The Masters of Bow Street (11 page)

‘That is enough,’ he interrupted. ‘I know all they might do and fully understand why you reached so quick a decision.’

‘And you are not angered, sir?’

‘Angered? By a woman who uses her head as well as her heart? No, Ruth, that way you’ll never anger me. Many things do. I need—’ He broke off abruptly. ‘Do you need time to con sider afresh?’

‘No, sir. I am firmly decided.’

‘Then the cottage will be ready for you on Monday,’ he promised. ‘As for James, he should give his master fair notice, a week or perhaps two, and then he can find out whether the school near Saint Paul’s can teach him as much as his grandfather taught you.’ He palmed the carved heads on the arms of the chair and asked, ‘Is this his carving?’

‘Yes, sir, it is.’

‘Whatever else you wish to bring to the cottage with this, tell my man Moffat, who will come to fetch you on Monday morning with a cart large enough to carry all you have.’ He stood up, placed his hands on her shoulders and pressed, and then smiled at her again. ‘Ruth,’ he said, ‘I think we shall become good friends. But we never will if I frighten you. Do I? Or does my reputation?’

‘No, sir,’ she replied thoughtfully. ‘I am apprehensive but not frightened - not even by your reputation!’

She sensed that he was trying to make sure that she was telling the truth, and indeed she was. Suddenly he laughed and took his hands away, swept her a mock bow, arid turned towards the door.

She was more lighthearted than she had been for at least six months, and she felt positive that she had reached the right decision. She was so preoccupied with his manner and her new lightness of heart that she did not move until she heard his horse on the cobbles, and by the time she reached the window, he was through the alley and gone.

‘Is it the truth?’ demanded Eve Milharvey, a week after the morning when she had fought the nausea and been frightened by its significance. She was walking in the warm sunlight in the piazza of Covent Garden with Peter Nicholson, one of Fred’s oldest friends, who had been present at the hanging. The grass in the squares divided by post and rails had been freshly scythed and boys were sweeping the cuttings into great piles; the scent of the new-cut grass was as overpowering as a French perfume. A few people, mostly couples of middle class, judging from their clothes, strolled on the gravel paths, and from the windows of the rows of fine houses on either side, old people and young were basking in the sunlight. A street seller of oranges was singing, voice touched with melody.

‘Sweet China oranges to sell, sweet China oranges.’

‘Aye, ‘tis the solemn truth,’ Peter assured Eve. ‘She has moved into the cottage, and the whole family is with her.’

‘And she spends much time in Furnival’s offices?’

‘She is the food provider for him and the court officials and mistress, of his offices and rooms,’ replied Peter, with a lopsided smile. He was a tall, silky-haired man in his late thirties, foppish after a fashion, wearing a pale-blue cloak over a striped green-and-dark-blue shirt and breeches with pale-blue bands beneath the knees. His boots were of pale hogskin which looked as pliable as silk. He inclined his head towards Eve as if to make sure that no one else could hear and there was an undercurrent of excitement in his voice.

‘Mistress of his bed, more like!’

‘With him, she’ll be that too.’

‘I wonder what Lisa Braidley will say to this new competition?’ Eve asked, obviously wanting no answer. ‘The woman is young and comely, you say?’

‘Yes, Eve, in all fairness that must be said.’

‘And she goes to Sebastian Smith’s church, Saint Hilary’s?’

‘Yes,’ answered Peter Nicholson. ‘Her husband would never go but she always does.’

‘Peter,’ Eve said, touching him on the arm with her gloves, ‘make sure that Lisa Braidley is made aware of this new situation soon, and make sure the Reverend Smith is also acquainted. Neither of them will be fooled by what kind of mistress she is called.’

‘It shall be done, Eve, and quickly.’

‘And carefully, remember, as a piece of gossip, not as by the common informer!’

‘As a delightful morsel of gossip,’ he assured her. ‘And the Reverend Smith, with his nose for prudery, will be in a right mood to admonish her!’

They walked on for a few moments in silence, reached a yard leading to Long Acre, and turned and began to walk back. The singer’s voice seemed to have died away and there was very little traffic in the roads which ran about the great square.

Suddenly Eve Milharvey said, ‘The boy. What is the boy doing?’

‘The boy James?’

‘Who else would I mean?’ she demanded impatiently.

‘He is still with grocer Morgan, who sells coffee and tea and spices.’

‘He won’t be for long, if I know John Furnival,’ she said, and her voice became momentarily strident. Another silence followed and lasted until they were close to the south entrance, when she took Peter’s arm again and said with quiet venom, ‘Listen to me, and make sure everything is carried out as I say. Have a boy of Marshall’s age dressed as he dresses and carrying parcels and pushing a cart as he does. Have this boy go into a shop ahead of Marshall and leave by the back way. Do you understand me?’

‘I do declare I even understand what you are planning,’ her companion said, his eyes glowing.

‘As young Marshall passes the shop have the shopkeeper raise a cry of “Stop thief!” And be sure,’ went on Eve Milharvey, ‘there is a thief-taker at hand to stop the Marshall boy and search his baskets.’ She looked levelly into her companion’s eyes and went on slowly. ‘It will not be difficult to find the stolen money in one of those baskets. Make sure the shopkeeper will swear to it and make sure some independent witnesses are stopped who will swear they saw the boy go in and come out again. If there is no one who can be proved an honest citizen, Furnival will get the boy out. We shall need them all in court when he comes up for hearing, and at the Sessions their evidence should be enough to have him hanged. Take all the time you need in which to prepare.’

‘Eve,’ Peter Nicholson said, ‘you are magnificent!’

‘I trust you will be competent,’ Eve said coldly.

‘I know the very shopkeeper to do just what he is told,’ Nicholson assured her. ‘A silversmith off Fleet Street close by the Cheshire Cheese, and there is a magistrate close by. I will pay five pounds each to two thief-takers who will whip the boy off to Newgate before Furnival or anyone else knows what has happened.’ He gave an excited laugh. ‘Truly, m’dear, it is worthy of the great Fred himself!’

Early on a Friday, a few days later, James Marshall set out for Morgan’s. It was a damp morning with a hint of rain but in places a promise of sunshine. He had two hundred yards fewer to walk to work from Bell Lane, and this was his fourth morning of leaving home from the cottage behind Bow Street. He had been surprised by the news, a little dubious about going to school, but a room to himself on the second floor of the tiny terraced cottage was ample compensation, far beyond anything he had dreamed of possessing. He could shut himself away from Beth and Henrietta when the weather was bad and they could not go out and he could pore over the books of London and English history which so fascinated him, back to the days of Roman occupation and even earlier. He had an oil lamp of his own, and a desk once used by one of John Furnival’s clerks now stood beneath the window so that it caught all the daylight there was. His sisters slept in a room at the back while his mother slept downstairs in the front room. Wet or fine, she could cross Bell Lane in a few seconds to attend to her duties in the Bow Street premises.

It was good to have her so much happier, and to be lighter hearted himself. It was good always to be warm, for there was no shortage of wood or coal and the fires were banked with slack on autumn’s cold nights. So much was good that apprehension over school was easy to forget.

The morning grew warm, and his jacket, a little too tight, made him feel hot; the thickness of the woollen stockings inside his ankle boots made his feet itch even before he reached Morgan’s. For the first time since he had been coming here he felt a sharp distaste for it all; for Morgan’s persistence in loading him with more and more, for the gloomy interior of the shop, for the horseplay of the assistants who would stay here or run shorter errands during the day. But soon the sun brightened and as his burden began to lighten after a few deliveries, his heart lightened, too.

His next call was at the Cheshire Cheese Inn, in a court off Fleet Street. Long before he reached it he could smell the aroma of the steak-and-kidney puddings; he had known times in a high wind when that aroma had tormented him even as far as the Royal Exchange.

Fleet Street had other fascinations for him, for two morning newspapers were published from offices situated there: The Morning Cry which, whenever he could read it, appealed to him much more than The London Courant. Already the street was bustling with the traffic it carried from the northern and northeastern provinces, and he had to watch the swinging of his baskets, for there was little room between the thoroughfare where the fast traffic moved and the doorways of the shops. Every fifty yards or so was an alleyway which led into a courtyard like the one leading to the Cheshire Cheese. He saw the hanging sign outside this alley, with a huge yellow cheese made into the face of a grinning man; it never failed to attract him. On days when he was here later in the morning he would linger in the hope of seeing some of the celebrities who came and gathered here to drink and talk. He had seen Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Pope; as well as Henry Fielding and Dr. Johnson and many lesser figures.

Suddenly he heard a cry: ‘Stop thief!’ from behind him, and turned his head cautiously for fear of swinging his burdens too fast. A woman brushed past him. A short fat man in dark clothes except for an apron like the one Morgan wore came rushing from a silversmith’s shop, the cry shrill on his lips: ‘Stop thief!’ As James turned, the man pointed. ‘There he is! Stop thief!’ From farther along the street a big and burly man came running, from the sidewalk on the other side came a second, adding to the din. ‘Stop thief!’ People were slowing down and the shop doorways were filling up.

‘That boy!’ cried the shopkeeper, flapping his apron. ‘He came and struck me across the head and emptied my money box!’

One of the big men clapped a hand on James’s shoulder while the other lifted the yoke and turned it upside down so that the precious packages fell out, fruit and cheese, spices and butter, everything which had been so carefully packed and loaded spilled and the wrappings burst.

‘There’s the little varmint!’ the shopkeeper screeched. ‘He ought to be hanged outside my shop! He ought to be—’

‘That’s enough loose talk,’ one of the big men said, and upturned a basket. ‘I’m a thief-taker by profession, but fair’s fair—’

Coins began to roll in all directions as the goods fell, making the self-styled thief-taker stop abruptly.

‘There’s your proof!’ cried the shopkeeper.

Until that moment James had been stunned by the swift sequence of events; even when the big man had gripped his shoulder he could not believe that anyone really suspected him. When the packages showered their contents over the ground he was so shocked that for a few seconds he could not even think, only stare in horror. As the money struck the pavement and coins from a half crown to a penny and some halfpence and even farthings fell between the cobbles, a shiver ran through him.

He looked up into the face of the man who held him and protested, ‘But I didn’t go into the shop! I didn’t take—’ He saw only cruelty and hardness in the face and eyes, enough to make him falter.

‘I saw him go in,’ a little old man called.

‘So did I,’ a woman asserted. ‘Bold as brass he did.’

‘But I swear—’ James began.

The man struck him savagely across the face and sent him reeling. The other big man came up and gripped his hands, pulling them behind him. Cold iron bands clasped James’s wrists as the shopkeeper cried again, ‘He ought to be hanged outside my shop, as an example to all the young thieves who pass this way. That’s what I say!’

‘That’s right,’ called the woman so eager to assert that she had seen James enter the silversmith’s. ‘Let’s have a hanging. Why should Tyburn have all the fun?’

‘A hanging, a hanging, a hanging!’ seemed to pour from the throats of the crowd that gathered, stretching halfway across the road, forcing carriages and coaches to slow down. ‘Hang the thief!’ men cried. ‘Hang him, hang him!’

‘He’ll be hanged, never fear,’ said the man who had clapped the manacles onto James. ‘But only after committal and a fair trial.’ He looked at the other thief-taker and said so that only James and those near could hear, ‘Get him through the Cheshire Cheese and out the other way or they’ll stretch his neck as sure as I stand here.’

‘But I did not steal—’ James began.

The man buffeted him so hard that his head rang and for seconds he seemed to have lost his senses. He felt himself pushed, then half dragged through Wine Office Court towards the Cheshire Cheese alley, past the closed doors of the inn. No one followed because other men hired by Peter Nicholson filled the entrance to the alley, and gradually the crowd thinned.

Beyond the passages and the huddle of wooden outhouses was another lane, and James was hustled along this. At the far end a small coach was standing, and before he realised what was happening the door was opened and the man who had manacled him lifted him by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his trousers and pitched him inside, then climbed in and slammed the door. Almost before the door had closed the coach began to move.

Struggling to a sitting position, forced to perch on the edge of his seat, James looked into the harsh face of his captor and said pleadingly, ‘I am innocent, sir, I swear to you. Some mistake was made—’

‘The mistake you made was robbing the shopkeeper,’ the thief-taker said roughly. ‘You take advice from me, boy. When we get to Newgate you admit you stole the money. Things might go easier with you then.’