Murdock’s pastry-flecked goatee trembled, then his large head shook. “You don’t know what you’re undertaking, Isaac. Truly you don’t.”
Little bank business got Harris’s attention in the early part of the afternoon. His ears were still ringing from what Murdock had said.
If William Sheridan had been murdered, it was a tragedy not just for his friends and admirers but for all Canadians—the country’s first political assassination. Moreover, with agents of such butchery at large, was Theresa not in all the greater danger?
Eight days she had been missing. Harris had been looking for six, and she seemed farther away than ever. He would continue. He still had to write to Marthe Laurendeau. At the same time, bound to this office, how much could he do in the few hours a day it left him?
He needed help. The rest of the world had to continue to regard Theresa as missing, not settle back in the belief that her remains had been found. This was what Sibyl meant to him. He doubted that she had killed William Sheridan—a hard man to hate personally and, in opposition, little threat as a Member of Parliament. Harris wasn’t cool enough to put aside all speculation on the subject. The servant’s first interest, though, was as a missing person, not as a murderess. The presence of the unwashed cloth suggested that she had left the house abruptly. Left or been removed from it. If the bones Lamb held were accepted as most probably Sibyl’s, the search for Theresa would go on.
What was needed was a description, and Jasper Small seemed the readiest source. Harris was just writing his friend a note when Dick Ogilvie knocked and entered with a sealed envelope.
“On that pile,” said Harris, re-dipping his steel-nibbed pen.
Dick set it down quickly, trying to make his intrusion as brief as possible. The towering pile of unopened correspondence toppled across the polished surface of the desk, shooting its topmost member very nearly into Harris’s lap. His hand closed on the envelope just below the sender’s name, H. M. Crane. Small could wait.
July 21, 1856
Dear Isaac,
Have just identified bracelet as Mrs. Crane’s and fabric as that of the green habit she left home in. Professor Lamb may have further revelations. Still, am compelled to fear the worst.
Kindly overlook any incivility. I realize that only through your persistent and unselfish exertions has truth come to light. Thank you for that. Finding what you found Saturday must have been can’t have been easy. Yet better to know.
The loss of both father—for so I regarded William Sheridan—and wife has made this the hardest week of my life. Shall spare no effort to find her murderer. At the same time, business will not stand still. Leave for Chicago tonight.
Faithfully yours,
Henry Crane
The hasty scrawl with scratchings out breathed the same sincerity as Crane’s halting reading at the funeral. Whatever conclusions Harris had reached wavered. Theresa might have had a reason for wearing the cities-of-Europe bracelet on her right wrist. Finding her murderer could be all that was left.
Harris was reluctant to lay the letter down. The paper itself, he discovered, was agreeable to hold, thick and creamy between his fingers. The watermark was English, like the builder of Crane’s brougham. The stationery of a successful man.
Crane’s success carried all the more weight on an afternoon when Harris had allowed his own and his employers’ business to stagnate. He pictured Crane’s private railway carriage. Tonight it would be coupled to a train bound for the Collingwood dock, where Crane’s steamer would be waiting. Crane would rise above grief to get on with making money. The Board of Trade approved such dutifulness. Harris fell short.
Moodily, he flicked the creamy paper. Losing to Crane in love forced him to acknowledge the other man’s persuasiveness, but a lingering resentment, of which Harris was not in general proud, made him at the same time partially immune. “Spare no effort”—where then, just to start with, were the handbills?
From an inside pocket, Harris eased his flimsy portrait tracing and unfolded it carefully. With a pencil stub, he tried to darken a smudged line, the eager curve of Theresa’s upper lip. The paper tore. Crane’s stationery was instantly crumpled into as small a ball as the rich vellum would allow and dropped into a drawer. All the letter meant was an opening from the man Harris had most questions for.
The Ontario, Simcoe and Huron had no train till ten. Before turning to his bank correspondence, Harris sent Crane word that he would call on him at his office at four unless Harris heard otherwise.
At three fifty, he was passing through the heavily-columned entrance to the block Crane had built for himself on a part of King Street East recently levelled by fire.
“Mr. Crane is expecting me.”
“Mr. Crane has gone out of town, sir,” replied the porter. “Not five minutes since, his carriage was by to take him to the station.”
Scared him off, thought Harris without satisfaction.
“When will he be back?”
“See me in a fortnight, I believe he said. His secretary will know, sir. Second floor, first door on your right.”
Harris fled without wasting time on the secretary. King Street was the best in the city for hailing a cab, but by the same token the worst for making speed. To cover the half mile to the Union Station, Harris had the driver drop down to the Esplanade, where he could whip his horse up to a brisk trot.
They raced up beside a Great Western passenger train that stood straining for departure, steam up and nose to the sun. No private car was attached, but Crane himself stood on the front platform of one of the canary yellow carriages, in conversation with a conductor on the ground below. If Chicago still beckoned, it seemed the trip was to be overland via Detroit.
Harris had paid the driver and was climbing the carriage steps before Crane saw him.
“Why, Isaac . . .” Polite surprise, a tight smile.
“I wanted to catch you if I could,” said Harris, unhurried now that he was aboard. “One or two matters in connection with your note.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t time.” Over Harris’s head, Crane’s eyes flicked towards the conductor, who with a raised hand signalled the driver. “Next month, let us say.”
“I’ll ride as far as Hamilton with you,” said Harris. “That will give us an hour and a quarter.”
The engine’s whistle sounded two short strokes.
Crane still didn’t make room on the platform. The step gave him a height advantage of eight or ten inches.
“August,” he said, “would be better. I’ll be back in time for the inquest.”
The train was starting to move.
“When did your wife break her arm?”
“As a girl—didn’t you know?”
“You can’t ride there, sir.” The conductor, walking at a pace with the train, touched Harris’s elbow.
“He’s right, Henry. May I join you?”
Crane looked as if he regretted having broken his silence by writing. Perhaps he had done so only under pressure from MacFarlane and had feared more questions would follow.
“Excuse me, no,” he said. “I have an address to prepare, besides which, the subject of my letter is too painful for me to discuss just now.”
They had cleared the station, but were still travelling slowly enough for Harris to have jumped down safely. He did not jump down.
“What did you do, Henry, that