The Price of Murder

by Bruce Alexander

  “These are specifically intended for dueling, then?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “One last question. Why were the pistols separated? That is, why did I carry one of them into your shop looking for its mate?”

  “That is our policy here at Griffin. We do not take into our charge any pistol or rifle on which we are not doing repair work of some sort. And we do not sell consignment. In that way our liability is lessened greatly.”

  “Thank you then, Mr. . . . Mr. . . .”

  “Blythe.”

  Having all that from him, I turned to find that Mr. Deuteronomy had packed up the pistols in the case and was waiting with it for me by the door. We left the shop together, and I cheered considerably when he did turn to me and declare:

  “I must say, young sir, that you got more from that fellow Blythe than I would have thought possible. How you will fit it all together, however, I’ve no idea.”

  “Nor have I!” said I, laughing. “I simply do as Sir John does: I ask questions until a pattern begins to emerge.”

  He joined his laughter with mine (which I thought a bit excessive) and kept it up a bit longer than necessary. Then did I notice that he seemed to be drawing away from me. Slightly alarmed at this, I put the matter to him quite directly:

  “Where are you going, sir,” said I to him, “with those dueling pistols?”

  “Why, I . . . I thought to show them round a bit that we might find us out who these belong to, really. To do this right I’ll need to borrow the pistols for a day or two.” He hesitated, and then he added more aggressively: “Besides, ’twas me put up the money so as we could get them out of the shop, was it not? I ought to be able to take them anyplace that I want.”

  “Your logic is faulty,” said I.

  “My . . . what?”

  “It’s true that you put up the money to claim the repaired pistol, but you took both of them. If, by keeping it overnight, you honestly believe that you can find your way to this Bennett, or to whomever it was sent him there to Griffin’s to get that pistol repaired, then I’ll let you try. But I’ll thank you to give back to me the one I brought to the gunsmith. Do you accept those terms, for otherwise I’ll claim them for the Bow Street Court in the name of Sir John Fielding—and you’ll either give them up, or face a charge of impeding an investigation and have a year for yourself in Newgate.”

  I said it all as coldly as ever I could. Mr. Deuteronomy had better believe me, for I believed myself. And indeed I could tell that I had made quite an impression upon him, for he had said naught during my speech, neither did he attempt to respond immediately. He simply stared at me, shocked and dumbfounded.

  “You’d do that to me, would you?” said he at last.

  “Without another thought,” said I. “Do you accept my terms?”

  Saying nothing, he went down on his hands and knees right there in Bond Street at the doorstep of the shop of Joseph Griffin, gunsmith; and there, as a crowd gathered, he opened the case, took from it one of the pistols, and handed it up to me. I pocketed it. The crowd, behaving as crowds will, laughed at what they had seen. Muttering and buzzing about it, they began to drift away. I offered Mr. Deuteronomy a hand up. He was slow to accept it.

  “ ’ Twas not my intention to shame you,” said I. “Simply to show you that I was serious in the matter.” Yet that, too, was said in a tone of seriousness that may have sounded cold to any listener.

  Nevertheless, he took my hand, and I helped him to his feet.

  “You made your point,” he replied.

  “I’ve a question for you. Since I’m trusting you with court materials, I must know where you live.”

  “In the Haymarket,” said he, “just above the coffee house.”

  No wonder he had arrived there so quickly!

  “And another,” said I. “What are your plans regarding the Newmarket race next Sunday?”

  “Ah, you heard about that, did you? Well, I’ll be there to ride Pegasus, and we’ll win—damn me if we don’t!” He hesitated, then blurted out. “And you can tell your Sir John another thing. Tell him that I expect to find my sister there.”

  That did little more than confuse me. How would he find her so far away? And why should he find her in Newmarket, of all places?

  “Explain that, if you please,” said I.

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Do it anyway.”

  He came close and lowered his voice. “Once, whilst in her cups, she told me that she had met Maggie’s father in Newmarket at the races. Maybe she thinks she’ll find him there again. Maybe she already has.”

  With that, he wheeled about and bolted off in the direction of the Haymarket. In a sense, he seemed to be daring me to catch him if I could. I did not accept his challenge, but turned and started back to Bow Street. I had much to tell Sir John, as I well knew. I was certain, too, that he would be most interested in that last bit of intelligence that Mr. Plummer had given us.

  So much had happened through the morning that I thought the day near done by the time I reached Bow Street. There was no telling from the gray sky above just what time it might be; I had not seen the sun the whole day through. Yet as I approached Number 4, I heard a commingling of sounds that told me that it was not near so late in the afternoon as I had supposed. There was, first of all, the rumble of many voices together, and then a beating of wood upon wood and one loud, low voice (unmistakably that of Sir John) that stilled the rest. It could not be much after one o’clock. Then came the sound of another voice—high, sharp, and hectoring in tone. Good God! It was Clarissa! What had been threatened once or twice had come to pass. When I was unavailable to take the place of Mr. Marsden, Sir John found that Clarissa had not as yet left for the Magdalene Home, and so did draft her for duty as his clerk. She, of course, would have been delighted. I wondered how she had done—and managed to wonder it without feeling that sense of anxiety that heretofore had always come in those situations in which I imagined us in competition, each with the other. I no longer supposed that, though just what our true relationship might be, I would have been at a loss to say. Engaged to be engaged? What, in all truth, could that mean?

  I slipped into the last row of the courtroom, attracting no notice at all. If I were recognized, it would only have been by those whores and layabouts who saw me doing the day’s buying in Covent Garden. I had become as one easily passed over by then, unnoticed in the background. That pleased me somehow, though I should be at a loss to explain why it did.

  The case before Sir John was one of those disputes between merchants in Covent Garden that he was known to settle so evenhandedly. The disputants were a man and a woman, as more often than not was the way of it. The man had a choice plot just at the entrance to the Garden through Russell Street, and he meant to hold on to it—in spite of the challenge put to him by the woman. (A Mrs. Penney, as I recall.) It seems that she approached the vendor (whose name I cannot now for the life of me remember), and offered to buy the space from him. Her offer of cash suited him, and he gave his consent orally. She presented him with a bill of sale that her solicitor had drawn up and asked him to sign. Reading the document carefully, he saw that there was no provision for him to have a space from which to sell his fruits; he had assumed they would trade spaces, and he, having the more desirable one, would get the cash amount in addition. By no means, said she. A place for him to sell his goods had not been under discussion. What he did after selling his place to her was up to him, but he had agreed to sell, she said, and now he must do that. He refused, and hence the two disputants wound up in magistrate’s court before Sir John Fielding.

  Sir John asked a few questions in order to get some feeling for the two disputants. She, needless to say, was the more aggressive of the two. Her plan, it seemed, was to sell raw produce from both locations. When it came time to interrogate the second disputant, Sir John asked the man if he contested any of the facts that Mrs. Penney had presented; he did not. He asked him then how he had come by the plot
in question, and was told that it had been in his family for years. How many years? Fifty, at least—his grandfather had bought it from a widower without children. And why had the greengrocer agreed to sell it now? Sickness in the family, said he. At that, Sir John nodded and asked to have the bill of sale that was in contention. Mrs. Penney handed it up to Clarissa, who, at Sir John’s request, read it carefully.

  To her, he said, “It is just as has been presented?”

  “It is, Sir John.”

  “Then give it me, please.”

  She complied, and the magistrate took the bill of sale and ripped it into as many pieces as was convenient.

  “There,” said he, “that is what your bill of sale is worth, Mrs. Penney. You may have another made up, which includes a trade of the two properties as well as a sum of money, for his property is unquestionably more valuable than your own.”

  His decision threw the courtroom into mutters and mumbles. There came male laughter and strident female objections. All was in turmoil until one voice broke through and dominated all the rest.

  “I do not think that altogether fair, Sir John. After all, a solicitor’s time costs money, does it not? Could the original bill of sale not have been amended to include those stipulations you demand? Of course it could. Yet now—now of course it could not. And another thing . . .”

  That voice, reader, you many suppose was that of a dissatisfied Mrs. Penney. Nevertheless, if you supposed such, then you would be wrong, for it was none other than our Clarissa who spoke out so boldly against Sir John.

  Even I, who knew her so well, was surprised at this intemperate outburst. Yet if I was surprised, the rest in the courtroom were quite stunned. All of a sudden, a pall of silence fell over the seated crowd. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Oh, they themselves had often misbehaved—indeed they had done so just now—like children in school. Occasionally, though very rarely, one of their number was so rowdy that he (or she) would be expelled from the courtroom, but the usual thing was simply to quiet down when Sir John banged with his gavel and called for order. All this, certainly—but never, never anything like what all had just witnessed: criticism of the magistrate by the very clerk who sat beside him. This was outright rebellion and must be put down. But how? Not only had the crowd fallen quite still, but also those in my row shifted forward in their seats and seemed to hold their breath. I felt it was done so in every row and corner of the place.

  Clarissa, too, had noticed the sudden silence and the sense of anticipation all around her. She was made uneasy by it but bravely (if a bit foolishly) attempted to continue.

  “And another thing . . . Sir John . . . we know not the financial circumstances of the woman in the case, do we? She may be . . . that is . . . she may be a widow . . . She may be . . .”

  And there, having noted the reaction of the crowd and feeling greatly oppressed by it, she, at last, sputtered to a halt. For the better part of a minute, she said nothing—nor, for that matter, did anyone else speak up. But then, addressing Sir John, she spoke up in a much smaller and less confident sort of voice.

  “I’m making a fool of myself,” said she, “am I not?”

  He sighed and nodded. “I fear so.”

  Even from my place in the last row I could see tears glistening in her eyes.

  I do believe that at that moment she might have jumped up and run from the place had Sir John not restrained her with his hand upon her own.

  “Please forgive me,” said she.

  “You are forgiven.”

  Then, once again, the unexpected: quite spontaneously, the entire court burst into applause. Sir John, certain that he wanted such demonstrations never again repeated, simply ignored this one. He picked up his gavel and beat thrice upon the tabletop.

  “The court is dismissed,” said he.

  And so they waited, he and Clarissa, until their audience had filed out in ones, twos, and threes, and at their own pace. Once again, Sir John restrained her with a hand upon hers. But once the crowd had gone, and he removed the restraint, she was up and away in a matter of seconds. She quite flew through the door that led to the “backstage” area, and, through it, to the stairs to our kitchen above. Indeed, even before she was out the large room and into the hall, she had a kerchief in hand and had begun weeping.

  “Come ahead, Jeremy,” Sir John called out, rising. “Let’s go to my back room and talk of your morning.”

  “How did you know I was here?” I responded.

  “I not only knew you were here, I knew also when you arrived. Just at the beginning of that sorrowful mess with Mrs. Penney, was it not?”

  “It was, but how could you tell?”

  “A certain step you have—a certain squeak in the shoes perhaps. I know not what it is, but it is enough to tell me when you enter a room.”

  We left the courtroom by way of the door through which Clarissa had exited a minute or two before. I knew not quite what to do with regard to her. I was, first of all, quite proud of her for admitting her mistake and asking Sir John’s forgiveness before all, as she had done; and a good part of me wished to go, find her, and comfort her. Yet I did naught, for, on the other hand, I owed a greater debt to Sir John; and he had, with little difficulty, convinced me that all our efforts must be concentrated upon finding the killer of Margaret Plummer.

  “I’m sure you perceived what had happened,” said Sir John as we entered his chambers. “Mr. Marsden fell ill not long after you left to meet that Plummer fellow. A coughing fit it was, yet I have never known one quite so violent and long-lasting. I fear for the man, in truth I do. I was about to send Clarissa to bring you back. But then she prevailed upon me to allow her to fill in for the clerk. It is not a demanding job, certainly. The real work of it is in the record-keeping and filing done afterward, so I thought, why not? I gave her a bit of instruction and sent Marsden home. The poor fellow had no voice left, or next to none. But it was a light day. There were two cases of public drunkenness and another of pissing in the street, and one other dispute besides the one to which you were witness—just the sort of easy day to try her out. What could have possessed the girl? Ordinarily, she is quite polite—but strongheaded and willful, there can be no doubt. What could have possessed her?”

  What indeed? I decided that Sir John’s question should be answered.

  “Perhaps, sir,” said I, “she supposed herself at table with us in the kitchen where all speak their minds and give their opinions as they will.”

  “Perhaps . . . but how could she be taken in by that Magdalene Penney? That woman has boasted she will own all of Covent Garden in five years.”

  “Does Clarissa know that?”

  “Well . . . no . . . I suppose she doesn’t. Still, that’s no justification for arguing one of my decisions with me.”

  “No, certainly not, Sir John.”

  “I must talk to her about that.” He sighed—unhappily, as it seemed to me; perhaps he was thinking of what he might say to her. But then did he rouse himself to say: “Do tell me what you accomplished this morning. I’ve a feeling you did well. Now, don’t tell me that I’m wrong.”

  And I certainly did not: I told him all, and he seemed well satisfied by my report. He applauded my threat to Mr. Deuteronomy, saying that a year in Newgate seemed justified in such a case as this one. He also thought it justifiable to allow Deuteronomy to “borrow” the pistol in its case, so long as we knew where to find him and get it back. Yet Sir John became most excited when he learned that Deuteronomy would be riding at Newmarket on Sunday and that he thought there was some chance his sister would also be there.

  “He said that, did he?” asked Sir John. “Do you feel that he was serious about this?”

  “Oh, I do,” I assured him, “for he told me that once when she had been drinking she told him that she had met Maggie’s father there at Newmarket. She’s a simple soul, sir. She probably believes it will all happen again just as before.”

  “Perhaps,” said he, “yes in
deed, perhaps.” He seemed troubled; nevertheless, I knew not what seemed wrong with what I had just told him. Yet he explained: “The trouble is with the magistrate of Newmarket, you see. It could be difficult to arrest Alice Plummer, or even to remove her to London for questioning. The magistrate seems to feel that unless a crime be committed in Newmarket, it is no true crime at all. I have had dealings with him before, but each time matters had to be negotiated. Oh, he can be—”

  Sir John halted at that point, for a voice, a very familiar one, intruded. From the sound of Clarissa’s voice and her hastening footsteps, I could tell she was most agitated.

  “Sir John! Jeremy! I’ve news for you!”

  The magistrate, now risen from his chair, seemed perturbed, unhappy with the interruption. “What is it, child?”

  “Elizabeth is missing.”

  FIVE

  In which Sir John seeks a thread tying Maggie to Elizabeth

  It became clear, after a few moments of awkward sputtering, that Sir John had no notion of just who Elizabeth might be. Clarissa and I set about to explain it to him, yet, between us, I feared that we may only have made things a bit worse.

  “Now, please, both of you,” said he, “let me see if I have this properly now. Elizabeth is a girl whom you knew back in Lichfield,” now addressing Clarissa. “Yet about the time you came here, so did she. Is that correct?”

  Of course, it was. Nevertheless, he took us painstakingly through all the information that we had heaped upon him, getting confirmation for each bit and fact until it became evident to me that he had used this as a device to slow things down a bit.

  “And you say that she has now gone missing?”

  “Indeed she has,” answered Clarissa. “Her mother brought this distressing news just now.”

  “Is she here?”

  “Oh, indeed sir—and terribly distressed.”