“How?”
“Having killed her, I say, the murderer either was interrupted or else could not find the jewels and determined to try another time. The chest, as I showed you by the dust on the under-side of the lid, had not been opened or disturbed.
“Now, Peg, we return to your case.
“You were taken into custody by the watchmen. Last night and this morning, be assured, I tried in several ways to effect your release. A last plea at Justice Fielding’s house, when he and I were in the front parlour and you and Mr. Sterne were detained at the back, made evident that I might free you only by wedding you.”
“By … what did you say?”
“I said: by wedding you. Don’t question or argue this; such is the fact. By a marriage at Newgate, I could have made null your uncle’s guardianship and taken you into mine.”
“Jeffrey, Jeffrey, if only you had told me this.”
“When should I have told you? During our talk at Justice Fielding’s, when you were in such a taking that even Mr. Sterne grew uneasy and Brogden intervened because he thought you half crazed?”
“I hate you.”
“Peg, we have no time for tears or vapours now. Leave off. Major Skelly is too close.”
Peg, about to hammer her fists on the floor, checked herself in fear and looked up at him through weeping.
“Well, I was resolved to wed you if you would have me. But not as a pauper. I would hazard much, Peg, but with your humours and vapours, I would not hazard that. If a great store of jewels had been hid in that chest, as I believed, I must do robbery after all to be independent of you.”
“Fool! Fool! Fool!”
“Perhaps so. In any event, this afternoon, I returned to the old woman’s lodgings on London Bridge. Tubby Beresford had caused the street-door to be locked and the key removed. There was a guard on the bridge. But these obstacles were none so formidable. They set watch only on the entrance-arch between the watch-towers. They don’t trouble to guard the footway on the west side of the bridge. And in general they are right. With vehicles gone from the carriage-road, nobody thinks of using this other path, as you and I did not think of using it last night. You recall?”
“Yes!”
“In fact, I deemed it ideal for my purpose. The footway may be reached through any alley or the back of any house on the west side of Fish Street Hill. I could go there, I thought, unseen or at least unremarked.
“That is what I did, Peg. I climbed up to the window as the murderer had done. I found what I hoped for, near as great a store as any pirate’s hoard, under the parchments in the false bottom of the chest. But there was one danger I foresaw and did not heed.”
“Danger?”
“Justice Fielding.”
The night was alive with whispers beyond the banks of the canal; water lapped whisperingly at the pavilion. But still nothing moved. Jeffrey heard small noises with such clearness, he suddenly realized, because the music from the rotunda had stopped.
“This blind man, Peg, is too formidably intelligent He sees too much; he learns too much without telling where he has learned it. He makes you feel a child before a parent against whom you would rebel. This morning, in that cursed spider-parlour of his, he suspected what I meant to do before I was quite determined to do it.”
“He is frightening, I allow. Still—!”
“Justice Fielding will never speak plain; that is not in his nature. Yet his hints and warnings grew so pointed I could not miss them. I even thanked him for his warning. In my folly I thought it only a general warning. I did not believe they would set close watch on me.”
“And they have set close watch on you?”
“Undoubtedly, from what Brogden said tonight”
“Jeffrey, did you take the jewels?”
“Some part of them, yes.”
“And that horrible man suspects it?”
“More: he knows it. I have been spending more money than he gave me, and Brogden indicated that too.”
“And you have done a hanging offence, and they know it? And you are in far worse danger than I ever was?”
“Oh, no,” Jeffrey said. “Though I did not know it when I opened the chest, what I did was quite legal. The law at least can’t touch me.”
“Then what do you mean?” Peg cried. “Dear God, will you say what you mean?”
Her voice went shrilling up, uncontrolled. And a man stepped out from behind a tree in the poplar-walk.
Though Peg could not see this, she saw her companion stiffen. This time Jeffrey had forgotten to hold her, and she scrambled to her feet. A voice, resonant and jeering, rang across from someone on the path to the footbridge across the canal.
“Come out, Wynne,” it called. “You’re a brave fellow, we all know, when there’s a six-foot constable to do your work. What d’ye dare when there’s only a woman?”
Jeffrey did not answer.
From the doorway of the pavilion to the bank of the canal was twenty feet. The narrow wooden bridge, without handrail, spanned it a little distance above-water. From the opposite bank the sanded pad) ran another five feet through grass to the opening between the poplars.
Major Skelly must have fired his first shot at Jeffrey from behind a tree at greater range. Now he was narrowing the gap, walking slowly in a straight line. Stockings, waistcoat, wig, even white face distorted with malice, stood out like a cameo in a nightmare. But dark-blue coat and breeches were invisible save for a flicker of silver lace that made the figure blur and sway against its background.
“I know you’re there. You can see me, though I can’t see you. D’ye fear this?”
Stopping within a pace of the bridge, he held up the pistol in his right hand.
“It’s empty. There was but one charge of powder and ball.”
And he flung the pistol high towards the canal, his right hand darting across to draw the sword.
The pistol splashed into water, sending out ripples round a moored gondola. And at the same moment music smote at them like a physical force of sound.
Cymbals began it; drums took it up under a thickening note of horns. Major Skelly, with the moonlight on the sword-blade, stepped out onto the bridge.
Jeffrey stood motionless, a little to the right of the open doorway, looking out across a waist-high panel. Peg, frantic, clutched at his left shoulder with both arms and spoke almost against his ear.
“Jeffrey, now.”
But there was no move or response. Major Skelly’s catlike tread carried him closer. With his right hand he held the sword to reflect moonlight. His left hand stole back round inside his coat and up towards the back of the waistcoat too.
“Jeffrey, fire. For God’s sake, fire.”
Whereupon she screamed out as he flung her away from him, towards the left, so that she staggered against chairs and fell across a table.
Major Skelly stopped short, eyes shifting. His left hand, closing round the butt of a second pistol, slipped out from inside his coat.
Jeffrey did not wait. He ran out through the doorway, on the bridge and in the moonlight, his arm rising to fire. The other man’s mouth fell open in the shock of the unexpected at seeing this, but Major Skelly was still the first to pull the trigger. And they fired almost point-blank in each other’s faces.
Blinded and deafened, Jeffrey could not seize back wits or eyesight. He knew his legs were shaking. He knew the bullet must have missed him, though the right side of his face began to throb raw from the burn of powder-grains.
But he had not heard the cloud of birds go whirring up from the trees, or even the heavy splash beside the bridge. He did not understand until he looked down vaguely amid smoke that had begun to blow away.
A tricorne hat floated against heaving water. A man floated there too: face upwards and arms out, drifting farther from the bridge. The water washed across that face, momentarily to clear away blood and show Major Skelly, mouth still open, shot through the brain between the eyes.
XIII
Midnight in St. James’s Square
THE LIGHT-OF-WEIGHT CHAISE, DRAWN by fast horses and hired for that reason at the King of Prussia Inn at the water-stairs not far from the Horse Ferry, clattered through empty streets with its horses at a gallop.
Once more Peg and Jeffrey occupied opposite corners of a carriage similar to last night’s. This time she sat on the left-hand side facing forward, and he on the right. But the jolting was much the same as they smashed along the Mill Bank into Abingdon Street, across Old Palace Yard, up Margaret Street and Parliament Street towards Whitehall and Charing Cross.
Peg, still white and shaky after the events in Ranelagh Gardens, voiced a last protest.
“Jeffrey, I beg! We have no need for such haste.”
“We have great need. It is late; I must learn what has passed in St. James’s Square.”
“I shall be sick again, and humiliate myself again. Why, why? And why must you have held so long in shooting at that odious man? Had you such awful scruples of firing when he could not see you?”
“Scruples, madam? I could not take the risk of missing him. If I had missed, even without the second pistol he was hiding, he would have had me helpless at the sword’s point.”
“Foh! You could have disarmed him with the sword at any time you chose!”
“Madam, shut up.”
“And I am sensible of what to expect”—Peg bit back tears— “whenever you are pleased to address me as ‘madam.’ Jeffrey, Jeffrey! Is it so impossible to say ‘darling’ or even ‘dear heart?’ Must the closest of most intimate speeches forever begin with ‘damn you’?”
“It—it is regrettable, no doubt. But it can’t be helped. That is the effect you have.”
“Oh, fie! And yet one night, when you were drunk, you held me down and recited lovely things writ by somebody called Herrick and somebody else called Donne.”
“Well, I was drunk. I was not myself.”
“You were yourself. Can’t you be drunk more often?”
“At some less harried time, Peg, I shall be happy to oblige. Meanwhile, let us think ourselves fortunate this night”
“Fortunate, upon my soul!”
“More than that Music or no, it was a miracle none heard those shots or saw what happened save old Charles Pilbeam. We could have been delayed at best or held in custody at worst It was a miracle the wherryman awaited us, though he expected gold and got it. As for the garden wall …”
“I knew this,” Peg said with the breathlessness of a pounce. “I knew you would say it. And you will never cease to remind me.
“I will never cease to admire you. Few women would be willing to climb headlong in hoop and petticoats over a garden wall five feet high, or possess the agility to do so if they would. Now for God’s sake spare me more references to your modesty, which in any case is at one with Prester John and the snakes of Ireland. We have serious matters ahead of us.”
The cobblestones in Whitehall, among the town’s worst-paved surfaces, sent their carriage slewing round as the horses stretched again at a gallop. Peg, about to arise in outrage, was flung back.
“We have serious matters ahead. But it is none so bad as it might be. Two of them are disposed of.”
“What gibberish is this? What do you speak of?”
“Two out of three are gone. Hamnet Tawnish is locked up at Bow Street, and Major Skelly is dead. Let Mrs. Cresswell be accounted for, as may perhaps be done now, and I need not return you to Newgate tomorrow morning.”
Beyond their right-hand carriage-lamp the equestrian statue of King Charles the First loomed in the middle of Charing Cross. They swung left up Cockspur Street towards the turning to Pall Mall. But Peg would not have noticed if they had been driving towards an abyss.
“Newgate?” She shrank against cushions. “Return to Newgate?”
“Did you fancy I carried a safe-conduct? Did you not hear what I told Mrs. Pilbeam?” Jeffrey looked round. “Well, I don’t relish telling you. But the fact may not be necessary.”
“I’ll not go to Newgate! You will. You are the one in danger.”
“No, Peg.”
“I say you will. You robbed that old woman of a great hoard of diamonds, and now they will hang you, and I shall never see you again.”
“Peg, stop this! The shocks have addled your wits. I took various items of jewellery, in the main diamonds, valued by Messrs. Hookson of Leadenhall Street at the estimate of thirty. thousand pounds. And there are more still there. But these were mine to take. What did you yourself see in that chest?”
“Faugh! I saw astrological charts. I saw old, useless parchments writ in old ink.”
“Yes. But there were also, for your observation, one or two new parchments in fresh ink. What other writings are always done in parchment, so that they may be preserved for all time? Legal documents, Peg: marriage-lines, deeds, and—wills.”
He looked away, closing his eyes, after which he looked back again.
“And what went on in the heart of Grace Delight, who once was called Rebecca Bracegirdle? She never knew me, or my father either. Yet I owe apology to her memory. I should not have burnt the painting that showed her resemblance to … well, no matter. I should not have wondered if her murderer ought to be punished.”
His hand hovered to the right side of his face, which throbbed painfully, and he turned back to the window.
“One of those documents was a will, executed in full legality, leaving all of which she died possessed to Thomas Wynne’s heir or heirs. How should I have got jewels in one minute and be spending gold almost in the next? Mad Tom Wynne was more than well known to Hookson’s. On the evidence of that will, before it is admitted to probate, they were quick to offer whatever moneys might be needed.”
“Oh, I am glad! And I am no lady of quality either; I am a most ungrateful bitch and you know it. But—Newgate! Oh, save us, Newgate!”
“You shall not be taken. Or, at least, not if I can prevent it. If Justice Fielding has been spinning no more plots in his spider-parlour …”
“Jeffrey, why should he spin plots?”
There was no answer. The carriage rattled along Pall Mall for the right-hand turning through John Street into St. James’s Square.
“Why should he?” Peg persisted. “At the King of Prussia, when I was at you and at you before we entered this carriage, you said he and my uncle had—had schemed to put me there because they would protect me. No doubt I should be grateful for that too; but I am not, rot me, and I’ll not say I am! I could kill both of them.”
“You may not be obliged to kill your uncle.”
“No. I … I had forgot what else you told me. I did not mean it of him; truly I did not. Why, why should all things be so unfair and unkind and most horrid vexatious?”
“That is ever the cry, Peg. It is not new. It will go up from those stones when you and I are dead and gone.”
“Who cares what shall happen when we are dead and gone? It is new to me; I hate it. Also, if this odious Justice Fielding meant well towards me, why should he ever seem like a bogle-man pursuing you?”
“I can’t say. Mrs. Cresswell—”
He paused. And Peg, as though suddenly remembering, fell silent too.
They jumped through the narrowness of John Street, past Norfolk House at the south-east corner of the square. From the belfry of St. James’s Church in Piccadilly, its spire clearly seen by moonlight on higher ground to the north, the clock had begun to strike twelve. Now only the setting moon poured its light into St. James’s Square.
The Trustees kept this square better illuminated than most. A lamp was affixed to each side of the octagonal iron railings enclosing the circular pond or basin in the centre. And tonight Mr. Pitt, who had received good news from India which took three months to reach him by sea, was holding a modest rout at his temporary house on the west. It being Saturday, with chariots to be called at midnight, footmen had just thrust lighted flambeaux into link-brackets on either side of the street-door.
&
nbsp; The watchman with his lanthorn went bawling the hour as soon as the church-clock finished striking. Magically, a crowd of pinch-faced idlers appeared to see the guests leave Mr. Pitt’s. The coachman from the King of Prusia, cutting a way through these idlers with his whip, made a flourish of whirling the carriage round to the door of the house rented by Sir Mortimer Ralston near York Street.
And Peg shrank back again as Jeffrey jumped out to hold open the carriage-door.
“You are at home, Peg, if it can be called that Give me your hand.”
“I’ll not get down. Not yet, that’s to say. I am filthy, do you see?” She opened her cloak to show a gown in disrepair from climbing across a wall. “I will await you.”
“No, you will not. This is much what you said last night. And there must be no running away again.”
“I’ll not run away. I swear it.”
“You shall have no opportunity. Will you come into the house with me, at my side as you should, or must I carry you across my shoulder?”
It was not necessary to drag her. Once she had made up her mind to enter, Peg almost ran up the steps. Jeffrey had hardly struck at the knocker before the street-door was flung open.
“Sir, sir, pray give yourself the trouble of entering.”
Every candle had been lighted in the carved and gilded chandelier of a marble foyer. Soft light shone on its Ionic columns with scrolled and gilded capitals, on the staircase of black-and-white wood, on the Chinese cabinet at its foot.
Hughes, the same major-domo, held open the door. But now Hughes almost cringed. So did a footman in flame-and-blue livery, who had just moved out from under the archway to the room on the left. It was as though someone had cracked a whip here as the coachman had cracked a whip in the square. In the middle of the foyer, eyes on the street-door, stood Brogden.
“The young lady is here, I see,” Brogden said. A little breath of relief escaped him, and he glanced round nervously. “You have done well, Mr. Wynne. I may say you have done very well.”
The Demoniacs Page 17
