Jack, Knave and Fool

by Alexander, Bruce

  It occurs to me that parts of the interrogation of Mrs. Bradbury which took place that day would be better summarized in part than reported in exact detail. I judged it a disappointment, as did, in the main, Sir John. When an hour and something more had elapsed, I carried down to him a cup of tea with which to rouse him to wakefulness, but found him fully alert, pacing the modest-sized room. The cup of tea, however, was most welcome.

  “Is there another in the pot you brewed?” he asked.

  “Ohyes,” said I, “and it is still warm.”

  “Then bring it for Mrs. Bradbury, and tell Mr. Fuller upon your return that he is to bring the prisoner to us.”

  I did as he had directed, and found Sir John in his customary place, seated behind the desk. Mr. Fuller followed quickly with her, and she took the cup from me gratefully enough with thanks. I daresay, however, that there was something in her manner that said such amenities were her due.

  The moment that Mr. Fuller had left, Sir John leaned forward across his desk and said in a manner most severe: “Madam, where is your husband?”

  “Oh,” said she, affecting a style most dramatic and tragic, “would that I knew!” Then did she tell her tale, from time to time taking a sip of the tea to strengthen her and help her hold back the tears. (She did wonderfully well at holding back the tears!) It seemed that George Bradbury had been gone near a month. Except for a letter that she had received from him from Warwick over two weeks ago, in which he told her that his father had died, the will had been read, and his business there would soon be concluded, she had received no word from him. (Sir John interrupted her and demanded to know if she could produce this letter; she assured him that she could.) In that missive he had also reassured her of his trust in her to continue to run the pawnshop in the way that he had instructed her; but as she had said in court, business had been bad, and she had been forced to buy far more than she had sold. It was this, she declared, that had led her to yield to the temptation to buy stolen goods: “For it did seem to me that if I had some truly attractive goods of the kind don’t often come our way in our dealings with the poor, then I might resell them quickly. You may not credit it, sir, but there’s them who are quite well off who will buy such goods with no questions asked —or so I have heard.” That, except for a shrill protestation that her husband’s absence had caused her much grief and anxiety, ended the story she had to tell.

  In a sense, I do Mrs. Bradbury no justice, for putting aside the complete absence of tears, she told her story quite convincingly. There were many asides and digressions (on her husband’s fine character, his generosity to her, and the difficulty of conducting trade in such a poor and disreputable area as Covent Garden, et cetera), so that her recital took near half an hour to complete. But then did Sir John begin his attack.

  “You talk of your worry at your husband’s long absence,” said he. “Will you tell me why you have made no inquiries? Have you written no letter to discover what had become of him?”

  “I knew no one to write to.”

  “You might have tried the magistrate in Warwick. I did and received a long, detailed, and enlightening letter from him.” Whereupon, Sir John gave her the contents of the letter in question near verbatim. He laid special emphasis on the large sum of money that he had with him from the sale of his father’s possessions, the white horse he rode on his journey from Warwick, and the likely possibility of his arrival two weeks past —“or a bit more, say fifteen or sixteen days ago. It was then — that is, upon his arrival in London — that he was cruelly murdered.”

  “Why, who could have done such a thing?” she whined. “Surelyyou do not think …”

  “I believe you were party to it. Indeed I do. Madam, it may interest you to know that the lad who testified against you — “

  “There was two of them in the shop that day. And he was the other.” She pointed at me.

  “If you mean he who sits with us now, then you are correct. That, however, is neither here nor there, for the lad who testified against you went on his own initiative to your shop to discover if your husband was alive. He had made a tentative identification of a head found in the Fleet sewer as that of George Bradbury. Yet, as I say, identification was only tentative, since the water and filth of the sewer had altered the features of the poor victim of the decapitation somewhat. There he heard, in substance, the story you have told me. Yet he was suspicious and made it his business to keep your shop under observation. He noted the frequent goings and comings of two men. One of them was Thomas Roundtree who was apprehended with you. The other was he who managed to escape us, one who, I have been told, is quite dangerous with his knife. His name is Jackie Carver, though it may be a fictitious one. Tell me, madam, does the name John Cutter mean anything to you?”

  “No, it does not. I know no one of that name.”

  “You may have noted, however, how well the two names fit together: John —Jackie, Cutter — Carver. Surely this is no mere coincidence.” Then did Sir John inform her how one John Cutter had sold a white horse to Matthew Gurney, the proprietor of the stable nearest her pawnshop fourteen days past. He told her that the description of John Cutter fitted well that of Jackie Carver, and further, that the horse, “a mare as big as a stallion,” fitted exactly that of the horse upon which George Bradbury had set off for London. Then did he conclude: “There is but one way that horse could have come to London to be sold, and that is with your husband riding upon him. What say you to that, Mrs. Bradbury?”

  “I know nothing of no white horse. I accept it now that my husband died at the hands of robbers on his way home to me. Even the Warwick magistrate said he was taking a great chance going alone, did he not?”

  “He did, yet how came the horse to London?”

  “I know nothing of no white horse. It must be a different one.”

  “We have ways of finding out if it is. It may surprise you to learn that to one who knows it well, a horse can be identified as certainly as can a man or woman.”

  She made no reply to that.

  “We have time aplenty to send to Warwick for one who knew that horse just that well—-a former servant of your father-in-law, or a farmhand who stabled the animal. I have two months before me in which to develop the case against you. And if need be, I can retry you and convict you for accepting stolen goods and have even longer to build my case.”

  “You can no such thing! I proved to you that there was no sense to that charge. You convicted me on—what was it? —conspiracy. I pled to it.”

  “Yes, you argued very cleverly, but I failed to introduce a piece of evidence against you for the reason that it has not yet been formally identified. There was found in the upstairs of your shop a Chinese vase, one which had no ticket attached. Just such a vase was stolen from the home of the Lord Chief Justice, William Murray.”

  “The Lord Chief Justice? Oh, Jesus!” she moaned, for the first time giving evidence of fright.

  “I can only suppose that the vase reached the table whereon it was found by the usual criminal process. The thief brought it to you, and you paid him a fraction of its value. And you, liking it well enough, used it as a decoration until a suitable buyer might be found.”

  “That ain’t how it was,” said she quickly. “No, that fellow Roundtree gave it to me. I never paid him a penny for it. He said it was in his family for years, that his father was a sailor and brought it from the East. He gave it to me in gratitude for letting him have a place to stay.”

  “And of course he never mentioned that he was a fugitive.”

  “He said so himself, didn’t he?”

  “Ah yes, I seem to recall that he did make such a claim.” Sir John paused for but a moment. “Mrs. Bradbury, why did you dispose of your husband’s clothes if you expected him back from Warwick?”

  Her answer was so patently false, so obviously an improvised lie, that I cannot remember it exact. It was something about him declaring upon his departure that he would buy a whole new wardrobe of clothes
for himself if his father’s property became his; she then claimed that upon hearing that he had inherited all, she simply carried out his wishes.

  Then did Sir John go once again through the list of particulars against her: the tentative identification of the head as Mr. Bradbury’s; the appearance of the white mare sold to the owner of the stable just down the street by one John Cutter; the fact that she had thrown out or otherwise disposed of her husband’s clothing. He then summed up: “All of those are circumstantial, I grant, but what I offer you now is the opportunity to confess your part in all this and receive in exchange a recommendation of transportation rather than the gallows to the judge who tries your case. My recommendations have never been refused. Madam, I offer you your life.

  “Perhaps,” he continued, “your part in it was not so great a one. Perhaps you, in your husband’s absence, took this Carver fellow as your lover, and your husband may have returned to find you in his arms. A fight may have ensued in which your husband was mortally struck down. If this or something like it is the case, you have but to tell me, and it will be taken into considera-tion.

  He seemed almost to be pleading with her. Yet in the space of time that followed, her only response was silence.

  Sir John sighed, then posed what proved to be his last question: “Tell me now, how did you meet this Jackie Carver? What was your relation to him?”

  “I know no one by that name,” said she. “If that was the name of the one who escaped, then I must accept that. I did not more than hire him off the street to help with the unloading.”

  That I myself knew to be a lie, for Bunkins had pointed him out to me entering the pawnshop. And Bunkins had seen him there frequently.

  “Jeremy,” said Sir John to me, “call Mr. Fuller and have him escort the prisoner back to the strong room. Let him then bring Mr. Roundtree to us — wrist irons, I believe, would be appropriate for him.”

  I did as I was told and returned with Mr. Fuller, who conducted Mrs. Bradbury from the room. Sir John then stood and stretched.

  “Ah, Jeremy,” said he, “she will be a hard one, I fear. She has made up her mind, very wisely, to hold with the story she told in the beginning.”

  “But surely you can break her.”

  “Not with what I have now at my disposal in the way of facts.”

  “She did not once weep in her telling of the tale.”

  “Well, this was a mere rehearsal, a first reading, as it were. I doubt not that she will be able to produce a tear or two when she comes to trial at Old Bailey— if indeed she ever does.”

  It was indeed a gloomy assessment.

  “She did, however, make one mistake,” he added.

  “Oh? What was that?”

  Yet before he could respond, a rattling of chains announced the arrival of Thomas Roundtree. Sir John put his forefinger to his lips, ending discussion for the moment. Then, as the prisoner entered the room, Sir John beckoned me to him.

  “Though you may object, Jeremy,” he whispered, “I must now send you off on an errand. I should like you to go to Mr. Donnelly’s surgery to pick up that which you left with him earlier. He should also have ready for you a written report. In any case, he promised me one.”

  I did not, of course, object. Though disappointed, I gave my agreement to his wish and left immediately for the surgery in Drury Lane.

  Perhaps it was best that I was not about during that first hour or more of Sir Johns interrogation of Roundtree, for of course I had some sympathy for the fellow. That alone, however, would have meant little, since after all my only role during these sessions was as an observer. Yet, as Sir John himself later confessed, he had “bullied the fellow unconscionably,” and considering the role I would subsequently play, it was good that I be not present for that, even as witness.

  Mr. Donnelly kept me far longer than I had expected—yet it was no one’s fault but my own. When I arrived, I found him still engaged in the task to which Sir John had set him. He invited me to sit down in his place and peer through his microscope. It was an opportunity never before extended me, so I was not likely to decline. I fixed one eye to it as one might to a telescope and shut the other. I scrutinized what lay below and found a number of rough dark circles, broken circles, and attached circles —and around them bits of pink.

  “What is it that I am looking at?” I asked Mr. Donnelly.

  “Scrapings from the handsaw in that box of tools you brought me.”

  “And what is it that I see?”

  “You make an excellent distinction, Jeremy,” said he. “What you see is blood and bits of bone.”

  “How can you be certain of that? I mean to say, bone is not pink, nor is blood this dark color — brown, almost black, perhaps some red in it, but only a bit.”

  “Ah, but that is the color of dried blood. I have seen it often on ship deck. As for bone, it bleaches white, but run a bloodstained saw through it, and the result is what you see before you now.”

  “Could it not be a mixture of two colors of paint?”

  “No. Look closely at the drops of blood, and you will see that there is substance to it. It is not so easy to see in the leavings of bone, but under a stronger microscope this would be evident. You know the adage Blood is thicker than water.’ Well, it is thicker than paint, too — thus paint is applied in coats.”

  “Thicker than paint?”

  “Yes, paint would flake upon the saw and appear flat. Blood, on the other hand, is the most mysterious stuff in the body. I believe it contains many properties if we could but see into it. We’d need a microscope for that which has not yet been created.”

  Once again I fixed my eye to the eyepiece and stared down at the dark circles and pink bits and saw that it was as he said.

  “It is fair amazing what one can see through such an instrument,” said I.

  “Yes, isn’t it? But now I must to my desk and write the report that Sir John has requested.”

  So saying, he took up pen and paper and went to his work. As he wrote, I sat apart, considering what he had said. After some minutes, I had a question or two for him.

  “Mr. Donnelly, may I interrupt?”

  He glanced back at me -with some show of annoyance. “Well, you have already done that, so you may as well proceed.”

  “You said that this is the appearance of blood, but do we not have the same sort of blood in common with all other animals?”

  “Well, with warm-blooded animals, at least. That is to say, I suppose that cow’s blood would look about the same as human blood, even using the microscope.”

  “Does it?” I asked.

  He sighed and shifted in his chair to face me.

  “In all truth, I have never viewed cow’s blood, or sheep’s blood, or horse’s blood under the microscope, but I have often viewed human blood so, and you may take my word on it, what I removed from the handsaw, and what we both viewed, was human blood.”

  “But in all due respect, sir, can you be absolutely certain — that is, not having viewed the blood of other animals? I have seen Mr. Tolliver, the butcher in Covent Garden, cut many a chop from sides of beef with a saw. Wouldn’t the blood from his saw look as the blood from the one where you got those dried drops of blood we looked at?”

  We then argued the point far longer than was necessary, certainly longer than was profitable. He claimed the physician’s expertise; I merely held out the possibility of doubt in the matter. We became quite heated.

  “Could not the carpenter have cut up a roast with his saw?” I insisted.

  With that, Mr. Donnelly turned back to his desk and purposefully tore up the sheet of paper upon which he had been writing. I was shocked.

  “Why did you do that, sir?” I asked.

  “Because I said in it specifically that I had found traces of human blood and bone on the carpenter’s saw. I shall now alter that simply to say that I found traces of blood and bone.”

  “Oh, well, I suppose in the interest of exactitude …”

 
He wagged his head then and chuckled. “Jeremy,” said he, “you truly were meant for the law. If ever I questioned it, you banished all doubt during our discussion.”

  There was naught he could have said that would have pleased me more.

  He did not take long to rewrite his report. And with it in my pocket and the toolbox in my hand, I made ready to go.

  “Please forgive me,” said I to him, “if I was aggressive in my argument.”

  “Think nothing of it,” said he. “It was all among friends and, as you put it, in the interest of exactitude.” Then: “Oh, by the bye, do tell Sir John that I shall walk over to Bow Street so that we may all ride over to the Laningham residence together. I have just time to change my clothes for this curious event.”

  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.