The Drowned Man Page 8

  There was family money here — Tom’s. The Foreign Office subsidized a consul general’s rent, but not to this level. He guessed that they had leased the robber baron estate as much for its façade as for its appointments inside, but it all cost a bundle. By the time Peter gained the top step two hands were stretched out towards him. Tom Hilfgott wore a knit cardigan sweater, pale blue, and Peter noted that it had Arnold Palmer’s signature stitched over the left breast. It must have been oppressively warm. Then he saw that Tom was also wearing a chef’s apron underneath the sweater. Peter struggled to keep an open mind as he shook hands.

  “May I present Nicola Hilfgott,” Brayden said. Knowing his station, he quickly retreated from the introductions and went back to the driveway to put away the car. Clearly, Peter understood, he had seen the Hilfgott team at work many times before and had chosen to disappear.

  “Tom Hilfgott. Not spelled quite like the character in Shine, the Geoffrey Rush pianist,” Tom said.

  “My husband is retired Army,” Nicola said. Her smile broadened, giving Tom his next cue.

  “You can call me Major Tom. Most people do.”

  Okay, then, Peter thought. There was no irony in Tom’s statement. He seemed unaware of the David Bowie song, a retro favourite of Sarah and Michael.

  Inside the house, the first noteworthy feature was the frigid air conditioning. Peter understood why Tom wore a sweater. Nicola led the parade straight along the hallway, and Peter could already see the back patio where the skewering and grilling would take place. Not bothering to stop, Nicola proudly swept her hand to the right, indicating the entrance to the massive dining room. Peter saw that there were no place settings on the mahogany table; they would be eating al fresco. He noted several pleasant oils and watercolours in the dining room, rural scenes of sleighs and people wrapped in furs; he guessed that they were authentic and valuable.

  “We’re having barbeque,” Nicola announced as they reached the sliding door out to the patio. Tom smiled even more broadly as he moved towards the drink cart. The patio was well equipped for backyard dining, including an eight-foot-long grill and a round glass table that was set for three. Neil Brayden wouldn’t be joining them for dinner.

  “Let’s have a drink first,” Tom said.

  “Your department,” Nicola sing-songed.

  “Gin, scotch? Or perhaps a rum Collins?” the husband said. He turned to the trolley, which contained every tool of mixology needed for any drink in the Bartender’s Guide. Peter looked for what he really wanted, and pointed to a plastic cooler by the cart.

  “I don’t want to be impertinent,” he said with deference, “but is there beer in there?”

  Tom Hilfgott brightened. “Yes, there is beer in the bucket. Nicola didn’t think you’d want any but I packed a few in the cooler anyway.” He opened it and pulled out two brown bottles of something called St-Ambroise. “I’ll join you.”

  He uncapped the bottles and handed him one conspiratorially.

  It was plain to Peter that they weren’t “having BBQ.” The term had special meaning in the U.S., and Peter had indulged in plenty of it when he was assigned to Quantico in the mid-nineties. In Virginia and points south, “having BBQ” meant ribs and pulled pork and murderous hot sauce. It was a competitive sport, full of raucous boasting and overstatement. This occasion would be more restrained, the middle-class version called “having a barbeque.”

  Tom began to lay out his tools, like a surgeon or a three-card monte dealer setting up his trick. Nicola, after asking if Peter wouldn’t rather have white wine, poured herself a glass. Tom took off his cardigan and revealed his barbeque apron, which proclaimed: “Someone is killing the great chefs of Europe. That’s why I’m cooking.”

  “That’s our cue, Inspector,” Nicola said. “Let’s snatch a talk inside, shall we? Tom, call us when the steaks and shrimp are ready.”

  Nicola led the way through the patio door. Tom caught Peter’s eye and mouthed “Rare?” Peter gave him a thumbs-up. He wondered if Brayden might be monitoring all this from somewhere near the house. He followed Nicola to a small but lavishly decorated library across the corridor from the vast dining room. The room had no windows but a round central skylight hovered over them in a cupola ceiling. The walls were panelled entirely in dark wood and a Tree of Life Kashan rug covered most of the oak floor. She ushered Peter to a wing-back chair and took a seat opposite him. To one side, a small round table held two pads of lined foolscap, two manila file folders, and a half dozen books.

  “Welcome to Montreal, Chief Inspector. Where shall we begin?”

  “It would be best if you started at the beginning. The documents?” Peter said.

  Nicola immediately slipped into diplomatic mode, laying elbows to wrists on the arms of her chair in a pose that conceded nothing. Her smile remained full but enigmatic. But Peter, watching her, found that he could read her mind. She was disappointed in him. She was thinking, Why should I recount the full story to an octogenarian policeman who is only in town for the purpose of retrieving a dead body?

  He barged ahead, quite aware of what mattered most to her in this scenario. “Tell me about the Booth Letters.” He knew from her three-page report that she labelled them this way.

  “They are authentic, I assure you,” she said, her voice rising. “I have seen all three. Leander Greenwell showed them to me on two occasions, and I subsequently undertook my own research.”

  Peter softened his tone to draw her out. “I’m intrigued. How did you do that?”

  “Tom and I did the researching.”

  “Your husband?”

  “Oh, yes. Tom is assistant regimental historian for his regiment. He has a graduate degree in history from Cambridge.”

  So did Guy Burgess, Peter thought.

  She continued. “Tom and I thoroughly enjoy delving into local history whenever we have a new placement. Now, this is important, Chief Inspector. Important. The Quebec Archives here in Montreal have no record at all of the letters. Yes, that could mean they are forgeries but I don’t believe it. They are authentic. And if the provincial archives have nothing on their document registry, we are out in the clear.”

  “So, you are confident Greenwell did not steal them from the archives here, or elsewhere?”

  “Quite. Tom and I also checked the Maryland Historical Society collection in Baltimore. We have contacts in Washington who helped us search the National Archives. Booth’s visit to Montreal is well established but these letters are something brand new. They are British documents.”

  “But the Americans must have been excited about the discoveries,” Peter said.

  Nicola paused, hinting at indignation. “We did not feel we had to disclose the precise contents to them. The Americans have no claim on the letters.”

  “Do the police here have a theory of what has happened to them?”

  “The police are incompetent. They don’t believe there are any letters at all. That Deroche isn’t taking the investigation seriously.”

  “I’m meeting with the Sûreté tomorrow.”

  “I know. I would appreciate your pressing them on the search. Obviously, Greenwell stole them back from your unfortunate colleague.”

  “And killed Carpenter?”

  The woman betrayed no sympathy for the British citizen she had lured into a killing zone. “That’s obvious, too, isn’t it?”

  Peter glanced at the two manila folders, making sure that Nicola noticed him do so. She handed him one.

  “I have been doing my best to reconstruct the letters from memory,” she said. “I’ve only managed parts of the first two and tidbits of the third.”

  Peter had honed his interrogation methods on tougher characters than Nicola Hilfgott. He wasn’t about to let her seize control and he pressed her on the details. “The first letter chronologically, you mean.”

  “Of course. One flow
s to the next. The first letter was signed by John Wilkes Booth, the assassin. It’s short but I’m snookered if I can remember the first paragraph.”

  She wasn’t apologizing. Peter took one of the files and read the first page. Her reconstruction was little more than a sample of the full text. If the correspondence was so significant, why was her memory so thin? The foolscap was covered in strike-outs, arrows, and insertions. The date and salutation, however, were cleanly set out in letter number one:

  October 23, 1864

  To: Sir Fenwick Williams

  British Commander, North America

  Dear Sir:

  My sincerest Regards . . .

  At once, Peter wanted to quibble with the text. The commander of British forces in Canada undoubtedly carried initials of his honours, befitting his status and career. Had Booth not known them, or had he ignored them? Had Nicola forgotten them?

  Peter read the first letter to the end, such as it was. Booth employed melodramatic language to denounce the Union, and declaimed on the virtue of the Confederacy. Even with his minimal knowledge of the Civil War, Peter fixed on two rhetorical gems that leapt out from the butchered text. Booth, referring to the “oppressors from the North,” adopted an urgent tone: “There is yet time for Britain to honor its common ground with the Confederate States.” The actor asserted that he was authorized to represent Jefferson Davis and the Richmond government but failed to explain how lecturing Sir Fenwick should endear him to the British government. In the final paragraph, as sketched out by Nicola, he made his motives overt: “My reasons for this disclosure are honorable. The goal of the South is not to undermine the stability of the Canadas, rather mine is to alert you to the impending threat from separatists in your midst.”

  Although there were two more letters to go, Peter already felt sickened. A man was murdered for this? For a dusty artifact of questionable origin?

  Nicola handed over her draft of letter number two. “The three have to be read together,” she said.

  Jacob Thompson purported to speak for the other two official Confederate commissioners to Canada from Richmond. His letter, as reconstructed by Nicola, made it clear that Sir Fenwick Williams had contacted him about Booth’s claims within a day of receiving the first missive. Thompson — her notes were especially spare on this point — denied that Booth was an agent of President Jefferson Davis, and called upon Sir Fenwick to ignore the fanatical actor. He went on, in fawning prose, to denounce the alleged activities of “Separationists” aimed at drawing “Europeans” into “such factionalism.”

  The third letter consisted of the salutation and a final paragraph, with a blank middle, and reminded Peter of the redacted text of a disingenuous response to a Freedom of Information request. Williams replied to Booth in a note sent care of St. Lawrence Hall, Montreal, and dated October 26, 1864. Nicola appeared to have devoted extra effort to the last paragraph, in spite of her disclaimer of a poor memory. The letter seemed little more than a half-hearted thank-you note, but Sir Fenwick had added a gratuitous flourish, stating:

  Her Majesty’s Command will not tolerate the insurrectionist actions of French radicals in Canada at any time. Without commentary on the merits of your cause, which I feel compelled to say is in a state of military decline, I can assure you that I will oversee the suppression of the French cause here.

  “I’m sorry they aren’t complete,” Nicola said.

  You should be sorry, Peter thought. The recreations were no better than fragments, and who knew what spin she had added. “How did Greenwell get hold of the letters?”

  A waft of meat-scented air invaded the study from outside. Peter understood that he had to move faster.

  “Greenwell’s a shifty character but extraordinarily well connected in the rare books community,” Nicola said. “On this point, I believed him. He tracked down the letters over a period of three years. He found two of them in family collections in Montreal. Serendipitously. The other he got through a dealer contact in Virginia, or somewhere. The chain of ownership was clear, nothing nefarious.”

  She protested too much, Peter reasoned. He still doubted their provenance. He decided to provoke her.

  “And they were worth only $10,000?”

  Her hesitation was momentary. “Between you and me, Chief Inspector, Leander was fearful of a lawsuit from the Quebec Government. It isn’t always easy to prove you haven’t committed theft. He wanted to sell.”

  Peter found that he enjoyed prodding the consul general. “So you weren’t afraid of a similar challenge in the courts?”

  “These letters are part of British colonial history. They belong to us. Archives is satisfied of their provenance, and I intended to ship them at once straight to London.”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  Her voice rose. “A claim from the Quebec Government? Yes, and the Americans and possibly the Booth family, too. But Canada East and Canada West were under undisputed British supervision at the time, until three years later when Canada won its independence. The head of British Forces was a party to all three letters. Williams was in charge of all military units in Canada and he frequently acted for the governor general. Montreal served as headquarters for both the Army and the GG. The letters belong to us. The Queen is the head of state here and we are acting legitimately.”

  This was the moment when Peter lost all sympathy with Nicola Hilfgott. The only exemplar in her saga was herself but whatever the merits of her constitutional argument, she couldn’t deny that she had put a Scotland Yard officer at risk. Peter had no doubt that Archives, the High Commissioner, and everyone else at Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs had demanded she take a formal approach to the purchase of the letters and had not expected British officials to be skulking about at midnight with pockets stuffed with cash. Peter had the nauseating feeling that John Carpenter had died for her hobbyhorse.

  He changed direction. “Did you have Carpenter over to the house?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s in my report. But you’re asking about this girl, aren’t you? Frank Counter called me this morning, warned me you would be inquiring about her. We never saw any female companion at any time. Hadn’t a clue.” Her smile turned chillier, something Peter had thought impossible.

  “So, he never alluded to bringing a date. Never asked to bring her along? Didn’t talk about taking off for a jaunt with someone?”

  “Never. He did have a lot of free time while he was here but I never sensed that he was desperate to get away to meet some girl.”

  “Did Greenwell ever mention a young woman?”

  “Never.”

  “By the way, do you know the man who tried to rescue Carpenter from the canal?

  “Just some professor at the Université de Montréal. A separatist, I am told.”

  Tom Hilfgott had a knack for ill-timed entrances. He came in with a spatula in one hand, Peter’s glass in the other. He wore a chef’s hat.

  “Supper, then?” He scuttled out.

  They got up from their chairs. Peter turned to her. “The money was yours personally, wasn’t it?”

  She wasn’t fazed. “Yes, but I planned to get reimbursed. I had authorization from the High Commission in Ottawa. Think about it this way. The Booth signature alone makes his letter valuable. The $10,000 was a bargain.”

  The dinner conversation, and the smoky barbeque, bored Peter to tears. The comparison of Tom Hilfgott with Denis Thatcher was almost too easy. When irked by a case, Peter sometimes amused himself by conjuring up one-off connections. He recalled that Margaret Thatcher was born in Lincolnshire, not far from the town of New Bosk. Had anybody asked he would have conceded that it was a pretty meaningless coincidence.

  Tom drank gin-and-tonic and told amiable stories. He cooked Peter’s steak to order, expertly rare. At one point he said, “Do you play golf, Peter?”

  “I’ve always thought that I was too short for golf,”
he replied.

  “Not necessarily. Ian Woosnam is only five-foot-four.”

  Peter had no idea who that was.

  The steaks might have been suitably rare, but Tom had over-spiced them and insisted on garnishing them with tiger shrimp. Peter tried not to drink too much beer, knowing that his jet lag and the time zone shift would soon catch him up. When Tom carried the dinner dishes into the house, Peter took the opportunity to say to Nicola, “Have you thought of giving your notes on the Booth correspondence to Inspector Deroche?”

  “I don’t see why,” she snapped. “He doesn’t seem in the least inquisitive.”

  Nicola made a show of walking over to the gigantic grill and retrieving a pack of cigarettes from a niche. She lit one up and exhaled with a flourish. Smoking has been reduced to a confessional intimacy in our society, Peter thought.

  “Tell Deroche what you like. Show him the reconstructions. Only, can we agree to meet here tomorrow night for drinks and dinner again and a debriefing, Peter?”

  Peter nodded politely, although he was determined to avoid any more of these occasions. But he understood her plan. If Bartleben and Counter did not see fit to assign anyone full time to the case, she would enlist Peter as her proxy — and scapegoat-in-reserve. Could they blame her for making the tough decisions when no other British officials were making an effort to hunt down the artifacts?

  “Peter, I look forward to working with you. And getting your feedback on your session with Inspector Deroche.”

  Peter was startled by the arrival on the back patio of Neil Brayden, who silently materialized in the uncanny way that aides-de-camp have.

  “No wish to rush you, Chief Inspector, but you said you needed a lift back to your hotel.”

  Peter was grateful for the interruption. They all said their goodbyes. As Brayden led him towards the car, Nicola called out, “I hope that you can stay on, Peter.”

  At this point, Peter wasn’t sure whether Nicola was more avid to retrieve the Booth letters or the money. She had the temperament of the fanatic and she wouldn’t leave Peter alone for the duration of his visit. He also guessed that it had cost the consul general a lot more than ten grand of her husband’s fortune to buy the Booth letters.