The Price of Murder

by Bruce Alexander

  Well have I learned the power lodged in those two words. Though the public’s opinion may be right or wrong, it is seldom that much can be said against it once it is formed. How then is it formed? Why, most often by those who write pamphlets on such subjects as fall before the public’s view. The purpose of these pamphlets, in fact, is to form the opinion of the public. That is why those who write them take on such airs, and why it is said up and down Grub Street by such as these that they are the true rulers of England.

  True enough, there are occasions, and many of them, when the writers of pamphlets have done good works, supporting this or that cause that needed and deserved support. In other instances, the pamphlets had attacked that which richly deserved it and brought the light of opinion upon that which many would have liked to keep hid. These are, in this way, battles of the pamphlets, wherein pamphleteers on either side of a question will rage and contradict each the other through their pamphlets, fighting to form public opinion.

  Nevertheless, the weakness of the pamphlet as a means of public discussion lies precisely in that. A pamphlet presents only one side of a question, argues only for innocence or for guilt. I have seldom (not to say never) read one which presented a balanced, detailed picture of any situation, or admitted that there was something to be said for both sides. Pamphlets tend, by their very nature, to be splenetic, rather than intellectual.

  The only place one may expect to find both sides of a question presented with a degree of fairness is in a court of law. That is what first attracted me to the law, and what, in spite of occasional disappointments, has kept me at it for a good many years. It would, however, be altogether vain to pretend that the law is uninfluenced by public opinion. On the contrary, it is indeed often a factor in ways that Sir John suggested. Public opinion will often bring a matter to trial with unseemly haste—that is, before one side or the other, or indeed both sides, are ready for the trial. And beyond that, public opinion may put undue pressure upon members of a jury, making those who must ultimately decide a case fearful of voting yea or nay in contradiction to the popular cause.

  Pamphleteers had first discovered Elizabeth Hooker when she disappeared. They brought her a sort of fame. They declared her the most beautiful and clever, the sweetest-natured, and above all, the most innocent of all maidens. How could such a one be stolen bodily from the streets of London? Was ours then a city so unsafe, populated by criminals, kidnappers, and the like? Et cetera. And then, when Elizabeth returned, telling her tale of abduction and imprisonment, word came to the writers of pamphlets, and they flocked to her, interviewing her (some did not even bother to do that), accepting her every word as truth and fabricating those she did not supply. Her captor, Mother Jeffers, looked every bit the wicked witch. Her imprisonment was like that of Rapunzel. Her escape from her tower was like unto that of a princess in some fairy tale set in the dim long-ago.

  In all, some six or seven pamphlets appeared before and during the trial. Each of them extolled the innocence of Elizabeth Hooker and denounced the guilt of Mother Jeffers. Had the pamphlets any great effect? They certainly did much to form public opinion in the matter. There was a great crowd that assembled in Covent Garden in her behalf the very evening of her return. And, on the eve of the trial, there was a torchlight parade from the Garden to Old Bailey in which the marchers carried signs bearing legends such as “Punish the old whore!” and “God bless the innocence of our dear Liz.” It was an altogether impressive showing and some eloquent speeches were made. But did all this influence the outcome of the trial? You must read the next chapter if you wish to discover that.

  TWELVE

  In which a death is discovered and an end is brought to all

  We thought it odd when Mr. Marsden failed to appear next morn—odd, that is, because he sent no word by the landlord’s lad, whose responsibility it was to carry word to us when Sir John’s clerk felt unable to put in his usual day of work.

  Mr. Marsden’s malady was a puzzle to us all. We had been assured that his was not a case of consumption. Still, his dry cough, which could, all of a sudden, explode into a racking, rasping spasm, was sometimes quite frightening and little different to us who heard it from that of the nasty illness that had half the population of London spitting blood upon the street.

  Once I had asked him how he felt on those days when he was too ill to report for work. He answered me straightaway.

  “Jeremy,” said he, “it’s the awfullest feeling you could ever imagine.”

  “Oh?” said I, “can you describe it?”

  “It’s like I can’t get enough air into my lungs, like they just won’t fill up, and I’m chokin’ to death right there in my room. A man can’t work when he feels himself in such a state, I’m sure you’d agree.”

  “Certainly he cannot.”

  He remained silent for a moment, reflecting. And then: “As jobs go, you know, this is a pretty easy one,” said he.

  “But an important one,” I responded.

  “Oh, I’ll grant you that—specially with Sir John being blind and all. But you’re used to writing letters for him and all kinds of other things. You’ll be able to do this job of mine better than I ever could.”

  What an odd thing for him to say! Was he thinking ahead to retirement—or . . . what? Yet I did not immediately ask him to explain, and he never gave me a later opportunity.

  All this I rolled over again in my mind as I made my way to Mr. Marsden’s dwelling place in Long Acre. What I learned there saddened me no end.

  When Mr. Marsden failed to respond to the landlord’s knock upon the door, the latter had let himself in with his key and found the clerk dead in his bed. His body was cold to the touch; there was no sign of breathing, nor of a heartbeat. Nevertheless, out of respect for one who had been a longtime resident, he sent for a doctor who lived nearby. The medico was still present and was filling out the papers that declared Marsden officially dead. I introduced myself and asked what he was listing as the cause of death.

  “A stoppage of the heart,” said he.

  “Indeed?” said I. “He had for some time been troubled by a difficulty of some sort in the lungs and had been under a physician’s care.”

  “Which physician is that?”

  “Mr. Donnelly.”

  “Mr. Donnelly, is it? Then he is but a surgeon.”

  “Not so,” said I. “He is a graduate of the University of Vienna.”

  He shrugged. “You may have him come and look at him, if you like.”

  “Impossible, I fear. This very morning he and his bride-to-be departed for Ireland.”

  “Then be satisfied with what I have put down here, for if this Marsden fellow’s heart had not stopped, he would, I assure you, be with us still today.”

  When I returned to Bow Street, having made arrangements with the embalmer in Long Acre, I passed the sad news on to Sir John. He said I had done right in selecting a plain, board coffin to bury him in. (“Little would it matter to him if we were to put his remains in some grander box,” said Sir John.) Mr. Marsden would be buried out of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, in the same churchyard where Margaret Mary Plummer, Deuteronomy’s niece, had been laid to rest. A collection would be taken among the Bow Street Runners, all of whom knew him, to defray the costs of burial.

  “I shall contribute something,” said I.

  “As you will,” said Sir John, “but if there is a need, by custom it would fall to me to supply the deficiency.”

  “How so?”

  “My annual stipend.”

  “Ah yes, of course—noblesse oblige.”

  He grinned in amusement. “Something of the sort. But Jeremy?”

  “Yes sir?”

  “It will fall to you today—and until I can find a permanent replacement—to work as Mr. Marsden’s replacement. I fear we’ve used up a good bit of the morning in this painful business. You must get on with the interviews of the prisoners and the disputants. I know not how many there are, but . . .”


  “Of course, Sir John.” I rose and started to the door.

  “Just one more thing, lad. What was it like, Mr. Marsden’s living quarters, I mean. Had he a good life, do you suppose?”

  What an odd question, I thought, and what a difficult one to answer. “Why, I know not quite what to say, Sir John. Though it was but a single room, it was a large one—not lavishly furnished but comfortable. There was wood for a good fire. What more does one need?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose, but . . . did he have many books about?”

  “Two or three law books, as I recall—all of them rather old.”

  “When he first came to me,” said Sir John, “he wanted to be a lawyer.”

  “The rest were all penny-dreadfuls—a great stack of them.”

  “Oh dear,” said he with a sigh.

  “And oh yes, there were a great many pipes about. He had quite a collection, so he did.”

  “He was a great one for his pipes, was he not? I daresay that they were well kept, too.”

  “Oh very. And another odd thing: When you entered the room, the first thing you noted was the smell of tobacco smoke. It seemed quite pervasive.”

  That seemed to satisfy Sir John. “Then perhaps ’twas not such a bad life, after all—a bit of dinner, a bottle of ale, and a pipe or two afterward. Ah, but he was alone. I could never live so.”

  As a consequence of Mr. Marsden’s death, I missed most of the trial of Mother Jeffers. We buried him upon the Monday the trial commenced. It continued through Tuesday and Wednesday, which made it quite a long session in court for those days. The length of the trial came as a result of Jeffers’s choice of counsel. She was wise enough (and wealthy enough) to have her solicitor engage William Ogden, to my mind the finest barrister in London, to plead her case. He was young, he was energetic, and his method was to throw out a net and bring in as many witnesses as possible. Then, having attacked the character—and therefore the testimony of Elizabeth Hooker—he launched a final assault in his summing-up before the jury.

  Louis Edgington, for the prosecution, had little more to work with than Elizabeth’s story of her abduction and imprisonment. She told it at great length, having embroidered it considerably since last I had heard it told. A couple of character witnesses were called, including her employer, Mr. Turbott, the silversmith. Perhaps Mr. Edgington thought this to be sufficient, what with mass meetings and torchlight parades in her behalf. Or perhaps he, a veteran of the courts, had simply grown lazy.

  In any case, Mr. Ogden assailed the testimony of each of them in cross-examination and spent most of the time quite rightly jabbing and cutting away at the story of Elizabeth Hooker. Though she was less believable by the time he had done with her, it could not be said that he had destroyed her testimony. The most deeply wounding shot of all was the last. William Ogden had turned his back upon her and walked away, as if to his seat. But, of a sudden, he turned and confronted her.

  “Mistress Hooker,” said he, “I have one last question for you, and it is this: Are you pregnant?”

  She was quite taken aback, unable for a while even to speak. Since this question was asked at the end of the first day of the trial, I was able to be present and can attest to her confusion.

  After sputtering and stuttering for some moments, she managed at last to declare her denial: “Why . . . why, no. I mean, I certainly . . . NO!”

  Mr. Edgington jumped to his feet, obviously intending to object. But, thinking better of it, he looked around him and sheepishly resumed his seat. His difficulty was that if he were to object to the question and get it stricken from the record, he would also lose her response, which, no matter how faltering, was certainly categorical. Nevertheless, Mr. Ogden had scored a point with the jury.

  As it happened, it was but the first of many points, for, once on the offense, he was virtually unstoppable. First, he brought Kathleen Quigley to the witness box, and he took her at length through the tale of the Easter dinner, the late departure of the two girls, and their separation in Covent Garden. Yet he went deeper with her than I had done, and got from her that though the two shared a bed in a small room down in the servants’ quarters of the Turbott residence and shop, there were often difficulties.

  “Was Elizabeth a good bed partner?” Mr. Ogden put it to her.

  “No sir, she weren’t,” said Kathleen. “She would oft sneak out the bed, dress herself, and let herself out with a duplicate key she’d got hold of.”

  “Did she offer you any account of her whereabouts during these secret expeditions of hers?”

  “No, not at first, but though she could go on less sleep than I ever could, eventually her hours began to take a toll in her work. She’d be dozing at her washing up and all. And so one day I just up and asked her where she went. ‘Oh, Kathleen,’ she says to me, ‘there’s a whole other world out there at night. It’s ever so much more fun than this one. Mostly, I go with my guide, my own special friend. He shows me round, wherever. And sometimes, I admit, we make mischief together.’”

  “And that was all she said?”

  “All that I can remember about that.”

  “Your witness, Mr. Edgington.”

  Truth be told, Mr. Edgington knew not quite what to do with her in cross-examination. So overwhelmed was he by what he had just heard from her that all he could manage were one or two perfunctory questions. The first, as I recall, was whether or not anyone else had noted Elizabeth’s nocturnal ramblings. Kathleen Quigley said that perhaps they had, but ’twas only to the cook she had ever mentioned it.

  “And what was her response?” asked Mr. Edgington.

  “She said to me, ‘That’s as may be, but what you say will get no farther than me.’ ‘Why not?’ says I. ‘Because,’ said she. “’Twould do no good, and would only get you and me both into trouble.’”

  Was there another question? I believe there was not, for I have a strong impression that he refused to pursue this further for fear of where it might lead.

  Next did Mr. Ogden call one Sally Ward, who referred to herself as a “hostess” at the Rose Tavern. She, it seemed, had seen Elizabeth Hooker at the Rose and in the company of two young men. “They were having a grand time,” said she. “Stayed to all hours, they did.” Mr. Edgington’s questions seemed intended only to get the “hostess” to admit that she was a prostitute. Her responses were such as to make it clear that she was not.

  A short parade of witnesses for the defense followed. Virginia Jeffers, the daughter, told of the inspection of her room, the taking of her frock, et cetera. The room was much different when it was viewed by Elizabeth. “But,” said she, “months back it had looked a bit more in that way Elizabeth had described.”

  That, of course, was interesting, yet Edgington had no questions to put to her in cross-examination; nor had he questions for Joan Simonson, a “resident” of the house, absent at the time of the search. She attested, in response to Mr. Ogden, that she had never seen the girl known as Elizabeth Hooker until she had given her testimony the day before in court.

  And on, at last, to Mother Jeffers. Hers was perhaps the shortest time spent in the witness box of all those called to testify. Mr. Ogden had but two questions he wished answered. The first was to give an account of her business.

  “Would you describe the house that you own and operate as a brothel?”

  “No, I would not,” said she.

  “How then would you describe it?”

  “As a lodging house, an inn. I rent out rooms to travelers.”

  “To travelers only?”

  “Well, I cannot be certain, but that is indeed how they strike me.”

  That brought a rumble of deep laughter from those in the courtroom. Had it continued, the judge, a Sir Hubert Timmons, would likely have cleared the courtroom. The second question to be settled was Mother Jeffers’s relation to Elizabeth Hooker. How did she answer that?

  “I had never seen that girl until she was brought to me in the company of Sir John Fielding and th
e Mr. Turbott who testified here yesterday.”

  “Never seen her?” Mr. Ogden pretended great shock at her response.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Your witness, Mr. Edgington.”

  The prosecution had at least thought out his questions in advance, but Mr. Ogden had thought them out, too. And, having done so, he had prepared her well when they came.

  “This house of yours,” said Mr. Edgington, “how was it you described it?”

  “As a lodging house, an inn for travelers.”

  “An inn, you say? Do you serve meals?”

  “We do. I do most of the cooking myself.”

  “How nice,” said Mr. Edgington. “But tell me more of those who stay at your inn. For instance, how do you know that they are travelers?”

  “Well, they seldom stay more than a single night.”

  There was a sudden explosion of laughter. Even Mr. Edgington unbent sufficiently to smile at that.

  “But occasionally they do stay longer,” added Mother Jeffers, apparently embarrassed by all the commotion and wishing to put an end to it.

  “Are these travelers mostly men and women?”

  She looked at him oddly. “Well, what else could they be?” More laughter.

  “Oh, what I meant to say was, do they appear in couples? A man and a woman, that sort of thing.”

  “Ah, well, that’s the usual, I suppose, but there are others, you know—men and men, and even women and women, occasionally.”

  And then, with great dramatic emphasis, Mr. Edgington demanded to know: “Just what do you believe they do in those rooms of yours, Mrs. Jeffers?”

  She drew herself erect and said to him quite indignantly, “Why, sir, I would not presume to guess. Would you have me spy upon my guests? That would be sinfully improper.”

  Again—and actually for the last time during the trial—there was sudden merriment at her response. “Sinfully improper” was the phrase that seemed to amuse most. Even Sir Hubert Timmons, the judge, joined in, and so it was quite some time before proceedings might continue. And when they did, it was evident that Mr. Edgington had been bested by the woman in the witness box. He briefly attempted to bring her to account for her refusal to identify Elizabeth Hooker and to describe their relations.