by John Creasey
Upstairs, that night, in a bedroom overlooking the stream and the pond and the lights at distant houses, Ruth said, ‘I can hardly believe this is real, John.’
‘The longer you stay here the more real you will find it,’ he promised her.
Two days later he asked if she would like to stay there all the time, with the children, while he came for weekends. The suggestion brought to the forefront of her mind an anxiety which had been hovering for many months, and now she was torn in two directions. To leave the children with others for so much of the time was against all her instincts, but she was sure that John needed her companionship and help. However he might refuse to admit it, he was not well, and she hated the thought of being away from him for long periods. She alone could help him relax; on his own he would work like the giant he was, to the point of disaster.
But no matter how much she wanted to be with him, and how great his need, how could she deny her daughters the magnificent air of the countryside, all the fresh garden products and the freedom from the squalor and disease of the city?
It was a long time before she made up her mind, though with much misgiving. Meg and Sam Fairweather, already deeply attached to the children-, would soon need a place to live in retirement, for Sam was getting too old for Bow Street. She could trust them absolutely with the girls, and there was no one with whom she could leave John.
She decided to leave her daughters here with Meg and Sam, while she stayed at Bow Street, coming here frequently for as long as she could wisely travel by coach. That would be until the seventh month of her pregnancy, she anticipated.
When the time came, for some reason she did not understand, leaving the children at St. Giles Farm worried her less than leaving James at the school had done, but as the weeks passed, her preoccupation with her fourth child, John’s obvious delight in the prospect and the level of high contentment in her life with him made her misgivings recede. But they were never far away.
Apart from this, her life seemed too good to be true.
Life for John continued in a domestic contentment he had never known before, despite increasing frustrations at Bow Street and an increasing sense of failure over efforts to win support for a peace force. Crimes increased beyond even his worst dreams, and more and more were decreed suitable for the death penalty. The thief-takers revelled in rewards for their evidence, true or false, with which to convict a man. The filth of London grew until the stench could be carried for miles on the wind and nowhere was there freedom from the effluence, and the water from the Thames became noisome and stank as it was drawn from the street stack pipes. But the parks became more beautiful than ever, the great houses more prosperous; as criminals multiplied so did those who made a good living at every craft under the sun. New docks, new warehouses, new shops, drew more and more trade from ships which not only brought rats to swell the rodent population of the city, but also rich silks and tapestries, spices, and tea and coffee.
Not only did trade from abroad increase bewilderingly and so bring more people in from the provinces to do the work, but trade from the provinces kept doubling and trebling itself. Since the first Turnpike Act in 1663, giving parishes on the Great North Road the right to take tithes from all who used it, the money going to road maintenance, a dozen new turnpikes had been added and all had become furiously busy. Whether from Derby or Manchester, Gloucester or Hereford, Oxford or Birmingham, Bath or Bristol, Chester or Coventry, Hawick or Dover, Portsmouth or Chichester, each bore thousands of tons of heavy-goods traffic to and from London.
Rutted or rock-strewn, muddy or waterlogged, well surfaced or bad, each turnpike was part of the forward-surging economy of the country, which was still based on London.
Distant from all this, on the fifteenth of December, 1740, a son was born to John and Ruth Furnival, attended by Dr. Anson, who had come from Great Furnival Square, and by Meg Fairweather as midwife.
Both mother and son thrived.
On the fourth Sunday after his birth the child was baptised and christened in the parish church of St. Giles, the Reverend Sebastian Smith assisting the vicar. Smith held the baby in his arms, sprinkled his wrinkled forehead and thin black hair liberally with holy water without waking him, and preached in a subdued boom until finally he said, ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost I hereby give to this child the names of John William Francis and I pray that he will add to the great name of Furnival still greater lustre and distinction. Amen.’
On the lips of the hundred people present there came the prayer: ‘Amen’.
The child gave his parents no anxiety. He appeared to have inherited the strength of his father with the equable temper of his mother and an intelligence which might have come from either or both. Soon after his ninth month he was taken to live part time at Bow Street, for Ruth would leave neither young John at St. Giles for long at a time nor her husband too long alone at Bow Street. They went seldom to Great Furnival Square, Ruth because she did not feel at home or happy there, John Furnival because the gap between his purposes and those of the family had widened yet further.
In the early years of the marriage, troubles of a different kind fell about their ears. Already Walpole’s yielding to powerful demands for war with Spain brought war with France to a dangerous crescendo. At last Walpole was defeated. The whole of Europe seemed to go up in flames; no nation of real consequence seemed at peace; or if there was peace, it was short-lived: George II led the British and allied armies against the French and won a victory and an uproarious burst of popularity, but rumours in newspapers and from government sources were right - the French prepared to invade across the Channel. All this time, new and more burdensome tasks were thrust upon Furnival. The repeal of the Gin Act in 1743 had eased the flow of charges for illegal sale and manufacture, but greatly increased the number of crimes which arose out of drunkenness.
Westminster became a victim of a different kind of plague: a fear of spies. Furnival was charged with seeking them out and searching for arms dumps cached for a Jacobite uprising in or near the metropolis. For not only was France threatening but the Scottish were said to be rallying around Prince Charles, who might soon become strong enough to march south with an invading army and take London and the throne. In his new position as Chief of the Secret Service, Furnival had to report daily to Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle.
As the threat of an invading army increased, so did the temptation to send Ruth to join the girls at St. Giles Farm, but if the invasion did break through, rebel forces might travel very swiftly, and he might not be able to get them away from the Bedfordshire village in time. So he kept Ruth and the child at Bow Street.
In the strange mixture of war and peace in which all Europe seemed involved, hundreds of French footmen were imported to London, putting as many English counterparts out of work. A group of English footmen called a meeting to discuss action and, rumour of this leaking out, Furnival was ordered by the government to prevent it. His first step was simple: to deny them use of the room where they wanted to assemble.
Almost without warning, hundreds of Englishmen marched on Bow Street. Some bribed or fooled a servant to admit them and found Furnival alone in his downstairs office.
‘You allow us into the meeting room,’ one man said, ‘or you’ll die where you sit.’
Ruth, puzzled by the crowd outside, had gone down to see what was the matter, and went into the office. As the men swung around, fearful of an attack, Furnival snatched up two pistols and pushed past them to the door.
‘You go upstairs with the baby,’ he ordered Ruth. ‘Send Harris or any man you can find to summon troops and our men - but let our men not attack the mob by themselves. They are to protect the rear.’ He did not utter a word to the invaders, who, taken aback at the sight of the pistols, retreated to the hallway. Ruth safely out of sight, Furnival stood at the foot of the stairs, pistols in hand. The front door crashed in and dozens more of the footmen rushed into the hallway - but stopped at sight of his gu
ns. Upstairs, the baby was crying; everything on the ground floor was wrecked, windows and furniture were smashed and documents were burned. John Furnival moved neither forward nor backward, but if any man drew near he levelled his guns.
Two and a half hours later, when he was at the point of exhaustion, troops arrived in Bow Street, and Furnival’s men, who had been keeping hundreds at bay, rushed to his support. Once the crisis was past, he felt once again pressures at his jaws and chest, and, breathing heavily, he groped for a chair, Ruth helping him.
He sat heaving for a while, and gradually recovered, saying when he could speak, ‘I confess I have never been more frightened. Has my hair turned white?’
‘Nothing but a distinguished grey,’ she assured him; and he blessed her for her cool head. ‘But mine will if you do not see a doctor.’
For once he conceded, ‘I will think of it.’
He was allowed little rest, even after that invasion of Bow Street.
Orders came to round up Roman Catholic priests who might be working for the Jacobites, and the rate of crime steadily increased. It was little consolation that the government accepted responsibility for the damage at Bow Street after the footmen’s riot and offered a hundred pounds in gold over and above all other rewards for the arrest and conviction of any street robber until May of 1745.
There could have been no greater incentive to the thief-taker; to those giving false evidence; to those prepared to condemn the innocent.
Pressed by Ruth, John at last saw a doctor, who advised him to take more rest and to eat less and gave him a medicine to take twice each day. From then on his attacks lessened in severity until he all but ignored them.
On little John’s fourth birthday in the blustery December of 1744, when a party was to be held to celebrate in the upstairs apartment at Bow Street and John was in court, a visitor came, different from any they had known before: a King’s Messenger, carrying a sealed message which he would hand only to John in person. The young clerk who had copied so many of Moffat’s appeals, and was now a married and family man, took a message into the court and John came out into his offices and then up the stairs. Ruth judged from his expression that he had been filled suddenly with hope that at last one of his pleas had been answered favourably, else why should a special envoy be sent? He broke the seal of the heavy envelope and straightened out a piece of parchmentlike paper with two folds. He began to read, and Ruth had never seen such hope or tension in him. The messenger watched with supercilious interest, until he was shocked - like Ruth - by the sudden laugh which burst from John Furnival’s lips, a laugh which went on and on and shook the walls, reminding Ruth vividly of the night when John had come back from Great Furnival Square and learned of the highwayman’s attack on Montmorency and the theft of Hooper’s gold and silver plate.
The envoy looked outraged, but before he could speak Furnival moved towards Ruth and held the missive so that she could read it.
Before she even began, Furnival gasped, ‘The King is rewarding me for my services to justice - he is making me a knight! Sir John Furnival, m’dear, how does that sound? Will the death sentence sound more pleasant from the mouth of Sir John, will the—’
‘Your pardon,’ the envoy interrupted coldly. ‘His Majesty is to hold a ceremony tomorrow at Westminster Palace which he has graciously invited you to attend to be dubbed Sir John. May I report to His Majesty that you will accept? Or shall I tell him you were so vastly amused that you could not make the decision easily?’
‘Oh, both,’ answered John Furnival. ‘Both, by all means! That I was vastly amused by the unexpected nature of the missive and humbly beg to accept. I will present myself tomorrow at Westminster Palace, if you will be good enough to tell me what time I should be there.’
‘At three o’clock, sir.’
‘And may I, as is the custom, have the company and support of my wife?’
‘As it please you,’ the envoy replied, supercilious again. He bowed stiffly and turned and went onto the landing where the young clerk was waiting to escort him.
The young clerk was at the Bow Street door, when the carriage returned from Westminster, and as he handed Ruth down he said in a clear voice, ‘Good afternoon, my lady.’
Ruth was so surprised that she slipped and would have fallen had the youth not supported her and if Tom Harris, standing by, hadn’t come to lend his weight. Upright again and looking quite beautiful, she breathed heavily, for the welcome had been a shock. They had not discussed it and until the moment when she had been called ‘my lady’ it had never really dawned on her that she would be known by the title. She caught a glimpse of John, smiling down at her, and felt sure he had deliberately not talked of it before the knighting to make sure that she would get the full effect of ‘my lady’ the first time it was used.
There was a boisterous party in the apartment, the other magistrates, clerks and officials coming to pay their respects, most of them wanting a word afterward with John Furnival the Fourth, who had been ‘banished’ to the cottage for the great occasion. At last, however, the visitors ceased coming and little John was brought back and put to bed, while soon afterward Ruth and John Furnival ate a simple meal, cooked exclusively for them, in ‘their’ room.
‘And now I am going to prove to you that Lady Furnival gets no more respect from Sir John than Mrs. Furnival used to get from plain John Furnival, Esquire,’ declared Furnival.
Had Ruth had any doubts before, she knew now that he was deeply pleased with the knighthood, although within a few days he would no doubt be sending off his protests again, and trying to find out whether the ‘Sir’ prefix would procure him a better hearing.
In August of 1745 the dreaded invasion of the Young Pretender began. Landing in Scotland to a rapturous reception he began his march of triumph south and was proclaimed King of Scotland in Edinburgh. As he took Derby there was panic in London; tens of thousands left the city; thousands besieged the Bank of England; even the King was advised to flee to Hanover. All this time Furnival maintained his work as magistrate and secret service leader, keeping Ruth and the baby in London.
‘The Prince will never get here,’ he would insist. ‘He’ll be turned back. The north will not support him.’
And the north, where the Prince’s great hopes had lain, watched as he passed by with his Highlanders and did not lift a finger to help; at the same time, in the Scottish Lowlands, loyalty had swung back to the Hanovers.
John Furnival had taken a night off duty so that he could give Ruth a rare treat, an evening at Drury Lane. Rebuilt only a few years after the fire which destroyed it, a light and lively play, written produced and acted by David Garrick, was being staged, and the evening was made the greater for Ruth because the King was in the Royal Box. Few saw the equerry who went to speak to him, but all saw the incredible sight of the portly sovereign climbing onto the stage, gesticulating wildly and shouting phrases in guttural English which no one could understand, then bursting out into German.
As his excitement increased and the audience and players began to wonder whether he had gone mad, an equerry joined him and announced clearly, ‘His Majesty has been advised of the complete and bloody defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden. He—’
His next words were lost in a roar of cheering, shouting and stamping, while only here and there appeared a pale, shocked face.
‘One danger over,’ Furnival said in the carriage as he and Ruth were driven home.
‘You mean you expect a bad winter of crime?’
‘You are a discerning woman,’ he declared.
Because of the preoccupation with the Jacobite rebellion, concentration on the criminals in London had been impossible for Furnival or anyone else, and crime during the winter of 1745 to 1746 had been the worst ever known.
But in some ways there was change for the better, as a number of the people to whom he had written over the years were persuaded by the worsening crime figures that an organised peace-keeping force in London would have made it
much easier to search out the Jacobites. A slow, steady stream of support was developing, and almost two years to the day since the King’s accolade, Sir John Furnival, as active as ever at Bow Street, arranged for missives to be sent out to thirty gentlemen, including three peers and five Members of Parliament, to attend a meeting at the Printers’ Hall in the City to discuss ways and means of bringing more pressure on the government and the King. For the first time Ruth left her fourth child at the farm so that she could give her undivided attention to her husband. In one way she was puzzled, for now that the great opportunity was at hand and there seemed a prospect of receiving the support he needed, he was more on edge than he had ever been.
‘I know, Ruth, I know,’ he said when she remarked on it and asked if she could help. ‘So near and yet so far - is that the reason, I wonder? I have been working for this day for so many weary years that like you I can hardly believe it is real.’ A smile broke through his frown and he held her by the arms. ‘Now the boot is on the other foot! Ruth, will you remember, I wonder, the day I set out to bargain with my family? I had such high hopes then. I did not really see how in all reason they would refuse and yet I was frightened that they would. When the actual Sunday came I was nearly as much on edge as I am now. Am I a fool, do you think? Or have I been fooling myself?’
‘No man was ever less of a fool,’ she replied. ‘What you lack is faith in those you are going to meet.’ She stood over him as he sat back in his chair and went on gently: ‘You should rest tonight - with no exertion. No exertions of any kind, sir!’ Her eyes teased him. ‘I will go and get some lemon curd tarts; they are in the oven, warming.’
She went out of their apartment and was away for perhaps ten minutes. Everyone except the court officials and two retainers whom she did not know well had left to attend a fight between two famous pugilists at a big new amphitheatre near Tottenham Court Road. She preferred things as they were, for she felt an overwhelming desire to be alone with John that night, having a sense that he had great need of her.
