Solemn Vows (5 page)

Chastity was up instantly, her tears forgotten. “I’ll call Mrs. Danby and the maids,” she said briskly to Marc. “We’ve got to get her to a bed. Our coach arrives in less than an hour.”

“You’ll be all right?”

“I’m used to it.”

M
ARC WAS SEATED
on the front bench of the hustings exactly where he had been sitting when Moncreiff was shot. The platform was no more than four feet above ground.
And though Moncreiff had been snoozing upright in the second row, he could have been seen by any marksman at or above the level of the hustings floor. Luke Bethel out at Crazy Dan’s cabin had claimed the shot had come from the other side of the square, which must mean the eastern side. The boardwalk that surrounded the square was a foot high, and at least a dozen people had been standing on benches in front of the shops: that extra elevation could have been enough. If so, then anyone near the general store, the livery stables, the blacksmith’s, or the harness shop—or in the alleyways in between—might be a witness. He would need to question every merchant and tradesman who had been standing within or near their shops at the time of the shooting. Even then, the presence of so many strangers could easily make any interrogation fruitless. Add to the mix the probability that ninety per cent of the onlookers were Reform sympathizers who would be disinclined to answer questions from military investigators about the death of a Tory.

While Marc was willing to take Prudence Maxwell’s dismissive description of her brother-in-law at face value, she was unlikely to know much about his political or financial affairs—or his personal peccadilloes for that matter. Like it or not, he would have to probe into the man’s life in a manner that was sure to enrage the power-brokers in the Family Compact (of which Moncreiff was a nominal member) and ruffle feathers just about everywhere else.

“Would you care for a smoke?” Angus Withers sat down beside Marc and offered him a cigar similar to the one he was puffing on.

“No, thank you.”

“I find a good smoke helps me think. Either that or it just anaesthetizes the thought processes to the point where I don’t give a damn any more.”

“I wanted to ask you, Dr. Withers, about the wound, if you don’t mind.”

“That’s why I came out. The ladies and I—well, only one of them can be legitimately termed so—have to be off for Yonge Street in half an hour.”

“What was the angle of entry? It might help me determine the vantage point of the shooter.”

“Unless the poor devil was lying sideways on his bench—”

“He wasn’t. He was dozing, but otherwise perfectly upright.”

“Then the bullet struck him just under the right shoulder, broke through a couple of ribs, ripped out his lungs, and exited through the fleshy muscle above the left kidney. Only the lungs were hit, no other organ.”

“So he had to have been shot somewhat from the side, the right side.”

“And from a point considerably above where we are now perched.”

While Dr. Withers worked on his cigar, Marc scrutinized
the eastern edge of the square. There was only one place the gunman could have been for that trajectory, and, even then, he would have to have been a crack shot. If indeed Langdon Moncreiff had been the target.

“Thank you, Doctor. At least I know where to begin.”

And with that, Marc strode deliberately towards the harness shop.

G
ood afternoon, Sergeant,” the harness-maker boomed cheerily, coming out to greet Marc on the wooden walk in front of his shop. “We been expectin’ someone like yerself to come callin’, haven’t we, Sarah-Mae?”

Sarah-Mae, as tiny as her husband was gargantuan, poked her bonneted pink face out from behind her better half.

“I’m Phineas Kimble, harness-maker to three townships for twenty-two years.” He threw out a hand the size of a pig’s rump. He towered over Marc, who was himself almost six feet and accustomed to peering downward when he talked.

“How do you do, sir,” Marc said. “I’m Lieutenant Edwards, and I’ve been asked by Governor Head to discover who committed the heinous murder of Councillor Langdon Moncreiff earlier today.” Kimble’s handshake was surprisingly gentle, the fingers as supple as the leather he worked for a living.

“I don’t reckon the governor does too much askin’.” Kimble grinned.

“Do you want to come in, Lieutenant Edwards?” Sarah-Mae said in a soft, musical voice. “I’ve just made some tea.”

“Officers in the British army don’t sip tea at five in the afternoon, Sari-girl. Why don’t you just whisk on into my study and fetch us a bottle of the best brandy?”

“Nothing, please,” Marc said. “I merely wish to ask you and your wife some questions about the shooting. It will only take a minute or two.”

“Well, sir, we saw it all,” Sarah-Mae volunteered. “Didn’t we, Phinn? The whole, horrible thing. I near to fainted right here on the walk.”

“I caught her just in time, though, as you can see fer yerself, there ain’t much to catch!”

“We was standin’ here watchin’ the proceedin’s from about two o’clock onwards, Phinn and me and our three eldest.”

“We closed up shop like everybody else on the square,” Phineas added. “We got a better view by standin’ on one of our benches.”

“And a lot of others did likewise,” Marc said. “There
must’ve been about three dozen people around the edge of the square with a bird’s-eye view of the murder.”

“Surely, then, somebody saw somethin’, Sergeant,” Kimble said. “All we could see from here is the old fella rear up like he’d been rammed you-know-where with a hot poker and then crumple backwards with a big swatch of blood under his arm. Then all hell broke loose.”

“Did you see a man run past the general store with a gun in his hand?” Marc asked quickly, then stared intently at Kimble’s raw-boned face as he reached for an answer.

“Well, now, funny you should ask me that,” he drawled. Was he stalling? Marc wondered. “Sarah-Mae didn’t see a thing fer several minutes, but when I looked up from steadyin’ her, I did see the old geezer sprintin’ fer Bill Frawley’s pinto by the stables. Looked to me like Crazy Dan, though I ain’t seen him in a dog’s age.” He paused and returned Marc’s searching stare.

Marc hesitated, then said, “It was Crazy Dan. But he didn’t do any shooting.”

“I thought not. Still, I found it awful puzzlin’ at the time.”

“Oh, why is that?”

“Well, Sari here figured she heard a crack like a gunshot somewheres nearby, but the baby’d started to cry back inside the shop and my boys was makin’ a considerable racket and the crowd was just startin’ to applaud, so she wasn’t sure—but then when I seen Crazy Dan doin’ his act and everybody
and his aunt hollerin’ at him to stop … well, I just figured she must’ve been wrong about it.”

Sarah-Mae was bobbing her pink chin in agreement.

“Did you not hear the shot?” Marc said to Kimble.

“Can’t say as I did.”

“Phinn don’t always hear too good in June,” Sarah-Mae said by way of explanation.

“Hay fever and devilish terrible sinus,” Phineas explained. “Plugged up like a constipated cow.” To Marc, his ears looked as if they were too big to be plugged by anything.

“Well, you’ll not be overly surprised, then, to learn that we have good grounds for believing that the assassin’s bullet came from the opening up there in your garret.”

Harness-maker and wife looked up slowly, in tandem and in joint puzzlement. “You mean the attic?” Phineas asked.

“Yes.”

“But there ain’t been nobody up there since Cecil was born ten years ago,” Sarah-Mae said in what appeared to be genuine alarm.

Marc turned to Phineas: “Would you be kind enough to take me up there?”

“If that’s what you want. We’re always pleased to be able to help an officer in King Billy’s service. Ain’t we, sweetheart?”

Sarah-Mae bobbed her chin, then added, “But you may have to
fly
there.”

A
S
M
ARC STARED UPWARDS
at the back of the establishment, he saw the problem. The shop rooms of the business occupied the first floor, and the Kimbles lived in the apartment that comprised the second floor. A rickety ladder led up the outside wall to a small Spanish-style balcony that had long since lost most of its ironwork.

“When Sarah-Mae and me first come here, that ladder was the only way we could get from the shop to our bedrooms and parlour,” Phineas explained patiently. “After one arse-freezin’ winter, I cut a hole and built a proper set of stairs inside the house.”

“What about the attic room?”

“You got in through a hatch in the parlour ceiling. We used to store saddles and extra harnesses up there, but so many bats and raccoons got in that after a while I just sealed up the hatch and plastered over her. And as far as I know, nobody’s been up there since. Even the coons seem to have found better spots to batten down in.”

“How would you get in if you really had to?”

Kimble looked at Marc as if he thought this were a trick question. After a pause, he said, “Can’t ever see why I’d want to do such a fool thing, but if ever I did, I’d use that vine growin’ up alongside and hoist myself up to the back window there. The vine’s as thick as Sari’s wrist and there’s never been glass in that window.”

“Then that’s what I’ll do.”

“’Course, the balcony could crumble as soon as you put yer big toe on it.”

Marc took this as an example of the man’s humour. “We are positive that the shot came from that room, so I must examine it carefully.”

“Then I better go with you,” Phineas said quickly.

“Suit yourself,” Marc said.

They moved over to the foot of the ladder.

Marc whistled. “Someone’s been on this ladder recently. That break is fresh.”

“Coulda been one of the boys, or the neighbour kids.”

Marc ignored this and stepped onto a sound rung. Once on the balcony, he immediately spotted, in the inch-thick dust on the plank flooring, unmistakable signs of bootprints, though they were smudged and gave no indication of what boots had made them. But they were man-size, and fresh.

“It wasn’t a youngster who made these,” Marc said as Phineas crawled up beside him.

“And it sure as hell wasn’t me!” Phineas raised a giant boot into a smooth patch of dust to make his point.

“And now we shinny our way up there,” Marc said, grasping the vine and giving it a trial tug with both hands. In this sort of gymnastic, he had only to draw upon his innumerable childhood experiences playing pirates or crusaders on his adoptive father’s estate. Within seconds he had scaled the wall and hauled himself through the paneless window. Then he turned to give the floundering harness-maker a hand up.

While Phineas was surveying a room he had obviously not seen for some years, Marc went immediately to the opening on the far wall. The late-afternoon sun poured into the weathered room and illuminated every detail. Smudged footprints led directly to the rotting sill. Marc ran his fingers along the ledge and paused.

“Could be a groove left there by a musket barrel,” Phineas said, peering over Marc’s shoulder. “Or any other kind of tool.”

“Perhaps, but this is used in only one kind of tool,” Marc said, holding up a wrapping that had been bitten off a paper-sheathed bullet. “And here’s the mark on it.”

“You can tell the kind of gun from that?”

“That and several other things,” Marc said. “The shooter, as you can see, was a good fifty yards away from the hustings as he knelt here and rested the barrel of the gun in the notch on the sill. No smooth-bore gun would be accurate from this distance, so our assassin must have used a rifled bore, which would account not only for its accuracy but for the damage it did to Moncreiff. The marking on the wrapper suggests that the rifle is of French design, a model of some recent make copied by the Americans. I’d hazard a guess that this is a U.S. army rifle manufactured within the past five or six years.”

Phineas took a minute to absorb this series of logical deductions. “So you’re tellin’ me that some Yankee free-booter climbed up into my attic while Sarah-Mae and me
were standin’ no more’n ten feet below on the sidewalk and blasted the bejesus out of the councillor?”