Bruce Alexander - [Sir John Fielding 01]

by Alexander, Bruce

  I did remember then: “He said Mr. Clairmont was wearing paint, like a woman.”

  “Exactly. I put this together with your earlier remark on the shine of his skin and drew a tentative conclusion. Had he been given permission on the morning of his visit to Mr. Bilbo to pay his respects to Lady Goodhope, she would surely have recognized him, myopic though she be. It was for this reason that on the night all were assembled in the library, I made it as warm and light in there as was possible. I thought if the nose be wax, I might melt it, or the paint might be sweated off him. David Garrick has since informed me that the stuff has more sticking power than I had supposed.”

  “But oh, how he did shine in the lights of that room!” said L “And he seemed much worried by his sweating. I recall he dabbed carefully at his face with his kerchief, then examined it afterward.”

  “I was sure enough that Mr. Clairmont was Lord Goodhope in disguise that I arranged that little mishap with young Meg. She was only too happy to play her part in it. It was perhaps a bit crude to play such a prank, but it worked surpassing well.”

  “And then Dick Dillon’s statement made it all most certain.”

  “Yes, Dillon—an unfortunate fellow altogether. I doubt I could have saved him from the gallows after he defended himself so well against that attack upon his life—for that was what it was, of course, that supposed attempt to escape in the middle of the night. Had he taken my offer when it was first made, he would have had a far better chance. I told him as much in my chambers. Yet he was so angered at Lord Goodhope—for he knew who had bribed the guard to make the attack—that he would make his statement against him in spite of all. It is perhaps best that Dillon died as he did. I have made a move to have that warder discharged—Wilson, Larkin, whatever his name. I doubt much will come of it, however. What goes on in Newgate is closed to us outside.”

  “And so Lord Goodhope awaits his trial before the House of Lords. Is that a usual thing?”

  “Very rare, none such in my memory.”

  Quite early the morning after our talk. Lady Fielding died. According to Mrs. Gredge, who was present with Sir John, she passed most quietly: “One moment she was with us. There was a hitch in her breathing, like, then the rattle, and she was gone. She said nothing. She was in that state between waking and sleeping. It was a blessing so, after these many months.”

  Mr. Donnelly came shortly after the event on his regular call, viewed the remains, and made official what was manifest. Sir John then went to his study where he remained the better part of the morning. He called me to him once as he sat in that darkened room, and in a bleak voice asked me to fetch Mr. Marsden so that he might make arrangements for the funeral. “I cannot,” said he. “I am not able. He will have errands for you to run, messages to deliver. I trust the two of you will act in my stead.”

  And thus it was a busy day for me, and I welcomed it so. Surprising one and all, Sir John convened his court that day and sat through a brief session. Though I was not present, I afterward heard it discussed that he exceeded himself for leniency. He bound none for trial, sent none to Newgate, and settled disputes so evenly that he found no arguments from the parties thereto. Word of his bereavement had traveled swiftly.

  The funeral service for Lady Fielding was held at St. Paul’s, just across the way. I remember little of it, and what was said by the priest. Yet I do remember the great crowd of people that was there. Sitting beside Mrs. Gredge in the pews at the front of the church— careful to go up as she went up, down as she went down, and sit only when she did—I had not noticed the number until I happened to turn halfway through the service. I seemed to me then that all of Covent Garden was there. At the conclusion, the casket was taken up by six of the Bow Street Runners, done into their best, and we filed along at the rear: Sir John behind the casket and I beside him, lest he make a false step, as he had asked; and Mrs. Gredge following us. I recognized a number from court along the way—Moll Caul-field, the street vendor, and Peg Button, whom he had charged to sin no more. And there were others whom I had not, for one reason or another, expected to see: Black Jack Bilbo, the former pirate; Meg from the Good hope residence (this was truly my last glimpse of her) and at her side, Mr. Donnelly; Mrs. Deemey, the dressmaker; and Katherine Durham, who had so kindly assisted me in buying meat out in the Garden. But there were scores more—well over a hundred, I should say; perhaps nearer to twice that number.

  At graveside, however, there were only a few. Besides we three from the house, there were the pallbearers, of course, under Mr. Bailey’s command, Mr. Marsden, and the priest. Lady Fielding’s people lived so distant in Hull that none of them, of course, were present; perhaps they had only just got word of her death.

  As the casket was lowered, and I gazed down into that deep cleft and heard the words “hope of resurrection” from the priest, I played the boy again and wept with Mrs. Gredge. I wept perhaps not so much for Lady Fielding, whom I could not have claimed to know well, as for my mother and father and little brother; for the life I had lost and the uncertainty of the one that lay ahead. Sir John had no tears. I believe he lost the power to shed them with his blindness. He stood simply solemn and somber, his face a mask of dignity under that black ribbon mask which covered his eyes.

  It was all soon done. And as we walked together to the coach outside the graveyard, a light rain began.

  “How fitting,” said Sir John, “heaven’s tears.” Yet he said it, let me be clear, in a tone laden with irony.

  Time passed. The end of the month came. Lady Goodhope lost her London residence to Black Jack Bilbo. He was more than generous in extending her time for her departure. One month stretched into the second as packing proceeded. Dray wagons came and went, bound for Lancashire. At last what hurried her along was the impending trial of Lord Goodhope. The House of Lords had finally found a place for it, the last on its list before adjournment. As all London primed for the excitement such a trial would provide, she wanted only to be quit of the city.

  Her situation at that time, as presented to her by Mr. Martinez, was not nearly so grave as it might have been. Though her husband’s debts, all together, totaled nearly £100,000, inclusive of the debt to Mr. Bilbo, she nevertheless had the holdings of The Island Company to fall back upon. Since Mr. Clairmont had died intestate and without heirs, in the likelihood of her husband’s death the entire enterprise would pass on to her son. She, as guardian, would be free to sell it off in its entirety or piecemeal. Her creditors were kept at bay by this probability. Leniency or a pardon would throw all this into confusion once again. And so she awaited the outcome of the trial with peculiar interest, though she waited at a remove of over a hundred miles.

  Her final departure took place toward the middle of June. My interest in it rested in the fact that she took Mistress Meg with her to the Lancashire estate, though, as Mr. Donnelly told us, “She was not at all sure how the girl would get on with her French-speaking female staff.” Sir John seemed satisfied by the news. “At least,” said he, “she will be out of London.”

  Now, with the trial impending. Lord Goodhope no longer simply languished in Newgate but made ready his defense. I wondered what defense he could prepare, since he was to be tried not only for the murder of Charles Clairmont, but for that of Dick Dillon, as well. While the statement of Dick Dillon, alone, read aloud in court, had been sufficient to convict Lucy Kilbourne, Dillon’s murder had taken place before a half dozen or more witnesses, any one of which was available to testify as to what he had seen. Nevertheless, Lord Goodhope met with his barrister daily, according to Sir John, and planned his defense.

  There were not many gallery seats available to these proceedings, yet Sir John was assured of one daily. He was no mere spectator but an interested party. The first day of the trial was by far the most interesting, he informed me. It began with all the pomp and circumstance one might expect from such a procedure. There was a reading of a Proclamation of Silence by the Sergeant-at-Arms. “And then,” said Sir John,
“followed a good deal of hocus-pocus before the throne of the Lord Chancellor, much God save the King from the Sergeant-at-Arms, a reading of the certiorari, and a calling of the roll of all the justices present. All this, mark you, before any attention to my indictment. At last they settled down to the work of it, and the trial began. That part, of course, was all too familiar to me.”

  The proceedings lasted but three days. On the evening of the second day, Sir John, having spent the morning at the House of Lords and the afternoon conducting his own court, invited me out with him to dinner at the Cheshire Cheese. I went willingly enough with him, though not without some foreboding of ill, for this was quite like the earlier excursion which ended in Sir John’s summons to the Goodhope residence. While there was no reason to expect such a conclusion to this evening, I well recalled that the earlier excursion had been undertaken to find a place for me in the printing trade. It seemed likely, though I put no question of it to Sir John in the course of our walk there, that some similar purpose had brought us out together again.

  And so it proved to be. An appointment had been made, unbeknownst to me. While I felt grateful to sit at the same table with so eminent a personage as Dictionary Johnson, and quite honored to shake his hand when introduced, I was nonetheless quite apprehensive as the two men talked, for I feared where such talk would lead. Why could I not simply stay with Sir John and Mrs. Gredge? Had I not made myself useful? What did I lack beyond years and stature?

  It was a blessing, at least, that James Boswell was absent. Sir John politely inquired after him, mentioning the long conversation he had had with him some weeks before.

  “Ah yes,” said Dr. Johnson, “he is returned to Edinburgh. He came down to London only to puff his book on Corsica.”

  “Is it a good book?” asked Sir John.

  Dr. Johnson considered that a trifle longer than the question warranted. At last he said: “It is not a bad book, though not half so good as he thinks it to be.”

  “Should I have it read to me?”

  “Do you intend ever to go to Corsica?”

  “Never,” said Sir John quite frankly.

  “Then there is no need.”

  Though both, I’m sure, would have disagreed, they were in some ways aUke. Dr. Johnson was the elder of the two men and the more set in his manner, yet both spoke with certainty and neither would brook argument in his field. (I have heard that Boswell gave it in his Life of Johnson that the “Great Cham” intended a career in the law but was prevented from it by poverty.) Sir John was blind, but Samuel Johnson seemed near to be, so scarred and misshapen were his eyes by scrofula. Both men were corpulent, though Dr. Johnson was huge, and each had arrived at his physical state by consuming great quantities of meat. So it was that night at the Cheshire Cheese.

  Each worked upon a slab of beef that would have generously fed two, Sir John washing it down with beer and Dr. Johnson with claret. I, with my smaller chop, could not keep up with them and made no effort to try. When they had finished, I was still eating. They ended their labors, belched mightily in appreciation, and resumed their conversation.

  “I recall, sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “that our last meeting was aborted when you were called away suddenly. That was the beginning of the Goodhope affair, was it not?”

  “It was, yes indeed. I was called away from here by my chief constable to inquire into the suicide of Lord Goodhope.”

  “And that suicide proved to be the murder of his half-brother.”

  “Just so.”

  “You have visited the trial. Has he a chance?”

  “None that I can see,” said Sir John. “His entire defense seems to be based upon his own weakness. He has laid the blame for it entirely on Lucy Kilbourne, who as you must know has already been convicted. It would seem that he has taken literary inspiration from Macbeth. Hers was the plot, he claims, and he but her tool in its execution. He has made much of the fact that Mr. Clairmont was first poisoned by her, but the surgeon who performed the autopsy was finally uncertain as to whether the poison given by Kilbourne or the shot fired by Goodhope was the certain cause of death. Both share in it equally.”

  “To cower, so to speak, behind a woman’s skirts would not seem to be a pose befitting a nobleman,” said Dr. Johnson.

  “Certainly not, and that is how it shall be viewed. But do not neglect, as some have, that Lord Goodhope is on trial for two murders. The second, of his former footman, was committed before many witnesses. The boy here, Jeremy, saw it plain. He grabbed onto Goodhope to pull him away, though it was after the fatal thrust was made.”

  “Did he? A brave lad.”

  I colored somewhat under Dr. Johnson’s scrutiny. In truth, I had not known that Sir John was aware of the part Meg and I had played in the struggle. Mr. Bailey must have told him.

  “Mr. Alfred Humber of Lloyd’s was called as the most eminent of those who witnessed the act,” said Sir John. “He gave a clear and unassailable account of it. Perhaps Lord Goodhope assumes that because the footman was a servant and had taken part in the plot, his murder will be forgiven.”

  BLIND JUSTICE

  “If all were known,” said Dr. Johnson, “some of his peers may have been comparably guilty. Perhaps that was his stratagem in pleading his case before the House of Lords.”

  “Yet from their temper,” said Sir John, “if that is his assumption, it is a dangerous one. They seem far more likely to view him as their scapegoat.”

  “He taking their sins with him to the scaffold—an interesting notion.”

  “But, Dr. Johnson,” said Sir John, “1 have a favor to ask of you …”

  Then followed what I had feared, for Sir John began to eulogize me not only as a brave lad, but also well educated and well spoken. I quite blushed with embarrassment at his praise. He explained that I had a trade taught me by my father, now deceased. “That trade is printing,” said he. “He can set type and is capable in all the attendant matters. Since he has made this beginning, I should like to see him continue. You know most, if not all, the booksellers, publishers, and printers of this city. I thought perhaps a word from you might see him on his way with one of them.”

  “If he is all that you say—and I am sure that he is, sir—no doubt a place can be found for him. And I should be happy to assist in it. Give me but a few days to ask about, and I shall arrange an appointment with the most suitable.” Then, leaning toward me, he looked at me as close as his scrofulous eyes would allow. “Will you make a good apprentice, young man?”

  “I shall try, sir,” said I, and somehow managed a smile.

  That night, when we had returned to the living quarters above Number 4 Bow Street, I said my good night to Sir John and prepared to make my way to my attic room. It came to me, as I took up the candle to light my way, that there might not be many more such journeys for me to the top of the stairs. Yet determined not to dwell on this unhappy matter, I put my mind to other things and my foot to the first step. It was then I was called back by Sir John.

  “Stay, Jeremy,” said he. “I think we should have a word together.”

  I returned to the kitchen, and with me came the candle, which brought Ught to the dark wherein he stood.

  “I sense you are disappointed,Sir?” said I, not wishing to own up to feelings that at that moment I had most keen.

  “Or perhaps it is that in my view you have a right to feel so,” he continued. “Think not for a moment that I do not value your qualities, nor appreciate how well they were put to use in this Goodhope matter.”

  “Then why …” I began strongly yet did not conclude, for I had sworn to myself to give him no reason to think I doubted his wisdom in this or any other matter.

  He waited, then satisfied that I would say no more, he addressed me thus: “Yes, why. That is a reasonable question.” He paused, plainly looking for the precise words, before continuing. “In my vanity, Jeremy, it would be very easy to ask you to stay in this house, to run my errands, to fetch and carry for me. You would
like that, I think. But I fear it would be wrong.”

  “Wrong!” said I, momentarily forgetting my resolve.

  He held up his hand. “For two reasons, Jeremy. First of all, there is yourself. Consider your situation. You are young, a bit more than a boy yet not quite a young man, and you are an orphan. Usually one in your situation would have little reason to hope for his future, particularly here in London. But you are remarkably keen witted and well educated for one of your years. More to the point, you have been trained in a useful and important trade. Though you will begin as an apprentice, your natural talents and earlier training will far exceed that of your fellows. You will shine. At this moment in your life, you will need such recognition. Your employer, whoever he may be, will move you along swiftly. You will be a journeyman well before your majority, and a master in no time after that. You will have a fine future. Why, no doubt you will be welcomed as a partner or have started your own enterprise while your old friend is still tied to the bench here at Bow Street, listening to the woeful tales of humanity as they pass before him.”

  He ended with a hopeful smile and a nod. He seemed earnest in his wish to convince me.

  “You refer to yourself here at Bow Street?” I had never before considered the possibility that he might wish to move onward. He was so complete in what he did.

  “I do, yes.”

  “You said there was a second reason, sir?”

  He sighed deeply. “Yes, Jeremy,” said he, “and that second reason is my own condition. I fear that owing to my good wife’s death, and the long dying that preceded it, I am in no state to give you what you want and deserve from me. I can scarce give myself what I require.”

  He stood silent for a moment, lost in his thoughts, as I was in mine. Finally: “You have been a good lad, Jeremy. I will continue to seek after your welfare, never fear. But it is time for you to make your own way in the world.”

  Emotion struggled with reason in my breast, but at last reason won. Sir John had spoken true.