by William King
“That’s up to your uncle, Miss.”
“If it were up to you, Mr Brodie, what would you do?”
“It is not up to me, Miss.”
“But if it were?”
There was a small trap here, for if her uncle did not do what I said I would do and she told him, it could be taken as a criticism of her uncle’s decision. “It is not my place to say.”
“You are a very cautious man, aren’t you, Mr Brodie?”
“Am I, Miss?”
“And you answer many questions with a question.”
“Do I, Miss?” I smiled as I said it, and after a moment, she smiled back in a way that lit up her entire face. In that moment a sense of complicity sprang up between us, a morsel of shared humour and understanding for which I was glad, for I found that I liked her.
“That was a statement not a question, Mr Brodie.”
“Indeed it was, Miss.”
At that moment, the door opened once more, and Mrs Bullock and Jane emerged, red-eyed but not weeping. In the doorway, they both turned and curtseyed to Mr Soames, and thanked him profusely. I guessed that Jane was going to keep her place and so did Miss Mayhew for she almost ran into the room and hugged her uncle. Flustered he waved her away and gestured for me to return. She smiled at me as she passed, although with her back to her uncle he could not see it. I allowed myself the smallest of smiles back.
“Now, Mr Brodie, to business,” said Mr Soames. “I would like to thank you.”
“Thank me, sir?”
“Yes, thank you, for you guided me to make the right decision concerning that poor girl. Without your generous words on her behalf I might have done something that I would have later regretted.”
“You've decided to retain the services of Jane Bullock then, sir?”
“Indeed I have, Mr Brodie. I was uncertain in my mind for a few moments back there. The good Lord knows I would not want any harm to come to the girl but when I considered the possibility that she might have been a confederate of those dreadful men, I thought that I was running an awful risk not just to myself but to poor dear Amanda. Your judgment of the case swayed me and put me in the right frame of mind to listen to her and Mrs Bullock when they came to tell me how sorry they were for what had happened. Jane told me that it was all her fault and that I was not to blame her parents for what had happened. When I saw how sincere she was I knew that she had done no wrong to me or mine.”
“I hope and I believe that you will have no cause to regret your decision, Mr Soames.”
“Whatever happens, Mr Brodie, the decision is mine and I will not regret it. I am fully convinced that I have done the right thing in this matter.”
He was beaming like one of the Brothers Cheeryble; benevolent, smiling, happy. He seemed very pleased with himself, almost theatrically so, as if inviting me and the rest of the world to contemplate what a decent, Christian fellow he was and yet…
And yet, it was nothing more than the truth. He was taking a risk that some might not have and he was behaving with the sort of benevolence and generosity in an employer that was all too rare in my experience.
He rose from the chair and moved over to the table on which sat a decanter and some glasses.
“Will you join me in a drink sir? Surely, just this once, it is not too early for you?”
Under the circumstances what could I do but join him? I drank down the brandy that he poured as slowly as was polite and during that time he helped himself to two more. Perhaps, I thought, now would be a good time to bring up the question that had been troubling me.
“May I ask your question, sir?”
“Ask away, Mr Brodie, you won't find me slow in answering.”
“You've employed me, sir, to find the men who stole from you and to recover your goods. I am wondering why you do not seek vengeance upon them by means of the law.”
He set the glass down on the table, then appeared to change his mind, filled it with brandy and raised it to his lips once more. He took a gulp, held the glass before his face and made a small chuffing sound.
“That's a very good question, Mr Brodie, and, if I may, I would like to answer it with one of my own.”
“I am the last man in the world who could object to you doing that, sir,” I said.
“Can I ask you, have you ever seen a hanging?”
“Once, when I was in the Foot Patrol, I acted as a guard at one outside of Newgate prison.”
“And may I ask you what you thought of it? Did you find it educational? Did it make you want to be a more moral man?”
I considered his question for a moment and as I did so the memories came flooding back. I remembered standing by the wooden barricades as the sun rose and the torches died and the carpenters set to work putting the last touches to the gallows.
I remembered looking out on that vast sea of faces, and listening to the roar and swell of twice ten thousand voices. The windows were packed with those wealthy enough to be able to hire a room overlooking the spectacle. The smell of thousands of unwashed bodies and the reek of the booze assaulted my nostrils, and I will never forget the terrible hunger that glinted in the eyes of those nearest me, a hunger and something else besides, perhaps the desire to watch that greatest mysteries, the moment where life shades suddenly into death, for that's what you see when you watch a man make the drop into eternity.
If I give them the benefit of the doubt I would say that many of the people there were merely curious. In a strange way they had a personal interest in what was about to happen, for its something that someday we all must undergo, that transition so swift and so shocking, from one condition to another. There were many faces there, of course, that held no such emotion. They had come out of a kind of casual cruelty, the same sort that takes people to badger-baiting and cock and dogfights.
I've always thought there's something awful about a hanging; a dreadful, drunken carnival atmosphere. It's supposed to be a warning and a lesson to the crowd but they do not treat it that way. For most it is a species of entertainment and not a wholesome one.
It brings out the worst in people, and maybe that's because really, underneath it all, it does frighten them. I don't mean it puts the fear of the law into them, but something else entirely. It frightens them because it reminds them of what must eventually happen to all of us and perhaps all that defiance, all those cruel jests and all of those drunken jeers are merely the sounds of frightened children confronting the spectre of their own mortality.
You could hear the cries of the gin sellers, and the ballad hawkers and pamphlet sellers charging a shilling for what purported to be the death cell confession of the accused, some screed hastily rewritten by a penny-a-liner from the last such booklet.
The tension built, slowly, through that long morning as the crowd waited for the death. Human beings en masse can be terrible; a monstrous Hydra-headed thing the mere sight of which can fill a man with fear. I was very aware that if that great herd chose to push its way forward, nothing could stand in its way.
A flat, eerie silence fell as the prisoner was led out, and made to stand beside the gallows. The chaplain’s words rang out through the still air, leaving you with the conviction that they could be heard in the farthest part of that wide space and echo on to the very furthest reaches of the great city.
There was a sharp, mass intake of breath as first the hood and then the noose was placed over the man's head, then the moan of almost ecstatic horror when he made the drop. There was an instant then, when all was quiet and all you could hear was the creak of the gallows as the body swung.
Looking out at the crowd, you could see the same drunken, stupefied, awestruck expression on every face, and then in that instant, every mouth opened and gave vent to an enormous roar. Men cheered and shook hands and began to sing and chant as if they were at some great street party.
“I did not enjoy it,” I told Mr Soames. He nodded as if in agreement.
“When I was a young man I attended a hanging,” Soam
es said. “It was a horrible experience but it made a great impression on me. I had paid £10 to rent a room overlooking the gallows and I got a good view of everything that happened. I sat up all night drinking with a group of friends and we behaved like the most perfect ghouls while the man who was to be hung went to meet his maker. We drank his health and made jokes and munched down rhubarb pies. Afterwards, I felt terribly guilty about that, for it did not seem like a very Christian thing to do. It preyed upon my mind for weeks, and it made me think about exactly how much a human life is worth in the eyes of the law? Do you know the conclusion I came to, Mr Brodie?”
“I do not, sir. Pray tell me.”
“Exactly one farthing. Do you want to know why I think that?”
“I am interested as to how you computed such an exact figure, and such a small one, sir.”
“I studied law for a while in my youth before I became a merchant. I was an articled clerk in Commons. They taught me then that the penalty for theft in a domicile of goods below the value of 40 shillings was transportation. For theft of goods of the value of 40 shillings or above, the penalty was to be hung by your neck until you are dead. And after the hanging, I reasoned it out, little by little, that if you stole goods valued at 39 shillings, eleven pence and three farthings you'd be transported. One more farthing and you would be hung. A farthing is the difference between life and death in such cases. Does that seem just to you, Mr Brodie?”
It was a serious question and it deserved more serious consideration than I gave it, but I spoke quickly, “Not when you put it that way, sir, but the law must draw the line somewhere.”
“Indeed it must, Mr Brodie, but I have often wondered why the line is drawn there exactly and not at some other, equally arbitrary point. It seems a most cruel and unchristian thing to me that a man’s life can be weighed in farthings.”
“Is that why you do not wish to lodge a prosecution against the robbers, sir?”
“I am not sure of much anymore. I am not sure whether it is for me to seek vengeance or to trust in the fact that the Lord will mete out his own justice to the malefactors. I know that when I think of the men who robbed me and menaced Miss Mayhew and my servants my heart is filled with rage. But I feel that given the choice I should err on the side of mercy, and I know that I do not wish to witness the horror of another hanging, as I would feel morally bound to do, if as a result of my actions men should be brought to the gallows.”
I was not sure whether Soames was a fool or an idealist or a true Christian gentleman. I was not sure how much of what he said was humbug but, at that moment, I felt something like admiration for him. I did not tell him that Sir Robert Peel had changed the law so that the penalty for housebreaking was no longer death. I doubted that it would have made much difference to his feelings anyway. It made my life much easier that he was not interested in a prosecution.
“I think I understand what you are saying, sir.”
“I am glad you do, Mr Brodie. I do not want you to think that I am unconscious of the wrong that those men have done me and my family and my servants. If there was some way of retrieving my goods and punishing those men short of death, I would take it happily. But they did not kill any of us, and this is not a case of an eye for an eye. Under the circumstances it seems most sensible to make the best of a bad job and attempt to restore my fortunes. For I confess that though I am not a poor man, I am not a particularly rich man and what they took is a significant sum to me. If it makes your job easier to restore the money than to catch the criminal then I will have to live with that.”
“Does it not trouble you, sir, that they might perform the same crime again?” I can only think that was the brandy, which I was unaccustomed to drinking at that time of day, speaking. It was not a question I would normally have asked.
“It does indeed and the thought that I may encourage those men into committing another crime and possibly harming innocents in the commission of it troubles me too, but I can only trust to the mercy and justice of Providence in the matter.”
He was trusting to the same merciful and just deity that had seen him robbed in the first place but I did not point that out. It was not my place to. I was acting as his agent in this matter and it was my task to see that things turned out as he wished insofar as it was in my power.
“What will you do now, Mr Brodie?” he asked, interrupting my reverie.
“Jane has given me another lead, sir. I will seek out the red-headed man. I believe I have some idea who it might be.”
“That’s a stroke of luck.”
“I’m afraid there’s nothing lucky about it, sir. It was part of my job at Bow Street to know every criminal in our patch. I was sometimes called to go as far as Manchester and identify local villains when they were about their tricks out of town. And I’m not saying that this is one of the gang. I am merely saying it’s a possibility and I must follow it up.”
“Then I shall wish you good luck with it. Will you join me in another drink?”
“I’m afraid I must be about your business, sir, but I thank you for the offer. Now, with your permission, I will away.”
As I left him helping himself to another drink, it came to me that Mr Soames was really a rather nervous man. Perhaps that was why he drank so much. At the time I did not know that he had other reasons.
It was dark again by the time I got back to the city. The gaslights glowed along all the main thoroughfares. In the night and fog London had a magical look to it. The running lights of the coaches gave them the appearance of fairy carriages and imparted a wondrous Arabian Nights glow to the faces looking out their windows. It’s one of the things I love about cities, that sense of possibility, the idea that anything might happen.
I saw the face of a lovely woman, gazing pensively, and with not a little sadness, into the street from within a hackney coach. Our glances met. There was a brief shock, something like recognition, although I'd never seen her before and would likely never to see her again. It seemed to me as if there was a strange attraction there, as if some spark within both of us had flared up at the sudden contact. It happens sometimes that way, particularly in the city like London. Perhaps in another life or another age of the world, we might have met and become lovers.
How often does it happen, I sometimes wonder, that two people who are suited to each other perfectly may pass in the street and never meet and go on their separate ways forever? For some reason the image of Amanda Mayhew drifted into my mind. I dismissed it immediately. She was an heiress and as far above me as the clouds.
I confess that it made me sad to think those thoughts as I walked along the crowded pavement, pausing occasionally to look in a shop window or study the street hoping, in a lonely sort of way, to encounter a face I knew or hear a voice I recognised. As so often happens when you are in that mood I met no-one. I wanted to go home then and see the children and talk with them but I had business elsewhere that night.
I wanted to find Ginger Jim Matthews and ask him a few questions. You might think that it was very ambitious of me to set out to locate one man in a city the size of London when I could not even see a friendly face on the street but it was not the case. Men like Ginger Jim have a very select circle of acquaintances and hang out in places frequented by that exclusive fraternity. And when you know those places, it becomes only a matter of visiting them and keeping on visiting them until you find the man you're looking for. It can be a long tedious process and it depends a great deal on luck, for you may be in one public house while your man is in the gin palace across the street, but it does work and it's been an essential part of detective work ever since the job began.
Of course, sometimes those places are the sort of low dives that no respectable person in their right mind would want to visit unless they had a very good reason. I must confess that I was glad of an excuse to go around Ginger Jim's haunts-- for such places have a tawdry sort of glamour that appeals to me. There's something about the haunts of lowlife that is attractive if yo
u have a certain sort of mind and I'm afraid I do.
My father always told me I would come to a bad end because of that, and in my youth, I believed him. To this day, on certain quiet Sundays, I feel it still; the haunting fear that I am damned by the very nature of my thoughts to go to that dour Calvinist hell of which that long-dead, godly man preached so lovingly.
I needed to start somewhere so I headed into the alleys of Seven Dials pushing through the throngs of beggars and workers and costermongers, keeping my eyes peeled for a lean, red-haired man in shabby genteel finery.
As I listened to the shouts of the costermongers, I realised that I was hungry. I smelled baked potatoes roasting and stopped to purchase one from a street-seller. He stood by his steaming can shouting, “Taters, lovely taters, piping hot!” His apparatus was a large one, resting on four legs. You could read the sign on it that said, Jolly’s Gigantics by the light of its two lanterns.
“Give me one,” I said and handed over my penny. He stuck it in his pocket and pulled a potato out of the can’s internal compartment in a rush of steam.
“You’ll be wanting salt and butter with that then, squire?”
I nodded and he knifed the potato open, and added butter and a sprinkle of salt before handing it over. It was so hot it almost burned my fingers and I passed it from hand-to-hand, waiting for it to cool so that I could eat it. As I did so I studied the pinched faces of the people surrounding me, drinking in the scene, trying to memorise the details. It was a habit of mine, to try and train my memory, to remember those important little things that sometimes make a difference. When I was younger, on the Bow Street Foot Patrol, I had done it to try and spot the pickpockets and magsmen and other small-time criminals who'd haunted my patch.
Tonight it was a mixed crowd, full of the semi-respectable or what passes for it in Seven Dials, mingling with the first early flocks of the thieves' night shift. There were just rousing themselves, the youthful pickpockets, the hard-faced bully boys, the pimps and the alley robbers; getting themselves ready for the night's work by knocking back a couple of glasses of gin or a pint of ale in the local beer shop. A few of them noticed me studying them. One of them gave me a hard glare back but most of them scuttled out of view, more from force of habit, I’m sure, than out of any fear.
