by John Creasey
He paused when three mugs of coffee and one hot pie in a pottery dish were placed on the table, then, as Benedict ate and James drank, he went on:
‘And they’ve got to license public houses, issue search warrants, frame orders to parish officers, and decide such matters as parish removals, the billeting of soldiers, applications for admission to workhouses or for other assistance, and hundreds of other problems. And if that’s not enough, they’re the heads of the police in the district. No, sir, none of that’s for me. I like to sleep at night.’
‘I have a belief that you do sleep,’ Benedict said.
‘Fair to middling, sir, fair to middling, if I don’t start worrying. Why, it couldn’t snow on Saint Paul’s Churchyard without flakes falling on one thief in every two.’
‘If you feel like this, why are you a trading justice?’ asked Benedict.
‘One simple reason - very simple. If I wasn’t here there would be someone else a lot worse.’
When the two men left the coffee house the two boys were waiting in a light drizzle, still watching the horse.
Benedict Sly said unbelievingly, ‘How do you find such characters, James?’
‘I keep my eyes open,’ James replied. He gave each boy a penny, then, pausing before the filthy one, he asked, ‘Is your father still in Marshalsea Prison?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the boy replied brightly. ‘He keeps going in and he keeps coming out, sir.’
As this dialogue was taking place, the door of a shop next door opened with the loud clanging of a bell and a big, bearded man with a peg leg stood in the doorway, grinning. The small window was crammed with odds and ends from ships breakers’ yards, and as they drew nearer, Benedict saw that the shop itself was even more crowded; there was scarce room to move.
‘Well, I’ll be blowed down, sir, I’ll be blowed down if it ain’t the Prime Minister himself,’ Peg Leg said. ‘I bin hoping you’d come, sir, come upon a find I did.’ He lowered his great voice to a hoarse whisper. ‘Coins, m’lud, coins from an old ship sunk in the estuary. Come and see, Mr. Prime Minister.’ He winked behind thick curly eyebrows at Benedict Sly and went on: ‘Glad to know you sir. Glad to make the acquaintance of any of the Prime Minister’s friends. And if he isn’t the Prime Minister then he ought to be, sir, that’s what I say.’
The shop stank with mildew and wood rot, but here and there a polished brass rail or a clean hurricane lamp, a ship’s wheel or a pair of lamp holders, showed brightly from fresh burnishing against light from candles at the back of the shop, which gave an eerie effect. Stepping over rusty metal, old ropes, rotting wood, rotting sailcloth and canvas, Peg Leg at last reached a corner where a cupboard was fastened with a huge padlock. He opened this with a rusty key, then took out a box of coins and held them up to a candle.
‘There they be, Mr. Prime Minister. Old Roman coins if you ask me.’
‘They are no more Roman than they are ancient British, and you are well aware of it,’ replied James. He poked among the coins, picked out two or three, examined them through a glass he took from his pocket, and then said, ‘They are Dutch, I think, Polycarp - old Dutch, perhaps. I don’t know their value. I’ll give you two pounds for them all or take them away and put them in “Mr. Londoner” and give you half what I get for them.’
Polycarp was breathing hard as he listened, hesitated, and then said, ‘It’s not that I don’t need the money, Mr. Prime Minister, but I’ll do better with half the price you get. If I run very short of cash, can I come and collect the two pounds?’
‘Yes. At any time.’
‘Then it’s a deal,’ affirmed Polycarp, and he began to scoop the coins into a canvas bag. ‘Things are bad, I don’t mind admitting, and why you and them other Members of Parlyment is thinking of paying for them river police I’ll never know. Look what it’ll cost. Five thousand pounds for the river guard, over four thousand for the quay guard, and that’s only the start of it. It’s robbery.’
‘I shouldn’t worry too much about it, Polycarp,’ soothed James. ‘The merchants would have to pay for all of this, and it keeps the river safe from thieves.’ He struck an attitude which startled Benedict and alarmed the other. ‘Do you pay your share for the protection? You use the Port of London, don’t you?’
After a shocked silence Peg Leg managed to say, ‘A joke’s a joke, Mr. Prime Minister, but you don’t have to frighten the wits out of an honest man.’
Driving back towards the Strand, Benedict Sly said after a long silence, ‘You are a difficult man to know, James. Have you others like that tucked away?’
‘In every part of London, although they are two of the best,’ James said. ‘Ben, I never understand it but I am more at peace in this part of London than anywhere else except Chelsea. There is something about the docks which fascinates me.’
As they drove through thick traffic near St. Paul’s, Benedict said quietly, ‘He was wrong to call you Prime Minister, James. Mr. Londoner is the perfect name for you.’
31: THE PARTY
Once again it was Mary’s birthday, and the party was at full swing.
James Marshall, sitting in the massive armchair which his grandfather had made nearly eighty years before and which on this occasion had been brought onto the terrace, watched the pageant of the river and the children playing in the orchard and heard the laughter in the house behind him. How many grandchildren had he, now? Sometimes he forgot! He began to recall them in a desultory way, less because he was keenly interested than because he was mildly exasperated with himself for not remembering.
Jimmy had four - no, five, children. Jimmy, his and Mary’s firstborn, whom he hardly remembered as a child and with whom he had spent such little time. Jimmy had been born in 1756; my goodness, he had a son of forty, who had married at seventeen, some of whose children were married and living in faraway places, one in Australia and one in America. One did not have to be a jailbird or felon to settle in the colonies any longer, and one did not have to be a rebel to prefer America to England.
James’s thoughts began to wander. It had taken him years really to recover from the fiasco of the police bill, years in which street robberies inside the built-up area of the metropolis became so numerous that the Bow Street Foot Patrols were extended, five new patrols being used to patrol the London streets, as well as the eight which continued to work outside. But all these worked by night; the government ignored the rising crime by day.
Yet what a success to have the government accept responsibility for all thirteen patrols in - when was it? - 1790, that was it, April 1790. His memory was not so bad after all! And two years later had come a further development which would have delighted the Fieldings and John Furnival. Another private Member and he, with support from Pitt, got the Middlesex Justices Act through the House of Commons. There were to be in all seven ‘public offices’, each with three magistrates who would be paid for their services and not permitted to accept other fees. Moreover, each office was to have six officers, like the Bow Street Foot Patrols, who would be paid twelve shillings a week and also expenses. All of these men were still free to receive rewards for successful prosecutions, and many earned a substantial sum.
A great move forward, but with drawbacks, for there was no central control, each office worked autonomously; and the small fee led to corruption among some men. Sir Douglas Rackham had led the opposition to the bill, but the House was against him, despite his cold, detached case against paid justices and the fact of his own resignation from the bench in order, he declared, to concentrate on work in the House of Commons.
‘If ever there were a rascal, that man is one,’ James said aloud. ‘But I will say one thing for the man: he never seems to grow a day older. I wish I could say the same about myself!’
Now, not far away, a young man was walking across the garden towards him. Reaching a brick wall, he sat on it, his legs dangling, his gaze on his grandfather. This young man, first son of Jimmy, had inherited his grandfather’s hooked nose and thrusting chin
, his high forehead and the well-defined lips which even James’s heavy white moustache and mutton-chop side whiskers could not disguise.
Seeing him, James’s thoughts returned to his children. Jimmy, then, now in full charge of ‘Mr. Londoner’ and with five children of his own.
Next came Charles, handsome in a way which had caused much bother before his marriage to Muriel Weygalls, the youngest of the Weygalls family. Both of Charles’s children were boys.
Aloud, James asked, ‘How many then, so far? Five, six, seven grandchildren.’
The young man on the wall stopped swinging his legs and watched and listened intently.
‘And next, Dorothy,’ James said, loud enough for his grandson to hear.
Dorothy, the only one of his children at all like dark-haired Henrietta, and whose two children had died in early infancy. Just how deeply Dorothy felt about this James did not know; outwardly she was always calm and composed.
And lastly, Jonathan, thought James.
He had wanted to name their fourth child David, after David Winfrith, who up to the time of the boy’s birth had played such an important part in their lives, but for some reason that he never understood Mary had been adamantly opposed to this. They had compromised with Jonathan, who, as he grew older, became more and more like his grandfather Sebastian Smith. Like Sebastian he had gone into the Church, and now had a living on the south bank of the Thames almost directly across the river from where James sat; James could see the spire of his church standing straight as a needle stabbing the sky.
Seven and eight makes fifteen - fifteen grandchildren, mused James.
The wind off the river grew fresher, but he did not move. Between the houses he saw the small craft, the barges, some gaily bedecked coasters which reminded him of the great pageant of nearly fifty years ago. Well, forty-five! How strange it was to realise that one was nearly sixty-seven, so much older than most of one’s friends when they died. Nicholas Sly .had been gone for ten years, but Benedict was still alive, although crippled by some disease of the bones which made walking impossible and movement difficult. And Mary, thank God, his Mary was still alive on yet another ‘family’ birthday, like an extension of himself, still spry, still able to smile readily and to tease more wickedly than most. None of the children or grandchildren really took after Mary, unless it was Richard, the eldest son of Jimmy and his wife. The boy was said to look like him, James, in face and body but there were undoubted qualities of Mary in him. Over the years James had watched him with his brothers and cousins, and if ever there was a peacemaker it was young Richard, even at a youthful age.
A stiffer wind caught James’s hair and blew it straight up from his forehead; for the first time he felt conscious of chill following the warm day. He eased himself forward in the chair, which did not creak or squeak, but before he rose to his feet Richard’s voice sounded from one side and his grandson appeared.
‘Can I get you anything, Grandfather?’
James, recovering from a start at the unexpected sound, said, ‘New bones, my boy, new bones for old.’
‘If Uncle Charles is to be believed they may one day be able to do that,’ replied Richard.
‘They? Who do you mean by “they”? Be more precise, Richard, more explicit. More harm is done in this world by the failure of one human being to understand another than by any of the seven deadly sins. Do you know the seven deadly sins, my boy?’
‘Most of them only by reputation, sir!’ Richard’s grey eyes creased at the corners.
James, well pleased, growled back, ‘You are an impudent young pup. I am too old for such flippancy.’
‘That I cannot believe, sir.’
‘Eh? You disagree with me?’ James was startled into speaking in a normal tone. ‘Have you no respect for age?’
‘A great deal, sir; most of it learned from study of you,’ Richard retorted, and, smiling, he moved in front of his grandfather. ‘That is not flattery. ‘Tis honest truth. I never see you as an old man, though, and I refuse to believe you are too old for anything to which you set your mind.’
James, taken even more aback, placed his hands on the arms of the chair and returned the other’s gaze. He warmed to the youth, who could be little more than twenty-two, if that. He had a comfortable feeling with Richard, who obviously felt the same with him.
‘Flattery,’ he insisted at last. ‘It will get you nowhere, Richard. D’you always mean what you say?’
‘Nearly always, sir!’
‘Do you really want to know if you can get me anything?’
‘I would be very happy to fetch whatever you want.’
‘Then first I want to go inside, my boy, into a corner where small children won’t fall over my feet and next I want some tea, fresh tea, you understand, and after that I wish to give my regular birthday performance and then to go for a drive. Are you competent to drive a carriage?’
‘Middling, sir, middling competent.’
‘True modesty is the milk of the humble, mock modesty is the vinegar of fools.’
James allowed himself to be helped from the chair, and as the stiffness eased from his joints he walked to and fro, still looking at the river, then turned towards the house. At one side, away from the big main room, was a smaller one where he and Mary often sat when they were alone together, and he turned towards this. As he reached it he became aware of a strange silence which had fallen upon the children, but it did not last for long, and suddenly the chatter in the other room was broken by a roar of ‘Punch and Judy!’ and loud cries of delight.
The noise did not worry him; indeed he found himself listening to the shrill, clear voice of Punch and the thwacking of Punch’s wife. He could picture the puppets - old-fashioned ones made of wood if Mary had found the puppet master with his strange name of Swatchelcove. He had heard this show every year for at least fifteen years and could distinguish not only Punch’s voice but Judy’s, the clown’s and the ghost’s, the beadle’s and the constable’s and even the hangman’s.
A clink of cups sounded outside the door and Mary came in, carrying one tray, with Richard behind her carrying another - with a silver-plated kettle, still steaming, and some cakes and biscuits. Mary wore a silk dress of dark blue, drawn in at the waist and off the shoulder. Her hair still had streaks of dark in it, and the lines at her eyes did nothing to lesson their brightness.
‘Richard tells me you forgot to add that you also wanted him to bring me to join you,’ she said, placing her tray on a small, low table.
‘After these many years why should I suddenly change?’ asked James, and Richard chuckled. ‘Pour me out some tea, Mrs. Marshall, and have less to say for yourself.’
‘If I failed to speak for myself who would speak for me?’ she said, smiling.
She poured out and James sat back on the cushions, as contented as he had been for a long time. In the past few years he had lost the sense of urgency which had driven and at the same time so troubled him most of his life. The outburst from the children stopped at last; the first calls for them to get ready to leave brought the inevitable cries of disappointment.
Mary, as relaxed as James, asked unexpectedly, ‘Why did you ask Richard if he were a good driver?’
‘Because I would like him to take me for a drive,’ answered James.
‘A drive to where?’ asked Mary.
James hesitated and it was some time before he answered, ‘I was going to say wherever the fancy takes me, but I can be more precise than that. I want to go from here to Westminster Bridge and thence by Charing Cross and the Strand to Bow Street, and next. . .’
She heard him out, without interrupting, and when he had finished, said quietly, ‘You had best take the large carriage, Richard. And I must remember your grandfather’s old bones and pack the seat with cushions. I’ll do that before I see the children off.’ She stood up, smiling at James, and love glowed in her eyes. ‘You wish to remember, Mr. Marshall, and I wish you would remember, some of the everyday things. You have t
o go into the family room and place a wrapped gift into every child’s hand, and you have to remember you do not name a single one, because—’
‘Because even if I get it right I may disappoint the ones I forget!’
‘I do declare there is hope for you yet!’
Mary leaned down and kissed his forehead, and James, watching her walk across the room with as much freedom as she had twenty and even thirty years ago, felt a deep contentment. And Richard’s chuckle was an added pleasure. No, he thought, there was no doubt at all that between him and Richard existed a rapport which he had not known with any of his children or any of the other grandchildren.
When tea was over he got out of his chair more quickly than usual and walked proudly upright towards the family room, outside which stood a huge wicker basket now overladen with gifts, including sweets and confections in packets small enough for him to hold two at once, just the right size to fit the tiny hands of the smaller children. This was a time-honoured ceremony and not only the parents but most of the children were eagerly expecting him.
There they spread, some sitting on the floor or on chairs and couches pushed back to the sides of the room, some kneeling, each one expectant. As Richard carried in the basket, piled high with gifts, the cry was as great as that for the Punch and Judy show. But with a difference. Now he could see them all, the brightness of their faces, with here and there one downcast and tearful from some earlier disappointment. The whole brood, together with the servants’ children and a number from neighbouring houses - Why there must be sixty young souls gathered there, he thought, from girls who were nearly women and young men dressed to ape their fathers and uncles to tots who could hardly walk. Here and there hair had been freshly brushed or plastered down with water, but mostly it was a dishevelled motley, grubby and sticky-mouthed, but with excitement everywhere.
