The Price of Murder sjf-10

by Bruce Alexander

  “What were their names?” asked Mother Jeffers.

  “Dick and Bobby,” said Elizabeth.

  “I must think upon that,” said the old woman, “but just now I can think of nine or more I know by those names. You have only the first names?”

  “I am near certain that is the case,” said Sir John, “but let us move on, shall we? You were, as she has given it, sitting in this very kitchen when the two brought her to you.” Then did Sir John turn to Elizabeth and ask her most direct, “Is this the woman who spoke to you and asked if you were willing to join her company?”

  “Is this the woman? Yes, indeed it is. This is the one who asked me, would I join them.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “How could I forget a face such as hers?”

  “If you will pardon me,” said Sir John, “it seems to me that what you just said was unnecessarily rude.”

  “So be it,” said Elizabeth.

  “And you, Mrs. Jeffers, what defense have you against this accusation?”

  “I have none,” said she almost proudly.

  “None?”

  “I have never seen this girl before in my life,” said she.

  There matters seemed to hang. It was not so much the denial as the manner in which it was given that put things at a halt. It was so coldly complete that I, for one, felt that there was nothing more to say. Yet impeded though he was, Sir John pressed on.

  “May I, then,” said he, “take Mistress Hooker through your house and visit such of it as she remembers? Note that I ask your permission in this, for you would be within your rights to demand that you see a search warrant before allowing us the run of your house.”

  “I understand,” said she. “But yes, you have my permission to go anywhere within this house.” And then, emphasizing each word, she said: “I have nothing to hide.”

  “Thank you.”

  “My daughter will show you round.”

  And with that, the girl who had spied us from the floor above showed us the way, and we followed her on a room-by-room tour of the entire house. That she was the daughter of Mother Jeffers surprised me-and I’m sure others, as well-but that was not the only surprise that awaited us.

  We had visited every room but one and routed two women out of their beds. Elizabeth would search all for her stolen frock; we then started up the narrow stairway to the garret room. There it was that Elizabeth had spent all the time of her imprisonment. She had described it well enough so that I had a fair idea of its look. Once inside, however, we found this garret room was altogether different from the one she had described. Where she had told of sleeping on a pile of straw with naught but a thin blanket to keep her warm, what we saw was a comfortable-looking bed with a comforter that would, it seemed, have kept anyone warm. There was a chair and a table, curtained windows that were held by latches alone. And, in one corner, a wardrobe.

  “They’ve changed it all,” said Elizabeth. “They’ve changed it completely!”

  “Nothing has been altered,” said Mrs. Jeffers’s daughter. “And I should know, for this is my room here.”

  Elizabeth gave her a killing look, then hastened to the wardrobe.

  “This proves she lies, and I alone tell the truth,” said she, “for here-look! This is mine! This is the frock taken from me when I arrived at this place.”

  She held it up proudly, but it was obvious to me, as it was also to Clarissa, that the frock had been made for one much more corpulent than Elizabeth-indeed, it had been made for Jeffers’s daughter.

  “I shall not fight you for it,” said she, “for my mother would not have that. But it should be plain to all who see you with it now that it was not made for you.”

  The matter of the dress, as well as much else, was held in abeyance-undecided till we reached Bow Street. Sir John took with us Mother Jeffers and gave Elizabeth in exchange. (“Well rid of her!” said Clarissa, who had soured completely on her old friend.) I confess, reader, that I slept through our entire return journey, rocking back and forth, bouncing up and down, just as Elizabeth had done on the voyage out. According to Clarissa, Jeffers was quite entertaining, though she declared it pained her to leave her daughter in the house. Sir John did not say that he was officially detaining her; he said simply that he had further questions for her to answer in his office in Bow Street. He wished to ask them after he had held his court session. Again, all this was reported to me later by Clarissa, for I was all of a sudden so exhausted that I heard nothing, said nothing, and was totally unable to recall anything of the drive to Bow Street. The night I had spent, awake on the road in the post coach, had at last caught up with me.

  Upon our arrival, Sir John ordered me upstairs and to my bed. ’Twas not me who carried out his orders, however. Rather ’twas Clarissa who both guiding and supporting me, got me upstairs and into my bed.

  And it was she, too, who woke me, five or six hours on. I heard her footsteps on the stairs moments before she appeared, and so I was at least sitting up in bed when she appeared in the doorway.

  “You’re much in demand,” said she.

  Still half-asleep, I grunted a reply of some sort, then rose to my feet and staggered to the wash basin, poured a bit of water into it, and splashed water upon my face. Only then did I feel I could communicate.

  “By whom am I wanted?”

  “First by Mr. Patley, who must see you before he goes out this evening to make his rounds. Second, by all the rest of us who respectfully request your presence at the dinner table, and third, by Sir John who, after dinner, wishes to have your report on the trip to Newmarket.” She looked at me closely to make sure that I was fully awake and would not collapse into bed the moment she left. “There,” said she. “I can trust you to rise, can’t I?”

  “You can trust me. Where’s Mr. Patley?”

  “Downstairs, waiting by the door to Bow Street.”

  Satisfied at last, she left as I hurriedly ran a comb through my hair and descended to meet Mr. Patley. He was there, in the dark, waiting for me just at the door.

  “Ah there you are,” said he. “I’ve news for you. Bad news, I fear-but it’s important.”

  “Let me hear it, by all means.”

  “Well, it’s this way. As you may know, Mr. Bailey covered for me whilst we was in Newmarket. He made the circuit for me, talked to all my snitches, and so on. But he wasn’t actually on hand when it happened.”

  “What happened? What have you to tell?”

  “It was last night whilst we were on the road back. Who should come walking into the King’s Favorite around eleven o’clock at night but Alice Plummer. She comes up behind one of the local drinkers, Walter Hogg by name, and she says, ‘Walter, I’ve got something for you.’ Then, quick as anything, she whips out a razor and, just as quick, she cuts his throat from ear to ear. It all happened so fast that those at the table could do naught but gape. Nor could they do more when she then took that selfsame razor and cuts her own throat with it. All this in less time than it takes to tell. Mr. Bailey said that when he got there just a little time later, there were two dead and more blood on the table and floor than he would have supposed that two bodies could hold.”

  There he stopped. I knew not what to say to him.

  “I just thought you ought to know,” said Patley. And, having spoken his piece, he opened the door and disappeared into the night.

  TEN

  In which I hear a startling confession from an odd source

  The news that I had heard from Mr. Patley was such that during dinner I had constantly to hold myself in check lest I take it upon myself to tell all or part of it to Sir John. We had long been in unspoken agreement not to discuss matters of the court at the table. Generally, he thought it best that Lady Fielding not hear of such matters, for she was easily distressed and would worry for his safety. I, on the other hand, had lately become more and more open with Clarissa. Still, much of that was between us two, and I trusted her not to repeat it. In any case, I held my tong
ue all through dinner, but soon as ever I had finished the washing up afterward, I hied myself up to see Sir John in the darkened room he called his study.

  “Jeremy? Is it you?”

  “Indeed it is, sir. And though it be a sorry tale, I’ve come to tell you of all that came to pass in Newmarket.”

  Which I did, more or less, though I admit that I held back a bit. I said nothing of the good fortune Mr. Patley and I had had in wagering what we had on Pegasus and Mr. Deuteronomy to win. Sir John must have guessed that something was missing from the story I told, for at about the time I had done with Newmarket, he stopped me with a question or two that were directly to the point.

  “What I do not quite understand,” said he, having heard me through, “is why, when Alice Plummer was in hand, you and Patley did not simply take her immediately to the nearest post coach and bring her here to London that I might question her.”

  “Uh, yes, well, had we done that, Sir John, we should have missed the King’s Plate race.”

  “Ah!” said he, as if he had made a considerable discovery.

  “We felt the least we could do for Deuteronomy Plummer was to see how he and Pegasus fared in the big race. After all, he had given us the tip that had enabled us to find her.”

  “Oh yes, of course, I recall well enough-the stable and the fellow named Stephen, all of that.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “But you stayed for the race, did you? Then tell me, how did it come out? That is, who won? Charade was the favorite, as I believe I heard from Mr. Baker. Was Charade the winner?”

  “Uh, no sir, Pegasus was the winner.”

  (I had the distinct feeling that Sir John was once again toying with me.)

  “You don’t say so,” said he. “Truly? How nice for Mr. Deuteronomy, winning such an important race on a horse running his first race.”

  “Second.”

  “All right, second. All the same, quite an accomplishment, eh? You didn’t happen to have something wagered on Pegasus, did you?”

  “Oh, a little something, a few shillings, not much more.”

  “Hmm, interesting.”

  And that, reader, was the extent of his comments. He left it all hanging in the air, for then I told him of what I had just learned from Mr. Patley. Sir John was most truly disturbed by the news.

  “Good God,” said he, cursing in dismay, “was that Alice Plummer who was involved in that nasty attack in Bedford Street? Mr. Bailey told me about it in his report this morning, yet at the time he knew only the name of the man. Walter Hogg, wasn’t it?”

  “It was, and when I heard that, I understood what earlier had eluded me. You’ll recall, sir, that when Katy Tiddle was dying she called for water so insistently that I ran out and brought some to her and, I then thought, missed her dying words. Well, ’twas not so at all. She named her murderer to me-not water; you see, but Walter.”

  “And how did you come to this conclusion?”

  “From what Patley and I were told by Alice Plummer. She said that she had entrusted her daughter Maggie to a man named Walter at Katy Tiddle’s urging. He had promised to find her a home with a couple who were unable to conceive.”

  “But how did she learn what had become of her daughter?”

  “That, I fear, she learned from me,” said I.

  “Oh, Jeremy,” said he, truly mourning what he had just heard. “One of the most important rules in interrogation is never to let the one you are questioning know just how much you know. She acted on your information. You do understand, don’t you?”

  At that I sighed. “Yes sir, I do understand.”

  “Now if this fellow Walter Hogg was acting as an agent for another, as we both suspect, then we have lost our chance to get the name of that other. Truly, you should have brought her straight to me whilst she was in your hands.”

  “Yes sir, you’re right, I know. If only. .”

  “Ah yes, ‘if only’-that covers a multitude of sins, does it not? He was then silent for a time, brooding upon the news that he had got from me. Then did he say, “This is specially painful to me, for I confess that I reached a complete impasse with the one they call Mother Jeffers.”

  “I did notice that the strongroom was empty,” I ventured timidly.

  “What could I do? I could not hold her for further questioning on the evidence we had, much less could I pass her on for trial in Old Bailey.”

  “Then you do not believe the testimony of Elizabeth Hooker, sir?”

  “Indeed I do not. Do you? Clarissa told me of that awful muddle in the garret room in which Elizabeth claimed to have been held prisoner. ‘It’s all been changed,’ said she. Well, it could not have been changed so much in so little time, as I understood it from Clarissa. Do you agree with her?”

  “Oh, indeed I do, sir. And there was also the matter of the frock, which Elizabeth claimed as her own. It would have been much too large for her, and would have fit the daughter quite well. So you believe Mrs. Jeffers when she says that she had never before seen the girl?”

  “I did not say that.”

  “What then?”

  “In all truth, Jeremy, I do not believe either one.”

  Again, it was Constable Patley who had brought the word to me. Whilst on his rounds, he had encountered Mr. Deuteronomy who announced to him that he had just returned from Newmarket and would be happy to receive me at any time-“but the earlier the better.” We both knew, of course, what he would be happy to receive.

  “He wrote down where to find him. Let’s see now, I’ve got it here somewheres.” And, so saying, he began going through his pockets.

  “Save yourself the trouble,” said I. “I believe I know the place. Would it be up above the Haymarket Coffee House?”

  “So it is, so it is. Hurry along, lad, and bring the lally. I’ll take you there safe.”

  I had already divided it into two separate bags, both of which were stowed beneath my bed. I grabbed them, gave the smaller to Clarissa, who had let Mr. Patley into the kitchen and had summoned me.

  “Be careful,” said she. “Don’t do battle for it, Jeremy, for when all is said and done, ’tis only money.”

  With that caution, she opened the door and sent us on our way. Yet, thinking ahead, I remembered that I, in a sense, did yet owe Mr. Deuteronomy a pistol-the one that I had taken from Katy Tiddle. And so I did stop off for it and got no argument in the matter from Mr. Baker.

  “You brought it in,” said he, “so it’s yours to take back.”

  “Good,” said I. “I’ll not be bringing it again.”

  “As you wish. Just remember that it’s loaded.”

  And so at last we headed out, Mr. Patley and I, moving swiftly through the city streets. Though it was not late, there were not many about. We kept our silence through most of the journey, and only toward the end did I speak up.

  “Mr. Patley, when you saw Deuteronomy, did you tell him about his sister, Alice?”

  “I did, yes, Jeremy.”

  “Well, thank goodness. I would not want that burden upon me.”

  “Indeed, I can understand that. But, truth to tell, lad, he took it right well. Almost too well, it seemed to me, like it really didn’t matter to him much at all. He’s a strange sort, ain’t he? She was his sister, after all.”

  I had no response handy for that, and so I simply held my tongue. Ahead of us were the lights of the Haymarket. There seemed always to be a crowd thereabouts, as indeed there was that evening. They were women, mostly, prostitutes and the like, though a few seemed to be moving swiftly through the crowd as if on their way to some destination. To what that might be I had no notion.

  We went direct to the coffee house, which was there on the far side of the square. Still open it was. And I realized, to my surprise, that often as I had been there, I had never been there after dark.

  “Ever been up there?” Mr. Patley asked.

  “To Deuteronomy’s rooms? No, I never have. Do you see the way up?”

  Both of
us studied the façade of the building, but try as we might, we saw no way up-until we ventured down the left side and discovered a sort of side entrance to the upper floor.

  “Well, I guess that’s it,” said Patley. “Go on up there, rap upon the door, and if he comes to open it, give me a wave.”

  I did it just so. And when Mr. Deuteronomy appeared, I gave to Mr. Patley, at the foot of the stairs, a great wave. He called his farewell to me and departed.

  “Your partner down there?” Deuteronomy asked.

  “He was. He thought it would be a bit safer for me, considering what I was carrying, if he were along.”

  Having said that, I passed to him the cloth bag, heavy with banknotes, which I had been guarding since the day before. Then did I make a movement toward the stairs.

  “Wait,” said he. “Come inside. I’ve someone wants to talk with you.”

  Curious, I followed him down the hall to the second door, the one toward the rear. He opened it and waved me inside. There I found Mr. Bennett awaiting me. I had not seen him since those early-morning exercise sessions wherein Deuteronomy put Pegasus through his paces. Bennett, the trainer, would observe and make a few suggestions and would answer the questions I put to him. And though he always seemed guarded and somewhat ill at ease, I liked the man well enough. (Strange it was to perceive how long ago and far away all this did seem to me at that moment.)

  “Mr. Bennett,” said I politely, “how happy I am to greet you in London. I hope that you had a good journey here from Newmarket.”

  He seemed even more ill at ease than I remembered. His eyes shifted to Deuteronomy and then back to me two or three times in as many seconds. He rose and touched hands with me-one could hardly call it more than that-and returned quickly to his chair. Tense and strained, he wanted little to do with such amenities.

  “You work for Sir John Fielding, don’t you? At the Bow Street Court?”