The Color of Death

by Alexander, Bruce

  “I shall,” I promised. “I’ll go tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow may be too late.”

  “Oh … well, do they allow visitors at night?”

  “I foresaw this,” said he, as he removed a letter from his pocket, “and wrote out a kind of pass for you which should enable you to visit Mr. Robb at any time of the day or night.”

  Taking the letter as it was offered, I thanked him and promised to get to St. Bartholomew’s as soon as ever I could. “But,” I added, ” you heard of my duties of this evening.”

  “I did, yes, and that brings me to the second matter I wished to speak to you about. When I found you there at the Trezavant house, doing the sort of work always done in the past by Sir John, I thought, Indeed, why not? Sir John could not go. Jeremy has always been with him on these visits to the setting of the crime and knows which questions to ask; and I’m sure you did a good, workmanlike job there.”

  “Well, I tried, but -”

  “Let me finish. That was my impression then, but as I listened to your report to Sir John, I was struck by what you had accomplished with your investigation. You’d made it your own. You brought important information to him. He knows it, and will use it, though he would not let you see that.”

  “But why?” I interjected. “Why is he so guarded with me? Why will he show no enthusiasm — no satisfaction even — for what I bring him? No matter what it may be, he always gives me the feeling that somehow I have fallen short. Wasn’t it so today?”

  He conceded it was so. But then he continued: “I had a teacher at the University of Vienna, a teacher of anatomy, which for one who wishes to be a surgeon, is probably the body of knowledge most important of all. His name was Grabermann, which translates roughly as gravedigger, if I’m not mistaken. In any case, I was quite certain that he was digging my grave for me. Though I tried to please him, studied tirelessly for his lectures, and answered all his questions correctly, I was constantly exposed to the bite of his sarcasm. He never accepted what I had to say without some belittling comment, and sometimes such were tossed out quite gratuitously. His object? Well, I never could quite grasp what was his object. And so, you can imagine my surprise when I heard from one of my friends, also a medical student, that he had heard our Professor Grabermann commending me to another member of the medical faculty as ‘the most knowledgeable and promising of all his students.’ I was astonished, so much so that when his course of lectures in anatomy was done, I went to him and asked him how I might reconcile his treatment of me with his opinion of me. He thought that very bold and said so, but because it was bold he responded. ‘My dear young fellow,’ said he to me, ‘I kept returning to you for answers to my questions for I could be sure that you would give me the right answers. Yet I could tell that you wished most of all to please me with the answers. You sought my approval, where as my personal approval had nothing to do with the subject of anatomy, nothing at all. And so, Herr Donnelly, I derided you, made sport of you before the class so that you might understand that anatomy was all-important and my approval, nothing.’ “

  He peered at me. There was something challenging in his look.

  I said to him, “I think I understand, sir.”

  “Do you? Well, let me put it plain. I think you are more interested in pleasing Sir John than you should be, or you need to be. Sir John, on the other hand, has noted this, and he seems to withhold his approval for just that reason. He wants you to — ”

  Just then the door did interrupt us. Annie was on the other side, pushing against it, returning from Mr. Tolliver’s stall in Covent Garden with a cut of meat judged worthy. Having bumped us out of the way with the door, she begged pardon and hurried past. Something seemed to be troubling her.

  Mr. Donnelly and I did not resume our talk. With Annie gone, he held the door open for himself and smiled a goodbye smile at me. “Well, I’ve talked quite enough,” said he in farewell. “Let us leave it that you’re doing well, very well. Don’t worry that Sir John may not be pleased. Please yourself.”

  And having said what he had intended, he departed, leaving me to reflect upon it.

  The dinner, which was intended as something of a celebration, seemed hardly that, for Annie was ominously quiet throughout. She had cooked with her usual skill, no doubt of that — the beef roast that she had selected was perfectly prepared, with abundant dripping for the potatoes and carrots. Yet our group, which Sir John called his “family, ” was such that when one member was downcast or out of sorts he (or in this case, she) could bring down the rest. Not even the bottle of claret that Sir John had opened helped much to enliven the feast.

  When we were done, Annie cleared the table and volunteered to do the washing up. Though Lady Fielding at first offered objections — (“She’s done enough cooking the meal, don’t you think?”) — Sir John overrode them and sent Clarissa and me down to the cellar in search of John Abernathy.

  “Who is this fellow, Abernathy? ” she asked, eager to hear the worst. “How many did he murder?”

  “Perhaps none, or so he claimed. Yet he was a dedicated and most active thief; what Bunkins would call ‘a village hustler,’ always on the scamp.”

  “Ah, that’s flash-talk, surely. You must teach it me.”

  Just then I threw open the door to the cellar. The profound darkness before us was rather intimidating, even to me; it inspired a wail of dismay from her.

  “Oh, Jeremy,” said she, “must we? I had forgotten how frightening it can be down there. There are rats — or some such creatures that patter about in the dark.”

  “Well, you must have been down there quite some time — long enough to change the files around, as I understand.”

  “Yes, but I was with Annie most of the time — no insult to you intended, Jeremy — and she propped the door open.”

  “Well, I can do that,” said I, and set about to do so. “And I’ve got a lighted candle. Here, I’ll light yours for you. That should give us as much as we need.”

  And so, thus equipped, we descended the stairs, I in the lead, Clarissa behind, and each of us bearing candles burning bright; the open door also shed a bit of light below, but only a bit, for darkness had long since fallen on London.

  Clarissa’s improvement of the filing system used by the Bow Street Court was simple enough, though there could be no doubt that it had made it much easier to find specific cases. Previously, individual cases were simply filed under the date upon which they were heard. Clarissa’s innovation was simply to list under the date the names of all those whose cases were inside the date folder; it was no longer necessary to look inside each folder to see which cases had been heard upon that day. It was a wonder to me that the files had not been changed in this way long before. That suggested to me what I had long suspected: that the files were very seldom consulted; for the most part, they were stored and forgotten.

  In this way, Clarissa and I were able to go quickly through the files for 1760, the year designated by Maude Bleeker as the one in which her Johnny Skylark appeared before Sir John Fielding, magistrate of the Bow Street Court.

  “What did you say this fellow’s name was?” Clarissa called to me from one end of the year’s files.

  “John Abernathy.”

  “I have it here,” said she, “ — tried on September 27th.”

  “Really? Why, that was indeed quickly done.” Working from the beginning of the year 1760, I had myself only reached the middle of March.

  “Shall I remove the case file from the folder?”

  “No, I think not. We — what happened?”

  What happened was this: Either I had not propped the door properly, or someone had, out of ignorance or malice, kicked away the brick that I had used. The door shut of a sudden with a great bang, thus creating a great draft which swept down the stairs and blew out our candles, plunging the cellar into complete darkness.

  A scream rose in her throat, which she barely managed to stifle. She made her way across the few steps that separat
ed us. “Yes,” said she, “what did happen?”

  I started to explain when a sudden scurrying of tiny animal feet sounded quite near to us. Just as sudden I ended my explanation, that I might better listen. Clarissa, on the other hand, let forth the scream she had only moments before stifled. She stood so close and screamed so loud that I was near deafened. Then did she throw her arms about me, pressing herself to me tight, squeezing me with all her strength, which was considerable. (She was no longer the frail little runaway from the Lichfield poorhouse.)

  “Come along,” said I, “let go, and we shall find the stairway.”

  “I’m afraid,” said she. “I do so hate those things.”

  “Come along,” I repeated.

  And holding her firmly about the waist, I took us to the stairs.

  The location was well-fixed in my mind. I murmured to her encouragingly and got her up the first step and then the second, and so on, up to the very top. And when we reached it, I found the door was locked. Well, thought I, so much for the possibility of any accidental removal of the door prop.

  I beat loudly and lustily upon the door. I raised my voice in repeated shouts to “open!” And Clarissa joined her voice with mine.

  It was not long before I heard footsteps and then the sound of the key turning in the lock. The door swung open, revealing a surprised Mr. Baker. He stepped aside.

  “Well, what are you doing in there, Jeremy? Or maybe I should say, how’d you manage to get yourself locked in?”

  “I’ve no idea,” said I, though I immediately excused Mr. Baker from blame. We had always been on the best of terms.

  “You all right, Mistress Roundtree?”

  “Well, I got a bit of a fright.”

  “I’ve no doubt of it,” said he. Then he turned and smiled at me. It was a most peculiar half-smile which communicated doubt, amused indulgence, and a certain manly understanding between him and me. He winked. Only then did I grasp that he believed that Clarissa and I were engaged in some adolescent version of the game of male and female — in short, that we were try sting for such purpose.

  “We were searching for a file. When the door came shut — you see? I used this brick to prop it open — that blew our candles out.” I wanted all this understood.

  “Ah, well, no harm done,” said he, and with a nod, he left us standing there at the door to the cellar.

  “Do you know what he thinks?” said I rather hotly to Clarissa. Then did I notice the expression upon her face; it was quite like the odd smile given me by Mr. Baker. I was most surprised at that, and perhaps a bit shocked.

  “Oh, I can guess,” said she. “But as he put it, ‘No harm done.’ “

  “Well, I hope you managed to bring the file with you. Didn’t drop it in your great fright, did you? “

  “No, I didn’t,” said she rather coldly. “If I had, I should only have had to go back and retrieve it. And I have no intention of going down there ever again. Certainly not with you.” She ended her speech with a sniff.

  “Well and good,” said I. “But let me see that file on John Abernathy, will you?”

  Without a word, she handed over the thick folder. I had no difficulty finding the Abernathy file, and I knew that what I wished to know would be on the very last page of the many which made up his file. There it was: “The prisoner, John Abernathy, was sentenced by Justice Francis Seward to transportation to the colony of Jamaica, where he would be sold to labor for the term of his natural life. He was sent out in chains on the HMS Avenger on October n, 1760.” So it was. Maude Bleeker’s Johnny Skylark was not hanged: The possibility did exist that she had seen him, just as she claimed.

  “Take this, the whole folder, and present it to Sir John,” I said to her. “He may want you to read it to him — or perhaps not. In any case, tell him I wished you to read to him the note on sentencing on the last page of the file.”

  She was suddenly curious. “Well, all right, but what about you? Where will you be?”

  “At St. Bartholomew’s Hospital,” said I. “I must visit a sick friend.”

  That sick friend, of course, was Arthur Robb. I hiked across London town to see him, weighted down somewhat by the two pistols that I carried in my coat pockets. I had requested them from Mr. Baker, the armorer and night jailer. When he heard where I was going, he thought it quite wise for me to go armed and otherwise prepared for trouble.

  The part of the city in which St. Bartholomew’s was located was not so much dangerous as it was dark and deserted at this time of night. It stood hard by Smithfield. The market would be full of customers — and most active — in a few hours’ time; but just now it was empty of all but stock to be slaughtered. I should have to choose my route to St. Bart’s carefully, taking the wider, better-lit streets and avoiding the narrow, dark streets which surrounded the hospital in such plenty.

  Most of the above I have paraphrased from what I remember of the advice Mr. Baker had given me as he checked over the two weapons and loaded them.

  “Are you sure you don’t want them in holsters on a belt, the way you usually wear them?” he asked.

  “No, I’ll be going into the hospital proper, and I daresay they wouldn’t want me walking amongst their patients with pistols in plain view.”

  “That makes good sense.”

  I fell silent for a moment as I considered whether I should bring the next matter up for discussion. And though I hesitated, curiosity won out.

  “Mr. Baker, have you any idea who might have kicked the door shut and locked us in the cellar?”

  “Well ‘tweren’t me.” He was very emphatic.

  “Oh, I know that. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  He looked me full in the face, scratched his head, and grimaced in thought.

  “Well now, let me see. I didn’t know you were down there, you two, so you must’ve gone down at the end of Fuller’s watch.”

  “I suppose we did.” Now there was a thought, for after all, I did not get along well with Mr. Fuller and had not for some time.

  “Was anyone else around?”

  “Oh, let me think. Yes, Bailey and Perkins got called up to talk with Sir John. They didn’t stay long. That new fellow — what’s his name? Pat-something.”

  “Patley,” said I.

  “That’s it, Patley. He waited down here and left with the other two. But truth to tell, Jeremy, I don’t know why you’re letting this bother you at all. Didn’t hurt anyone. ‘Twasn’t much more than a prank, was it?”

  “No, I suppose not. I’ll put it behind me.”

  “It’s best you do.”

  I was, however, not as good as my word. I worried away at the matter for over half my journey to St. Bart’s. Mr. Baker was right, of course. It was hardly more than a prank, and a mean-spirited one at that. And it was true, as well, that Mr. Fuller delighted in such tricks; he was notorious for the indignities, large and small, that he forced upon prisoners. Nevertheless, Constable Patley seemed a likelier candidate — though I could not specifically say why that should be. Was it simply because he had been a soldier, and the “prank” seemed to me to be the sort of jest that might enliven boring evenings in the barracks room? Or was it something deeper? It was true, I admitted, that I had acted rather arrogantly toward him on our march to the Trezavant residence — though not altogether without reason. Was this simply his way of getting back at me? Or did my suspicion go deeper still?

  I gave all this greater thought than it deserved; mulling it about in my mind; posing Mr. Fuller against Mr. Patley; attempting to articulate to myself the basis of my uneasiness around Mr. Patley, the vague hostility that I felt toward him — to no avail.

  At last, finding no answer in what, after all, was mere speculation, I dropped the matter and urged myself to think about something else — anything else. Then did I turn past Old Bailey and start up Gilt Spur Street — not within sight (and smell) of Smithfield yard. And there, quite unbidden, Clarissa Roundtree popped into mind. What a strange one she was
! More often than not, she was bold as brass — just as she had been with Samuel Johnson, and as she so often was evenings at table. She seemed to wish all to believe her as capable as any man. Yet would a man scream, and clasp me to him, as she had when the candles were blown out and a rat began scurrying nearby? Indeed, I think not. And what, after all, could she have meant by that sly look that she gave me, and her own comment upon Mr. Baker’s comment? What, I asked myself, was she thinking of? Well, that was quite enough about Mistress Roundtree, was it not?

  I put her out of my mind, and there she stayed for a minute or two — until (again, quite unbidden) I happened to remember how she had felt when she had flown into my arms there in the darkened cellar. As I may have observed elsewhere, she was rather tall for her age and much better, well, better … developed than she had been when she first took her place in the household a year past. The point is, she fitted me rather well for one her age. But was I even sure of her age? I had thought her about twelve when first I saw her; that would make her thirteen, would it not? Perhaps she was older than that. She certainly/^ older.

  Thus, with such foolish thoughts as this circling through my brain, I arrived at St. Bartholomew s Hospital, oldest and largest in London. I chastised myself for not thinking more seriously while on this most solemn occasion. Arthur’s life would soon end — Mr. Donnelly had attested to that — and I surely owed him more decorous notions than those I had just had regarding Clarissa. Perhaps he would wish me to pray with him — but what prayers did I know? What could I say in comfort to him?

  I passed through the great stone gate and glimpsed above it the statue of King Henry VIII as I went under it. Then did I go straight to the office in which Mr. Donnelly had signed the papers of admission as I and the footman held Arthur between us, doing what we could to make him tolerably comfortable. I rapped hard upon the door and waited but a moment until a loud voice came from beyond it.

  “Who is there?”

  “I am come from the Bow Street Court to question one of your patients.”