The Price of Murder (25 page)

Then, at last, a return to the Green Man, where I had agreed to meet Mr. Patley. I’d no idea of the time, though surely I had made the one-hour time limit I had set for myself. I would have been most uneasy if he had wandered away. But no, there he was, sitting at the bar, flirting with the barmaid, holding forth as one might at an ale house in the Strand. He spied me entering the place and threw open his arms in welcome.

“Jeremy, old friend,” said he, “come sit beside me and have an ale with me. I’ve had three.”

Three, was it? Perhaps I’d been gone considerably longer than an hour.

“I’ll gladly have an ale, Mr. Patley. But tell me, are you not getting a bit hungry?”

“Well, now that you mention it . . .”

As if by magic, an ale in a pewter tankard appeared before me. I took a deep draught and understood at once how Patley might have consumed three such in the space of an hour. It was a bit bitter, but properly so, and not the sort to put a pucker upon your face. In short, I liked it.

He turned to the barmaid and asked about dinner.

“Well,” said she, “it’s not yet six, and there ain’t many eat quite so early, but I always thought it best to eat when you’re hungry.” She must have thought that a great joke, for she laughed long and loud at it. Mr. Patley joined in.

In any case, we ordered alike, a beef chop apiece, and we did eat at the bar, because, as Patley explained to the barmaid, “We wouldn’t want to get too far away from that good ale.” This, too, was thought to be quite funny.

I would not wish to present myself as above all this foolery, reader, for it was not long till I was acting near as silly as Mr. Patley. Ah well, I assured myself, this was to be something of a celebration, was it not?

Oh, indeed it was to be just that, yet both Patley and I felt that there were other things at stake. Oddly enough, it was my companion who brought that home to me when, without overture or opening, he peered at me and said, “Well, did you find him?”

“Find who?” said I, though I’m certain, looking back, that I must have known just who he meant.

“Deuteronomy, of course. When you’re not with me, you’re with him.” (This was said without malice.)

“Well, yes I did see him. I felt that he should have a chance to see his sister. I told him where she was.”

“Did he go to see her?”

“I doubt it. He said he would not. He got sick enough before a race as it was without adding more to it—that’s what he said, anyway.”

We had eaten well. Each of us had had another ale to top off what we had already had. The place had become more crowded, and consequently noisier. There was no reason to stay. We settled up with the barmaid and made our way through the crowd to the outside.

“Well,” said Mr. Patley, “we might as well walk up the hill to the Good Queen Bess.”

“Might just as well.”

We hiked the distance to the inn in silence. As for myself, each step I took told me that I should make an early night of it. But, after all, why not? I knew I must rouse early to collect Alice Plummer from the magistrate’s court. Early to bed and early to rise, et cetera.

Patley, on the other hand, seemed to take on new vitality with each step. I quite marveled at the fellow. Had he not eaten the same heavy meal that I had? Had he not drunk four ales to my two? Or was it five to my two?

And so, of course, I was not surprised when, as we entered the inn, he proposed that we go into the tap-room “for a little something to make us sleepy.” He took it in good stead when I told him that I needed nothing to make me sleepy, for I was quite tired already. I would go up to our room, I told him, and read myself to sleep. It shouldn’t take very long.

I shall get through the second episode at the magistrate’s court as quickly as possible. It was a bitter disappointment, and every barrister will tell you that there is no sense in dwelling upon disappointments.

I banged upon the door of the magistrate’s court a bit before seven in the morning. It was answered by another, just as large and just as ugly as he who had answered the door the afternoon before. He looked at me sourly and asked my business. When I told him that I had come to collect Alice Plummer, he said that I’d come too late, that her fine had been paid and that she had been taken forth by a townsman—all this on the day before. Was he sure of this? Certainly he was, he assured me, for he was the constable delegated by the magistrate to fetch her out of her cell.

I insisted on hearing this from Malachi Simmons himself, and the constable shrugged. It was a matter of indifference to him. He said that the magistrate would be down soon, and he pointed to a bench next to the door and said I might sit there, if I chose.

Only minutes later I heard footsteps upon stairs somewhere deep in the house, and a few minutes after that the constable came and told me that the magistrate would see me. Then: down the two long halls once again and into the chambers of Malachi Simmons. This time, of course, I was much disturbed and not in the least given to accommodating his feelings. In short, I fear I was rather rude.

What I heard from the magistrate was this: About an hour after Mr. Patley and I left him, he was visited by one Stephen Applegate, who described himself as “a friend of Alice Plummer.” He wished to know if she were being held here. The magistrate acknowledged this and acquainted the young man with the charges that awaited her in London. These Stephen brushed aside as lies and half-truths. He dealt, for example, with the matter of child-selling by telling him (as he had no doubt been told by her) that in truth she had believed that she had been giving the child out for adoption. She had not solicited any amount of money in payment for her daughter but had been given it as a reward.

“And I have heard, young man,” said the magistrate, “that your methods of questioning her were highly suspect.” I demanded to know what was wrong with our questioning of Alice Plummer, and he explained what I myself should have realized: One does not fill a witness with gin whilst interrogating him or her. At best, you would be drawing from her unconsidered responses, and, at worst, she would tend to agree with all that was said to her.

Where could he have heard that? Why, of course! Stephen would have remembered that Mr. Patley and I had announced ourselves as guests at the Good Queen Bess. He must have headed there as soon as he was free to leave the stable—and then into the tap-room, where he would have heard the serving woman on the matter of the two glasses of gin, and the innkeeper, of course, must have tipped young Applegate on just where he might find his Alice.

I attempted to defend my methods, telling the magistrate that she was drunk before ever we asked a question of her.

“And so you attempted to make her drunker, did you? No, young sir, I fear that won’t do at all. Not only did Stephen Applegate present a good case against you and your methods, he is also from a very old family here in Newmarket. They’ve owned and run that stable for as long as anyone can remember. Of course I would take his word over yours. He paid her fine, and he took her out of here. That was about an hour or two after you left last evening.”

“But—”

“No buts! Out of here now, or I’ll throw you into the same cell she had.”

I had no choice but to leave. But, I believe, I ran all the way up to the Good Queen Bess without stopping. Indeed, I’m sure I did, for I remember that when I attempted to explain the situation to Mr. Patley in our room, I was so out of breath that I could do naught but begin again after I had properly caught my breath. I ended with a shout: “We must find her again!”

“Well, the first place to look,” said the ever-practical Mr. Patley, “would be where we found her in the first place.”

And so, as soon as Patley had dressed and made himself otherwise presentable, we started up the hill to Applegate’s stable. Stephen seemed to be waiting for us, so sure that we would be coming round to see him that he had not even sought the darkness at the rear of the place. He was leaning upon the door as we approached, his pitchfork within easy reach (just the thing for driving away the unwanted). He had a proper smirk upon his face.

“Good morning to you,” said he. “I’m sure I know who you’re looking for and why you’re here.”

“Well,” said I, “where is she?”

“She ought to be in London by now.”

“You sure about that?”

“Just about as sure as I can be at this distance.”

“You have any objection to us taking a look around?”

“No, go ahead, but you’d do better to check the list of passengers on the post coach that left last evening around nine. But go ahead, suit yourself. I’ll wait right here.”

We looked, of course. If we had not, we would not have seemed to be searching seriously for her. We even climbed the ladder in the rear and tramped through the hay in the loft—without success, of course. Nor was I surprised at that, for Stephen’s indifference was not feigned. It was plain that he was confident we would find no trace of her. Mr. Patley was of the same mind.

“It don’t look like she’s here, does it?” said he.

I shook my head. “No, it doesn’t. We should go and check the passenger list as he dared us to do, but I’m sure she’ll be on it.”

We climbed down from the loft and headed out of the place.

Stephen silently watched us go. But then, thinking better of it, he called after us as we started down the hill.

“I tried to get her to stay. Told her I could hide her so you’d never find her. But she said no. There was something she had to do in London.”

I turned and nodded, yet I certainly would not thank him.

“No reason not to go to the big race now,” said Mr. Patley. “Come to think of it, I’d better go and place my bet whilst I still can.”

I didn’t ask him how much he was betting, nor on which horse, yet I was greatly curious about one thing: “Mr. Patley, are you hedging your bet?”

He looked at me a bit sheepishly. “No, I’m not. The little fellow’s got me convinced that the two of them can really do it. I’ve got ten pounds, the last of my mustering out pay, on Pegasus to win. But what about you?”

’Twas then my time to look embarrassed. “No, he’s convinced me, too—and those odds!”

“I know,” said he. “They’re just irresistible.”

 
Again, just as at Shepherd’s Bush, there were so many horses entered that it was necessary to run the race in heats. Pegasus was in the first heat of the day, which meant that he was running against a field of horses that, the odds said, had no chance in the final race of the day. Still, Mr. Deuteronomy held him so in check that Pegasus did not win outright but rather placed second. (Three from each heat would compete for the King’s Plate in the last race.) Yet Pegasus had qualified, and that was all that had been asked of him, and the horse had more than two hours in which to recover himself.

The course was oval and about a mile in length. It was proper to walk a horse once round it after he had run. Deuteronomy walked Pegasus thus much at least, then trotted him round a time or two. It seemed that in the next couple of hours the horse was never completely still except when Mr. Bennett was massaging his legs.

“You see what they’re doing, don’t you?” said Mr. Patley, as always my guide in this new world.

“I think so,” said I. “Deuteronomy seems to be running exactly the same sort of race that they ran last week at Shepherd’s Bush.”

“That’s right. And he’s keeping Pegasus warm and loose without tiring him.”

No one else had seemed to notice the technique they employed, yet once it was explained to me, it appeared to be both sensible and necessary.

As Mr. Patley amplified his earlier comments, he pointed out that the favored horses raced in the last heat before the final run, so they were warmed up and ready to go when the last race of the day came. If Pegasus were to have a chance at the King’s Plate, he would have to be as properly warmed up as any that had run in the previous heat; and it appeared that he was. Yet he would also have to achieve this racing peak without having tired himself out. Mr. Deuteronomy, in his green and white racing colors, was proving—to us, at least—that there was more to jockeying than sitting on a horse.

Charade, the Duke of Queensberry’s entry, was the favorite in every way—not only the favorite of the bettors, but also with the rail-birds who crowded around us at the first pole. The reason for this was quite evident: there was probably never before or after a more beautiful horse than Charade. Big, strong-looking, and generally handsome—if races were beauty competitions, he would have won every time.

Pegasus, on the other hand, was simply smarter than the rest. He and his rider, Mr. Deuteronomy, demonstrated that very early on. Of the nine horses at the line, three reared, and two otherwise shied at the starting gun, and so Pegasus, taking off as smoothly as a ship launched into the sea, had an immediate advantage over half the field. He kept it up to the brook, which flowed across the course at that point. All four of the leaders cleared it without difficulty, yet Deuteronomy was finding it hard to find a path through the leaders. He shouted something and somehow seemed to relax his grip on the reins, giving Pegasus his head. The horse broke to the outside, and, in this way, worked past the others, one by one, up to second place—behind Charade. Both those fine animals were galloping apparently for all they were worth. The crowd, many more than five thousand in number, cheered loudly at the sight of them beating their way down the stretch. And again, Deuteronomy shouted at Pegasus, and then, little by little, Pegasus began to move up and away from Charade.

Pegasus won by a full length. There could be no disputing it. As that single, stunning fact was communicated to the vast assemblage of people all round us, they fell silent. To my ears, it seemed that Mr. Patley and I were the only two who rejoiced. And why should we not? We had suddenly become rich men.