Convicted Innocent

by Meggie Taylor

  * * * * *

  Men began yelling.

  Horace thought he heard a police whistle somewhere behind him in the tunnels; but that was as useful as wishful thinking for all the good it did them in the moment.

  Lewis laid the fair-haired fellow low with a blindingly fast trio of kicks: one to the legs to knock him down, another to the chin, which snapped the man’s head back, and a third to the head for good measure. Caught completely unaware, the blonde went down and stayed down.

  The other heavies scattered as the police sergeant rolled to his feet. His hands were free – how was that possible?

  Ah yes, a knife, Horace noted. Apparently, the fellow had snagged one from his captors and then played dead (or almost dead) in order to cut through his bonds.

  Another of the thugs fell in the space between one heartbeat and the next; a weasel-faced fellow fled around the pit and into a tunnel on the far side; three others – each burly and capable – formed a wheeling triangle around the policeman, their knives out and ready.

  Another heartbeat.

  Lewis, whose lips were clenched in a thin line, hesitated but a moment. Then he attacked his attackers.

  The thug who’d stabbed David Powell fell first, hamstrung in both legs and unconscious.

  Two more heartbeats.

  The second large bruiser staggered back and then sat down heavily; he had no visible wounds, but seemed thoroughly addled.

  Four heartbeats together.

  The last one danced around the wary police sergeant, and managed to swipe a line of red down Lewis’s right forearm with his blade…before the tall policeman simply punched him in the chin. This fellow’s head snapped up and he fell backward, as straight as a board and out cold before he hit the ground.

  In less than two-dozen heartbeats, Lewis Todd had nearly leveled the room.

  (Somewhere in the tunnels behind the old detective, another police whistle shrilled faintly and Horace thought he might hear sounds of fighting. The whistle was far off, but closer than before. But not yet close enough.)

  The police sergeant dropped to his knees beside the little clergyman’s still and crumpled form, and let out a brief, quiet, keening moan.

  “Lewis,” Horace said, finding his voice. The detective hadn’t moved at all during the melee, his attention divided between Nicholas Harker and the remaining thug guarding Conway Duke.

  “He lives,” the sergeant murmured, and then more sharply, “Innocent! Come here.”

  The old man’s confusion only increased when Nicholas Harker took a hesitant step toward the policeman and priest, and then moved more quickly when Lewis made an insistent, beckoning gesture.

  “Help him,” the tall policeman commanded when the young man reached them and knelt down.

  Harker cast a frightened look back toward Horace and the others, but nodded. Lewis Todd pushed to his feet and stalked toward the old detective, Duke, and the single remaining heavy.

  If Horace had ever seen an angrier, more determined expression on a man’s face, he couldn’t remember when. Whether by force of will or some power the detective had never encountered before, Lewis not only ignored the bloody wounds in his legs and one in his side (when had that happened?), but also managed to move with all the lethal grace and speed of a tiger at hunt.

  The final thug took one look at those cold gray eyes and began swearing profusely.

  “Throw down your weapon,” Horace said, wondering where on earth the magician was in all of the chaos. Had he miscalculated so badly?

  The thug paused briefly in his swearing, exhaled in a huff, swore once more, and then lunged toward Conway Duke. In a trice, he had flung an arm over one of the uncle’s shoulders and under the opposite arm, pinning the unfortunate man to him, and pressed the blade of his knife across Duke’s throat. When Duke scrabbled at the imprisoning arm, a trickle of red bloomed under his chin; he ceased struggling at once.

  “Warnin’ you,” the heavy grated to them. “Safe passage, or ‘e gets hit.”

  The uncle let out a terrified whimper.

  Sergeant Todd paused a few paces away, snarled, and then started forward again.

  “Lewis!” Horace put out a hand to stop the man.

  Where was that bloody magician? To a similar point, where were Sergeant Bartholomew and the others?

  “It’s a bluff,” the tall policeman growled, even though he stopped in his tracks.

  “How can you be sure?” the detective asked as the thug dragged his prisoner backward toward the tunnel from which the pair had come originally.

  “The blood—” a wracking cough interrupted him, “—the blood on his shoe is mine. Kicked me.”

  Lewis took a step toward the retreating pair but faltered as another cough nearly bent him double.

  Horace grasped the sergeant under the arm to steady him, “Lewis?”

  The sergeant straightened, clenched his jaw determinedly, and tried again to take another step, but his legs buckled.

  “Easy, son. I’ve got you,” Horace murmured, getting his arms around the tall policeman before the fellow collapsed completely. The detective went to one knee helping the younger man sit down, keeping an eye on the thug and his prisoner all the while.

  “Sir,” Lewis mumbled, his head starting to loll. He coughed again. “Don’t let them ‘scape. Duke’s not a victim…mastermind.”

  Horace grunted.

  “He’s been giving ‘em hand signals. Don’t let…” Lewis murmured again, and then he fainted.

  The old man gently laid the younger policeman down and then lurched to his feet. Jogging as quickly as he might after the pair that had just disappeared in the tunnel’s darkness, Horace cursed his own shortsightedness.

  Of course he trusted Sergeant Todd’s judgment; though he didn’t quite see how it all fit together yet or how Duke might be his magician, Horace was willing to take Lewis’s pronouncement on faith.

  …only there was no sign of either Duke or his captor ahead of him in the tunnel.

  Horace slowed, stopped, and swore.

  Too slow, old man, he berated himself, but then he heard something that nearly made him smile.

  “Hi! You there: stop! Why, Mr. Duke—! No, no! We’ll sort all that out at the station.”

  Sergeant Bartholomew’s voice wafted to him from somewhere up ahead, faint and oddly distorted by the confines of the passage, but clear nonetheless.

  Finally! The reinforcements he’d sent the long way around had found their way in. Apparently the metal door on the main corridor was the entrance to the arena.

  Less than a minute later, the face of a constable he sort of recognized peered back at him around a bend, the lad’s face haloed by lamplight.

  “Sir!” The constable then shouted back over his shoulder, presumably to Sergeant Bartholomew: “It’s the inspector!”

  “Come with me, quickly.”

  Letting the constable run to catch up, Horace spun on his heel and retraced his steps to the arena.

  Sergeant Todd was as he’d left him: unconscious, bleeding, and breathing roughly. The old man paused for a moment to make sure the constable who’d followed was taking care of the dear boy, and then stood and stopped.

  Slowly he pivoted on his heel, noting that not one of the heavies Lewis had knocked down was stirring yet.

  Hopefully they would stay that way until more reinforcements arrived. What could he do, anyway? Hit them again?

  In a moment he was kneeling next to Nicholas Harker by Lewis’s best mate. Powell lay twisted on his stomach, and Harker had stripped off his own shirt to press to the bloody wound in the little man’s back.

  Horace fumbled for a moment before he found a pulse, but there it was: weak, perhaps, but steady.

  Harker said something, a question inflecting his tone.

  Horace shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “He…asked if you would…untie my hands.”

  Powell’s eyes fluttered open and then his face screwed up in pain
.

  “Oh! Hush, lad,” Horace commanded gently, and then bent to do as Harker had asked.

  “I’m glad…God, that hurts—!” the papist groaned. “—I’m glad…you didn’t…didn’t kill him. He’s in—…innocent.”

  “I’m glad as well. Your warning was well-timed. Now please stop speaking.”

  The detective kept a quiet vigil over the little priest until the band of bobbies he’d parted from at the blonde’s request trooped into the arena. The pushed quite a number of the gang before them; aside from the weasel-faced chap who’d fled, Horace thought they might’ve captured all of the two dozen or so he’d counted.

  From the other tunnel, Sergeant Bartholomew and his squad (his crew’s numbers had swelled) brought with them the final heavy and Conway Duke.

  Horace beckoned to Bartholomew as soon as he caught the sergeant’s eye.

  “Sir, glad to see you,” the sergeant began, but Horace cut him off.

  “Watch Mr. Duke very carefully.”

  “Sir?” A puzzled Bartholomew glanced back to where a protesting Conway Duke was being handcuffed the same as all the assembled heavies. Turning to the inspector, comprehension suddenly dawned on the bobby’s face. “Is he—?”

  “Yes. Particularly note if he makes or seems to make any sort of hand signal to anyone.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Conway Duke was given his own personal detail of constables.

  The last group of policemen to enter the chamber had the fine goods factory owner in tow.

  “What is the meaning of this?!”

  Archibald Harker had been none too happy when a few policemen had shown up on his doorstep to ‘invite’ him to accompany them during a raid on his factory. By the time he’d been led down to the fighting arena, the man was nearly apoplectic.

  “The indignity of traipsing around in the darkness—! Harassment by the police!” he was ranting when he caught sight of his nephew and stopped.

  “Nicholas?” Archibald spluttered. “This is where you’ve been?”

  The boy shrugged and nodded.

  Horace stood and, grasping the young man by the elbow, drew Nicholas to his feet as a pair of constables took over tending the little papist (who’d mercifully lost consciousness again).

  “We found him down here,” the detective confirmed. “As well as the fellow behind it all.”

  He nodded toward Conway Duke, who was still playing innocent. Horace watched the senior Harker’s reaction.

  Archibald frowned. “You’ve given up the nonsense about my nephew being some criminal mastermind, then?”

  Horace said nothing.

  “Nicholas has not been cuffed like the others,” the senior Harker noticed. “You know he’s not a murderer.”

  “Seems unlikely,” the inspector conceded, watching with concern as David Powell and Lewis Todd were loaded onto stretches for transport out.

  “Lord! It’s about bloody time!” Archibald seemed both exasperated and relieved. “You’re alright, son?”

  Nicholas nodded, pulling the suit jacket his uncle had doffed and given him about his bare shoulders.

  “He’ll come with me, then.” Archibald stated.

  Horace shook his head. “It’s not as simple as that.”

  “Why? Clearly we’re victims in this mess.”

  The inspector stared at Archibald for a moment, then glanced pointedly around the arena, and then back at the senior Harker.

  “I think not.”

  Epilogue

  Early May 1887

  “—An’ you must be Mrs. Tipple.”

  Mathilda grasped the hand offered to her politely, sizing up the woman before her. She’d heard of Penelope Marvelle before, of course, but this was the first time they’d met.

  The young woman was tall and quite pretty, had a brilliant crown of flaming ginger hair, and her smile and merry laugh were catching. Indeed, Ms. Marvelle’s expression was one of genuine delight as she greeted the Tipples.

  “Charmed.” Mathilda felt her polite smile broaden and warm to match the younger woman’s vibrant sincerity.

  “Grand, dearie! Though I fear I must be off, now. I’ll leave you to m’ boys.”

  Ms. Marvelle turned, leaned over, and gave David Powell a kiss on both cheeks. He mirrored the gesture with a smile and nodded in good humor to her enjoinder to behave.

  Then the young woman turned to Lewis Todd, whose bed at London Hospital was right next to the little clergyman’s. Mathilda noticed Ms. Marvelle’s laughing blue eyes soften for an instant as she stood over the policeman, but then they sparkled with a sudden twinkle of mischief.

  Sergeant Todd quirked an eyebrow at the young woman as she leaned close. She whispered something in his ear and then straightened, an expectant look on her face. A pause, then both of the sergeant’s ears shot a bright red.

  Both she and Powell laughed; Lewis harrumphed as his cheeks flushed a bit as well, but his eyes crinkled in a smile.

  “Well, au revoir!” Ms. Marvelle gave one of Sergeant Todd’s hands a squeeze, straightened her hat, and then walked briskly from the ward, nodding to the Tipples in passing.

  Mathilda smiled inwardly as she noticed how Lewis watched the young woman as she went. It was about time someone caught his fancy!

  Her husband had been hanging back throughout this exchange, but now he drew up chairs for both of them and they sat down to converse.

  This was their second visit, though Rory had stopped by a time or two on his own. The first time, David Powell had still been unconscious, and Lewis Todd had been little better; now, nearly a week after their rescue, both young men were sitting up in bed and looking markedly better.

  “They let you smoke in here?”

  “This?” Powell held up briar pipe he’d been turning over in hand and smiled. “Alas, no! They’re quite adamant about it, so I had to sneak out yesterday. Heavenly!”

  The clergyman nodded to the partly open drawer in the table between the beds. As Mathilda looked inside, he went on.

  “My housekeeper learned I’d lost mine and mentioned it to a friend or two. Still trying to figure which one I like best.”

  The drawer had more than a dozen smoking pipes of all shapes and sizes, as well as a half-dozen pouches of pipe tobacco.

  “Only ‘a friend or two?’”

  Powell chuckled.

  “Well, perhaps a few more. Sometimes a body loses something, but, by God’s grace, it comes back to him—” he leaned over the drawer and made a quick count, “—fourteen-fold!”

  He paused, a faraway look in his eyes, which seemed to Mathilda to have nothing to do with the contents of the drawer. With a small smile and a shake of his head though, Powell straightened.

  The movement caused him to inhale sharply, though, and his expression became pained for a brief moment.

  “Are you alright?”

  “Well enough.” He rolled his shoulders, grimacing ruefully. “I keep forgetting why I’m in hospital.”

  “You forget that you were stabbed?” she asked drily.

  “Surprisingly, yes! I can attribute that to the wonders of modern medicine, I think. In fact, the doctor spoke of perhaps letting me leave tomorrow or the next day.”

  “That’s marvelous! Forgive my boldness, please, but…that seems very soon. You nearly died.”

  “I’m grateful for your concern,” Powell returned, his smile softer. “I think I should be fine, especially under the care of my very doting, very motherly housekeeper. Also, though I’m not an expert about these things, it seems the knife missed nearly everything important on its way in and out – even my heart, if only by a hair. So really a few stitches are all that ail me.”

  “Providential.”

  Powell beamed.

  “And Lewis?” she asked.

  The little clergyman chuckled. “Ah. Well, that nutter stole a pair of crutches a day or so ago, and after tearing open his wounds not once, but twice, the nurses took the crutches away and threatened t
o tie him down. I hazard he may be here a few days longer than I, what with broken ribs and three times as many stitches and all.”

  Mathilda glanced over fondly to where her husband and the dark-haired young fellow were lost in some case file or another that Rory had brought. Horace was explaining something to Lewis as the latter held the paperwork at arm’s length and squinted (he’d not yet been fitted for a new pair of reading spectacles). It sounded very business-like.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Tipple,” the clergyman said apologetically then, and then more loudly to the other two: “If I may, what was that about Nicholas Harker?”

  Mathilda hadn’t been listening to the other conversation, but apparently mention of that name had caught Powell’s attention.

  “Oh, seems there’s good news on his account,” Lewis replied. “A retrial seems likely.”

  Horace nodded, continuing when the younger policeman left off.

  “The whole matter is a mess, of course. Evidence for the murder trial is being scrutinized again, and in light of the testimony you’ve promised to help Mr. Harker craft—” he nodded to Powell, “—it seems we’ll get the right man this time.”

  “And that’s made it so tricky?”

  Rory pursed his lips and shook his head humorlessly. “No, lawyers are to blame for that. Citing gross negligence, they want the whole matter – including everything we discovered in the tunnels while pursuing the real murderer – dismissed from court.”

  From what her husband had explained to her, Mathilda knew the murder trial previously directed at Nicholas Harker had been refocused around Conway Duke and his underlings. The Harker empire had escaped that mess.

  However, they’d not escaped entirely. The illegal prizefighting pit had been but a single part of the police’s discoveries last Sunday. One of Horace’s men (she thought it might be the pleasant one, Simon Bartholomew) had traced the broadest of the tunnels underneath the fine goods factory to a nearby gentlemen’s club also owned by the Harkers.

  The police raid had extended into this establishment as well. There the police found ledgers, documents, and even photographs recording all manner of illegal activities, from prizefighting and the gambling associated with it, to prostitution and money laundering.

  (Mathilda personally thought it rather careless of them to have kept such records all in one place, but she wasn’t too versed in the workings of criminal overlords.)

  The evidence against the family was solid, but what tickled her Rory even more was the scandal.

  So many prominent men – even a few female socialites – appeared in the Harkers’ ledgers as frequent participants in illicit or illegal activities. No doubt an enterprising soul had collected the documentation as leverage, perhaps even to fuel designs for blackmail. None of these names had yet found their way to the newspapers, but ripples had begun behind the scenes. If Horace had wanted, he could have pursued investigations on barristers, members of Parliament, society matrons, a baron or two, and even a chap from the Prime Minister’s office. He had elected, however (and with his superior’s blessing), to let much of the matter sort itself out.

  Indeed, on Monday (only a day after the raid), a judge had approached Horace’s superintendent about dropping the Harker matter altogether. The super had listened and then politely pointed out that the judge should recuse himself from the case for having a vested interest in the outcome. Wasn’t that his face in this photograph? And this one? Oh. How interesting.

  After a bit of bluster and threatening, this pillar of justice withdrew his claim…and his support of the Harkers, both publicly and privately.

  Apparently word of this had spread, and no one else attempted to derail the proceedings.

  So the police would take the Harkers to court over prizefighting, for operating a house of ill-repute, and for other such doings; in the meantime, their clientele would take them apart for being so careless with their clandestine pastimes. The Harker empire would likely be but a shadow of itself within a year.

  “—He’s a simple fellow,” Lewis was saying as Mathilda returned her attention to the conversation. “What’s to be done with him after this? I think he’d be easily taken advantage of again.”

  Powell nodded in agreement.

  Her Horace had an answer for this, of course.

  “When the legal matters are settled and his name is cleared, which it should be, I think a place has been found for him in the country. The arrangements were made by one or two in the Harker clan who – and I thought I’d never say this – who seem a respectable sort. They’ve volunteered to help the lad. It seems he’ll be in good hands.”

  “I’m glad,” both Lewis and his friend said at the same time, looked at each other, and then grinned in unison.

  “Lord, you’re like twins!” Mathilda said.

  Powell laughed.

  “Have you drawn a motive out of Duke yet?” Lewis asked more seriously.

  “Yes.” Powell seconded. “Why did this all happen?”

  Horace frowned. From what he’d told her, Mathilda knew this was a matter that still bothered her husband greatly.

  “I wish Conway Duke were more boastful. However, the man just sits there in prison. He occasionally protests his innocence, but remains silent otherwise.”

  “We have nothing, then.” Lewis sounded almost bitter.

  “No, not nothing.” Rory chewed his lip. “Everything we’ve gathered about the man’s motives has come from his underlings, and it’s quite substantial. Enough for a sturdy case, though it would be stronger if the man would confess. Our current sketch of his operation is that he’s been at this business for some time. The gang runs cons on other gangs or families like the Harkers, and then sets them up to take the fall while he and his men walk away. A prime example is what happened to the Mercers down in Portsmouth last year.”

  “That was his doing?”

  “According to his men, yes. We might’ve even found the fellow who first got wind of Nicholas Harker’s letter to you, a fellow by the name of Corbin Ediker. He was in Holloway the same time as Harker, and likely overheard Frank O’Malley reciting back the lad’s dictation. It may be safe to assume that, upon failing to intercept the letter before it was posted and delivered, the gang attempted to wrest it from you.”

  “Which they botched.” Lewis said.

  “And I was just an unlucky, interfering bystander.” Powell added.

  Horace nodded. “Yes, but then Duke worked you into his scheme to pin all blame on his nuisance of a nephew and fell the family’s empire. His gang would then be ideally placed to snatch up the choicest pickings from the spoils.”

  The priest made a disgusted sound at the back of his throat. “How could anyone even think to foist such awfulness as murder on the shoulders of someone so…so innocent? That boy knew of the injustice of it all – in his own simple way – yet he still offered to die in place of men he scarcely knew. His uncle was aware of the lad’s nature, and he abused it; he twisted it out of proportions; he made him seem a monster. What sort of man does that, and to his own flesh and blood?!”

  “David.” Lewis murmured to quiet him.

  The priest’s voice had risen steadily in anger as he spoke, and the bell-like fury had begun to carry through the ward. A nurse at the far end turned to look back at them with a frown.

  “Oh. Forgive me,” Powell returned, seeming not at all apologetic. “I fear I’m rather uncharitable where Conway Duke and those like him are concerned.”

  Mathilda glanced at her husband and Lewis before saying, “Though we may not express it so heatedly, I believe we all share the strength of your sentiments.”

  Powell nodded, introspective, and then asked in a more even voice, “Is it known who murdered Frank O’Malley, and why?”

  Horace pursed his lips. “Given the status of the proceedings…and the public nature of our current location…I oughtn’t say anything about our culprit.”

  As he said this, Mathilda noticed the little priest shoot a
glance at the police sergeant; though she couldn’t understand the look Lewis returned, apparently Powell did, for he frowned. She knew what the frown meant: Rory had shared the same frustration with her only last night as they went to bed. They hadn’t managed to definitively pin the murder – or any of the others like it – on anyone yet. True, the Harker boy had witnessed enough of something that his uncle had set him up as his scapegoat, but there wasn’t physical evidence enough yet to support a trial-worthy murder charge against Conway Duke.

  “As for the why, I think the poor chap died because it best suited our murderer’s plans. O’Malley knew a great deal about the gang’s operations, and his loyalty seemed to be owed foremost to Nicholas Harker. I believe the testimony he was to have given on the boy’s behalf would’ve included material against the gang, so he was nabbed before that could happened. And while I believe O’Malley might have died for those ‘offenses’ alone, his murder was in such a manner and at such a time so as to lead the police to the tunnels.”

  Horace paused.

  “Timing. It was a brutal, vindictive-yet-calculated matter of timing.”

  Only Duke hadn’t reckoned that her Horace would’ve set aside his prejudice against the Harkers long enough to seek true rather than convenient answers. Mathilda knew they were all thinking this, though none of them said it aloud. She also thought it fitting that of all the men in London that Duke’s gang might’ve kidnapped, it had to nab the two most suited to helping their scapegoat: one to speak for the boy, and the other to fight for him.

  Conway Duke and his thugs really hadn’t had a chance.

  “Well, a birthday toast,” Powell said, his tone brightening. “Though we’ll have to make do without raising anything delicious in a glass or snifter.”

  “—Birthday?” Mathilda asked.

  “Lewis’s,” Horace put in.

  “Oh. Is it the seventh already?” The sergeant said faintly, his ears tingeing pink.

  “Yes,” the other chorused together.

  Powell smiled. “To brothers.”

  “To persistent friends.” Lewis added, grinning. “Old and new.”

  “To laughter and new loves.” Mathilda’s toast earned her an eyebrow raised in curiosity from Lewis, at whom she was looking pointedly. When she shrugged, his ears turned an immediate, brilliant shade of red.

  Horace finished, “To innocents not convicted, but saved.”

  ###

  Thank you for reading my story. If you enjoyed it, won’t you please take a moment to leave me a review at your favorite retailer?

  Cheers!

  Meggie Taylor

  About the author

  It all began when nine-year-old Meggie Taylor first saw a Reading Rainbow episode on book repair. After making a book out of cardboard and glue and stolen printer paper, she then decided she needed a story to fill the pages. The result was a brief western, entitled "Stinky Sam," which she illustrated as well.

  Since the days of Stinky Sam and his exploits, both the author and her writing have moved on. After living in several states throughout the country, Meggie studied Liberal Arts at Magdalen College in New Hampshire, and then English Literature at the University of New Hampshire. She then taught remedial English composition at the college level for a few years before joining the New Hampshire Army National Guard as a photojournalist in 2010. Her civilian job took her to northern Virginia in 2011 (where she lives now), and then she deployed to Afghanistan in 2013. Much of her military writing, all of which is published under the name Margaret Taylor, has run in news outlets throughout the U.S.

  Behind the scenes of the non-fiction journalism and the teaching and the various desk jobs, though, has always been the fiction storytelling. Stinky Sam was the first of many, many characters Meggie has created, but the most enduring have been those who appear in The Bobby and The Priest series. After more than a decade of penning (penciling) dozens of short stories and their revisions, "Convicted Innocent" finally screamed its way out into the marketplace.

  More of the adventures of the policeman and the little cleric are to follow.

  Visit me!

  Website: https://meggietaylorsworks.com

  Blog: https://meggiesinkblots.blogspot.com/