Theft of Life

by Imogen Robertson

  Mr Christopher’s Academy was housed in a considerable building on Soho Square. Even this early in the day, figures could be seen through the high windows on the ground floor taking instruction on the use of the short sword.

  Harriet was shown into what must at one time have been the ballroom. A number of gentlemen, their coats removed, stood in a wide semi-circle while in front of them Mr Christopher was trading strikes with another young man. As they fought, Mr Christopher maintained a commentary on his actions. He moved with such grace and economy it seemed he was hardly exerting himself at all. His opponent, by contrast, was red in the face and sweating. Harriet looked around her. There was a large portrait of the Prince of Wales prominently displayed, but otherwise the walls were decorated solely with crossed swords and foils. In each of the alcoves were racks holding what seemed to her a great variety of weaponry.

  Her attention was drawn back to the fight by the sound of a sword clattering to the scuffed wooden floor. Mr Christopher had disarmed his opponent and was now explaining how he had done so. The gentlemen all nodded and stroked their chins, and Christopher bowed to them, and having given them liberty to continue their practice alone as long as they saw fit, he wished them good morning and picked up his coat. He carried it over his arm as he came towards Harriet, then at once took her arm and bent towards her.

  ‘Mrs Westerman, I was not certain to see you this morning. How is Mr Crowther?’

  ‘You have heard? He is badly bruised and in more pain than he is willing to admit, but he assures me he will live. How did you hear?’

  ‘I had a note at daybreak from Palmer. Will you come upstairs and take a dish of tea with me and my wife, and you may reassure me further. I am sorry I was not there last night.’

  Behind her, the irregular clashes of metal on metal rang through the high chamber. ‘How did Palmer know? No matter. I should be delighted. Crowther thinks he broke the nose of the man who was holding him.’

  ‘Good,’ Christopher said firmly. ‘This way, please.’

  He led her out of the ballroom and up a wide oak staircase. As they climbed, it seemed the house became less martial and more feminine. On the landing hung a pretty landscape in oils over a table with a red ceramic vase placed on it. Christopher took her into a sunny parlour on the first floor. A lady who Harriet presumed was Mrs Christopher was sitting at a round, high table with three small children. One, a boy of about Eustache’s age, seemed to be at his studies judging by the scattered papers and his look of fierce confusion. The two girls and their mother were at their sewing. The youngest, who could not be more than six, was working with great concentration and limited success on a scrap of material. Her sister, perhaps not much older than the boy, was neatly embroidering initials on a blue square of linen. The scene would have made an excellent subject for a print extolling domestic harmony. The children were all tawny-skinned, pitched halfway it seemed between their parents.

  Mrs Christopher and her children all stood at once and the introductions were made. When the children had shaken hands with their guest they were ushered out and Harriet was seated and tea placed at her side. She liked the look of Mrs Christopher; the woman was cheerful and composed, seemed concerned for Crowther and interested in the lotions used to treat him. ‘You can imagine, given my husband’s profession, that I have had to treat a great many bruises in my time. Have I not, Tobias?’

  ‘You have healing hands, my dear.’

  She grinned. ‘And I make liberal use of the brandy bottle. I find that cures most men under forty admirably. But Mrs Westerman has not come here only to discuss ointments.’

  At this, Christopher heaved a sigh. ‘I am ashamed to speak to you after all my fervour yesterday, my friend. Guadeloupe refuses to tell me where he “found” the watch, despite all my threats and promises. I am disgraced.’ He sat down heavily in his chair. ‘I begin to fear perhaps he did have some hand in Trimnell’s death. Bystander, accomplice, perhaps? The tool in the hand of some other fiend. God knows, the boy never thinks for himself.’

  ‘I think you are too hard on him, Tobias,’ his wife said. ‘There is more good in him than he will himself admit.’ She turned towards Harriet. ‘Do you think Guadeloupe had any part in it, Mrs Westerman?’

  Harriet considered, then replied: ‘No. Crowther was beaten as a warning. I am sure of that. That suggests that someone has heard about us asking questions yesterday and is afraid we will find something out about Trimnell’s death. Therefore Guadeloupe must be innocent. Though perhaps the attack was meant to punish me. Still, Crowther is sure that the men who assaulted him were the same who assaulted Trimnell, so perhaps Guadeloupe found the watch, after all.’

  ‘What did you do, Mrs Westerman, that deserves punishment?’ Christopher asked.

  Harriet told them about her encounters with Mrs Trimnell and young Oxford the day before. Mrs Christopher stifled a giggle when she spoke of the young man being tumbled into the muck. Her husband looked at her disapprovingly.

  ‘Well,’ she grinned, ‘I’m sorry, Tobias, but I am glad to hear of it. He sounds like just the sort of man who loves to hurl abuse at us from the other side of the street.’

  Harriet looked between them, more hurt than she knew how to show. ‘You are insulted in London?’

  Tobias shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘If we go to the Pleasure Gardens or the fair in a modest sort of way, Mrs Westerman, our reception is friendly enough. But I found in the first days of my prosperity that those who had a mind to dislike us – a black man with a white woman and tawny children – were provoked beyond endurance when we dressed finely and went abroad in a carriage. An African walking with a white woman is one thing. A rich African walking with a fashionably dressed white woman is too much for them. My wife has money in her purse to dress in high fashion should she wish, but she does not. Modest gentility is as high as we can style ourselves in safety. It goes against my nature, for I would dress my wife in gold and think it only a fraction of her worth.’

  Mrs Christopher patted her husband’s arm. ‘As if I would have the time to dress in silk while managing your home.’ She looked back to Harriet. ‘I am very glad you think Guadeloupe innocent of the charge against him.’

  As she was saying this, the door was flung open and an attractive girl of about sixteen years of age flew into the room. ‘Papa, Mama! I am home! I had such a fine visit. Mrs Green was quite charming and Cecelia and I drove all around the lanes in a gig.’ She suddenly noticed Harriet and faltered. ‘Oh, forgive me, I did not know we had a guest.’ She dropped a neat little curtsey and Harriet stood to shake her hand.

  ‘My eldest daughter, Sally,’ Christopher said by way of explanation. ‘Sally, Mrs Westerman. Believe it or not, madam, Sally is usually quite a sensible girl. My wife runs the house while my daughter manages the accounts and bills my pupils, but she has been spending a few days with a schoolfriend in the country and the fresh air has obviously turned her brain.’

  Sally still looked a little flustered. ‘Papa, you are unfair.’ She smiled very sweetly at Harriet. ‘Papa would not charge anyone if he could avoid it, Mrs Westerman. He is far too soft-hearted.’ She looked at her mother. ‘Were you speaking of Guadeloupe? Of what is he innocent?’

  The girl took a low seat at her father’s side and her mother fetched a cup of tea for her while she removed her bonnet. Her hair was a shock of dark copper curls that matched her complexion; her eyes were hazel. She was, Harriet thought, quite beautiful.

  ‘Trimnell was discovered killed on Saturday morning, Sally,’ her father said. The girl opened her lips. ‘Guadeloupe was found to have pawned his watch and is confined in Bridewell. Did you not read of it in the newspaper yesterday?’

  ‘Oh Papa, no,’ Sally said. ‘No, Guadeloupe never met him!’

  Christopher spoke more quietly. ‘Sally?’

  She swallowed and managed to say, ‘I gave Guadeloupe the watch, sir. I told him it was Trimnell’s and I didn’t want it.’

  ‘You!’ Ch
ristopher looked far more fearsome now than he had done with a sword in his hand. ‘You? And how did you, my daughter, come to have that man’s watch?’

  ‘He gave it to me, Papa. I did not want to take it, but he put it in my basket. I did not know what to do, so I gave it to Guadeloupe. I just wanted to get rid of it. I was afraid to tell you, because Trimnell stopped me in the street and I thought you’d be terribly angry, and it seemed better just to get rid of it.’ Her voice trailed away as she said this last, then she looked up at her father again, her eyes open and pleading. ‘Oh, sir! I would have told you, but then I went down to Kent with Cecelia and her family, and the ladies do not read the newspaper at her home and I was having such a nice time, I simply forgot all about him.’ She shuddered as if the memory of the man revolted her.

  ‘Trimnell stopped you in the street?’ Christopher spat out each word as if he was throwing a stone. Harriet thought she could see the blood swelling in his veins and recognised the rage and fear of a parent.

  ‘I wanted to get away, but he would not let go of my basket.’

  Christopher clenched his hands. ‘If he were not dead already … Why did you not tell me at once?’

  His wife sighed. ‘Why indeed, Tobias?’

  Christopher sank back in his chair, fiercely silent. Harriet put down her cup. ‘Miss Christopher, why did he give you the watch?’

  Sally looked at her father and mother. Mrs Christopher smiled encouragingly at her. Harriet thought for a few moments. ‘Had you ever seen Mr Trimnell before he gave you the watch?’

  The girl spoke very quietly. ‘I saw him here. That is, he came to speak to Papa and I heard a little of their conversation as I passed the door.’

  ‘You were listening at key-holes,’ her father said, though the heat had gone out of his voice. He reached out and brushed her cheek with his knuckles. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eyes.

  ‘Yes, perhaps a little, Papa. I heard some of what was said and realised he was your old master, and I waited upstairs at the window so I might see him as he went. I didn’t have any thought of speaking to him. I just wanted to see him.’

  Harriet felt her heart sink in her chest. Willoughby’s remark about Mr Trimnell finding a mulatto daughter alive in London came back to her as clearly as if it had just been spoken in her ear.

  ‘Miss Christopher, your father said he arrived in London some fourteen years ago. I think you are a little older than that.’

  ‘I am sixteen, ma’am,’ The girl murmured. She lowered her head so her curls fell over her face.

  ‘So you were born in Jamaica?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘Sally was born to my first wife,’ Christopher said slowly. ‘She was a fellow slave, Ebele Ngozi, Igbo like myself. We married on the plantation according to our own rites. She died a little more than a year after Sally was born.’ He reached out and pulled at one of the girl’s ringlets. ‘She wished to return to Africa and her people. Her exile had been too long, and too painful. She took the shorter route home.’

  ‘Mr Christopher, were there other white men on Mr Trimnell’s estate while you and your wife were enslaved there?’ Harriet looked only at the delicately painted patterns on the tea-cup as she spoke.

  ‘No.’ She heard him sigh and move in his chair. ‘Ebele was attacked by Trimnell. She, and many other of the women he owned. Do you think that makes me less Sally’s father? I married Grace eleven years ago and she has raised Sally since. Is she not Sally’s mother as much as Ebele?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Christopher,’ Harriet said, still staring at her cup. ‘I believe that absolutely. But would Mr Trimnell agree with us?’

  Mr Christopher did not reply.

  ‘I knew he was my father,’ Sally said at last. ‘I have known since I was five years old.’

  Harriet looked up at that. ‘Mr Christopher told you?’

  She shook her head quickly. ‘There was no need to tell. Papa told me of my mother, told me enough of the estate. The rest I could work out in my own mind, and after Papa married again and my sister was born … We are just alike.’

  Christopher laughed softly. ‘Not so alike. Your sister is far more obedient than you are, and not so wilful. You have your Mama Ebele’s fire. Your sister has never stormed at me to raise my fees, or to refuse some fine gentleman teaching until his bill is paid.’

  His daughter smiled.

  ‘What did Trimnell know about Sally, Mr Christopher?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘He knew I took her with me when I ran, and when Trimnell came to me last week, he brought Sally’s manumission as well as mine, and asked, if she had lived. Then if he might see her. The manumission I took, but I would not let him look on my child.’ He was still looking at his daughter. ‘I always meant to tell him you were dead, but when the moment came, I could not say the words, even if they might protect you. I could not say them.’

  Sally wiped at her eyes with the sort of vigour Harriet used herself when she wished to stop crying immediately. ‘Trimnell saw me looking from the window upstairs as he left,’ she confessed. ‘I stepped away as soon as he turned round, but it was too late.’

  Harriet got to her feet and went to the window. Soho Square lay below them in the sunshine. A pair of young men who had just left the Academy were talking excitedly as they crossed towards Greek Street, still miming the thrusts and parries Christopher had been teaching them. ‘Did you wish to see him again, Miss Christopher?’

  ‘No. To see him that once was enough. He walked like a beggar.’ Harriet looked back into the room. Mrs Christopher had changed her seat so she might sit on Sally’s other side, not touching her, but as determined a guardian as her husband. ‘He must have been watching for me. He stopped me on Thursday afternoon as I came back from the butcher’s and held onto my basket: I could not run away for fear of losing it.’

  ‘Did he try and claim you?’ Harriet said. ‘Not as his property, but as his daughter?’

  ‘He said he wanted to acknowledge me.’ She said it with utter scorn. ‘He said he would take me into his home and his wife would be a mother to me. I told him I had a home, a father and a mother already – but it was as if he couldn’t understand. He was so thin and dirty, and he seemed to think that I should be pleased at the idea of leaving my home to live with him.’ Scorn became a baffled contempt.

  Harriet put her hand on the glass pane and imagined it. Trimnell twisted with guilt, with hopes of redeeming himself but still unable to understand that a girl might prefer the black father who had raised her to the white man who had raped her mother. ‘Was he angry with you?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘He just kept speaking more loudly and slowly as if he thought I was soft-brained. Why would he think I wanted him as a father when I have Papa? When I have this? He said he wanted to give me a present and put his silly watch into my basket. I did not want it! Cornforth the grocer came out of his shop and asked him what he was about and he let me go. I ran back home.’

  So Trimnell had caused enough of a scene to make the grocer come out of his shop.

  ‘Miss Christopher, was anyone watching you while Trimnell spoke to you? Might someone have overheard?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘I do not know. He was so close to me I could hardly see anything. And he talked and shouted so.’

  Harriet left the window. ‘Thank you, Miss Christopher. And thank you for the tea, Mrs Christopher.’

  The family stood. ‘My pleasure, Mrs Westerman,’ said her hostess.

  Sally leaned against her father. ‘May we fetch Guadeloupe from Bridewell, Papa?’

  ‘At once, though you should never have given him the watch, Sally. You knew he would pawn it and drink the money away.’ She apologised quietly. ‘I am sure that explaining your actions to the city magistrate will be punishment enough. Now, Mrs Westerman, I shall see you out.’

  IV.2

  FRANCIS WOKE SLOWLY AND later than he had intended, and rang for hot water. His landlady had complaine
d in the first weeks after he’d taken this room that he called for more hot water than the rest of her tenants put together. They had agreed a little extra for the work, and went on now in a friendly fashion, though she called him eccentric for it. Particularly as his skin didn’t show the dirt, she said. It was one of the many mysteries of the English, how they decorated themselves, their homes and their palaces with such extravagance, yet were so careless in keeping clean. The maid brought up the can and his shirts clean and mended over her arm. He lifted the fabric to his face and breathed in the smell of starch and felt it comfort him. The girl grinned at him and asked after his wounds. He had almost forgotten them. The lotion from Berkeley Square must have done its work well.

  Francis washed and dressed himself with care, took his breakfast of bread and cheese and small beer at the chandler’s on the corner, and made his way to the shop.

  He found Constable Miller on the doorstep. The man was shifting from foot to foot and occasionally glancing over his shoulder at the books set out in the window, as if they might be planning a surprise attack. Francis smiled at him. ‘You may always wait for me inside, Mr Miller,’ he said as he opened the door. ‘Ferguson is always here at dawn.’

  Miller took off his hat as he came in. ‘Books make me nervy, Mr Glass. I’m happy to sit in by the fire with you but I feel, standing in here, like they are all talking about me behind my back.’ Francis laughed softly. ‘I’ve had word from Bartholomew,’ Miller went on. ‘It was murder proved. Still no sight nor sound of Penny though.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And, there’s a lawyer in your parlour. Says he has Mrs Smith’s will. The fellows at her place told him you were charged with the business.’

  Francis glanced over his shoulder towards the parlour. ‘Again, my thanks, Mr Miller. You are very kind.’

  The constable scratched the back of his neck. ‘You’re making up for not thanking me the night I pulled you from the fire now, Mr Glass. No thanks needed. Just wish I had something more useful to do than flounder about in the stews asking for Penny. Half of them answer they’ll be Penny if I want ’em to be.’ He tutted. ‘Not one in three of them over fifteen neither.’