The Price of Murder sjf-10

by Bruce Alexander

  “How should I know how that silly cow of a sister got her name?” he cried. “What should I care?” Then, having seen the audience he had created for himself, he lowered his voice to little more than a whisper: “The only thing good Alice ever done was to have that daughter of hers. Have you seen her? Have you seen Maggie?”

  “I have, yes.” I could say neither more nor less than that.

  “Well, then you know.”

  I feared he would begin to question me with regard to my “meeting,” as it were, with Maggie. And so I urged him onward to Bow Street and Sir John. I was not the one to inform him of the death of his favorite niece. I knew not how much of the story Sir John would tell him, yet ’twas best for him to do the telling. In any case, I got him moving again. And while he would not say a word more about his sister, he spent the whole distance to the magistrate’s court rhapsodizing about Maggie, praising her beauty, her sweetness, her every accomplishment.

  Thus it was that we arrived. I showed him the way in and called out a greeting to Mr. Fuller, the day jailer, just to make sure that he was about. He answered in kind and stuck his head out to see what I might require, but then, when he caught sight of him who was beside me, his mouth twisted into a smirk, and his cheeks puffed in his effort to hold back laughter. (What a churl he was!)

  “Is Sir John in his chambers?” I asked him.

  He gave a hasty nod and retreated deep into his domain. Not a word was said in response-naught but an odd sound that may have been muffled sniggers.

  “Down at the end of the hall,” said I to my companion.

  I did a fast pace down the hall, intending to distance us from Mr. Fuller as quickly as might be possible.

  I paused at the door, allowing Deuteronomy Plummer to catch up, then introduced the two men without much ado. Sir John came forward, his hand outstretched in welcome.

  “Deuteronomy Plummer?” he repeated. “Do I not know that name from the world of racing?”

  Obviously flattered, Mr. Plummer hemmed and hawed a bit, unable to find words of sufficient graciousness, and, at last, mumbled that he rode “a little.”

  “Ah well, a good deal more than ‘a little,’ or so I’ve heard. What a pleasure to meet you.”

  “An honor to meet you, sir.”

  “Am I to assume from the coincidence of the two surnames that you are related by blood to the Alice Plummer whom we seek?” asked Sir John.

  “I’m her brother, sir, and I seek her, too, as you might say. That’s how me and the young man here met. I was searchin’ her place in Seven Dials, just lookin’ for some hint where she went to and along he comes.”

  “Young man?” Sir John repeated the phrase as if he could not suppose who might be meant. “Ah, you mean Jeremy, of course.” Then, turning more or less in my direction, he said, “Jeremy, are you still here? Have you not other duties to occupy yourself?”

  “None that I can think of, sir,” said I.

  “Come now. Are you forgetting Clarissa? She may need your protection. You cannot simply maroon her where you left her, now can you?”

  “I suppose not,” said I.

  “Then on your way, lad.”

  On your way, said he. On my way, indeed! I was quite beside myself with indignation at Sir John’s treatment of me, in particular before a witness I had brought to him. How could he have behaved in such a way toward me? Was having Clarissa home to cook his dinner so important to him?

  I stormed down Chandos Street in the general direction of Dawson’s Alley and the imposing building where I had left Clarissa some time before. She was with her friend, was she not? She would probably welcome an extra hour with her. But no, Sir John had instructed me to bring her back, and that is what I would do, no matter what her wishes in the matter. Thus was I prepared-oh, more than prepared-to grasp her by the wrist and pull her bodily from the house. I should then run with her at full speed for Bow Street that I might return in time to hear at least a bit of Sir John’s interrogation of Mr. Plummer.

  I came quickly to Number 5 Dawson’s Alley and pounded upon the door with my fist. None could complain that I knocked too weakly to be heard, as Sir John sometimes had done. Even if Clarissa Roundtree and Elizabeth Hooker were chattering up on the third floor, they would certainly hear my knock as a summons, a demand for attention.

  As it happened, however, they were not on the third floor, but just round the corner in a little sitting room near the door. And so it was that Elizabeth came to the door quite immediately. She curtsied grandly, more or less duplicating that curtsy that she had offered me to the delight of the crowd at Covent Garden. Ordinarily, I would have greeted her similarly with a bow; but, wrapped up in my own concerns, I offered nothing of the kind in return. As she started to greet me, I spoke over her rather rudely.

  “I’ve come for Clarissa,” said I roughly, as if giving an order.

  “I supposed you had.”

  Her face quite crumpled in response to my boorish manner. I feared for a moment she might burst into tears, such a delicate child was she. Immediately was I overcome by a sense of guilt.

  “You must forgive me,” said I to her. “What I said was in no wise ill-intentioned. I am simply in a great hurry, and I-”

  “Oh, Jeremy, you’re always in a hurry.” It was Clarissa’s voice rising above my own. Only then did she appear. “Indeed you are late,” said she, “though not so late as I expected. Nevertheless, as you see, I am ready.”

  And true enough, she was. Wrapped in her cloak, she bussed Elizabeth upon the cheek and announced that she had had quite a wonderful time and that soon she would return that they might gab once again.

  “I loved your story about the vicar,” said she. “Caught out again, was he? That, I hope, has taught him a lesson.”

  And, so saying, they embraced hurriedly, and Clarissa slid by her friend and out the door. There were then further goodbyes called out, waves from both, and only then did the door close after her.

  “Goodness,” said she, “I’m so glad that’s over.”

  I must have looked at her oddly then, for I was quite unsure that I had heard her correctly.

  “Glad, oh yes, glad, Jeremy. I have never, I think, spent a more trying pair of hours in my life-not even in the Lichfield poorhouse.”

  “What passed between you two that you should be moved to such a complaint?”

  “Nothing! That’s just it, you see-nothing at all. After the first twenty or thirty minutes we had naught to say, one to the other. What an inert being she has become-utterly vapid, without purpose, quite useless, a kitchen slavey she is and she will always be.”

  “And yet you-”

  “No, I take that back. Her great ambition, it seems, is to be a housekeeper, and she may indeed advance that far! She has not read a book in years-and seems proud of it. She. . she. .”

  Whether from want of words or breath, her denunciation ceased at about this point, and Clarissa walked beside me quite panting, unable to go further.

  “In short,” said I, “you were bored.”

  She nodded. We went along in silence all the way up Chandos Street, at which time she resumed in a more moderate and less emotional tone.

  “You’ve no idea how fortunate we are, you and I,” said she to me. “When we sit at table, matters are discussed. We’re encouraged to read books and to make plans for the future. I had never quite realized it until now.”

  “Sometimes I forget that myself.”

  “Just look at Annie-how she has risen-a leading actress in Mr. Garrick’s theatre. Her story must be unique.”

  “Perhaps so. I see your point, in any case, and I agree.” Again, I fell silent for a spell. “Nevertheless, Sir John can at times behave in the most confounding manner. Why, I brought to him today our best witness to date in the matter of Maggie Plummer.”

  “Who was that again?”

  “Maggie Plummer. Oh, you remember-the dead girl who was yesterday pulled from the Thames. I told you all about her on our way
over to Dawson’s Alley.”

  “Oh-oh, yes.”

  Whereupon I told her about it once again, adding my encounter with Deuteronomy Plummer, and telling her of my frustrating dismissal by Sir John.

  “Why did you so want to stay?” she asked when I had concluded.

  “Well, I. . I wished to listen in on the interrogation as, well, as part of my education in the law. And I. . I. . Hang it, Clarissa, I would know what this fellow had to say about his sister, his niece, about all of it.”

  “And why do you suppose Sir John wanted you away?” I was silent for a moment, thinking through my response. I wished to be as truthful as I could be in this matter, yet at the same time I wished also to place myself in the best possible light.

  “Well, he said he wanted me to fetch you and accompany you back to Bow Street.”

  “And I applaud him for that,” said she. “But you seem to feel that he had another, ulterior motive in sending you away.”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “And that is. .?”

  “To be more candid than I would wish to be, I must say that he probably supposed he could get more out of Mr. Plummer if I were not present.”

  I sighed, oddly glad to have come forth with it.

  “You must have thought that yourself,” said she.

  “Why do you say that?” I sounded a bit tetchy, even to myself.

  “You took Mr. Deuteronomy Plummer to Sir John without telling him that his sister had sold her daughter, did you not? And neglecting also to mention to him that his niece was dead? And the only questions you put to him then were of a general nature, isn’t that also correct?”

  Again I sighed. “All true,” said I. “You have made your point. Let us end the discussion right here and now.”

  And that we did, for, after all, we were quite near Number 4 Bow Street, were we not? And whatever had been discussed between us would now be set aside as we adopted our domestic personae.

  As we entered into the “backstage” area of the Bow Street Court, and were just then about to mount the stairs, the footsteps we had heard loud in our ears brought to us Mr. Deuteronomy Plummer. They, the footsteps, were unsteady. He walked as a drunken man, unable to keep a steady forward rhythm-though I was certain that he was sober. He seemed to push past without seeing us; and, indeed, his sight may have been impaired by the tears in his eyes. He spoke not a word as he went out the door to Bow Street.

  I did not discover the substance of Sir John’s meeting with Mr. Plummer until after dinner that evening. He had invited me to come up and see him when I had finished the washing up. It took me a bit longer than I might have expected, for, as I washed pots, pans, and dishes, Clarissa took all the bits and pieces I had gathered from Katy Tiddle’s room and spread them out upon the kitchen table. As I had, she went first to the labels and similar oddments of paper. She picked up each one and studied it, then placed it back upon the table. Eventually, there were two separate piles of these bits of paper-labels and all others.

  “Jeremy,” said she to me, “when you found all these, were they together, or in two separate groups, as I have them here?”

  “Oh no, no, neither one,” said I, wringing out the cloth I had used on the dishes. “They were scattered all over her room. Some were on the floor. Three or four I found in the folds of the blankets on her bed, and a few were under the bed.”

  “I see. Well, I fear I can’t make any immediate sense of this bunch, no matter how I divide them up.” She shrugged quite eloquently. “Sorry.”

  “I hadn’t expected much from them. But what about those others?”

  “What others?”

  “Those with the numbers scrawled upon them. They were all together in a pile in the table next her bed.”

  “You know what those are, don’t you? I certainly do.”

  “Not really, no.”

  “As near as I can tell,” said Clarissa, “these stubs, tickets, et cetera, are all from various pawn shops. Some of them are marked in just such a way on the back. Come here and I’ll show you, shall I?”

  “No, Sir John has asked for me. Perhaps later.”

  With that, I left her and jog-trotted up the stairs and down the hall to the little room he called his study. It was there that he went to consider and suppose. Dark and light were one to him, and so he sat most often in the dark as he thought. That, in any case, is how I found him on the evening in question.

  “Is that you, Jeremy? Come, sit down. Light a candle, if you like.”

  “No, I’ve no need,” said I, as I took a chair across the desk from him.

  “I wanted to explain my dismissal of you earlier today.”

  “I understood it, Sir John.”

  “I hope you did. It was naught but my wish to get our friend Deuteronomy alone and get him talking that moved me to send you so roughly on your way.”

  “Well,” said I, “you got him alone right enough. Did you get him talking?”

  “Yes, and I did not like the sound of all I heard from him. I truly believe he would murder his sister if he were to come across her in his present state. I gave him a stern warning, yet, in truth, I’m not even sure he heard me, so overwhelmed was he by the news I had given him. He was certainly attached to that niece of his, wasn’t he?”

  “He was indeed.”

  “He’s claimed her body for burial at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden. I’d like you to attend the funeral service in case anything should turn up there. Find out when it will be held from those at the church, will you? Probably not until the day after tomorrow-tomorrow being Easter.”

  “I will, Sir John.”

  “You might even take Clarissa along to the funeral-with Lady Fielding’s approval, of course. Women seem to know how to behave on such occasions.” He sighed. “Let me see,” said he, “what else? I’d also like you to find out from Mr. Baker if Mr. Plummer is riding tomorrow. Baker often attends these meets, I believe. If Deuteronomy Plummer rides, I’d like you to attend and let yourself be seen by him. I want him to know that we are watching him, so that he does nothing foolish, nothing violent. You understand, I’m sure.”

  “Indeed I do, sir.”

  “And what, if anything, did you turn up in your search of that woman’s place-the one who got herself murdered? Katy Tiddle? Was that her name?”

  “I found odds and ends. There are labels of one kind or another-nothing of interest there. But more promising is a pile of tickets and stubs, each one numbered-that is, they would be promising if I could figure out just what they are and what the numbers are for. Clarissa believes them to be pawn tickets.”

  “Oh? Then no doubt she’s correct,” said he, pleasing me little. “When handling a case like this, Jeremy, it is important to keep at it diligently. Do something on it each day. It is only thus that we shall ever manage to solve it. And I assure you, lad, that indeed we shall solve it.” He hesitated, then added: “Why not proceed on the assumption that Clarissa is correct and see where that leads you?”

  THREE

  In which I view my first horse race, and the investigation begins

  And so it came about that I went next day to Shepherd’s Bush in the company of Mr. Baker-or have I said that quite right? No, the way of it was that Mr. Baker-night jailer, armorer, and general keeper of quarters for the Bow Street Runners-told me the way there, even drew a rough map for me, and agreed to meet me there in midafternoon. Thus might he have the opportunity to take a few hours sleep before the first heat of the first race. He told me he had often done it so, for as I learned, he was quite passionately devoted to what was even then called by some “the sport of kings.” In all truth, I know not how George III, nor the late Louis of France, felt about the racing of horses round a specified course. I do know, however, that any man who gave to it the dedication and enthusiasm that Mr. Baker offered would surely have felt in his heart that he was king, if only for a day. Which day? Why, racing day, of course.

  Because it was Easter, I felt obliged to ren
ew my acquaintance with the faith in which I had been baptized. That done-the Easter anthems heard and the cries of “He is risen!” raised on high-I set forth on the long journey from Bow Street to Uxbridge Road, Shepherd’s Bush, with naught to sustain me but two of Molly’s hot cross buns.

  When first I broached the matter of the race meet to our Mr. Baker, he was curious as to why I, having shown no previous interest in the sport, should of a sudden wish to give it my full interest. But then, I told him of Mr. Plummer and his relation to the mother of the girl who had been pulled from the Thames the day before.

  “So Deuteronomy Plummer is her brother,” said he. “Is that the way it is?”

  “That’s indeed the way it is. Will he be racing at any of the courses Sunday?”

  “At Shepherd’s Bush Common, as I’ve heard. I was intending to go myself. I’d invited Mr. Patley to accompany me.”

  “Could I come along?” I asked.

  And that, reader, is when we worked it out so that I might meet him there. When we had done, I put another question to him.

  “Do such race meets always start so late of a Sunday?”

  “Naw,” said he, “it’s ’cause it’s Easter. I believe Shepherd’s Bush is the only one going, and that’s ’cause it’s pretty far outside London.”

  “How far?”

  “Well, you’ll be afoot, so it’s going to take you the better part of the morning to get there, probably.”

  And it did. In general, taking Mr. Baker’s advice, I followed the river. Though, in its way westward, it took bends and twists, it was nevertheless the safest route. To go off roaming through Tothill Fields might save some time if the right way were known, yet if you were as ignorant of this piece of territory as I certainly was, you would no doubt become hopelessly lost. And so I went my way, curious at the volume and nature of the river traffic, and seeing that most of it was vegetables for Covent Garden and pleasure boats for those rich enough to have them. ’Twas not till I approached near to Hammersmith that, following Mr. Baker’s directions, I turned north for Shepherd’s Bush. From that point on, it was naught but a matter of holding to the map he had sketched for me.