Minor Corruption (13 page)

“There is one positive side to all of this,
though.”

“I don’t see none.”

“Here is a persuasive case as to why the
Toronto constabulary needs the services of an experienced and
dedicated investigator. The only way to work out of this mess, from
the standpoint of the town council, is to show that the police are
unbiased, objective and politically neutral. We’ll get the facts,
and they alone will determine justice in this case.”

Cobb realized that the Chief was telling him
that the future of the force as he envisioned it lay in this
constable’s hands. He would be given charge of the case and, except
that he would not be in plain clothes, he would be a
de
facto
detective. The new breed. Moreover, as they both knew,
not only would Cobb not have access to support and advice from Marc
Edwards, Marc might well be pitted against him, as the Major’s
personal loyalty to the Baldwins and his unwavering commitment to
the Reform cause were never in doubt.

“So how do we go about gettin’ the true
facts?” he said to the Chief.

“Get yerself out to the mill. Question all
the hands. Someone must have seen a man with puffy white hair
skulkin’ about the place. See if any of them young bucks at
Whittle’s had anythin’ to do with young Betsy. If the rapist wasn’t
Seamus Baldwin – and we gotta keep an open mind on this, despite
the sincerity of Jake Broom – then it was one them mill-hands. For
all we know, Broom might’ve been tricked by the light or simply
panicked and
thought
he saw a puff of white hair. You’ll
need to look over the scene real careful. Find out where everybody
was just past noon on that day.”

“But that was two months ago!”

“Ah, but the day before there was a tornado
that tore through the bush and a big wind that blew in windows and
knocked down trees. They’ll remember, all right.”

“They’d better.”

“For the moment, though, there’s no need to
go back to Spadina. If you feel you haveta go, it’d nice to have
some further evidence to take with you.”

“I’ll need to quiz the servants about Uncle
Seamus, as they call him. If Betsy and him
were
makin’ eyes
at each other, they somebody would’ve seen it.”

“But will they tell us, eh? You’ll need all
yer skills on this one, Cobb.”

And the constable’s notorious tact.

SEVEN

Cobb began right away. At the Chief’s suggestion he
rented a horse and buggy from Frank’s livery, and headed up Brock
Street to the Spadina road. Although Jake Broom had been warned not
to say a word about his statement and had assured them that he had
told no-one except the police about what he had seen, Sturges urged
Cobb to try and reach the mill before the young mill-hand did. Cobb
got lucky. A quarter-mile from the cut-off to the mill, he spotted
Broom in the bush at the side of the road, taking a leak. He
hurried on by. Ten minutes later he drew up in front of the mill
office. A local farmer had just unloaded a wagonful of Indian corn,
and roared past him in a flurry of hooves.

“Good day to you, too,” Cobb said, jumping
down.

Seth Whittle, the miller, was standing in the
office doorway. He stepped out to greet Cobb, a worried look on his
face. “Young Broom ain’t in trouble, is he?” he said.

“Not at all, sir. He come to the police with
information about an incident that took place here last August. My
name’s Cobb, and I been asked to investigate.”

“I’m Seth Whittle.” He held out a large,
calloused hand that seemed at odds with his otherwise plump, almost
flabby, body. He was fair-skinned and sunburnt with thinning
reddish hair.

“I’ll need to talk to you and then the rest
of yer crew who were workin’ here last August the third.”

Whittle whistled through a gap in his teeth:
“That’s some while back Only thing I remember about that time was a
big wind, some say a tornado, that come blowin’ through here to
damage one of the sluices on my weir.”

“Yer milldam?”

“Yup. And, now I recall, the very next
mornin’ old Dennis Johns come in here drunk and tipped a whole load
of wheat on the ground over there. Injured his horse in the
bargain. Survived himself by landin’ on his thick skull.”

“Then it oughta be easy fer you to recollect
some other things that day.”

“You said there’d been an incident?”

“Accordin’ to a sworn statement just made by
Jake Broom to the police, Betsy Thurgood was raped in a stall in
that there barn. Just after noon hour on August the third.”

“That ain’t possible.”

“Maybe so. But that’s what I been ordered to
find out.”

“Nobody in my crew would’ve done somethin’
like that to little Betsy. She was our pet. We all adored her.
We’re all still wearin’ black, as you can see.”

Cobb noted the black armband.

“Must’ve been some stranger hidin’ out there.
But I still don’t think it could’ve happened here.”

“If you’d let me use yer office, I’d be much
obliged.”

“Certainly.”

Whittle looked genuinely upset, but whether
it was grief, guilt or fear Cobb could not tell.

***

Cobb settled himself down behind the miller’s desk.
He told Whittle to inform each of his men – Joe Mullins, Sol Clift
and Burton Thurgood – that they were to be questioned one at a
time. Whittle was not to forewarn them, and following his
interrogation, each man was to remain in the office and keep quiet.
Cobb didn’t want them fabricating a joint story. As instructed,
Whittle returned from this task, looking very anxious. He sat down
across from Cobb, obviously uncomfortable in the unfamiliar and
less authoritative chair. Cobb silently congratulated himself.

“Let’s begin, sir, with you tellin’ me about
this lunch-hour business.”

“Well, Betsy’d worked on special occasions up
at Spadina since she was twelve. She’d become a favourite up there,
and whenever she did work, Mrs. Morrisey, the cook, made Burton a
special lunch and Betsy was allowed to bring it down here.”

“When did she start permanent up there?”

“About a week before the day we’re talkin’
about. Then she come here regular, every noon.”

“Okay. Now tell me what went on here –
startin’ with Betsy’s arrival.”

Whittle tweaked his right ear nervously, as
if it might jar his memory. “That’s a while ago, but I remember
because of the spill and the fuss in the forenoon and the fact that
Betsy didn’t bring her father’s food here fer three or four days
after that. When she did come back, she just said she’d been sick.
I never dreamed – ”

“Did she seem her usual self then?”

“Well now, as far as I could tell, yes. We
always teased her a bit about workin’ fer the swells up at Spadina
and she always had a shy little laugh.”

“On the third, a Saturday, who all was in
this room havin’ their eats?”

“All of us. The usual bunch, that is: me,
Burton, Sol, Joe and Jake. I recollect because it took all five of
us to clean up old Dennis’s mess. I got blisters on my blisters
that day.”

“How long did Betsy stay?”

“I couldn’t swear to it after all this time,
but she never stayed more’n ten minutes. And she always arrived
right on the strike of twelve. There’s a path through the woods
from here all the way through to Spadina.”

“I see. And you lease this mill property from
the Baldwins?”

“I do. They own all the land hereabouts. But
I got a fifty-year lease. That’ll see me out.”

“And they own Trout Creek as well?”

A faint blush reddened Whittle’s cheeks
between the freckles, and his round, friendly eyes narrowed
slightly. “Every drop of water and blade of grass.”

“So let’s say, then, that Betsy arrives at
noon and leaves at ten after twelve.” Cobb jotted the time down in
his notebook. “Did you see her cross the road and head into the
bush – direct?”

Whittle paused to think this over. “I don’t
believe she did. But Sol Clift might be able to help you there. He
made some remark about it, I think. But I can’t remember
exactly.”

“So all five of you were here when she left,
and you stayed to finish yer eats. How long did that take?”

“The men have an hour for their lunch. But
about twelve-thirty that day, Burton Thurgood and me left to go
upstream to repair the sluice at the weir.”

“That the tornado damaged?”

“That’s right. We’d started cuttin’ and
fittin’ some new logs that mornin’, but had to stop and help clean
up the spilled grain.”

“So you was anxious to get back there?”

“We were.”

“How long were you there?”

“Oh, I couldn’t say fer sure. But there was
two or three hours work there.”

“And you and Thurgood were together?”

“The whole time.”

Well, Cobb thought, that jibes with what Jake
Broom swore to. When he got back to the office to report the rape
to Whittle, the miller had already gone. But where was Betsy from
twelve-ten to twelve-thirty? Already in the barn being
assaulted?

“And you saw or heard nothin’ unusual while
you was workin’ up there?”

Whittle thought about this. “No,
nothin’.”

“Could you see the barn from the weir?”

“No, there’s a clump of trees between
‘em.”

“All right, thank you. Now please bring in
Mr. Mullins.”

Joe Mullins was ushered in, and Whittle was
banished to a bench in the storage room next door. Mullins was
about twenty-five years of age, of medium build, fair-skinned but
well-tanned – with dark red hair slicked down. He looked nervous
but not frightened.

Cobb gave him a brief account of what might
have happened in the barn on August the third, and noted the look
of genuine horror that crept into his face.

“Not our Betsy? Not here?”

“We have reason to believe so, but I need to
know where everybody was and what they were doin’ that noon hour
and just after.”

The tornado, damaged weir and grain spill had
a salutary effect on the young man’s memory. Cobb was pleased to
see that he did not view himself as a suspect during the
interrogation.

“Betsy left at her usual time. Just before
half-past, the boss and Burton left to fix the weir. I left about
five minutes later to go fer a stroll and a smoke.”

“What direction did you go in?”

“Not towards the barn, which is just north of
here. I always go southwards down to the ravine where the creek
makes a big turn. It’s peaceful down there. And there’s a trout
pool – a good one, though we’re forbidden to angle. The Baldwins
keep the trout fer themselves.”

There was no real resentment in Mullins’
remark, just an acknowledgement of how things are. “So you just had
a smoke?”

“My pipe, yes.”

“Did you see or hear anythin’ unusual?”

After a brief pause, Mullins said, “Not
really. Old Seamus Baldwin was down there, but he often is. He’s a
keen angler.”

Cobb almost swallowed his tongue. Uncle
Seamus was
here
on that day! Not a hundred yards from the
barn. When he could get his thoughts aligned again, Cobb said, “And
he was fishin’?”

“Come to think of it, he wasn’t. He was just
walkin’ up and down. He didn’t see me as I’d finished my pipe and
gone to rest fer a bit in the grass. Then I went back up to the
mill and started work fer the afternoon – about five to one or
so.”

Cobb thanked him and waved him to the
storeroom. Looking both worried and chagrined, Whittle obediently
went back into the mill and called for Sol Clift.

Clift was a tall, gangly chap of some thirty
years, nearly bald, and so thin he was almost skeletal, except for
the bands of muscle built up after some dozen years in a
grist-mill. He had big puppy eyes that stared at you without
blinking. Cobb thought he might be a little on the “slow” side.
When Cobb filled him in on why he was here, the shock of the
apparent rape registered sharply in his face, and the big eyes
watered.

“Not our little Betsy?” he breathed.

“It looks so, lad. Now you can help me catch
the bugger that did it by answering my questions carefully.”

Sol corroborated much of what Whittle and
Mullins had reported, adding that Jake Broom had left about ten
minutes before one o’clock to see to the sick horse, and then he
himself had gone back into the mill.

“How far away would you say the barn was from
here?” Cobb asked him.

“Oh, about a hundred yards or so. You could
get there from here in a minute or two.”

“Now one last thing. Mr. Whittle mentioned
that you might have seen which way Betsy went when she left
here.”

Clift dabbed at his eyes. “I was sittin’ over
there, where I always do. I like to look out the window. That day
Betsy didn’t go straight across the road as she was supposed to.”
He hung his head.

“Where would she go?”

He peered up, abashed. “I seen her go past
the window. She smiled at me and put a finger to her lips.” The
pain of that memory was etched on his face.

“Headin’ north?”

“Yeah. Up towards the barn.”

Cobb’s heart skipped a beat. “The barn?”

“She liked to look at the horses. And the
Shetland pony Mr. Whittle keeps as a pet. She brung them apples and
carrots. I promised her I’d never tell on her ‘cause her father
wouldn’t like her not goin’ straight back to Spadina. But it won’t
matter now, will it?”

“No, it won’t. But it may help me catch the
culprit.”

Cobb struggled to keep his excitement in
check. His fingers trembled as he jotted down the key times and
movements: he did not want to rely exclusively on his prodigious
memory. So far he had reliable and corroborated testimony that
Betsy Thurgood had in fact been in that barn, possibly from
twelve-fifteen until the rape occurred. If Jake Broom left the mill
office a few minutes before one – say, ten to the hour – then he
would have reached the barn and observed the rape-in-progress just
before one. Seamus Baldwin, who was looking more and more like the
guilty party, was spotted by Joe Mullins lurking a few minutes away
near Trout Creek shortly after the half-hour. Then Mullins drifted
away, giving Baldwin enough time to slip up through the bush to the
barn and discover Betsy feeding the horses. As her confidant at
Spadina, he might know of her passion for the animals and expect to
find her near them. The rape might well have begun about
twelve-fifty or so and been near completion when Jake Broom came
upon it. Cobb took a few minutes to complete his notes.