Bruce Alexander - [Sir John Fielding 01]

by Alexander, Bruce

  What struck me then was how little she altered in either posture or expression. She removed her hand from the rail of the stairs and clasped her robe a bit tighter at her throat. If what Sir John had told her caused any change in her face, I could not detect it. “Thank you. You will, of course, be welcome here, and your surgeon, too. Please keep me informed of your findings. Good night.” And with that she turned and marched up the stairs.

  It was not until we two were settled in his Bow Street kitchen, gnawing on two-day-old cold leg of mutton and fresh bread and butter, that Sir John deemed it proper to tell me what it was that had persuaded him to change his mind so completely. By then, of course, I had my own suspicions, so that what I heard from him did not come as a complete surprise.

  “You’ll recall, Jeremy,” he said to me, “that Lord Goodhope’s face bore powder burns.”

  “One side of his face was dark as any blackamoor’s.”

  “So it must be with a pistol of such power fired at such close range,” he explained. “It takes considerable black powder to propel a ball the size of the one Mr. Bailey dug out of the wall. With the ball comes also a great quantity of black powder: enough to be-soot his face complete.” He paused. “You see where this leads, perhaps?”

  “I think so,” said I.

  “Then tell me.”

  “Well, if powder comes out the front of the pistol along with the … ball, then some of it must also leak out the back: I mean to say, it’s an explosion inside that makes the ball go. Isn’t that how guns work?”

  Sir John smiled indulgently and nodded. “It is. Yes.”

  “The explosion at the back of the gun would be enough to dirty the hand that held it. Lord Goodhope’s hands were clean, so he did not hold the pistol when it was fired.”

  “Exactly.” He pulled a morsel of rare mutton away from the bone, dropped it on a chunk of Mrs. Gredge’s bread, and popped the two together into his mouth. Taking time to chew thoughtfully and silently, he washed the generous mouthful down with a gulp of beer: enough, in any case, to encourage a manly belch from him.

  “I take it,” he said to me then, “you’ve had no experience of firearms.”

  “Oh, no sir.”

  “Your father: Did he shoot?”

  “Him neither. He had a great dislike of guns.”

  “He sounds a good man from what you say of him.”

  “Oh, he was, sir. He was.”

  “Well, I credit him for fathering a bright boy: and educating him well, too.”

  It took me a moment to catch his drift. When I did, I blushed and thanked him. Then, remembering, I brought up a matter that had given me pause earlier. “Before we left on our second visit, you asked Lady Goodhope if her lord was left-handed or right-handed. What was the importance of that?”

  “Consider it. If he had been right-handed, the wound just to the right of the bridge of the nose, and the path of the ball diagonally to the left into the brain, would have come quite naturally. But for a left-handed man to achieve the same wound with the same result, it would have been necessary to hold the pistol at a most unnatural angle, perhaps even to pull the trigger with the thumb. You see? Possible, but unlikely.”

  I did consider it, even to the extent of moving my left hand to my face to try what he had described. He was indeed correct: The angle was possible but unlikely. “But, Sir John, when you asked her that,” said I, “you knew already that Lord Goodhope had not pulled the trigger in respect to his clean hands.”

  “You’re right, boy: just a detail. But in matters of murder, it is good to collect as many details as we can. It’s the weight of evidence that proves guilt, seldom one fact alone.” He took another swig of beer before he continued: “And tomorrow, we’ll go again to St. James Street in search of more details. God grant that we may discover the most important of them all.”

  “And what is that. Sir John?”

  “How the perpetrator of this deed could have committed it and then have vanished from the room.”

  Chapter Four

  In which further puzzling

  details come to light

  Reader, as I write this for your enlightenment in the last decade of our century, you cannot but imagine the lawlessness of the London streets, even in the year 1768. I put it thus, for if it were bad then, it was very much worse when Sir John Fielding received his appointment as magistrate of the Bow Street Court. That was in 1754, a year before my birth. His brother Henry had drawn up a plan for permanent, paid constables to be on call day and night from Bow Street. But, having seen its passage through Parliament and being fatally ill with the dropsy, Henry Fielding left the implementation of the plan in his brother’s hands and went off to Portugal to die.

  The streets could be made safer, said Sir John, by “quick notice and sudden pursuit”—and so they were. Yet whoso may believe that crime may ever be eradicated completely from the world’s largest city is either childish or foolish. The battle is constant. The sudden victories that were achieved by the Bow Street Runners (as the constables came to be known) were followed from time to time by losses. Robbery gangs were broken only to be reformed by surviving members. Petty thievery continued. Idle apprentices were led to lives of crime to pay for their dissolute pursuits, gambling and whoring. Thus it was that while, in the year of which I write, the streets were much safer than before, they were not near as safe as they are today.

  All this above is preamble by way of explanation to the shocking news I received from Sir John himself next morning just past breakfast. I had heard him thumping about very early. In fact, he had departed briefly to return as I was down on my knees, scrubbing the stairs, as Mrs. Gredge had bade me do. I heard his steps rise from below. I turned and found him just a few stairs down.

  “Jeremy?” queried he.

  “Aye, Sir John,” said I, jumping to my feet.

  “1 must ask you to leave off what you are doing and accompany me.” He seemed no little concerned, and I was made to wonder.

  Jumping to my feet, I said, “As you wish, Sir John.” In truth, I was glad to be called away from stair scrubbing. “I’ll be but a minute.”

  And it hardly took more than that for me to empty my scrub bucket out the window, put it aside, and seek my coat. Mrs. Gredge was not on hand to hear my excuse nor Sir John’s explanation, and so she would have to think ill of me when she discovered me gone.

  As I followed him, I made bold to ask, “What is the matter?”

  “A sad one, I fear,” said he. “Mr. Bailey was struck last night by one wielding a cutlass.”

  “Does he live?” I asked. “Is it serious?”

  “Yes, indeed he lives. As to whether it is serious or no, we must go to his lodging house together to ascertain.”

  And that we did, making our way through Covent Garden and its horde of vegetable hawkers to the streets behind it. I noted that once past Covent Garden Sir John held back somewhat. At last he confessed to me, “I am not so well acquainted here, Jeremy. Perhaps it would be best for me to give you the address of Mr. Bailey’s lodging place. It is Number Ten Berry Lane: nearby, I have been told, a bit north and a bit west of the Garden. Perhaps you might ask our way: And I should have no objection if you took me by the arm when you deem it necessary in this terra incognita.”

  When we arrived at Number lo, I informed Sir John and positioned him before the door. He beat upon it stoutly with his walking stick. There then appeared a dame of perhaps forty years, plump and red-haired.

  She was quite overcome when she espied the visitor on her doorstep. “Ooh, b’Gawd, it’s his lordship himself, it is,” said she. “Welcome to my house, Lord John.”

  He smiled in amusement at that: “Madam, you elevate my rank unnecessarily, but I thank you for your ready recognition. You will have guessed I have come to see your boarder, Mr. Bailey, to make sure of his recovery.”

  She ushered us in and danced ahead of us, leading the way, bugling our arrival loudly. Over her shoulder, as it were, she in
- formed us that she had installed Mr. Bailey in her bedchamber so as to make him more comfortable. “The couch is good enough for me, sure.”

  “Very kind of you, madam, indeed.”

  “The surgeon’s with him now. Sir John.”

  She stopped then before an open door at the end of the hall and gestured us inside.

  There was Mr. Bailey, sitting up comfortably in the large bed, bare-chested down to his middle where the coverlet maintained his decency. Upon his left forearm was a large bandage. On that side of the bed sat the surgeon: a rather young man, not yet thirty, I judged. Both were smiling as if some joke or pleasantry had just passed between them.

  “Come in, come in. Sir John, and make acquaintance with my surgeon, Mr. Donnelly. He’s cousin to the lady who met you at the door, Mrs. Plunkett.” Then Mr. Bailey added, as if to make certain we knew that all was in order, “Widow.”

  Mr. Donnelly jumped from the bed and pumped Sir John’s hand vigorously, declaring it an honor to meet him. In this instance. Sir John took care to introduce me to Mr. Donnelly and Mrs. Plunkett, who had joined us in the room, as “my young charge, Jeremy Proctor.” I took heart in that.

  Thereafter followed a report by Mr. Donnelly on Mr. Bailey’s wound, not superficial for he had stitched it last night, but not deep either. “What saved him was his musculature, you see,” said Donnelly, “which is considerable. There is so much meat on those arms of his that the bone was well protected.”

  “And the nerves?”

  “It’s a bit early to tell. His left hand is somewhat incapacitated, but that’s to be expected. I shouldn’t think the cut was deep enough to do much damage of that sort.”

  “Oh, I’m fine, Sir John,” declared Mr. Bailey. “I’ll be back on the job in a day’s time.”

  “Could be a bit longer than that,” said Donnelly with a wry smile. “We must watch for fever, infection of the wound. I’ll come by daily.”

  He then began gathering up the tools of his trade and dropping them in his bag.

  “If you have time, Mr. Donnelly,” said Sir John, “I wonder if you might wait a moment while I talk to Mr. Bailey. Our meeting here may be quite fortuitous for me. Ihere is quite another matter I should like to put before you.”

  “Why, certainly, sir.” He turned to Mrs. Plunkett. “Perhaps I might beg a cup of tea from you, dear cuz.”

  And so the two cousins made off to the kitchen as I found a chair for Sir John. The one I put my hands on was littered with male and female garments, mixed, w hich I set at one corner of the bed. The thought was planted in my mind that this was perhaps not Mr. Bailey’s first visit to Mrs. Plunkett’s bedchamber, nor perhaps was it solely for his comfort that she made him a guest.

  Be that as it may. Sir John settled into the chair close by his chief constable and asked for the story of his wounding. “1 he villain who did this will appear before me this afternoon. The robbery victim will be present, of course, but I must depose you as the arresting officer. Give me the story, the who, when, and where of it, and it will count as testimony in my court.”

  Thus, with frequent interruptions from Sir John calling for details, Mr. Bailey gave his account of robbery, pursuit, and apprehension.

  He had been on St. Martin’s Lane up in the vicinity of the notorious Seven Dials not long after midnight. The street was not empty but neither was it full. There were dark, empty places aplenty for a thief to hide and a robbery to take place. From one of those, an alley off the lane, he heard a commotion, the sound of running footsteps, and then the hue and cry was raised: “Robbery! Stop, thief, stop!”

  When the villain rounded out the alley, Mr. Bailey was but twenty yards distant. He added his “Stop in the name of the law” to the victim’s cry and had no difficulty running him down. “The fool thought he could scare me off with the cutlass he carried,” said Mr. Bailey. “He heaved it about over his head, making circles in the air in a threatening way. Then, when I continued to come at him, he made some sort of speech about knowing how to use the thing, which proved to be a lie. He was remarkable awkward with it.”

  “But what of the pistol?” interrupted Sir John. “You took it with you from the Goodhope library, did you not? Surely you could have tamed the fellow with that, empty though it be.”

  “Might have done, sir, but I’d stopped in at Bow Street and left it off there. I had by me naught to rely on but my usual.”

  Mr. Bailey had his oak club out, and while ordinarily no match for a cutlass, in this instance it proved sufficient. “He came at me, feinting,” he continued, “and I jumped to one side, giving him a sound clout on his left shoulder. That angered him so that he over- stepped himself, hacking at my neck. I dropped back, but not quite far enough, for the hack ended as a slash across my forearm. He was off balance with that so that I had only to step forward and deliver another sound clout to his head. One more laid him out in the street.”

  The robbery victim, grateful to Mr. Bailey and concerned for his wound, managed to bring a hackney down from Seven Dials. All three, the victim, the arresting officer, and the perpetrator of the crime, went in style to Bow Street. The villain came to himself in the hackney with the point of his own cutlass against his belly.

  “What is his name?” asked Sir John.

  “Dick Dillon, or some such, perhaps Davey: It’s in my report. A big sort but clumsy on his feet.”

  “And the amount stolen?”

  “Twenty guineas and a bit. The victim, Hawkins by name, won it from Dillon and others, and was daft enough to think he’d be allowed to stroll home with it. Now he wants his purse back, of course.”

  “Of course.” With that. Sir John rose to his feet and thanked him. “What you’ve given me will do very well. I’ll be in to see you again, perhaps even tomorrow. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Bailey, I’ve a matter to take up with your surgeon.”

  “A good one he is. Sir John. He sews a good stitch. Five years he was a ship’s surgeon.”

  “A Navy man?”

  “So he was and just left His Majesty’s Service.”

  Gabriel Donnelly was Dublin-born, the son of a successful shopkeeper with great ambitions for his son. The medical profession, for which the father intended him, was then, as now, virtually closed to the Catholic Irish, except by means of apprenticeship to an established Catholic physician. Since no place could be found for him and their hope was for no less than a university education, the shopkeeper scraped together his savings and made liquid his investments; thus he put together sufficient to send his son abroad for his education. France was out of the question, due to the war: so he was sent to Vienna. It was a long and difficult time for Gabriel away from home and language so long, but he did well in his studies. When he completed them he found the only place open to him was as a ship’s surgeon. The Royal Navy was willing to overlook the matter of his religion, so great was its need for qualified surgeons during the last two years of the French war. Now, the term of his agreement completed, he had come here and used what money he had saved to open a surgery in the area of Covent Garden.

  “But why to London?” Sir John had asked him as we rode together to St. James Street.

  Mr. Donnelly replied: “It is such a great city, sir. I thought, surely, it would be less provincial in such matters than my native town. A man of my confession should have a better chance here.”

  “Vain hope, I fear.”

  “There are many Irish here in London.”

  “Oh, indeed there are. A few come before me every week at Bow Street Court.”

  Mr. Donnelly had no reply to that. He sat back in the seat of the hackney and simply shrugged as expressively as any Frenchman or Italian.

  He had given Sir John his history as we three proceeded to St. James Street and the residence of the late Lord Goodhope. Hearing of Sir John’s need for a surgeon to examine the corpus and something of his suspicions, he had willingly agreed to accompany us.

  “Perhaps you should have remained in the Navy,” sug
gested Sir John.

  “There was no future for me there.”

  Sir John considered this. “Probably not,” he allowed. “And in truth, a man with your diploma deserves a better post than ship’s surgeon. In any case, Mr. Donnelly, you’ll be paid for your ministrations to Mr. Bailey.”

  “But I was called by my cousin. It seems she and Mr. Bailey are great friends.” There was no hint of a smile there. He accepted the situation, whatever it might have been.

  “Be assured,” said Sir John, “that the court has funds to pay for the repair of its constables. Also, by the by, to recompense you for the time you spend in this examination to which we hasten.”

  “Well, Sir John, I’ll not pretend that the fees, no matter how little, will not be welcome. My surgery, so far, has not attracted many.”

  “I count myself lucky to have run into you, as I did.”

  The hackney drew up in front of the Goodhope residence.

  “Ah, but here we are at the house on St. James Street,” said Sir John. “You are about to prove yourself.”

  “To your satisfaction, I trust.”

  We entered without difficulty. Potter said nothing, simply threw open the doors to us. I, entering last, noted a look of hostility in the eyes of the butler. Yet it disappeared as Lady Goodhope stepped forward to greet us. She was dressed, already, suitably in black. Sir John introduced Mr. Donnelly to her and stated the need for him, as a surgeon, to examine her husband’s body. Hesitating a moment, she consented and directed Potter to take the surgeon to the cellar. Mr. Donnelly bowed and gave his thanks, then left to do his job, leaving us alone with Lady Goodhope.

  “I hope this will be the end of it,” said she. There was the hint of pique in her voice.

  “Your ladyship?” Sir John turned to her. His attitude was one of confusion.

  “My expectation is that once this examination is concluded I may be permitted to advertise Lord Goodhope’s death and prepare his funeral. Is that correct?”