Jack, Knave and Fool

by Alexander, Bruce

  “Now, my girl,” he teased, “I said merely if I were such a man.”

  Both laughed at that, and were still laughing when from below came a rising thunder of footsteps on the stairs — at least two were there. Then an urgent banging upon the door. I was nearest. Sir John nodded to open it up.

  It was Mr. Baker, the night constable and gaoler, together with a man whom I’d never seen before.

  “Sir John,” said Mr. Baker, “this here footman — “

  “From the Laningham house, sir. Something terrible has— I mean to say, Lady Laningham, old Lady Laningham, that is, she drunk her tonic and got sick, pukin’ and gaggin’ something terrible. ‘I’m poisoned,’ she says, and calls out for you. Oh, do please come, sir. She’s a good mistress and she’s terrible sick.”

  SIX

  In Which Letters

  Are Sent and a

  Discovery Is Made

  We arrived separately. Sir John, who had luckily encountered Constable Bailey on his way out of Number 4 Bow Street, enlisted him in the expedition, and together they rode in a hackney coach with instructions to the driver to follow the footman, who led the way on horseback. I had been sent to fetch Mr. Donnelly from his surgery, if he be there, and take him forthwith to the Laningham residence in St. James Square. Though I ran to my destination in Drury Lane and found him in his rooms at the rear, the time it took for him to organize his departure and us both to make our journey by hackney to St. James Square put our arrival at least a quarter of an hour following that of Sir John and Mr. Bailey. Much had happened in that time. Since I was not present, I cannot offer it to you as a witness might. What follows, pieced together from what I later heard from Sir John and Mr. Bailey, is an account of what happened in that period of time. Though it be hearsay, because of its sources I trust in its accuracy.

  Sir John and Mr. Bailey were admitted to the great house without delay or question by a very worried butler, a man who later became known to them as Mr. Poole. Inside, filling the large entrance hall, what seemed to be the entire staff of servants —a considerable number—were milling about, talking distractedly among themselves in small groups. Upon Sir John’s appearance, the hum of worried conversation did immediately cease. All turned toward him as one expected, one whose arrival was hoped for.

  So that there be no doubt of it, the butler announced to the room at large: “He is here.” None came forward. All simply waited in silence.

  “Where is she now?” asked Sir John. “That is, Lady Laningham, of course.”

  “Up these stairs here, sir.” Then, aware of Sir John’s blindness, perhaps for the first time: “But of course. My apologies, sir. Here, let me take you there.” With that, he grasped Sir John’s arm at the elbow.

  Sir John shook loose. “I have my own ways of dealing with my condition. You lead the way. Constable Bailey will follow. I shall grasp onto him.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  Thus they proceeded. And as they ascended the wide staircase, Sir John put a number of questions to the butler.

  “What is her condition?”

  “Very grave, I fear, sir.”

  “When did the attack come upon her?”

  “About an hour past.”

  “And it was with the drinking of her tonic?”

  “That is my understanding, sir. It is a usual thing with her, sir —her tonic each night. It is, in truth, mostly gin, sweetened and darkened with sweet spirits. It puts her to sleep, and that is why she takes it.”

  “Who is it prepares it?”

  “That is done in the kitchen, sir. It would be the cook or one of her staff. Her maid carries it from the kitchen to her. It was she who was with her when the attack came upon her, and she to whom she made her declaration.”

  “That she had been poisoned?”

  “Yes sir, and called for you.”

  “I am grateful to the maid, to you, and the footman who brought me,” said Sir John. “But now, tell me, who is with Lady Laningham now?”

  “The new Lord Laningham, as he wishes now to be addressed, his lady wife, and Dr. Diller.”

  “Ah, a medico. Is he known in the house?”

  “He treated the late Lord Laningham. He was sent for, not by name, by the new master, who simply ordered that a doctor be brought.”

  By that time they had reached the first floor and now stood before the door to Lady Laningham s chambers. Sir John, realizing this, continued in a low tone. “What is your name, sir?”

  “Humphrey Poole, sir.”

  “Then, Mr. Poole, I have a request. I would like you to go now and in some suitable private place, perhaps belowstairs would be best, assemble the maid, the cook or the member of her staff who prepared the tonic, and any other of the servants who you think might have something relevant to contribute on the matter. I shall let you be the judge on that —but be a lenient one. I am here to learn all I can of this. If one of the stafl has something to say, I wish to hear it.”

  “It will be my great pleasure to do so, sir.”

  “One more thing. I myself sent for a doctor, one whom I trust, named Gabriel Donnelly. He should be arriving in the company of a lad named Proctor. If they should arrive while I am engaged in interviewing the members of the servant staff, send the lad to me. But Mr. Donnelly must in any case be taken to see Lady Laningham, no matter her condition and no matter if his access to her must be forced by me or Constable Bailey here. Is that understood?”

  “Completely, sir.”

  “Go, then. Now, Mr. Bailey, give a stout knock upon the door, then step aside. I wish mine to be the first face seen when the door is opened.”

  And so, as Mr. Poole hurried away to the stairs, Mr. Bailey rapped stoutly upon the door. There was a pause of some long moments’ duration. Mr. Bailey was about to knock again, when he heard footsteps beyond and stepped back quickly as Sir John had directed.

  The door came open. Arthur Paltrow, now Lord Laningham, appeared, speaking harshly before he had properly taken a look at who waited in the hall: “I thought I said —” Then did he recognize Sir John. “You!” said he. “What are you doing here?”

  At this point, reader, the accounts of my two informants differ. Sir John said merely that Lord Laningham sounded surprised. Benjamin Bailey, who had the advantage of sight and a good view of him, said that the man was for a moment struck dumb, his mouth agape, his eyes wide. “But more,” Mr. Bailey later told me, “he looked like he would at that moment rather see the Devil hisself waiting there than Sir John Fielding.”

  Then did the Magistrate of the Bow Street Court say, with great assurance: “I am here because I was sent for.”

  “Well … well …” Lord Laningham thus dithered until he found the power of speech. “Sent for by whom?”

  “By your aunt.”

  “But she is dead, only minutes ago.”

  “All the more reason for me to be here,” said Sir John. “But the fact is, when first she suffered the attack, which you now tell me was fatal, she specifically requested my presence. I need not prove that to you. My presence here is proof enough. Now, if you will conduct me to where her corpus lies, I should like to view it.”

  “But how can you? You’re …”

  “I mean that only in the figurative sense. Constable Bailey here will serve as my eyes. I understand there has been a physician in attendance. I wish also to speak with him.” And over his shoulder: “Come along, Mr. Bailey.”

  Sir John stepped forward, and Lord Laningham had no choice but to step aside. Once past the door, Sir John grasped the constable by the arm and allowed him to steer him along as they followed the new master of the house through a sitting room and another door into the lady’s bedroom. Sir John said later that the smells of illness and death permeated the place. Mr. Bailey informed him that the body had been laid out upon the bed, covered completely by a sheet. The physician, Dr. Diller, stood by the bed, looking curiously at the two imposing figures who had entered. The present Lady Laningham stood apart
, her hands clasped before her, an expression of consternation upon her face.

  “Dr. Diller,” said Sir John, “you are here?”

  “I am, yes,” said the physician.

  “I am Sir John Fielding, Magistrate of the Bow Street Court. I am come because I was bidden to come by Lady Laningham in the first throes of her attack. She has passed, has she?”

  “Only minutes ago.”

  “And when did you arrive?”

  “But half an hour past. I was summoned by one of the servants. I dwell not far from here.”

  “Would you be so kind as to pull back the sheet so that Constable Bailey here might describe to me the appearance of the corpus?”

  “Well … I …” Dr. Diller looked to Lord Laningham, who gave a sharp nod of assent. “Certainly,” said the physician.

  He threw back the sheet to reveal a figure —appearing somewhat withered, as Mr. Bailey pictured her — in a soiled nightdress. Two crown pieces rested upon her eyes. A piece of silk was looped under her jaw and tied atop her head, thus holding her mouth shut; this gave her shrunken face a tight-lipped, disapproving expression in death. All this Mr. Bailey dutifully described to his chief.

  “Dr. Diller,” said Sir John, “was it necessary to secure her jaw with the band of silk?”

  “In this case, yes, it was. So violent were her spasms of vomiting that she had dislocated her jaw.”

  “Really!”

  “Indeed I had to break her jaw, or she would have choked to death.”

  “Yet she died in any case. To what do you attribute her death?”

  “Extreme indigestion,” said he, with a certain authoritative finality.

  “Oh? Only that?”

  Again the medico threw an uneasy glance at Lord Laningham. Mr. Bailey whispered in Sir John’s ear, informing him of this.

  “I wonder,” said Sir John, turning in the general direction of Lord and Lady Laningham, “if I might continue my interview with Dr. Diller in private?”

  “Why, I … I … why, yes, I suppose you may. Pamela?”

  Together, the two made for the door. Yet Sir John had not quite done with them.

  “I would also ask,” said Sir John, calling alter, “that when all have lelt this room, it be locked and sealed. The corpus of this woman is not to be disturbed in any way. The customary washing of the body is to be forgone. No dressing her in clean clothing. She is not to be touched. That is my order as magistrate. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Certainly, certainly,” said Lord Laningham, “very clear. It will be done just as you say. You may depend upon it.” He was once again that eager-to-please fellow we had met at the Crown and Anchor.

  “Thank you, then, and if I see no more of you this evening, good night to you both.” He waited then until he heard the sitting room door to the hall close before he resumed his conversation with the doctor. “Were you aware, Dr. Diller, that the late Lord Laningham died but a week ago before hundreds in the Crown and Anchor in a manner much like his wife died tonight?”

  “Of course I heard of his death. He had been in my care before on a number of occasions. He was not a well man, though he pretended otherwise. I called upon his lady as soon as she was able to accept visitors and discussed the matter of his dying with her. From what she told me, I gathered he had died of an apoplectic seizure.”

  “Yet she, you feel, died of acute indigestion?”

  “Well, there were differences, as I understood them. For one thing, she vomited copiously.”

  “He vomited copiously.”

  “He spoke a few dying words to her. She could not speak.”

  “Not indeed with a broken jaw. But as I believe I told you, at the onset of the attack she called for me.”

  “Ah yes.” He hesitated. “The present Lord Laningham seemed to know nothing of that. We were all quite surprised when you and the constable here made your appearance.”

  “I’ve no doubt of it,” said Sir John. “She said it to her maid. She also said — and I charge you to say nothing of this to anyone — that she had been poisoned.”

  At that Dr. Diller was quite taken aback. “Pouoned! Why … what …”

  As he grasped unsuccessfully for words, a loud knock sounded upon the door in the sitting room.

  “Mr. Bailey, attend to that, will you? If it is Mr. Donnelly and Jeremy, show them in at once.” As the constable marched off to do Sir John’s bidding, the magistrate returned his attention to the medico: “Do you know Mr. Donnelly, sir?”

  “I have not met him, no, but I understand he is medical advisor to the new coroner.”

  “That is correct. I knew not that you would be here in attendance, and so I sent my young assistant to summon him —Ah, I hear their voices. Both have arrived. Mr. Donnelly happened to be at the Crown and Anchor on that fateful Sunday and did all that anyone could to assist the late Lord Laningham in his last hour. I should like you and Mr. Donnelly to compare your observations on the two deaths. Bear in mind, too, what the late Lady Laningham said to her maid: ‘I have been poisoned.’ I should like both of you to consider that possibility.”

  At that point, or perhaps a moment or two earlier, Mr. Donnelly and I entered the late lady’s bedroom. We had been swiftly ushered to the sitting room door by the butler, who had assured us that Sir John Fielding was yet inside and awaited our arrival. Upon our entrance into the bedroom, Sir John introduced the two medicos as I stared dumbly at the body on the bed. I hardly recognized the woman. She seemed but a shriveled thing as she lay unmoving with coins upon her eyes. Her hollow cheeks were without powder, her thin lips without rouge. I did not have to be told that she was dead.

  As I waited, Sir John explained to Mr. Donnelley what he had in mind, “a consultation over the dead, as it were.” Both physicians were agreeable, and so we prepared to go—just where, I knew not at that moment.

  Yet the first question asked by Mr. Donnelly was this: “Where is the vomit? It must be saved.”

  “It is here, right enough,” said Sir John. “The place reeks of it.”

  “No, it is not,” said Dr. Diller. “The smell lingers, as such odors will, but Lord Laningham had the maid working quite feverishly to clean it up during my first minutes here with the woman. He said he would not have that stink in the house—which, under the circumstances, I thought rather insensitive of him.”

  “Damn!” said Mr. Donnelly. “I hoped to have some of it to bring to a chemist for analysis.”

  “There may be a bit on the rug, or perhaps on the bed, most of it bile, I should suppose.”

  “Let us find what we can,” said Mr. Donnelly.

  “Gentlemen,” said Sir John, “I leave you to the search. Mr. Bailey, you may go about your duties.”

  Mr. Poole, the butler, had established Sir John below the stairs in a kind of common room or parlor kept for the servants just beyond the big kitchen. The room and its furnishings were much like those I had first seen belowstairs in the Goodhope residence. At a corner table, one probably used to play cards, Sir John had seated himself; I stood just to his rear. His witnesses came and went, occupying the chair just opposite his at the square table. Thus it was that he might speak in a low voice, achieving some degree of confidentiality and intimacy with them.

  The first to whom Sir John spoke was the cook. He was particularly interested in the preparation of Lady Laningham s tonic.

  “A ‘tonic’ is what she called it, sir,” said the cook, “but in truth it was naught but a flask of lightning with a quarter of sweet peach brandy for taste. It was a good stiff drink to put her under for the night, was all it was, and it always seemed to do the work for her.”

  “How long had it been her habit to take this tonic, so called, before bed?” asked Sir John. “Perhaps since the death of the late Lord Laningham?”

  “Oh no sir, much earlier, sir. Years it’s been. Some months past there was talk of it at table amongst us belowstairs. And there was general agreement she started with her tonics when the late Lord
Laningham, God rest his soul, become incapable and the two started sleeping separate.”

  “I see. How long after taking her dinner did she call for her tonic?”

  “Well, she ate early this evening, she did, though not much. Maggie, that’s her maid, brought back her tray only half ate. Then, it wasn’t long, maybe an hour, she come back and said the lady would like her tonic now. Couldn’t have picked a worser time.”

  “Oh? How was that?”

  “Well, just as she come down, so did the new Lord and Lady Laningham. They wanted to be showed all about the kitchen, askin’ questions and all. I’d got the sweet brandy in but not the gin, and here’s the new lady wantin’ to see the size of the oven, askin’ how many I could serve from it. She had questions about sauces and desserts, all manner of things. I had to get them out of the kitchen before I could add the gin, give it a stir, and hand it over to Maggie. Her tonic ain’t hard to make, but she wants the portions right — or wanted them, poor thing. And at the end I just weren’t sure I’d measured out the quarter brandy exact, what with one thing and another.”

  “I understand. And all the time Lord and Lady Laningham were there, distracting you from the preparation of the tonic. You said that questions were asked by Lady Laningham. Did the lord participate? Did he also have questions?”

  “No sir, he seemed to think this was women’s things. He wandered around a bit, looked in cupboards and such like.”

  “Who else was in the kitchen at that time?” asked Sir John.

  “Then? Wasn’t anyone, as I can recall. My slaveys was off havin’ a nip before the pots and pans come due for a wash. All the rest had ate early.”

  “But surely the maid was there —Maggie?”

  “Part of the time she was,” said the cook. “She went off somewheres, though.”

  Having exhausted his store of questions, Sir John excused the cook and called to Mr. Poole that he would like now to talk with Lady Laningham’s maid. She was brought to him in a state of near collapse, supported by the butler, weeping true and bitter tears. She, not Sir John, asked the first question.