Jack, Knave and Fool (35 page)

And so, saying my goodbye to him, I took my leave.

It occurred to me as I hurried back in the dark that there was not another of mature years in my range of acquaintance, only Mr. Donnelly, with whom I would have dared to argue as I had. Never once had he said, “You are a mere lad. WTio are you to question my opinion?” He may have argued his superior knowledge as a physician — though he would have done so with any layman who disagreed with him, and that was quite a different matter. He credited my intelligence and had always done so. And for that I would ever be grateful to him.

Entering Number 4 through the door marked “No admittance,” I walked down the long hall which led to the court’s “backstage.” There were constables about. Mr. Baker had replaced Mr. Fuller for the duration of the night. .And I saw, passing the strong room, that only Mrs. Bradbury was there inside; she sat in one corner which she had made her own and did not even bother to look up as I passed by. I continued on my way to the magistrate’s chambers, sure that I should find him there still deeply involved in the interrogation of Thomas Roundtree.

But no, he was at the door, just leaving the room as I arrived. Above the black band that hid his sightless eyes, his brow was puckered in a frown. The corners of his mouth were turned down in a proper scowl. He seemed altogether quite unhappy. Behind I caught a glimpse of Roundtree, his back to the door, still seated where he had been put well over an hour before.

“Jeremy?” said Sir John, recognizing me before I had said a word. “Come over here out of earshot so that we may talk a little. It seems I must go upstairs and change my clothes. What I have on, I’m told by Lady Fielding, is not grand enough for the evening’s occasion.”

Thus reminded, I gave him Mr. Donnelly’s message regarding their journey to the Laningham residence.

Sir John cackled at that. “There is an Irishman for you who can pinch a penny hard as any Scotsman.” But now he whispered: “Tell me, Jeremy what does he say in his report? Don’t bother to read it. Just give me the content of it.”

“The gist is that he found traces of blood and bone on the handsaw which he took from the toolbox.”

“Damn! I could have made good use of that. He’s sure of it, is he?”

“He examined scrapings under his microscope.”

“That should make it certain.” He bit his lip in indecision. “If I could but stay a bit longer.” He sighed. “But I cannot. I have a premonitory notion that something of importance may happen this evening, and I feel obliged to be present if it does.” Then did he brighten somewhat: “I have an idea, Jeremy.”

“And what is that, sir?”

“You might see what you can do with him.”

“Question him?”

“Yes, yes indeed. I played the bear with him. You might play the lamb. Something he said indicates to me that he feels a bit guilty in the way he treated you —cozened you, played the fool until you let down your guard so that he could escape. Use that. Be his friend. Yet try’ to get from him what truly happened on the night George Bradbury returned from Warwick, and above all, get him to implicate the others. I have promised transportation for him, no matter what his part. That, of course, is all I can promise.

Though I was quite intimidated by the task he had given me, I managed a solemn promise to do my best.

“I know you will,” said he. “Fetch me if he breaks, or even if he seems close. I shall let you be the judge of when that might be. But now … now I must go.”

He grasped for my hand and squeezed it awkwardly between his two. Then he was gone.

I peered inside the room. We had conducted our conversation in whispers at some distance from the door. Yet even so, Thomas Roundtree seemed a shrunken figure as he sat bent in his chair, his bowed head just visible above his narrow shoulders. It seemed barely possible that upright he would stand a good six feet tall. Sir John had advised me to play the lamb with him. Looking at Roundtree, diminished and despondent, I could hardly imagine any other role for myself. My heart went out to him, in spite of myself. I took a deep breath and walked inside.

Turning at my footsteps, he looked at me rather dully and nodded. “Hullo, lad,” said he.

“Hello, Mr. Roundtree,” said I. “You look as if you might not object to a bit of companionship.”

I pulled a chair over, set down the box of tools, and sat down close to him before he could answer in the negative. As I did. I noticed the set of hand irons that he wore were attached to a chain, which in turn had been run through a stout half-link that had been driven into the floor; I must have tripped over that arc-shaped protrusion at least a dozen times without ever once realizing its purpose. It was evident to me, too, why he sat so sagged and bent: his chair had been placed too far back from the link in the floor to which his chains were attached. To keep a purchase on it with his buttocks, it was necessary for him to assume a posture in which he was near bent double. This may have been Mr. Fuller’s idea of a joke on Roundtree; he was capable of such petty cruelties to his prisoners. And Sir John, of course, could not have seen.

“Here,” said I, rising, “let me fix that chair for you.”

I pushed it in close as it would go to the hitch. He was able then to sit erect and relax a bit.

“Is that better?”

“Ain’t it though,” said he, wiggling his arms. “The gaoler did that. I tried moving the chair with my arse, but that didn’t work. Ain’t got much arse back there to work with.”

It was no doubt true. His clothes did hang upon him. I glimpsed his bony wrists; were it not for his big hands, the irons might have fallen off him.

“I thought you might like to talk a little.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” said he. “I been talked at hard for near all afternoon, it seems. What the magistrate said to me wasn’t what I’d call encouragin’. But you know, I been thinkin’ on what you said last time I saw you, and it’s true, I brought it all on myself. Each time I done something I know was wrong, I sank a little deeper into the shit. Like that time I ran away from you —oh, I laughed and made grand fun of you—but you prob’ly got a great whipping for it, if that’s what they do to apprentice constables.”

“No, nothing of the sort,” said I.

“But I’ve done worse.”

Rather than ask him direct what worse he had done, which was of course what I wished to know, I gambled that it would be ultimately better to build a firmer foundation of friendship.

“We were greatly puzzled that you had gone fugitive on such a trifling charge as public drunkenness. But then, when I returned to your room and encountered your daughter, we understood.”

“That’s right. I couldn’t go for no month in gaol, for she would’ve soon been starvin’ and out on the street beggin’ — or worse.”

“And you hadn’t the money to pay the fine?”

“Oh, I had the money right enough, but we had other uses for it.”

Their passage to the colonies, of course. Though I thought it, I made no mention of it.

“How is she?” he asked. “How is my daughter, Clarissa? You said she was gettin’ on well.”

“Oh, she’s near cured, I’d say, though the doctor still visits.”

“She’s quite the child, ain’t she? Tell me, lad, what do you think of her?”

“I think many things,” said I, wondering just what I ought to answer. Then, opting for the truth: “I think, first of all, she’s very bright —but I need not tell you that, for you said as much yourself. Yet I also think her willful and headstrong, the sort of girl who will have her way by any means she can. But withal, charming” —a word borrowed from Sir John —“and … and interesting.”

“Ahh,” said he, laughing despite his situation, “you’ve come to know her well, I can tell. She is all you said and more — in every direction. Though you may not have guessed it, she likes you quite well. When you gifted her that book, you won her over.”

“Well, she is often quite tart with me.”

“I’ve no doubt of it. Still, you know, to understand her proper, you had to know her mother. She’s most like her in every partic’lar — in her look, in her manner, in her brightness, oh, specially in her brightness.” He paused then, and I saw tears well in his eyes. He ducked his head, and with his manacled hands, he wiped them away.

Then did he do a most remarkable thing — remarkable, that is, considering his circumstances, and remarkable, too, in that his audience was myself, a youth of fifteen years. He told me the story of his life —or that portion of it he had lived in marriage at Lichfield — of Sarah, his wife, of Clarissa’s birth, and the little family they made together. His version differed markedly from the one given us by the Lichfield magistrate, not so much in substance as in tone, for it was not one story but many; these were his store of memories from what he now well knew was the best part of his life. As such, they were, most of them, memories of happy times — Christmases spent with her people, holidays, walks in the country. He recalled their family jokes, told of the bright future he had sketched for Sarah if only he might earn his master carpenter papers, talked of their pride in Clarissa as she grew into the bright girl she is today. Once begun, he seemed unable to stop. He must have gone on so for near an hour. I truly believe he talked to himself, rather than to me.

Yet of a sudden he ended that part of his tale. It was as if he had looked around him and noted who he was, where he was, and why he was here. He sighed a great sigh then and gave forth his men culpa.

“I was not a good provider,” said he, “not a bad carpenter, but never a good provider. Y’see, I’ve had an awful problem all these years with the drink, and I do not think we would’ve survived, the three of us, if Sarah’s father, old Mr. Gladden, had not helped us along. Then he died right sudden, and the women tried to run the bookshop, Sarah with her mother and sister. She would take Clarissa along, and there, midst all those books, she taught her to read. It weren’t hard. It was as if the child had been born to it. But the shop tailed, and she had to depend on me, and I was undependable. That’s what she called me when she chastised me, and when she did I’d grow angry at her, though I never raised a hand to her, nor to Clarissa. No, I took my revenge by going out to drink some more. Then she took sick with the consumption. Clarissa nursed her, but she lingered on, which was a curse, I truly believe.”

By that time tears streamed down his cheeks, and I having listened to him so, they blurred my sight, as well. Yet he pressed on, wailing his guilt to me.

“I have stole, and I have done far worse, but the worst thing I ever done was be a bad husband and … father. I drank so when Sarah died, for I was sore ashamed. I drank so, Clarissa went out to the neighbors beggin’ for food —my own daughter a beggar! And that’s when they took her away from me.”

Then, finally overwhelmed, he surrendered to his tears and wept copiously, his shoulders heaving, his chains jangling as he beat down upon his knees with his fists. I knew not what to do to help him. Clumsily I rose, grasped the hand nearest me, and gave it a manly squeeze with my own. I had not felt such sorrow for another since my young friend Mariah went so horribly—nay, more, since my own father died. Slowly, he began to gain control of himself. Yet still he would speak.

“I’ve been a fool all my life,” said he. “Sarah would never have married such a fool as me if I’d not gotten her with child. Her better sense would have prevailed.”

With that I dipped into my coat pocket and pulled at my kerchief, loosening the report written by Mr. Donnelly and sending it down to the floor. That was a reminder, certainly, of the onerous task I had been given. I handed him the kerchief, and he made good use of it. I retrieved the report and tucked it away as I sat down and leaned close to him.

“What has Sir John told you?” I asked in a low voice.

“Oh …” Roundtree croaked, then cleared his throat and spoke on in a husky voice: “My future ain’t bright, I’ll tell you. He calculates the worth of that vase I stole at twenty guineas or more. That’s enough to hang me. Oh, I stole it, no question, might as well own up since that bitch of a Bradbury woman pointed the finger at me. She’d no need to do that.”

“Did the magistrate say no more than that?”

“Oh, he said plenty. He told me he could get me transportation ‘stead of the rope if only I would tell what happened to George Bradbury.”

“And you hesitate? Why? Exile and forced labor would surely be better than the rope. How can you hesitate when one of the two has already betrayed you?”

“All right, lad, I’ll tell you what I would not tell the magistrate. One has betrayed me, true, but I’m afeared of t’other —not for myself but for Clarissa. If I confessed, I would name him, Jackie Carver, and he would have his revenge. He promised me as much. They paid me just so much as would buy our passage to the colonies just to get rid of me and what I knew. Promised to pay more later. But if I was to snitch, and he couldn’t get at me in Newgate waiting trial, he would hunt Clarissa out, even down to Lichfield. I’m sure of it as can be.”

“But even tonight the Bow Street Runners are searching for him. They will find him. Have no doubt of it. And listen to me, please, Sir John Fielding has it in his power to hold Clarissa from Lichfield, though they want her back in the parish workhouse. He could find employment for her. He could give her the new life you could not.”

“He said something of the sort, but if she was here in London, it would be all the easier for that villain to get to her.”

“We would keep her safe here with us until Carver was caught.”

He took a moment to consider that, then brushed it aside: “He would find a way.”

I grabbed the report from Mr. Donnelly from my pocket and waved it at him. “Do you see this? It is a report from a doctor who examined your handsaw and found blood and bone on it. This is the only true evidence of murder we have so far —and it points to you. It says thatytw murdered George Bradbury.”

“I murdered no one. Twas him, Carver, who done it. He told me so himself. Boasted of it, he did.”

“Then how was it the blood and bone got on your saw?”

“The problem was, Carver puts it to me, ‘How do you fit a five-and-a-half-foot man in a three-foot box?’ No, George Bradbury was dead when they showed him to me. I cut off his head with the saw and sent Carver off to be rid of it. He come back, and says he dropped it in the Fleet sewer. I told him that was no place to be done with it, for there was too many places for it to bump up against and stop. And ain’t that just what happened?”