The Widow's Demise (16 page)

“Looks like your pals have fallen asleep,”
Glenna said to Crow. “Can’t hold their liquor.”

“I’m still awake,” Crow said, cupping his
chin in his hands.

“Good for you,” Glenna said. “Here, finish
off my wine, will you? I’ve got to find the facility.”

It was at this precise moment that Marc
Edwards entered the tavern. His tall bearing and gentleman’s attire
immediately attracted the attention of the bar’s patrons. He felt
several dozen eyes upon him. Which suited him fine, for he said in
a loud voice:

“Is there anyone here who intends to vote in
the election? There’s only forty minutes to go.”

“What election?” said Gert to Crow.

“Holy Jesus! We were heading to Danby’s to
cast our vote.” Crow looked over at Marc and waved. “Over here,” he
said.

Marc came over to the table. “You wish to
vote?” he said to Crow.

“Yeah. And so do my friends here.”

“You ain’t gonna leave us?” said Glenna,
returning.

“We gotta vote,” said Green. “Sorry.”

“I’ll help you,” Marc said.

“We was hopin’ you boys would come home to
our place for a little . . . ah, supper,” said Glenna.

“Help me wake these fellas up,” Crow said to
Marc.

“You got transportation?” Marc said.

“That’s our hay-wagon out front.”

“You won’t get far in that,” Marc said. “The
left real wheel is off it.”

“Oh, my God,” said Crow.

“What about us?” Gert said.

“Sorry, but we gotta go,” Crow said, shaking
Powell, who had slumped face-down on the table.

“I’ll see if Murphy has a carriage to let,”
Marc said. “You get your friends awake and upright.” Marc brushed
by the two women and found Murphy behind the bar.

“You got a carriage or wagon for hire?” Marc
said.

“I’ve got an old broken down barouche and a
team,” Murphy said. “It’ll cost you money.”

“I’ll just need it for an hour,” Marc
said.

“Five dollars,” Murphy said, whose support
for Reform only went so far.

Marc gave him the money.

Ten minutes later, Green and Powell were
dozing in the back of the barouche, which had had its roof torn off
and its seats ravaged by mice. A stableboy was hitching up a
mismatched team of drays.

“Look after the Percherons hitched to that
hay-wagon,” Marc said to the stableboy. “And see if you can find
someone to put that wheel back onto it. There’s a shilling in it
for you if you can.”

“They’ve fallen asleep again,” Crow said in
disgust.

“Don’t worry. We’ll wake them when we get to
the poll,” Marc said. He hitched his own horse to the back of the
barouche, and cracked the reins over the horses’ ears. The barouche
moved forward – south towards Danby’s Crossing. The two women stood
in the doorway, watching them go. Behind them was D’Arcy
Rutherford. He wasn’t smiling.

***

It was five minutes to six when Marc pulled up to
the rail outside Danby’s Inn. All three farmers were now awake –
pale and sickly looking, and unsteady on their pins. Marc helped
each one out of the carriage.

“Now, fellows, get in there and vote.”

The farmers tottered into the foyer, where
the returning officer was standing behind his table with his
poll-book open and his watch in his hand. He looked startled at the
last-minute arrivals.

“We’ve come to vote,” said Green.

And one by one they opted for the Reform
party. The final count was Arthur Dingman: 260; Louis LaFontaine:
263.

The celebration of Louis LaFontaine’s victory was
heartfelt but muted. Gilles Gagnon’s trial was to begin on Monday.
The principal parties and a few other well-wishers congregated in
the generous parlour of Baldwin House. Louis gave a speech of
thanks that moved his audience.

“I owe a debt of gratitude to Robert Baldwin
here that I can never repay, whose generosity and dedication to our
mutual cause are legend in Canada West. The importance of this
victory today cannot be exaggerated. For I have been elected in an
English-speaking riding entirely by English speakers. I – a rebel
and a Catholic and a Frenchman. This will send a message to my home
province that French and English can collaborate, can be united in
a single cause: the quest for justice in a responsible government.
I look forward to serving beside Robert in the new Legislature.
And, as a result of my staying here in Canada West for almost a
month, my English has improved, if ever so slightly.”

Louis gave a smile as applause rained down
upon him. Robert spoke next.

“This moment is a significant one in our
history. Louis and I intend to create a Reform administration,
sooner rather than later. The immediate future may look uncertain –
with the proroging of Parliament due to the grave state of health
of our Governor – but the long term looks sanguine indeed. Any new
governor will be compelled to accept the status quo and the gains
we have already made. Gentlemen, the future is ours.”

The gathering broke up at midnight, Marc
having excused himself an hour earlier to get a good night’s
sleep.

***

A great deal of care and money had been put into the
construction of the Court House and its matching neighbour, the
jail. The interior was as austere as it was magnificent. It was all
polished oak and filigreed plaster. The high bench gleamed down
upon the side-galleries and lawyer’s lecterns with impressive
majesty. Behind the attorneys’ seats were several rows of pews for
the VIPs. Monday morning was taken up with jury selection. By two
o’clock in the afternoon the trial was ready to begin.

It was in the robing room that Marc
discovered who his adversary would be: Sheldon McBride. McBride was
as rotund as he was orotund, a short, bejowled man with a full
white beard and bushy eyebrows. In his flamboyant wig and flowing
robe he looked like an ageing tragedian or Moses on the Mount. Marc
knew the fellow’s reputation for histrionics and fulminations, and
respected him for it. But he welcomed the challenge. Cobb had
provided him with plenty of ammunition to take into the fray.

Once in the courtroom, which was packed, Marc
glanced up at Beth in the side-gallery nearest him and then up at
the prisoner standing in the dock. The judge entered the courtroom,
the indictment was read, and McBride, resplendent in his robes,
rose to give the opening address to the jury. He outlined the case
as prime facie open and shut. The defendant had been discovered by
a policeman moments after the fatal blow had been struck – acid
tossed into the face of an innocent woman of stature in the
community, which caused her to fall and impale herself on a spike,
resulting in her death. The charge was murder. The motive was rage
at the rejection of the accused’s attentions to the lady. Witnesses
would be called to corroborate this contention. Moreover, the
accused had been caught red-handed with the empty vial of acid in
his hand and the victim’s scratches on his face. McBride sat down,
well satisfied.

Marc was brief. He said the evidence would
show that someone other than the defendant committed the murder,
seconds before the policeman arrived, and that there were others
with stronger motives and opportunity to commit the crime.

McBride then called the Crown’s first
witness: Dr. Angus Withers.

McBride leaned on his lectern and said, “Good
afternoon, Dr. Withers. Let me begin by asking you when you arrived
at the murder scene?”

“I got there, apparently, about fifteen
minutes after Constable Wilkie came upon the scene,” Withers
said.

“And what did you find, sir?”

“I found Constable Wilkie and Constable
Rossiter standing near a woman’s body lying prone on the ground.
Another man was sitting nearby. Constable Rossiter was keeping the
onlookers back and Constable Cobb was keeping an eye on the seated
man.”

“Do you see that man in the courtroom?”

“I do. It was the prisoner in the dock.”

“Did you examine the body of the woman on the
ground?”

“I did. She was dead, recently dead. She was
lying on her back. Her throat had been pierced by a sharp
object.”

“And could you identify that object?”

“Yes. There was blood on one of the sharp
spikes that constituted the low fence around the front lawn of
Rosewood.”

“You know the house?”

“Everybody does. And I recognized the woman
immediately as Mrs. Cardiff-Jones, an occupant of Rosewood and
widowed daughter of the Attorney-General.”

“What else, besides the gash on the throat,
did you notice about the body?”

“The cheeks and lower jaw had been singed or
eaten away by what could only have been acid thrown in her
face.”

This brought a murmuring from the
galleries.

“Could that have been the cause of
death?”

“No. While infinitely painful, it would not
have killed her.”

“Were you able to determine the type of
acid?”

“Yes. The police gave me the vial found at
the scene, and in it I found traces of hydrochloric acid.”

“What, then, was the cause and manner of her
death?”

“I can only speculate that the acid was
thrown in her face by someone very close to her and that as she
spun away and fell forward, she landed on the low, spiked fence and
severed her jugular – causing her to bleed to death.”

“Did she die right away?”

“No. She was found on her back, so she must
have turned and staggered forward again before collapsing for
good.”

“Did you examine the victim’s
fingernails?”

“I was asked to do so by the police.”

“What did you find?”

“I found blood and bits of skin.”

“Belonging to the victim?”

“No, sir. There were no other marks on the
body except the ruined face and the slashed jugular.”

“Were you asked by the police to examine a
scratch on the accused’s face?”

“I was.”

“And what did you find?”

“I found evidence of his left cheek having
been recently scratched.”

“Was it consistent with the blood and skin
under the victim’s fingernails?”

Marc was on his feet. “Milord, there is no
way of Dr. Withers determining whose blood and skin was under the
victim’s fingernails.”

“Yes,” said the judge, a veteran of the
Queen’s bench named Laidlaw. “That calls for an opinion the coroner
is not able to substantiate. Move on, Mr. McBride.”

“But the accused had been very recently
scratched and you found foreign blood and skin under the victim’s
fingernails?”

“The blood had scarcely dried on the
scratches,” Withers said.

“We may reasonably assume a cause and effect
between the two items, may we not?” McBride said smoothly.

“Milord,” Marc said, rising, “the Crown is
summing up.”

“You know better, Mr. McBride,” said the
judge, but Mc Bride had already made his point.

“I have no more questions, Milord,” said
McBride, sitting down.

“Your witness, then,” Judge Laidlaw said to
Marc.

Marc rose to his lectern. “Would the victim
have had enough strength to scratch the defendant’s face in the
manner suggested by the Crown?”

”Only as a reflex action. Perhaps, if the
perpetrator still had the vial in his hand, she thought she was
under attack again and lashed out instinctively.”

“But that is highly speculative?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You said that the acid was not the primary
cause of death?”

“Correct. Death was a result of the loss of
blood.”

“Then whoever threw the acid intended only to
harm the victim, not to kill her?”

“She might have died eventually as a result
of the wound to her flesh.”

“But that is not certain?”

“No, sir.”

“Strictly speaking, then, Mrs.
Cardiff-Jones’s death was an accident, an unforeseen result of the
acid throwing?”

“Possibly. But only if the acid was thrown
first. There could have been an initial struggle, the victim could
have been pushed onto that spike, then acid thrown to disfigure
her.”

“But that is mere speculation, and, I put it
to you, it is highly improbable.”

Dr. Withers, an old pal of Marc’s, smiled
wryly. “I suppose so.”

“No more questions, Milord.”

Next up was Constable Ewan Wilkie. He stepped
nervously onto the witness-stand, where he stood drumming his
fingers on the rail.

“There is no need to be nervous,” McBride
said in a somewhat patronizing tone. “Just answer my questions as
best you can in plain and simple language.”

“Yes, yer Honour,” Wilkie said.

McBride winced, but carried on. “Constable
Wilkie, tell the court exactly what you saw on the evening of the
crime as you were on your patrol along Front Street.”

“Well, sir, I was walkin’ east and it was
gettin’ dark, but up ahead, in front of Rosewood, I seen a man
hunched over somethin’ on the ground.”

“You didn’t see right away that it was a
body?”

“No. I just saw this fellow hunched over,
with somethin’ in his hand.”

“You weren’t alarmed at first?”

“No, sir. Then I thought the fellow might be
hurt so I started to walk faster towards him.”

“Then what did you notice?”

“I seen that a woman was layin’ on the ground
and the man was hunched over her. He had a glass vial in one of his
hands.”

“This was the same vial that the coroner
found to have contained hydrochloric acid?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When did you know that the woman was
seriously hurt or perhaps dead?”

“When I got up to the man, I saw blood all
over the lady’s chest and the ground around her. Her eyes were open
but she wasn’t seein’ anythin’.”

“And what did the man with vial do then?”

”He looked up at me and he looked real
scared.”

“And you saw a fresh scratch on his
face?”