‘Do you not see the black bandage?’ Nick grated. ‘He is blind.’ Nick twisted round as if to make a dash for it, only to snarl a curse at two other Bow Street Runners who appeared in the doorway, their pistols raised to his heart. From behind him came those dreadful soft tones.
‘Quite a useful catch on one hook. Casanova together with a felon escaped from Newgate, Nick Rathburn. I remember his voice.’
9.
Imitating Casanova, standing beside him, Nick Rathburn held his perfumed handkerchief to his nose in an attempt to mitigate the fetid atmosphere of Bow Street police court, packed with as motley a crowd of spectators as had ever collected there. It was two hours after their arrest at Spring Gardens, and elegant beaux and women of fashion, jostling jilts from Covent Garden and footpads, journalists and players who had hurried along after the theatre, to view the notorious Venetian in his misfortune, the sensational news of whose arrest was circulating London like wildfire.
Casanova had soon perceived Madame Corneleys together with Lord Pembroke in the small gallery at one side of the courtroom. Nick followed his gaze, not failing to notice how the fickle jade’s expression, when directed towards her lover of but a night or two since, was now bereft of sympathy. For all the elegance of his apparel, Casanova wore a bedraggled appearance, like some eagle of magnificent plumage dashed from the sky to earth, chin sunk forward as if he would never more raise his head. For his part Nick had accepted the situation with characteristic fatalism. His intuition all the time warning him disaster lay ahead, the Charpillon whore’s perfidious betrayal was less of a shock to him than it had been to Casanova.
The girl was in her place at the side of the court reserved for witnesses, sitting with a cloak around her, eyes fixed demurely on her folded hands, never raising her face until addressed by the clerk of the court or the justice. ‘You are accused, Signor Casanova, of conspiring with your companion to extort money with menaces from a certain Luke Edgworth Esquire.’ So the massive figure, the inevitable black bandage round his eyes, had begun the proceedings. ‘The accusation will be supported by several witnesses, including your proposed victim himself, together with the third accomplice in your nefarious scheme, Marianne Charpillon.’
‘I deny all that she may utter against me. I have given her nothing but marks of affection and she has answered with the basest ingratitude. I am placed in this wretched position through her and her alone. I am a foreigner in a strange country’ — Casanova had produced a sob in his throat palpably aimed at gaining sympathy — ‘what small omission, what trifling illegality I may have committed in error — ’
‘I am fully aware you may be strange to our customs and laws, though not so strange, it seems, to maladroit practices. Nevertheless, this court condemns no one out of hand. You will have every chance to defend yourself.’
Casanova had inclined his head in a little bow and the Blind Beak briefly outlined how, acting in his dual capacity of law-officer and justice, he had, on information received, secretly vouchsafed him by one Marianne Charpillon, set out to unmask the conspiracy directed at lightening the beguiled Mr. Edgworth’s pocket by a considerable sum. Describing the girl in the case, who was artfully to seduce the dupe, as a typical product of London’s criminal environment, he went on to explain how, undergoing a sudden change of heart, she had approached one of his officers laying information against Casanova. ‘You may say she is no better than those she has betrayed, but I choose to regard her action as an honest effort to reform herself from following further the path of crime — ’
Marianne Charpillon raised her gaze sufficiently to display the tears trickling down each cheek, which was too much for Casanova who yelled: ‘False tears, you traitorous bitch.’
‘You have forgot the money the gull paid her,’ Nick shouted above the uproar which broke out following Casanova’s violent outburst.
‘If you knew her as I did’ — the Venetian was exerting himself at the top of his lungs — ‘you would know she must have been rewarded by a goodly sum.’
Whereupon Marianne Charpillon promptly dropped her demure attitude, jumping up to scream, ‘You foreign filth. Try to blacken me because I would not give in to your lust, you depraved old goat.’ She turned to John Fielding, and, remembering to adopt her other pose of remorseful humility, begged him not to listen to her traducers. While Nick, realizing their accusation had struck shrewdly home, shouted in Casanova’s ear to restrain himself.
‘Do you stay still. Violence towards her will make it not any easier for us.’
Casanova relaxed his belligerent posture; his chin sank on his cravat again. The clerk of the court, Mr. Bond, leapt to his feet in an attempt to quieten the commotion, only the Blind Beak still grim and silent, and the hubbub subsided. Casanova raised his head in time to see Madame Corneleys and her companion quit their places in the gallery, their expressions supercilious and full of disgust. Order restored, Mr. Fielding, sternly warning Nick and Casanova that a repetition of such atrocious behaviour would result in their being flung forthwith into Newgate until their tempers were cooled, proceeded, ‘As you censure me for dealing with this witness and conniving with her against her former accomplices, I do answer you frankly. So determined am I to root out crime that flourishes so foully in our city I will make use of whatever means, provided they be in themselves not illegal, which do come to my hand; informers, ex-felons, whoever will side with me against evildoers.’
Marianne Charpillon gave evidence with her resumed humility, which many of her listeners could not but find affecting. She told how, receiving her instructions from Mr. Fielding accordingly and, with Mr. Edgworth’s collaboration, the snare of these she was to betray had been laid. It was when, coincidentally enough, she recounted how, the night before the trap was sprung so gratifyingly, the justice, during Casanova’s and Nick’s absence, had personally conferred with her upon last-minute details at Spring Gardens, her words sent Nick’s thoughts winging back to Chagrin so that every nerve of his being chilled to ice and his air of cynical self-possession dropped from him like a discarded cloak.
Chagrin was staring straight at him.
No sign of recognition showed in the glance bent upon him from the gallery; only the merest flicker of her eyes, which had not long since smiled tenderly into his, told him she knew him. He strove to will her to offer a sign she was not without sympathy for him in his extremity, but her features remained cold and expressionless. Then, as if she found the sordid tale too much for her sensibilities, she turned to her escort, a genteel-looking man at her side, and with a nod he followed her out of the court. Sick to the stomach Nick turned away, his eyes closed in abysmal misery. In that instant when he seemed to reach his nadir of wretchedness a flash of revelation pictured to him the past as it was in all its squalid bitterness. The birds of presentiment whose dark wings he had heard about his head when he had first joined the Spring Garden menage had come home to roost. That night, when his spirit had been so elevated that he had glimpsed, during his brief moments of enchantment with the girl who had just turned from him in aversion, a prospect of what might have been, he should have apprehended what must be his fate.
Now it was too late, long as he might with a longing from his innermost heart to be granted an opportunity of starting his life afresh. That fatalism and stoic cynicism ingrained in his very nature were undermined by a torrent of bitter regrets which swept through him, engrossing all his mind and emotions so that he had been half listening only to what was going on about him. A nudge in the ribs jolted him back to his immediate surroundings.
‘Do you hear that?’ Casanova’s whisper tingled with exulting excitement. ‘He is not here. Edgworth has failed them.’ Nick shot a look at where the clerk of the court bent beside the Blind Beak, his spectacles raised now and then in Marianne Charpillon’s direction. There was, indeed, no sign of Edgworth, and from the faces of the law-officers and the murmurs running round the courtroom Nick gauged his case had taken an unexpect
ed turn. Once again Casanova’s feverish mutter was in his ear. ‘Pox on the gull if he is not too shy to show his face. That must be it, and without his evidence that blind hulk cannot proceed against us.’
Mr. Fielding asked quietly: ‘Is Mr. Edgworth not yet present?’ A hush fell on the courtroom, necks craned and every eye was directed towards where the girl and the law-officers waited. ‘Mr. Edgworth, is he here?’ The clerk glanced round over his spectacles, gave a shrug and a sniff of disapprobation.
‘The witness has not put in an appearance, Mr. Fielding.’ The magistrate sat impassively for a few moments while Mr. Bond returned to his place to scratch away with his quill pen at the document before him. Now the hubbub among the onlookers rose excitedly, until Mr. Bond flung down his quill, irritably bobbing up to cry: ‘Silence in court. Do you be silent.’ John Fielding pursed his lips, waiting for the whispering and murmuring to die down.
‘Signor Casanova, do you stand forward. I am desirous you should give me your close attention.’ Casanova moved from his place, advanced, his step jaunty as of old, his fine feathers no longer wearing a bedraggled look, until he stood but a pace or two from the magistrate. ‘Despite the seeming blackness of the case against you, it appears it must break down for want of one person’s evidence, namely Mr. Edgworth, who, for reasons best known to himself, has failed to present himself here to prosecute his case.’
‘Perhaps, your honour,’ Casanova insinuated, ‘it is because the witness is as worthy as his accusation. Being no less a liar than she’ — flinging an accusing finger at Marianne Charpillon — ‘he is afraid to face me in public.’
‘You choose to forget,’ the Blind Beak pointed out chillingly, ‘I myself overheard what transpired at your house tonight.’
‘True,’ Casanova retorted brazenly, ‘you and your officers were trespassing on my premises, though that, of course, is by the way.’ A gasp ran round the court at the Venetian’s insolence. Nick, still in his place before the bar, raised his eyes upwards in an expression of dismay.
‘And you,’ Mr. Fielding lashed out witheringly, ‘trespass any further upon my patience, Signor Casanova, you will experience something of the less pleasant side of this court’s justice. Rest content with your good fortune tonight that your prospective victim, no doubt feeling reluctant to suffer the publicity involved, has decided to offer no evidence in this case. The charge against you is dismissed. You are bound over to keep the peace for the remainder of your stay in London.’
Casanova gathered his wits together sufficiently to answer with an assumed humility: ‘I thank your honour, and express my appreciation of the uprightness of justice as dispensed in your court.’ Reaching Nick, he paused as if to learn what was to be his companion’s fate.
‘As for the other accused, arrested as an accomplice of the person against whom the charge has been dismissed, the case is different.’ Now the Blind Beak was addressing Nick directly. ‘You are the same Nick Rathburn I did send to Newgate from this court six years since upon a charge of stealing. Four years ago you escaped from that prison, to which you must now return.’ Nick felt Casanova’s hand upon his shoulder. ‘Alas, disaster has overtaken our partnership and so here it ends. Adieu. Good fortune will still come out of this sorry business, never fear. As for me, I shall have to go back to Paris and the three-card trick again.’
Nick could not forbear a crooked grin as he took the other’s hand in good-bye and watched Casanova go out of the court and his life.
Nick was hustled out into a small bare room at the back, there to await conveyance to Newgate. Dejectedly he sat on a bench, guarded by an officer, until presently another returned, accompanied by the clerk of the court. Nick, imagining the carriage which would bear him to Newgate was awaiting, stood up slowly and was surprised to hear the clerk’s: ‘Mr. Fielding will see you in his room.’
Nick, cogitating furiously upon what could have prompted this unexpected interview, found himself on the first floor over the courtroom. The clerk rapped on the heavy door and Nick and his two guards followed him into the sitting room. A bright fire burned cheerfully in the grate and the massive oak table, reflecting the light from a heavy silver branch of candles, was cluttered with a decanter and glasses, books and parchment documents.
‘The prisoner,’ Mr. Bond announced unnecessarily, with hesitant glances between Mr. Fielding and Nick, whose handcuffs clinked incongruously against such warm, peaceful surroundings.
‘Remove his irons!’ And in a few moments Nick was massaging the blood back into his cramped wrists. ‘Sit at the table,’ next came that familiarly sibilant voice. ‘A glass of port wine? Mr. Bond will pour you some.’ The latter registered disapproval, while he proceeded to fill a glass from the decanter. ‘Now, would you, Mr. Bond, retire with the officers, for I have business to discuss with Mr. Rathburn,’ and the clerk’s eyes bulged behind his spectacles. ‘Station yourselves so that in the unlikely event should I need your assistance you will be within earshot.’
There was a long silence after the door had closed. Nick, his brow creased speculatively, sat, his drink untouched before him, a score of questions chasing round his head, and waited for what the Blind Beak had to say. ‘You have not tasted your glass,’ Mr. Fielding remarked, so that Nick gave a slight start, for it seemed impossible the blind man should have known whether or no he had touched his glass. They made a curiously contrasting picture, the one towering and enormously stout, beside the other equally tall but lean, his thin saturnine face alertly watchful, as opposed to the other’s plump, impassively quiescent. ‘I required you to know,’ slowly, soft protruding lower lip at the rim of his wine-glass, ‘I am not unmindful of your action which stayed that Venetian rogue’s sword. I am sensible you may have saved my life.’
‘Any other man, except perhaps Casanova,’ Nick replied, ‘would have done the same for a — ’ He broke off a trifle awkwardly and the other took him up.
‘For a blind man, you were going to say...?’ Nick murmured something and the other sipped his port unconcernedly. ‘Possibly you thought I should have commented upon your concern for my welfare tonight in mitigation of your offence, for I am reckoned a just man.’ He paused, a thumb and forefinger pinching his double chin reminiscently. ‘Some six years ago, however, I permitted myself to be provoked into committing a young offender to Newgate, when I should have been more patient. No doubt you recall the occasion in question?’
In passing he mentioned casually how he had argued the governor of Newgate out of putting a murderer’s price on Nick’s head, and how investigating that strange murder at the house near the prison he had exposed the wife’s lover as her husband’s slayer, the man presently arrested swallowing a fatal phial of poison. Mr. Fielding had moved beside the fireplace to warm a hand against the blazing logs. Nick took a sip of the port wine, smooth and rich to his palate, and leaned back. He had been unable to resist an inward, ironical smile at the thought now that it was Chagrin, not he, the other should have thanked that Casanova’s sword had not speeded to its deadly work. It was only Chagrin’s tender memory had stepped between him and his hatred of the Blind Beak.
He brushed away the recollection of her face as she had last looked upon him in his agony of degradation and forced himself to concentrate his attention on attempting to determine what ulterior motive lay behind the Blind Beak’s present demeanour towards him. He found it difficult to believe this was the same individual he had feared and hated, against whom he had wildly vowed vengeance, now seemingly so benign and warm-voiced, having little in common with the acid-toned justice of the probing mind able to penetrate the heart’s innermost secrets.
John Fielding drew to the crux of the business uppermost in his mind, yet conveying the impression he was concerned with nothing more important than holding his half-empty glass beneath his nose to savour the bouquet of the wine. ‘I am going to offer you a chance to carve for yourself a more commendable niche in the scheme of things than you have in the past ha
d opportunity of securing. I must tell you,’ his lower lip twitching ever so slightly, ‘my motives are not entirely altruistic.’ A shadow passed across his face. ‘It occurs to me,’ he continued, ‘it is I you may have sought to hold blameworthy for the death of a certain poor Doll Tawdry.’ At Nick’s hiss of indrawn breath, the Blind Beak turned to the fire, murmuring over his shoulder: ‘I recognized you by your voice, though it has grown a trifle less loud, as the champion of that wretched child. That her unhappy fate cannot in truth be laid at my door, who meant to save her from just such an end, you must know. She paid the price so many of her sisters in the same profession pay.’ His words fell slowly, like pebbles cast by a wilful child into a still pool, upon the heavy silence of the room.
‘What do you want of me?’ The lines of Nick’s saturnine features were inflexible and his eyes narrowed. The Blind Beak turned back to him and now he appeared to tower and expand in the light of the candles. Nick experienced the sensation that the other, despite his lack of sight, was watching him closely, exploring deep into the recesses of his mind.
‘Remember my word earlier tonight? I am so resolved to root out this rank weed of crime battening upon London I will welcome any ally: felons, informers, whosoever will join me in my fight.’ Nick stirred, leaned forward in his chair. The other hesitated, then went on. ‘A cardinal rule of mine,’ he said, ‘is quick notice and sudden pursuit. But,’ his voice rising slightly, ‘I grow daily more convinced prevention is better than cure; the only way I can so fashion my Bow Street Runners into an overpowering force is to possess foreknowledge of what depredation thief or sharper plans. Forewarned I shall be forearmed indeed.’
The Blind Beak Page 7