A Useful Woman (12 page)

The Arrival of the Robin Redbreast

At the top of Wellington Street, and close to the more crowded portion of the busy Strand . . .
has always been the center of criminal as well as of theatrical life.

—
Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald,
Chronicles of the Bow Street Police Office

When Principal Officer Adam Harkness returned to the ward room at the policing station, a most unusual chorus of greetings rose around him.

“Oooo, my stars! If it ain't the Earl of Bow Street 'imself! They do say 'e dances so trippingly!”

“Give us a turn, then, your lordship, show us how it's done!”

“My word! So 'andsome! Iffen 'e don't favor me with a waltz directly, I shall surely perish!”

“And who'd let you waltz in them boots, Dickinson?” Harkness pulled off his tricorn hat and took a swipe at the constable who made the jibe. “You'd stomp a hole right through the floor, and God help the lady whose foot got in the way!”

The room dissolved into general laughter with Harkness joining in as he hung coat and hat on their pegs.

There was little fancy or comfortable about the Bow Street Police Office. Its ward room was a plain, whitewashed space
furnished with benches and scarred tables where the patrol constables and captains could gather to rest or receive their assignments. Even when it was empty, the place smelled of beer, tobacco, cold mutton, and damp wool. Maps of the various city neighborhoods had been pasted to the walls, along with printed notices of crimes and criminals from around London and the provinces.

It was unusually crowded just now, as it was late afternoon and the men of the night patrol were gathering to hear their orders and assignments. They were a rough lot, and sported every shade of skin from Michael Dougherty's pale Irish white to Sampson Goutier's midnight black. Drawn largely from the laboring classes, the fellows had signed on mostly in hope of steadier work than doing the city's digging and hauling.

“Speakin' serious now, Mr. Harkness.” Dickinson took his outsized boots off the table where he'd been resting his feet and planted them on the floor. “Did you see the ballroom? My sister'll strike me dead if one of our own was inside Almack's an' I can't tell her what it was like.”

Harkness surveyed the round of hopeful faces and sympathized. He was sure his own sisters, not to mention his mother, would be pressing him for details when he got home tonight.

“Well, lads, I'll tell you.” He leaned toward them, and to a man, they leaned toward him.

“It was very, very big,” he said. “And very, very empty.”

With that, Harkness walked out of the room and let the curses of disappointment swirl against his back.

*   *   *

The patrol room, which waited on the far side of the ward room, was somewhat smaller and scarcely more luxurious. In truth, it resembled a cross between a bank office and the reading room of a circulating library. In the ward room, the cabinets and shelves
held lanterns, pistols, and alarm bells. In the patrol room, they held bound volumes of newspapers and clippings. More recent papers from across the length and breadth of England hung on racks or were stacked on the tables. Among them were issues of Bow Street's own publication,
Hue & Cry.
Circulated among the policing offices of London and its outskirts, its pages were given over to descriptions of crimes and descriptions of stolen property that was either still missing or had been discovered in pawn shops or other inappropriate places.

The world in general might call each and every man who worked out of the Bow Street station a “runner,” but the men themselves did not use the term. Those who walked the streets or rode the highways were patrolmen, and each patrol was headed by a captain. Principal officers, like Harkness, were separate from the patrols, although they did sometimes assist them in the same way they assisted the river police or the watch. Principal officers had no fixed rounds to keep—rather, they went where the magistrates sent them. Generally what occurred was that a gentleman or other worthy citizen, such as Mr. William Willis, would write the magistrates to complain of some loss or injury, or to warn that they expected trouble. The magistrate reviewed the details, and assigned a patrol captain or a principal officer, as he felt the case merited. The worthy who contacted the office was afterward required to pay the fees of the men they hired.

At the moment, only one other man was at his desk in the patrol room. Samuel Tauton looked up from the paper he was perusing to give Harkness a friendly wave.

“Hello, Harkness.”

“Tauton!” Harkness grasped the other man's hand. “I hadn't heard you were back. How was Bath?”

Tauton smiled and folded his hands across his paunch.
Samuel Hercules Tauton was older than Harkness by at least ten years. He was also as crafty as they came and had a memory for faces that was second to none. He could spot a thief years after the crime had been laid away as unsolvable, and unlike some thief takers who'd just go after whoever was handy, Tauton's man—or woman—would generally be found out to be the right one.

“Bath gave me and my fellows some rare good fishing, I can tell you,” said Tauton cheerfully. “Thinned the schools of the London dips for you lot.”

The Prince of Wales had been in Bath the week before, which meant a host of swells, fashionables, and nabobs had followed him, along with a herd of pickpockets and other ne'er-do-wells. The city officials had written at once to the magistrates, begging to be supplied with some Bow Street men to help clear out the traveling predators.

“I hear you've climbed the mountain of the fashionable world, Harkness.” Tauton folded his paper. “A dead man in Almack's, is it? I'm surprised Townsend didn't take this on himself.”

Harkness allowed himself a brief, bitter smile. “It might take him away from the Prince of Wales's side, and then who would hold His Royal Highness's watch while he's gaming?” John Townsend was the principal officer best known to the public. Very few weeks went by without Townsend's name being mentioned in the papers. As far as Harkness could tell, the man was useful in that he kept the aristocracy, which controlled the purse strings, well disposed toward the idea of Bow Street and stations like it, but that was the beginning and the end of it.

Tauton grimaced. “Still, I expect it's nothing,” he went on breezily. But when Harkness remained silent, Tauton's face grew solemn. “It is nothing, isn't it?”

“Everyone wants it to be.”

“What did you see?”

“Not a thing, Tauton.” Harkness perched himself on a stool at one of the writing desks. “It wasn't as if they were going to leave the corpse, or anything else, lying about all night until I could get a look at it.”

“What did you find, then?”

Harkness rubbed his jaw. “I found Mr. Willis being harassed by his wife to make sure no rogue had accidentally slipped inside the rooms. I found doors with surprisingly stout locks thrown wide open for men and women to come and go. I found charwomen and porters, all more than ready to talk and asking for details about the corpse. I found a great, mostly empty, set of public rooms that could have hidden a small army. I found a very strange story,” he added, “of a lady patroness, the young Duke of Casselmain, a private secretary, and a rather undefined gentlewoman with the dramatic name of Rosalind Thorne who in some order all found the body.” He paused again. “It's a damned odd crowd to be hanging about a corpse.”

“You suspect something?” Tauton asked him.

Harkness shook his head. “I suspect that young gentlemen are fools, young ladies are pretty, old ladies are nosy, and confidential secretaries are shocked and horrified.”

“And you're going to talk to them all anyway?”

“All the ones who will talk to me. Probably come to nothing, but I'll have a good report for Townsend and the magistrates, and it will read well in the papers.”

“Bit of a step down for the hero of the highways, ain't it?”

“You did warn me it was dull work when I accepted the promotion,” answered Harkness. “Still, there's fewer chances I'll get my throat cut asking questions at Almack's.”

Tauton chuckled. “My boy, that all depends on who you dance with.”

*   *   *

Harkness spent the rest of the afternoon writing up what he'd learned from Willis and from the magistrate. No one was sure yet if an actual crime had been committed. Nothing appeared to have been stolen, but the Willises were still completing their inventory. Mr. Willis did state confidently that the young man's note case and gold snuff box had been found near him, and returned to the family. Despite this, it was good to start a full description of the crime—if a crime it proved to be—circulating generally among the other policing offices. One never knew where a useful tidbit of information might turn up, or when.

Once Harkness gave his report to the clerk to copy out, he wrote up a pair of letters in his best fist—one to Sarah Villiers, Lady Jersey, and one to Devon Winterbourne, Duke of Casselmain. Both requested the favor of an interview regarding the recent unfortunate occurrence. He'd have liked to send off a third letter to Miss Rosalind Thorne, but while it was public knowledge which houses the nobility resided in, he had no direction for Miss Thorne. Maybe Mr. Willis could supply one. He'd been fairly cooperative today. Of course, that might change if he thought Harkness was about to start bothering his patrons and their friends.

Once the letters were put in the mail bag, Harkness turned his attention to the files, and the
Hue & Cry
. Finding a description of a similar crime was only a faint hope. If he'd read about any other dead gentlemen who were not obviously killed in a duel, he would have remembered. Still, Harkness liked to be thorough and he knew the value of patience.

By the time Harkness straightened up and knuckled his eyes, daylight had faded to twilight. The boy came in to light the lamps. Out in the ward room, he heard the sounds of the patrol
captains calling out names and assignments to the men, accompanied by the usual complaints and taunts, and the tramp of boots as the patrols took to the streets to do what they could for another night.

Tauton looked up from his own report. “Have you found anything?”

“Not a bean.” Harkness returned the last pages to their file, and the file to its cabinet drawer. “Wasn't really expecting it, but . . .” He shrugged. “I've gone over the ground now. If I find something tomorrow, I might just know what I'm looking at.”

Tauton eyed him. “You really do think this is more than just some tomfoolery gone wrong?”

Harkness pushed the drawer shut. “I can't get it out of my mind that there was a damned odd crowd hanging about for it to be only tomfoolery.”

“I wouldn't get too bothered about them. Your man, if there was one, was out the door and down the street as soon as Aimesworth's head hit the boards. Even one of the gentry'd know better than to hang about with the man they'd just killed.”

“If they could get out fast enough,” said Harkness. “It's a big place, and not as empty as it might have been. Maybe they got spotted before they could get to the door and had to play at being as surprised as everybody else.”

“Now there is a thought,” said Tauton slowly. “Well, well. You'll let me know if you need any help?”

“I will that.”

The men said good night. Back in the ward room, Harkness claimed his great coat and tricorn hat and wound his muffler tight around his neck. A glance out the narrow windows showed that the snow had started up again, and it was getting worse. A good night for one of his mother's hot dinners at home, and the cheerful riot in the parlor afterward. Harkness had six brothers
and sisters, most of them still at home, or near enough. There was seldom any peace about the place, and very little quiet.

Harkness's musings on home and hearth, though, were interrupted by the sight of the man waiting at the bottom of the station's stairs, hands shoved deep into his pockets and a look of determined hope on his sharp-boned face.

“Well now, George Littlefield,” Harkness hailed the newspaperman. “What brings you to Bow Street today?”

“Well now, Mr. Harkness,” the other man answered amiably, “I expect you already know.”

“I expect I do.” The news of Aimesworth's death might not be in the papers yet, but that didn't mean that their hounds weren't already on the scent. “I'm a little surprised that you worked out so quick it'd be me on the case.”

Littlefield shrugged. Probably his work had consisted of laying a shilling across the clerk's palm. “Care to get a pint and talk the matter through?” He jerked his chin toward the Staff and Bell public house across the busy street.

Harkness shook his head slowly. “I've got nothing to say to the
Chronicle
, Littlefield. Not for beer, love, or money.” And nothing to say to George Littlefield that was worth keeping his dinner waiting.