The Color of Death

by Alexander, Bruce

  “They come by with great frequency,” said I. “Indeed, I shouldn’t be but a few minutes gone.”

  “No,” said he, “I find the night air rather refreshing. It has restored me somewhat.”

  And so we continued along St. James Street, and as we went I looked left and right at the great houses. Even in the moonlight they looked impressive — or perhaps especially then, for the night shadows seemed to cover over the imperfections and worn spots that were visible during the day. (Not all the houses in this district were in the same excellent state of repair.)

  As we approached Mr. Bilbo’s residence, I saw that lights burned in a number of the windows. It was indeed one of the grandest in this street, having formerly belonged to Lord Goodhope. Mr. Bilbo, the owner and operator of one of London s most popular gaming houses, took the house in settlement of the nobleman’s gambling debt. Since then, I had been there often, for my friend, Jimmie Bunkins, had been taken by Mr. Bilbo as his ward; and through my intercession our cook, Annie, had been accepted as a scholar by Bunkins s tutor, Mr. Burn-ham. All in all, I was well-known there, though no better than Sir John himself, who maintained a curious relationship with the head of the house, Mr. Bilbo. As a gambler and the proprietor of a gambling establishment, he could never be accepted as a respectable gentleman in London society. There were those who tut-tutted at Sir John’s friendship with such a man. To them, the magistrate would say gruffly, “I like the man, and there’s an end to it.”

  As we passed the house in question, I mentioned it to him and noted the smile spread across his face.

  “Ah yes,” said he, “it is here on the same street as the Lilley residence. I’d nearly forgotten. I daresay Black Jack is counting chips at his club at this moment.”

  “There are a few lights lit,” said I. “Bunkins and Mr. Burnham, no doubt.”

  “No doubt. It is quite late, though. Why, it must be well past midnight.” We walked on in silence, past the neighbors to the Bilbo residence; Pall Mall was then much closer — or so it seemed.

  “I wonder what Mr. Bilbo will do when he hears a house on his street has been robbed,” said I.

  Sir John thought about that a moment, and then chuckled, “He will probably distribute pistols and cutlasses to all in the house. Or perhaps construct a redoubt before the front door. Or both.”

  We laughed together at that. The idea of fortifications built in St. James Street seemed especially rich. What would the neighbors say? Indeed what must they have said when Mr. Bilbo moved in, followed by those persistent rumors that he had made his first fortune as a pirate in the Spanish waters of the New World.

  But to me it seemed that there were more urgent matters to discuss: “Tell me, though, sir, what did you think of those you questioned?”

  “In truth,” said he, “I did not think much of them. The butler seemed interested only in defending himself. The maid — well, she did well enough, I suppose, and I certainly would not have had her get her nose slit to protect those jewels, but … Oh well, they offered something — the porter was actually quite shrewd and helpful, but … but… oh, damnation! It just never ends! Too many robberies! Too many killings!”

  I had not meant to cause him such annoyance. It was just that I had not realized the depth of his frustration. These ironical jokes of his, which now seemed to come with greater frequency, were his way of dealing with his discouragement. That very morning he had bared his true feelings when he had said that he wished the streets were safer. Why had I not then taken him more in earnest?

  All this might have been said to him, but none of it was. I simply grasped at the most convenient response. (Nor, as you shall see, would it have mattered much what I attempted to say at that particular moment.) What I managed was no more than this: “Well, perhaps tomorrow’s visit will prove more fruitful.”

  “I suppose it may,” said he. “After all, we — ”

  He had my attention as he spoke, and so it was that by the light of the streetlamp, I caught a flash of strong movement from the corner of my eye. I turned, looked, and saw that little more than twelve feet away a man stood before us, his feet planted firmly, his arm straightened, and in his hand, a pistol.

  At once I pushed Sir John to the pavement and struggled to throw back my coat that I might draw forth one of my pistols from its holster. As it came free, the man before me fired. I raised the pistol, cocking it, and fired back at him. Had I but taken a moment more I would have hit my target at such a short distance, but my shot went wide. I pulled the left-side pistol from its place and raised it for another try. But by this time our assailant had taken to his heels, fast disappearing down a walkway which ran along the side of one of St. James Street’s grand houses. I went after him, hoping for a better shot. And then, of a sudden, I stopped.

  Good God, Sir John! I could not go chasing assassins, thus leaving him alone. Nor could I discharge the pistol, for there might be others of the gang about.

  I ran back to Sir John, expecting to find him up and about, ready to pursue his attacker on his own, calling down heaven’s wrath upon the villain. But no, he lay crumpled where I had pushed him, apparently unable to pull himself to his feet. Was he hit? Was he dead? I had not even considered such a possibility.

  Kneeling down beside him, I saw that he was breathing — shallowly, yet breathing nevertheless.

  “Sir John,” I whispered urgently, ” you are wounded. Can you tell me where you were hit?”

  “Shoulder,” said he, panting, “in the shoulder.”

  Gingerly, I pulled back his coat and saw the blood spread upon his white linen shirt. “I must get you to Mr. Donnelly.”

  “To Mr. Bilbo. Take me there.” He seemed now to be gathering strength. “Jeremy,” said Sir John, “what did the fellow look like?”

  “I … I’m not sure, sir.” And indeed I wasn’t, for all had happened so very quickly. But I concentrated upon the picture I held in my mind. And then I had something — to me, a quite unexpected something — that I might report.

  “Sir, I believe he was a black man.”

  TWO

  In Which Sir John

  Appoints Me to an

  Interim Position

  Of all that happened following this astonishing and frightening event, I shall speak only briefly and in summary.

  After having made my declaration to Sir John, I heard running footsteps from the direction whence we had come. I cocked the loaded pistol and made ready to shoot, should it be another assassin come to finish the work of the first. But no, it was Mr. Brede, who, having heard shots fired, had come in all haste. Together, we carried him to Mr. Bilbo’s house, which was not so far away. Mr. Burnham came in answer to Mr. Brede s urgent thumping upon the door. I responded to the challenge issued from inside and told what had happened. The door swung open, revealing Mr. Burnham, pistol in hand, looking, somehow as if he had just come in. I noted the constable’s surprise at the tutor’s dark face. As soon as we had Sir John lying comfortably upon a sofa, Mr. Brede ran off to fetch Gabriel Donnelly, the medical examiner for Westminster who was, luckily, still nearby at Lord Lilley’s performing his official duties.

  Through it all, Sir John had remained conscious. In fact, by the time we laid him down upon the sofa, he was more responsive, more talkative, than when we had picked him up from the pavement of St. James Street. He had kept up a steady stream of cautions and warnings. In spite of his wound — and as yet we knew not whether or not it be serious — he was truly still in command.

  Mr. Donnelly, who had only a few years past been a ship’s surgeon in the Royal Navy, had in his day treated many (did he say hundreds?) of such gunshot wounds. After boiling his instruments — Jimmie Bunkins wakened the cook, who saw to this — he removed the bullet and bound the wound. By this time Sir John was dutifully drunk from Mr. Bilbo’s best brandy. When the surgeon had done, he pronounced the wound “serious enough, though by no means mortal.” He did caution, however, that the wound must be kept clean and the dressing
changed once a day. (Hardly necessary in my case, for I had seen in Mr. Cowley an example of what might happen when one was irresponsible in caring for a wound; a gangrenous state, which led to the amputation of his left leg.)

  “And where will you be?” he asked the magistrate.

  “Where will I be? What a question!” Sir John, still drunk, slurred these words considerably so that they were barely comprehensible, even to me. “I’ll be at Number 4 Bow Street, where I belong.”

  “No he won’t. He’ll be right here.” It was Mr. Bilbo, thumping into the room, loud as he liked, as befit the proper master of the house. Bunkins had gone off to the gaming establishment to fetch his master that he might know of his friend’s misfortune.

  “I’ll go home if I wish … wish to.” Indeed, it was barely possible to understand him.

  “You will not. You’re too drunk to go home.” Indeed Mr. Bilbo had made a good point. Even if Sir John had not been shot and lost a considerable amount of blood, I doubted that his legs would carry him to the coach, be it a hackney or Mr. Bilbo’s own.

  Black Jack Bilbo they called him, partly in respect of the dark beard he wore, though perhaps also for the dark moods which came upon him all of a sudden. Now, with his thick legs planted wide and his fists upon his hips, he appeared as a bull might, fuming and snorting, and about to charge. Just to see him in that threatening posture would have frightened most men.

  Even had he been able to see him so, Sir John, of course, would have remained unmoved; his friend did not frighten him, nor could he. Nevertheless, as a magistrate and as a man, he was ever one to admit the truth when he heard it, and after a moment’s consideration of the matter, he said in a manner of surprise, “Am I drunk? Jeremy, are you here? Would you say that I am drunk?”

  “I fear so,” said I.

  “You,” said Mr. Bilbo, “are disgustingly drunk. Would you wish to go home in such a state?”

  He thought upon that for a good long while. For a moment, I thought he might have drifted off to sleep. But no. “P’raps not. S’pose I’ll stay. But you Jeremy, you go home and tell Kate where I be when she wakes. S’clear?”

  “Most clear, Sir John.”

  “S’good. Now I think I’ll sleep.” Which he did — off in an instant.

  Black Jack Bilbo assured Mr. Donnelly that Sir John would be well cared for. He then offered us a return to our separate abodes in his coach. We gladly accepted and rode in style to the humbler streets surrounding Covent Garden. After I had returned the brace of pistols to Mr. Baker and told him of the evening’s events, I struggled up the stairs to the kitchen — but I got no farther than that. Having settled down to the table with a glass of milk and a chunk of bread, I thought to satisfy the raging hunger that had attacked me of a sudden. Next morning Annie found me asleep at the table, the bread half eaten and the milk half drunk.

  First Annie, and then Clarissa, tried to rouse me — yet without success. Only Lady Fielding, when she woke to find herself alone in bed and saw I had returned without Sir John, managed to separate me from the arms of Morpheus, though it was not easy.

  She shouted at me: “Jeremy! Jeremy! You must tell me what has happened!”

  She pummeled me with her fists. “Get up! Wake up, you wicked boy! What have you done with my Jack?”

  That, I think, was what brought me to my senses. It was not the screams in my ear, nor was it even the blows she rained upon my head and shoulders; but to hear myself so unjustly accused by one so close to me — that demanded immediate redress. What had I done with her Jack? What indeed!

  Jumping to my feet, I defended myself vigorously. “Lady Fielding,” said I, “if he is your Jack, he is also mine. I have done naught with him. What was done last night was done to him by an armed assailant. In short, Sir John was shot at close range and wounded.”

  “Shot!” exclaimed Lady Fielding. “Wounded?”

  Annie and Clarissa, who stood behind her, echoed her concern.

  I then told them in detail all that had happened, nor did I, in the telling, scant my efforts to defend him and see him safe to Black Jack Bilbo’s. I did also quote Mr. Donnelly on the extent of Sir John’s wounding, “serious enough, though by no means mortal.”

  “Oh, thank God,” said Lady Fielding.

  “He will require care,” said I. “His dressing must be changed each day.”

  “Oh, we shall see to it,” said she. Then, looking behind her for confirmation, she added, “Won’t we, ladies?”

  “Of course,” said Annie.

  “You may be sure of it,” said Clarissa.

  And so it was soon settled: All three would travel with me to Mr. Bilbo’s residence after breakfast — Lady Fielding and Clarissa to check upon Sir John’s condition, and Annie to her daily reading lesson with Mr. Burnham. (Our cook had now had near two years of instruction in letters; and as she was bright and eager to learn, she could now read and comprehend all but texts so dense they would give a challenge to all but Oxford scholars.) And I? Well, I would naturally do whatever Sir John asked of me to help keep alive the investigation begun the night before. He would also surely want me to take a letter asking that for the foreseeable future all cases ordinarily tried by the Bow Street Court be brought instead before the magistrate for Outer London and its environs, Saunders Welch. Mr. Welch might complain bitterly, but I could see no other way to handle it.

  Breakfast was quite generous, though not as leisurely, as the day before. Even so, it was near nine before Lady Fielding and the other “ladies” (as she called them) had reached that stage of readiness when a hackney might be summoned and set to wait at the door for them. And so it fell to me to go down to fetch the coach.

  Yet it happened that I was stopped on my way by Mr. Marsden, the court clerk, who sought to know something of Sir John’s condition. I spoke reassuringly and again quoted Mr. Donnelly — serious but not mortal.

  “Constable Brede brought the news,” said Mr. Marsden. “I was quite overcome, I was, when I heard the news. I been workin’ for the gent near twenty years now, and I’ve seen him in some tight places, but he never took a bullet before.”

  To hear such made me most uncomfortable. After all, had I not been Sir John’s guardian? Was he not my responsibility?

  “I … I’m afraid I hadn’t my pistol out quick enough. I was armed, you know. Constable Baker saw to that.”

  “Oh, think not upon it, Jeremy,” said Mr. Marsden. “From what I heard from Mr. Brede, you acquitted yourself right well. Tried to push Sir John out of the line of fire, you did, and returned fire.”

  “And missed!” That, reader, came not from me but from just behind me in a deeper voice which was most familiar. “Or so I heard.”

  I turned round and faced him. “You heard correct, Mr. Fuller. And when I sought to pull my second pistol from its holster, he turned and ran from me.”

  “As well he might. Even a blackie’s got more sense than to stand there and let you have another shot at him. He was a blackie, wasn’t he?”

  “As I remember it,” said I, “yes he was.”

  At that Mr. Marsden gave a long whistle. “You don’t mean it,” said he in wonder. “I’d not heard that.”

  “Well, now you have,” said Mr. Fuller as he turned sharply on his heel and walked away.

  Mr. Marsden stared after him, perplexed, for a long moment. Then, coming to himself, he said, “Ah, Jeremy, I almost forgot. I’ve something here for you.”

  “What is that, sir?”

  “It was left with me by the new fellow, Constable Patley. He’d heard about Sir John, so he thought I should give it to you instead.” So saying, he pulled a folded and somewhat wrinkled sheet of paper from his coat pocket and offered it to me. “He says it’s his report on the robbery at Lord Lilley’s residence.”

  I took it from him and glanced at it. There seemed little for me there, and so I tucked it away. “I’ll look at it later,” said I.

  “I got little from it for the file,” said Mr. Ma
rsden. “A name, and not much more.”

  “I’ll read it to Sir John when he’s ready for it. But right now I’d better find a hackney. We’re off to see him at Black Jack Bilbo’s.”

  Then, with a wave, I left him and proceeded out the door to Bow Street.

  It was Mr. Burnham who answered my knock upon the door to Mr. Bilbo’s residence. My first glimpse of him told me that though he had been up quite as late as I, he appeared to be far better rested. Smiling, he threw the door wide and beheld the four of us standing on the porch. When his eye fixed upon Lady Fielding, the smile vanished from his face and was replaced by a look of alarm. And it seemed to me that when he stepped aside to admit us, he did so only after a considerable hesitation; indeed one might say that he showed a certain reluctance in allowing us into the house at all. I could not but wonder why.

  Beginning with Lady Fielding, he greeted us each one by name there in the entrance hall. He then looked about as if in hopes of finding someone to whom he might pass us on — but there was no one about.

  Lady Fielding thrust herself forward and said in a voice at once insistent and confidential, “Mr. Burnham, you must tell us, how is he?”

  “Uh, you mean Sir John, of course?”

  “Indeed! Yes! Of course!”

  “I believe he does as well as anyone might expect. Perhaps better. Though I must confess that I have not looked in on him this morning.”

  Lady Fielding stepped back and regarded Mr. Burnham thoughtfully, perhaps wondering at his odd behavior. “But of course you would not have seen him this morning, for you, sir, are a tutor and therein your responsibilities lie. You are not here to nurse Sir John, but we are. We have come this long way from Bow Street to do just that. We shall gladly take responsibility for his care.”

  “Yes, certainly. I quite understand.”

  She looked at him rather sharply. “Do you?”

  “Yes … quite …” But then a thought struck him: “Ah, but no doubt you ladies would like first to refresh yourselves. Right this way — in here, please!”