The Price of Murder sjf-10

by Bruce Alexander

  “A glass of gin would be nice.”

  “Well, then.” I gestured toward the door to the tap-room, and she nodded and followed. I noticed the deskman continuing to look at us with considerable curiosity.

  We must have made a strange-looking trio as we entered the room. And though I cared little what the many who gaped might think of us, I did wish to keep our conversation with this poor woman as private as might be possible. I directed the other two over to that same table in the corner, where Mr. Patley had seen her first. Then did I hasten to the serving woman and order two coffees and a glass of gin.

  “Who’s the gin for?” she asked suspiciously.

  “For her,” said I.

  “This ain’t that kind of place. They won’t let you upstairs with her.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Now, if you permit, we’ll have two coffees and a glass of gin.”

  Without another word, she turned away from me and made for the bar.

  I went to the table and found Alice and Mr. Patley engaged in the sort of talk that I can only call neighborly. Though I should have, I’d never really noticed what a personable manner he had. He seemed to get people to do what he wished them to do simply by being agreeable, kind, or what they had taken lately to calling “nice.” What was it they were discussing as I sat down with them? As I recall, it was something to do with how and when he had happened to see her out the window.

  “When was that, yesterday? or the day before? I ain’t sure about that, but I am sure I looked right out the window, and there you were.” He tapped it. “This very window,” said he.

  “Is that how it was?” said she. “Just imagine!” She managed a smile.

  It was strange to see him so. I realized that there were things that I could learn from him.

  “I think,” said she, “that must have been day before yesterday.”

  “Is that so? You’ve got a pretty good memory. You know that?”

  “Better’n some people think.”

  He chuckled at that. “How long have you been up here?”

  “A long time, but I ain’t sure just how long.”

  “Well, take a guess at it, why don’t you?”

  “It was right after I talked to you about. . about Maggie. That’s when I left London and come here-near a month ago.”

  “But you didn’t tell anybody where you’d gone. If we’d found Maggie, how could we let you know?”

  “Well, I knew you wouldn’t find her, because she got adopted.”

  The serving woman came then with what I had ordered. She insisted on immediate payment, an interruption in the flow of the interrogation that could cost us dear. But at last she accepted payment and was away. Alice drank greedily from the glass of gin, and Mr. Patley judged her ready to begin again.

  “Who told you about this practice of adopting, Alice?” he asked.

  “Well, first it was Katy next door, and then it was Walter.”

  “Walter? Who’s he?”

  “He was the one took my Maggie away to the good couple who couldn’t have a child all by themselves. Never did find out his last name. But I told Maggie all about how her new family would love her and have money enough to take good care of her, like I never could. And so when Walter took her away she didn’t make no fuss nor nothin’. Just kissed me goodbye and waved.”

  “Did Walter give you the name of this couple he took Maggie to?”

  “No, not hardly. He said it had to be a secret because if it weren’t, sometime when I got to missin’ her bad, I might go and try to steal her back. Oh, and I might, because even now I get to missing her so bad I can’t hardly stand it.” There she paused and looked up winningly at Mr. Patley. “Could I have another gin?”

  He glanced over at me, and I, feeling that the interrogation had gone well thus far with a glass of gin to loosen her tongue, decided that a second glass might make it go even better. I signaled for another gin to the serving woman who pulled a sour face but passed it on to the man behind the bar. It was most quickly forthcoming. Alice took it from the serving woman with polite thanks and treated herself to a hasty sip. Then, with a smile, she returned her attention to the constable.

  “There is only a couple more questions we got to ask you,” said he to her. “You’re doin’ fine so far, Alice.”

  She smiled foolishly at that. “All the right answers?”

  “No mistakes yet. I’d like you to tell me, though, just how it was you came into all that money?”

  “All what money?”

  “Well you came up here from London on the mail coach, didn’t you?”

  “Certain’y. It was the onliest way I could get here, ’cept walk.” She remained silent for a moment, then said playfully, “Oh, that money!”

  “Yes, Alice, that money.”

  “Well,” said she, “I never asked for a penny-truly I never. But the day that Walter came for Maggie he brought me a proper bag of coins and said that the couple wanted me to have this money, ’cause they were so grateful. I never did get a proper count on it in pounds and pence, but it’s a lot, and it’s lasted me a long time. Course I knew where I’d go just as soon as ever I got that much money in hand.”

  “And where was that?”

  “Why, right here-right in Newmarket-to see my sweetheart, Stephen. He’s been my sweetheart for years and years.”

  “Did you two write letters to each other? Did he invite you to come?”

  “Stephen? Oh no, he didn’t know where I was, and I couldn’t write to tell him, because I never had any learning. But I just came to him, and we picked up just where we left off. It was beautiful. Course he’s angry-now, maybe a mite jealous, because I came down here to see you two.” She said nothing more for a moment, but thrust out her lower lip in a pout. “When are you two going to give me that message from Maggie I been waiting to hear?”

  “In a while, Alice. It won’t be long,” said the constable. “Just one more question.”

  “All right, what is it?”

  “Whose idea was it to report Maggie as missing? Was it yours?”

  “Oh no, nothing of the kind. Katy Tiddle thought it up. It was all her idea. She said it would keep people from asking a lot of questions when they noticed that Maggie was gone. I could just say she was stolen and I’d reported it to the constable.”

  She waited, frowning. “Well,” said she, “I answered your last question. Ain’t I goin’ to hear now what Maggie has to say?”

  Mr. Patley looked at me with great uncertainty. Clearly, he wished me now to assume the burden.

  “Alice,” said I, “we didn’t say we had a message from Maggie. We said we had a message about her.”

  “Well, all right, what’s the message about her then?”

  The difficulty I was having putting the information that I had into words must have shown in my face. No doubt I looked terribly distressed, for that was indeed how I felt.

  She read my face. For, of a sudden, the expression upon her own altered to one of alarm, then went beyond that to horror, utter horror.

  “Oh, dear God in heaven,” said she, “Maggie’s dead, ain’t she?”

  “I fear it’s true, Alice. You were deceived by Katy Tiddle and Walter.”

  “What do you mean? Say it!”

  “Uh. . well, it’s. .” I temporized, glancing at Mr. Patley and finding no help there, unable to find the right words, unwilling to say it plain. I sighed, then plunged on: “Alice, there was no nice couple waiting for Walter to deliver your daughter to them. Walter may have kept Maggie for his own use, or sold her on to someone quite rich. We think-I think-that the latter is the way of it.”

  “Can you help us find Walter? He made a whore of her, Alice,” said the constable. “If he delivered her to someone else, then he can tell us who, so we can get to that someone else.”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth? How do I know she’s really dead? Maybe this is just another trick to get me back to London.”

  “A waterma
n pulled her body out of the Thames. I took it to the doctor who pronounced her dead, and then your brother had her buried in the churchyard at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden.”

  “My brother? Deuteronomy?”

  “That’s right. He’s right here in Newmarket. He’ll tell you everything we said is true.”

  “No, keep him out of it. He’s always tellin’ me what to do.”

  Having heard all that we had to say, she sat quietly, as if devising a plan of action. Neither Patley nor I spoke. We simply waited. I know not quite what we expected from her, yet certainly not what she gave us; in fact, she quite astounded us.

  She began to scream.

  I know not quite how to describe her cries, for there was naught of surprise nor fear in them. Call them, rather, screams of outrage: protests against the cruelty of fortune, the unfairness of fate.

  In any case, they had an immediate and electrifying effect upon all there in the tap-room. Those at the tables and bar-thank God the place was not then greatly crowded-turned immediately, open-mouthed in shocked surprise. The innkeeper and the serving woman came running. And as for Patley and me, we had leapt to our feet and were making helpless gestures with our hands. Yet what more could we do?

  “You must get her out of here!” shouted the serving woman at a volume that seemed to match that of the screams.

  “Yes, but how?”

  “I don’t care how you do it. Just do it!”

  There was a rhythm to Alice’s cries, and they were of a predictable duration, so that as she halted to take a breath, Mr. Patley, a man of fair proportions, was able to clap a hand over her mouth and pull her to her feet.

  He quick-marched her out. There was little for me to do but run ahead and get from the innkeeper the location of the magistrate’s court. This was a situation that called for desperate measures.

  “I knew you was bringin’ trouble the moment you came through that door,” the serving woman shouted after us.

  Luckily, I had with me the letter dictated by Sir John to the magistrate of Newmarket, Malachi Simmons. I had carried it round with me in the inside pocket of my coat since we had left London. I recalled well that there was a problem in using it, and that had to do with when it was presented to the local magistrate. It was best to use it only in an emergency, Sir John had said, but if it were offered too late, it had best be given with a good excuse as to why it had not been presented earlier. I believed I had just such an excuse.

  Alice Plummer had quietened down a bit by the time we arrived at the magistrate’s court. Not that she had reconciled herself to the shocking news we had given her. No, indeed. I believe, rather, that the strain put upon her throat by her repeated screams had overtaxed it to the point that she could scarce speak above a whisper. Yet that was not immediately apparent to us, for at some point shortly after we three had left the Good Queen Bess she silenced herself altogether: she spoke not a word, nor did she scream again. And I thanked God for it.

  The magistrate’s court stood upon that very street off Market Square that I had latterly overlooked; the name of that street, if indeed it ever had one, I have completely forgotten. We found the house quite easily, a couple of hundred years old it was, but large and imposing. I banged loudly upon the door, and as we waited for a response, I muttered to Mr. Patley that he was to let me do the talking. He nodded his understanding and agreement. We heard steps behind the door, and a brief moment later, it flew open to reveal one who was at least as tall and wide as Bow Street’s Constable Bailey.

  “What’s your business here?” he demanded.

  “We wish to have some words with the magistrate, Mr. Malachi Simmons.”

  “And what about?”

  I stifled the urge I felt to tell him that it was no business of his, whatever it was. Rather, did I smile sweetly and inform him that I had a letter to deliver.

  “Must be a pretty long letter if it takes three of you to deliver it,” said he, then added, “From London, are ye?”

  I said that we were.

  “Well then, stay where you are, all three of you. What’s your name?” He pointed at me.

  “Jeremy Proctor,” said I, “but I doubt he’ll know me. But say, we’re come from the Bow Street Court.”

  “Stay here.”

  Then did the fellow close the door, as one might upon a beggar, in our very faces. Patley and I exchanged looks, shrugs, and sighs of resignation. After a long wait, we heard footsteps once more and the door came open again.

  “He’ll see you,” said the fellow. “Right this way.”

  He led us down a long hall and another, so that we were at the farthest corner of the house from the door through which we had entered. Our guide moved at a swift pace, indeed so swift that Alice had some difficulty in keeping up. He was a strange sort of butler, was he not? Probably butler cum constable cum turnkey, and who could say what more? He knocked upon the door at the end of the second hall, waited a moment till he heard something beyond it, then opened the door, and nodded us inside.

  These were the magistrate’s chambers. Malachi Simmons sat hunched at a table-or could it properly be called a desk? He was, in any case, a man of sour countenance. He looked at all three of us in a suspicious manner, as if trying to determine which among us were the criminals and which were not. ’Twas upon me that he settled.

  “With what are you charged?” he asked in an unpleasant, nasal voice.

  “Well. . well, I’m not charged,” said I most emphatic.

  He thrust his head forward and squinted at me. “Not charged? Then why are you here?”

  Why indeed? “I’ve a letter for you, sir.”

  “What? a letter? Oh yes, now I remember. Well, hand it over, lad.” As I was fishing it out of my inside pocket, he added: “Who’s it from?”

  “Sir John Fielding of the Bow Street Court in London. I am his assistant, Jeremy Proctor. This gentleman at my left, sir, is-”

  “You’re exceeding your brief, young sir. I asked for the letter, not an introduction to each of your company. Now, give me the damned letter, would you?”

  I hastened forward and dropped the letter before him upon his desk. He broke the seal, opened the letter, then threw it down in disgust.

  “How am I to read that?” said he. “I’ve not got my spectacles. You-yes, you young man. You read it to me, will you?”

  I did as he asked, laying special emphasis on our respect for his jurisdiction in all matters and the collegial appeal Sir John made to Malachi Simmons for his assistance in these matters. As I read, I glanced up at the magistrate more than once and found him nodding with what I assumed to be satisfaction. Yet when I finished, I found him to be anything but satisfied.

  “That’s a very good sort of letter, very well phrased-and you read it well-but I find it just a bit heavy in the generalities and light in the particularities.”

  “How do you mean, sir?” I asked.

  “Just what I say. About all I get from what you’ve just read me is that you’ve come here to Newmarket to search for a woman named Alice Plummer, and to apprehend her, and return her to London. Mistress Plummer, I take it, is the young woman between the two of you. Is that correct?”

  “Yes sir, she is.”

  “Tell me why then she has been so energetically pursued by you two-all the way from London, after all. What is the charge that she faces back in Bow Street?”

  “Child-selling, sir.”

  “Ah, well, that is serious. And what do you wish me to do with her?”

  “If you could hold her overnight, we would be greatly in your debt.”

  “Hold her? You mean in our strongroom? I should need a bit of proof for that, something in the way of evidence. Have you the child here? Where is the child?”

  “Dead and buried,” said I.

  “Sounds worse and worse,” said he. “But surely your Sir John had a lesser charge that he might employ to hold her. Are you familiar with the term ‘holding charge’?”

  “I am, and we
have such: Giving false report of a crime.”

  “But that can’t be proven, either, I suppose.”

  “On the contrary, sir. Constable Patley, to my left, was given the false report by Mistress Plummer.”

  The magistrate, Mr. Simmons, turned his attention to Mr. Patley.

  “What about it, sir? Are you willing to swear to that?”

  “I am, sir,” said Mr. Patley. “And she’s confessed all to us.”

  “Well, it may not be necessary. But what’s she got to say for herself?”

  “Not much,” said Patley. “I fear she’s passed out on her feet, sir. If I wasn’t holding her up, she’d fall over on the floor.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Sure as I can be, sir.”

  “Unhand her then. Let’s see if she manages to keep her feet.”

  Mr. Patley shrugged, removed his hands from her waist and her arm. Alice promptly crumpled to the floor, bumping her head rather nastily. She, however, seemed quite oblivious of the hurt.

  “Well!” said the magistrate, “just as you said. I’d say she was drunk, wouldn’t you?” This he directed to me. I nodded, not knowing quite what he hoped to prove by this.

  “Indeed I would say she is quite drunk,” said I.

  “Well then we three are enough together to comprise a bit of the public, and so I fine her a shilling for public drunkenness.”

  “A shilling?” said I. “That’s a pretty light fine. Sir John fixes it at a pound.”

  “Those are city prices. We get a lot of drunks out here and not a one of them could afford a pound.” Then did he call out loud and clear: “Mr. Yates, come here. I’ve a need for you.”

  And so, without delay, came the big, hulking fellow who had led the way to the magistrate’s chambers. I recall that I decided that he must have waited just outside the door, expecting the call.

  “Yes sir,” said he who had answered the call. “What will you?”

  “Take her away and lock her up in one of the cells, will you?”

  Needing no more detailed instruction than that, Yates bent down and swept her off the floor. He threw her over his shoulder as carelessly as one might toss a rag doll.