds,
Marc and his party were greeted at the front door by Robert and his
father and mother, and seconds later Beth was introduced to, and
took a first impression of, the infamous Uncle Seamus. Before her,
holding onto her gloved hand and kissing it lightly, was a short,
wiry gentleman impeccably dressed in morning-coat and freshly
pressed trousers. He sported a great shock of grey-white hair,
which alone gave the illusion of bulk and height, but it had been
at least partly tamed by pomade. The face was angular and pixyish,
completely unlike the strong, regular and handsome features of his
younger brother William and his nephew Robert. But it was the eyes
that arrested Beth’s attention. They were large and a pale blue,
their size and roundness exaggerated by the bony sockets that
attempted to contain them, as if a pair of moonstones had been
inadvertently dropped there and left to fend for themselves. When
he stepped back and straightened up, Beth noticed that his clothes,
though covering his nimble limbs appropriately enough, seemed
somehow incongruous, as if his body had suddenly shrunk inside
them. Beth had the feeling that he had come out of the womb as a
fully-formed gnome and had grown older and marginally larger in
slow, measured degrees.
“I am most honoured to meet the lady who
takes such good care of our Mr. Edwards,” smiled the elfin
uncle.
“It’s been far too long between visits,”
Robert said to Beth. “Your husband and I really must withdraw from
politics and the law long enough to observe and enjoy the more
important things in life, mustn’t we?” Then by way of illustration
he reached out and took a willing Maggie out of Marc’s arms.
“You mustn’t chide yourself,” Beth said,
giving the baby an affectionate squeeze. “We’ve all been far busier
than we ought to. And you have four very fortunate children, who
see you every day.”
“Who are already in the back yard whooping it
up,” Dr. Baldwin said. “We’d better see to them, eh?”
“And I hear more little rascals coming up the
drive,” Brodie said as shouts of laughter echoed through the open
front door.
“You good people go on through to the
garden,” Uncle Seamus said affably. “I’ll stay here and play
butler. Go on with you, Miss Diana. Eliza’s been waiting for your
arrival since breakfast.”
“Yes, yes,” Dr. Baldwin said. “Please do. Let
us not stand upon ceremony.”
As Diana, Brodie, Robert (with Maggie tucked
under his arm), Marc and Beth (babe in arms) moved down the hall
towards the rear of the house, Beth whispered to Marc, “Robert’s
uncle seems like a proper gentleman, doesn’t he?”
“Disappointed, are we?” Marc teased, then
squeezed her hand.
Behind them a roar of laughter and a
cacophony of little-girl giggles erupted.
***
It was a children’s party all the way. Eliza was
Robert’s favourite, and he had spared no expense and overlooked no
detail to make the day as perfect as possible, given the whims and
vagaries of nine-year-olds. Eliza’s older sister Maria and her
brothers William and Robert had been assigned various supervisory
and administrative roles, and carried them out with a lawyerly eye
for protocol and decorum. The birthday girl herself was supported
by a cast of almost two dozen of her peers, who included not only
several cousins and the children of Robert’s friends and associates
(Robert Sullivan, his law partner, Clement Peachey, the firm’s
solicitor, and Francis Hincks) but the offspring of neighbours in
town and half a dozen youngsters from the nearby cluster of homes
housing several of the mill-hands who worked for the local miller,
Seth Whittle. Even eleven-year-old Fabian Cobb had ridden out in
one of the special carriages arranged by their host, seduced as he
was by visions of bonbons and prizes for the swift and
dextrous.