The Masters of Bow Street (72 page)

Had she been older, Richard might have been beguiled into staying, but this was only a child. Seeing the look on his face she backed away, frightened; but his anger was not with her, only with the conditions which made it necessary for young girls to resort to such methods of earning their livelihood. Taking out his purse he gave her a golden sovereign. She stared at the bright yellow on her palm, the colour of her hair, her mouth wide open, her eyes round and huge. Then he strode from her to the bar, paid the host generously, wished him a merry Christmas, and went briskly out.

Mounting his horse, he rode slowly homeward, for the snow could cover ruts and potholes treacherously, and the faster he rode the harder would be a fall. But he had no mishaps. Few coaches and fewer riders appeared on the road, and if the snow continued, a lot of people would be kept from their beds that night.

Dusk had fallen earlier than usual when he reached the Strand because the leaden skies and thick falling flakes created a strange mingling of brightness and gloom. He took the horse straight to the stables, then walked in the tracks of others to ‘Mr. Londoner’. Even here the snow had kept many people away. When the road should be thronged with traffic, sidewalks crowded and the shops bulging, few people were about. Outside the main doorway of ‘Mr. Londoner’ stood a small carriage, covered with snow so that he could not read the crest on the side; the driver was nowhere in sight. Then, as Richard went into the side entrance, stamping snow off his boots; a man came hurrying from the shop’s doorway.

‘Mr. Marshall, sir! Mr. Marshall!’

Richard turned to find the coachman, who must have been standing inside the doorway, hurrying towards him. He wore the livery of the House of Furnival and in his hand was a letter. As they went inside the narrow entrance Richard tore this open and his fingers were so unsteady that the thick paper shook.

He read:

The dolt who should have brought you my greetings a week ago lost the missive and was too frightened to tell me. I beg you, whatever your plans, come and dine with Susan and me this night. We dine at five-thirty but will delay if we receive word from you. I have sent a man to Chelsea, another to Bow Street and others to all your regular haunts to try to make sure of catching you.Simon

The weight of relief was so great that Richard stood upright, for a few moments, staring out of the open doorway. ‘I beg you, whatever your plans, come and dine with Susan and me this night. We dine at five-thirty. . .’

It now wanted twenty minutes of four. ‘What are your orders?’ he asked the coachman at last. ‘On finding you, to send messages to Chelsea and Bow Street for the release of the coachmen waiting there, sir, and to wait for you no matter how long you may be.’

‘Come upstairs and warm yourself in the kitchen,’ Richard said. “The cook will give you some hot soup.’

When he entered the main house at Great Furnival Square, where Simon now lived, there was a welcoming warmth and brightness of candles and trees and holly and mistletoe, although no other guests as yet. It was usual for Simon to have a small dinner party this night and as many of the rest of the family as could come would fill the house tomorrow. Footmen took Richard’s cloak, drew off his boots and put on the shoes he carried in the cloak’s tail pocket, and escorted him upstairs. There could be no less than a thousand candles in the wall brackets and hanging chandelier, casting both light and shadow on the portraits of past Furnivals which adorned the staircase walls. If the quiet was strange, the beauty and elegance were enchanting.

Suddenly a door opened and Simon came towards him, both hands held out in welcome in the old, familiar way. And it was Simon the friend, not Simon Rattray-Furnival, head of the great house, who linked arms with him and said, ‘I was desolate lest you should not come. At any other time but Christmas I would have thrown the idiot messenger out into the snow! And any man but Richard would have inquired to find out if any letter had been mislaid. Not Richard, though! What a man you are! At a time when you should be bellowing like a town crier at your triumph you hide yourself!’

He gave Richard no time to ask what he meant by triumph but led the way into a small, exquisitely furnished and lighted room, where the table was laid, silver and glass shimmered, and a fire glowed in the beautiful marble fireplace.

‘We shall dine here tonight, Richard, since there are but four of us.’

Four? wondered Richard.

Out of a doorway at the other side of the room came Susan, so beautifully gowned that he hardly recognised her; and, a step behind her, another, somewhat younger woman, elegant in dark-green velvet, wearing only a single brooch upon her corsage, amber-pale shoulders glowing in the candlelight. She was taller than Susan, moved with grace, and although was not by most standards beautiful, her eyes had the colour and brightness of emeralds and her lips were generous- looking and full.

‘Richard, I am eager to present Mrs. Katherine Hooper. Katherine, you have often heard me talk of my blood brother, Richard. I hope you find him more distracting company than me! Susan, my love, if you will ring for service, we will, I trust, sharpen our appetites.’

Almost at once a white-haired butler came in bearing a tray, and when they each held a glass of sherry, Simon said,- ‘To new friends and old customs!’

‘New friends,’ Richard echoed, ‘and old customs.’

Katherine was the widow of Cornelius Hooper, Richard learned, grandson of a former Lord Mayor of London and one of three brothers on the board of Hooper, Rill, Bankers, well known among the smaller independent banking houses. At one time the family had been merchants and shipowners as well as bankers, but they had sold these interests to the House of Furnival and now concentrated on banking.

During the next two days, while they remained as guests - the heavy snow, which had gone on until it would have made travelling even short distances difficult, preventing them from leaving - Richard saw a great deal of Katherine, and learned much about her. Her husband had been twenty-four years older than she; she had been married at seventeen, and the only child of the marriage had died in its first year. She was the daughter of a family of goldsmiths whose business had been absorbed by larger companies, had brothers, sisters, and a host of nieces and nephews. She had spent two years at school in Versailles and spoke French fluently. These facts he was told, some by Susan, some by Katherine herself, but other things he discovered in the course of conversation.

She knew a great deal about the work he had done, had studied social and economic history, and could hold her own with Simon on many aspects of trading and of banking. And she could quote Sir John Furnival, the Fieldings and Bentham and Chadwick as freely as he, Richard. He had never known a woman so familiar with what had been taken for granted as a man’s world.

She most astonished him by her knowledge of conditions in London. ‘And in the last few years there has been little improvement,’ she asserted. ‘The whole of London is a rabbit warren of thieves’ hiding places. There is one near Fleet Ditch, close to Saffron Hill—’

‘Number Three West Street?’ Richard interrupted.

‘So you know of it!’

‘It is famous - or infamous - throughout London, full of ways of escape, secret panels, trap doors, concealed staircases—’

‘It is said that Jonathan Wild once lived there,’ said Katherine.

‘It is certain that some who have escaped from the Fleet or Newgate have holed up in the house for months, that whenever the Runners search for stolen goods they have no more than one chance in five of finding what they look for, but always discover the proceeds of some crime, or the skeleton of a man promised succour and then sealed in a wall to die of starvation. And there are six or seven places by which one can reach the roof and a dozen directions to escape from there.’

‘Do you know, Richard, you sound most excited!’ Katherine teased.

‘And in my way I am,’ admitted Richard. ‘Every time I think about the situation I am more convinced that it must be changed.’

‘So much has to be changed,’ Katherine responded quietly. ‘Reform is needed in workshops, in mills, in the streets, in Parliament. You have concentrated on the police, I know, but one day that will no longer be necessary. What will you turn to then?’

‘I shall decide if and when the time comes,’ replied Richard. ‘True reform of the peace-keeping and police systems in London is not yet achieved despite a hundred years of striving by men far greater than I.’

‘Not all men define greatness in the same way,’ she replied lightly, switching the subject to the Bill for Improving the Police In and Near the Metropolis, of which she knew a surprising amount.

They were walking in the garden which, on the night of the Furnival ball, had been the scene of so much bloodshed. Now the children of a dozen families hurled snowballs or climbed trees and dropped into the snow or, with the help of grownups, made giant snowmen.

‘I cannot tell you how glad I am to hear that Mr. Peel likes the bill in its present form,’ Katherine said suddenly.

Richard stopped in his tracks, staring at her.

‘I don’t understand you. How can you possibly know the Home Secretary’s mind? I have not yet heard from him myself.’

‘You mean that Simon did not tell you?’ Katherine’s voice rose in astonishment. ‘There was some matter of taxation on which Mr. Peel and the Lord of the Treasury sought Simon’s advice. Mr. Peel told Simon there was only one word, just a single word, that he wished to change in the bill.’

They stood in the snow, facing each other.

Richard saw the admiration in her eyes, as well as their beauty.

She saw this man with the eagle’s face and the grey eyes that might have been made of finely tempered steel, this man who talked with the voice of reason, this man whom she knew Simon greatly loved, staring at her openmouthed.

She saw the incredulity in his expression.

And she saw the tears, the actual tears, which filled his eyes.

Very slowly and only when they had turned and begun to move back towards the house did Katherine Hooper say, ‘So it means so much to you?’

Huskily Richard replied, ‘It is not possible to tell you how much it means. If I have made a fool of myself I am sorry, but even now, I can scarcely believe it. Peel
approves?
He will present the bill to the House of Commons?’

‘There is even a date set aside,’ Katherine told him. ‘It will not be as early as he had wished, because there is some work to be done behind the scenes to diminish any likely opposition. If you know anything about Robert Peel you know that he does not like to be defeated in the House of Commons! It is to be in April - as early in April as can be arranged. The Leader of the House is already planning it. Why, I have even been promised permission to be present when Peel introduces the bill.’ After a few moments she went on. ‘Does it disappoint you that he, not you, will make the introduction to the House?’

Richard frowned in puzzlement.

‘No, no, not in any way. On the contrary. Peel will have ten times the authority I could have.’ Slowly he shook his head and in a wondering voice went on: ‘How could Simon
forget
to tell me?’

‘In truth I thought I had told you on the night when you arrived,’ Simon defended himself. ‘I have the clearest recollection of referring to your triumph. What other triumph could you expect? I assumed that you already knew what I meant and were behaving with your customary humility!’

‘If ever a word fitted a man, humility fits Richard,’ Katherine smiled.

‘Peel himself will introduce the bill and I believe the House will approve by a handsome majority,’ Sir Douglas Rackham told a secret meeting of justices and, high constables in the high-ceilinged drawing-room of his home at Kensington. It was furnished with extraordinary effectiveness; the pale-gold and soft-green colouring soothed and warmed. ‘It will be a waste of time and effort to try to prevent its passing. We must therefore devote ourselves to stirring up hostility among the public so that the new police force becomes a total failure. If, once it is tried, it proves unsuccessful, then we can be done with this nonsense for the rest of our lives.’

Every one of the thirty men at that meeting voiced his approval, even the one man on duty as a guard, who at the age of twenty was a Bow Street patrol member. He was Arthur Jackson, son of Frederick Jackson, long since retired. No one present dreamed that Arthur was planning to apply for a post with the New Police while remaining a spy within this group. Not even Todhunter Mason, the man responsible for Timothy McCampbell-Furnival’s murder, suspected young Jackson. Had his greatgrandfather not been hanged at Tyburn Fields?

Mason, who had a foot in the magistrates’ as well as the thieves’ camps, listened with approval.

On that sixteenth of April, 1829, a bright and sunny day with great banks of clouds vividly white against the deep blue of the sky, every narrow bench in the House of Commons was full and some Members were actually to stand throughout the first reading and the debate which followed the second. Sitting on a cross-bench between the two parties, Richard was directly opposite the Speaker and had full sight of Peel as he spoke with quiet effectiveness, not haranguing the House but set on keeping the temperature cool.

‘I do not wish to disguise that the time is come when, from the increase in its population, the enlargement of its resources and the multiplying development of its energies, we may fairly pronounce that the country has outgrown her police institutions, and that the cheapest
and
the safest course will be the introduction of a new mode of protection.’

There was a rustle of movement and calls of approval, with as yet no single voice raised in opposition. Richard sat spellbound as Peel went on.

‘Such men will be recruited from the ranks of ex-soldiers and ex-bailors, as well as trusted officers already employed by courts such as Bow Street, with whose Runners they will cooperate. The Runners, of course, will remain the chief detective department. None shall be older than thirty-five or less than five feet seven inches in height, and all must be men of exceptional courage for they will be unarmed save for a staff or stick, so that the charge of being a civilian army established to bend the people to the government’s will cannot justly be levelled against them. And so that the new force may be able to rely on the cooperation and good will of the public at large, there shall be the following principles embodied in the instructions given to each member of the force, instructions drawn up with great care by your committee.’