Governing Passion (14 page)

“But you are willing to accept his judgement
on the matter of an alliance?”

Madame Poulin paused, and finished her tea
before saying, “He is a great man, a great Frenchman. Many people I
know are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“But he will have to tread carefully?”

Madame Poulin smiled, unwarily. “Indeed he
will. And he won’t be helped by this murder.”

“Oh. How so?”

“Well, Michel tells me they’ve charged one of
his mates just because he’s a Frenchman. And here you are, coming
around to see if Michel might be part of this thing.”

“But I’m trying to find out who really did
it,” Marc said. “I’ve talked to Jacques LeMieux and I believe him
when he says he is innocent.”

“I see. Then I hope you’re successful,
because to the French people in town – and there are a lot of them
in the capital for the work that’s going on everywhere – it will
look like a case of racial bias.”

“That’s why LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin
have put me on the case. They are in the middle of negotiations
with possible supporters of our cause and any racial conflict
locally will not make them any easier.”

“Well, Michel and Denis are nice boys. You
can safely look elsewhere.”

Marc stood up. “Thank you for your frankness,
ma’am. I’ll convey your thoughts on the union to Mr.
LaFontaine.”

Marc said goodbye at the door and left. While
he sincerely hoped that Michel Jardin did not kill Dunham, he still
could not rule him out. Even his brother Denis was a possibility,
though only Jardin, Manson and Leroy knew that Dunham was going to
be on guard duty that night. Unless, of course, Michel mentioned it
to Denis. Marc turned back and surprised Madame Poulin at the
door.

“Sorry to bother you again, Madame, but I
forgot to ask about Denis Jardin. Was he here last night?”

“He was here all evening with my son and me,
playing cards. I saw him off to bed.”

Marc thanked her again and left, quite
satisfied with his visit.

***

Gregory Manson’s boarding-house was only a block
from the Clarendon Hotel, on Queen Street, so Marc returned the
horse and cutter to the livery stable and walked to the place, a
one-storey clapboard cottage. He was shown in by the landlady, a
Mrs. Brownwell, who was as thin as a stork with a nose that would
have made that bird proud.

“I’ve come to ask you about the whereabouts
of Mr. Manson last night,” Marc said when they were seated in a
small, comfortable-looking parlour.

“This is about the murder?” she shuddered. “I
just heard about it a little while ago. Horrible business. A body
ain’t safe on the streets no more.”

“I think the streets are safe, ma’am. The
murder took place way out at the hospital, which is being turned
into Parliament.”

“Yes, ain’t it excitin’ that Kingston is to
be the new capital. We’re plannin’ on buildin’ a splendid city
hall, and there’s ever so much construction goin’ on everywhere.
The only sad thing is that there are so many Frenchies comin’ in
here to work on the projects. After what they did in the rebellion,
they should all be in prison.”

Marc winced, though this was a common enough
sentiment among many Upper Canadians. While Louis was concerned
with being seen to traffic with the enemy, Robert and the Reformers
had a similar problem with many of the people who would normally
support them. But an alliance was the only way forward, if a
dangerous one.

“I’d like to know if you heard Mr. Manson
come in last night shortly after midnight?”

“Oh, gracious no. I was sound asleep. He let
himself in, but he told me at breakfast it was about
twelve-thirty.”

If true, Marc thought, that would give him
just time to walk home from Bernie’s. But there was no
corroboration, so Manson did not really have an alibi. He could
have gone straight to the site and struck Dunham, out of jealousy
at not being made foreman. With Dunham dead, as he now was, Manson
had got the job, at least temporarily.

Marc thanked Mrs. Brownwell. At the door she
said, “I’d look to them Frenchies if I was you.”

***

As Mrs. Brownwell had suggested, Kingston was a boom
town. There was construction everywhere as residences for the
eighty-four members of the Legislative Assembly and the other
councillors and cabinet members had to be built from scratch. Many
of the limestone warehouses were being converted into hotels and
boarding places comfortable enough for gentlemen, and in some
cases, their ladies. New businesses to serve such an elite
clientele were springing up daily. All of this at Toronto’s
expense, which added spice to the enterprise.

Marvin Leroy’s boarding-house was just
another block away on Queen Street. There Marc found the landlord,
James Muir, at home but not very helpful. He had been away from
home last night, and his wife, who had been there, had just now
gone off for a visit to her sister and wouldn’t be back until
tomorrow at the earliest. Marc said he would call back.

He wasn’t overly concerned because, of the
three co-workers, only Leroy did not have a strong personal motive
for murder. He may not have liked Dunham, but he hadn’t been
singled out like the Quebecers and didn’t fancy the foreman’s job.
But Marc would come back and check all the same. He was positive
one of the three was the killer. He just had to find a way to
discover which one.

***

First thing in the morning Marc drove out to the
building site. He wanted to confront Manson and Leroy about their
mutual lie. Bert Campion, the architect, met him at the doorway to
the Legislative Council chamber. The workmen were up on the
scaffolding.

“I’d like to talk to Manson and Leroy,” Mark
said.

“I’ll fetch Manson down for you,” Campion
said, moving into the room under reconstruction. “But first I’ve
got something to show you.”

He held out his hand, opened it palm up, and
revealed a tin button.

“What’s this?” Marc said, curious but
puzzled.

“I found this after you left yesterday, over
there near where the body was.”

Marc cursed himself silently for having
missed it himself when he had examined the crime scene. “Is it
important?” he said.

“Yes, I believe so. You see, we haven’t been
working on that side of the room so far, and so there’s no reason
for a button – an overalls button – to have fallen off in that
area.”

“I see. You think it might have been ripped
off, perhaps by Dunham himself?”

“It’s possible.”

“Any idea whose it might be?”

“Yes, I do. I noticed that Gregory Manson had
the bib of his overalls tied up with a piece of string. I asked him
if he had lost a button. And he had to say yes, didn’t he?”

”Well, then, I’d better speak to him first,
eh?”

“I’ll get him.”

Campion called to Manson to come down from
the scaffolding. Manson obeyed, and gave Marc a sharp look.

“Mr. Edwards wishes to talk to you again,
Manson. I want you to cooperate fully.”

Manson muttered agreement, and Marc took him
to one side.

“You and Marvin Leroy did not walk home from
Bernie’s on the night of the murder, did you?”

“Of course we did. We always did.”

“Perhaps. But not that night. Leroy stayed to
finish his dice game, didn’t he?”

Manson looked down. “He may have. It’s hard
to remember because we’re in that dive every night
practically.”

“Bernie swears he did. And you, sir, did not
go straight home, did you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. Campion found this button – your
overalls button – over there near the body. It fell off of you when
you confronted Earl Dunham sometime after midnight. Is that not
so?”

Manson looked down and then up, defiance on
his face. “What if I did? That doesn’t mean I killed him, does
it?”

“What were you doing out here at that
hour?”

“All right, all right, I’ll tell you. I had
one too many to drink at Bernie’s. I started to feel sorry for
myself, not being made foreman. But I was angry at Dunham more
because of the way he fired Denis Jardin. Denis, even though he was
a Frenchie, was the best lath-man we had. We’re runnin’ way behind
on this construction, and we need Denis. So I went out there. I
knew Dunham would be on guard-duty, he was always suckin’ up to
Campion. I went there to try and persuade him to rehire Denis.”

“And you had a confrontation?”

“I couldn’t make him see reason. We were over
on the other side of the room, near the piles of laths where he was
hidin’, and he just kept shoutin’ at me to mind my own business.
Then he grabbed me – that’s when the button must’ve popped off –
and pushed me away. I stormed out.. I was mad as a hatter, but
Dunham was certainly alive when I left him. Alive and cursin’
me.”

“You didn’t, in your anger, pick up a hammer
and strike him?”

“I did not! Besides, there were no tools
lyin’ about over there.”

Dunham had been struck on the back of the
head, according to the coroner’s report, whose contents had been
summarized for Marc by the magistrate. That meant someone had
sneaked up behind the victim and caught him unawares. Mason could
hardly have raced over to where the tools were, picked up a hammer,
and then raced back to strike Dunham on the back of the head. But,
of course, he could have waited and returned later to do the job by
stealth.

“I’ll have to inform the magistrate of these
findings,” Marc said. But the magistrate already had his man,
Jacques LeMieux, who had a powerful motive, had been heard making a
threat against the victim, who had no alibi, and whose tool had
been the murder weapon. The best Marc could hope for would be to
use Manson’s actions in court as pointing to an alternative
scenario. “That’ll be all for now,” Marc said, dismissing
Manson.

Leroy quickly admitted he had not left the
dive with Manson. “I was winnin’ too much at dice to leave.”

“How long after did you leave Bernie’s?”

“Could have been an hour. Have you checked
with my landlady? She always hears me come in.”

“She’s away at the moment. But I shall check,
don’t worry.”

“I went straight home from Bernie’s.”

“But if you don’t know what time you left,
what difference will her testimony make? You could have left after
half an hour and had plenty of time to murder Dunham and get home,
say, by one-thirty.”

“But I didn’t. I went straight home.”

Marc let Leroy go back to his work. Without a
strong motive, it was hard to see that he – in a good mood after
winning at dice – would have gone out to the site and committed
murder. But he was still on the list, especially if his landlady
didn’t hear him come in.

Marc thanked Campion and drove back to
Kingston, straight to the magistrate.

***

In the foyer of the hotel Marc was met by Robert
Baldwin, who looked excited.

“What is it?” Marc said.

“We’ve just received a letter from Henri
Thériault, in response to Christopher Pettigrew’s letter. Come on
into the meeting room. Everybody’s there.”

Marc followed Robert into the nearby room,
where, seated around the table were Hincks, LaFontaine, Gilles
Gagnon and young Pettigrew.

“You’re just in time, Marc,” Hincks said.
“I’ve got a letter here. It’s in French, so why don’t you read and
translate it for us?”

Marc nodded to the others and sat down. There
was an air of expectancy in the room, for the cohesion of
LaFontaine’s nationalist group might well be tied up in this
response. Certainly the fact that Thériault, isolated on his
family’s farm in Chateauguay, had replied at all was a positive
sign. Marc took the letter and read one sentence at a time,
translating as he went.

Dear Christopher:

It was good to hear from you again after such a long
absence, and to know that you are well and proposing to marry. May
I offer my congratulations. I know also, from our conversations
during the time I spent hiding out in your Montreal home almost
four years ago, that you were a passionate believer in the Reform
cause in your province. I have of course heard, and heard much,
about your champion, Robert Baldwin, and I have been kept informed
of the attempts by Louis LaFontaine to forge an alliance of the
left with him. While I admire Mr. LaFontaine, I, like many of my
contemporaries, are puzzled by his consistent denunciation of the
terms of the union and his readiness to embrace the British
parliamentary form of government. Was it not this very form of
colonial rule that prompted even the English farmers of Upper
Canada to take up arms?

However, your patient and detailed
explanation of Baldwin’s hopes for a responsible form of government
wherein the executive would be beholden to the Assembly and the
Assembly beholden to the electorate was intriguing, to say the
least. However, interesting though the possibilities be, there is
no more than a hope and a desire on the part of the Reformers that
the governor will accede to their pressures, even if they become
the dominant voice in the Assembly, representing both races.

What you are asking me to do is to betray the
trust that so many of my countrymen have placed in me over the past
three and half years – to collaborate with those who have burnt our
barns and destroyed our churches – on the faint hope of a political
breakthrough in Kingston this Spring. Let me say that I am now
convinced that responsible government could work in favour of both
races, but am not sufficiently certain of its attainment to join
LaFontaine’s alliance. Your eloquence has, however, convinced me
that I should stay where I am and not respond to the overtures of
John Neilson and his ultra-nationalists. For while there would be
satisfaction personally for me to do so, I think an obstructionist
and xenophobic approach at this point in our history is not the way
forward.