The Price of Murder sjf-10

by Bruce Alexander

  And, having spoken thus, she planted a kiss upon my cheek and ran for the door. There she waved and disappeared inside.

  So there I stood in Bow Street, awaiting the arrival of Mr. Patley, so that we two might leave together for the Post Coach House and catch the evening mail coach to Newmarket. I knew that there was time to spare till it departed; nevertheless, I was eager to be under way.

  Mr. Marsden had come to work early that day as if to assure Sir John and the rest of us that he was fit to do all that was asked of him. Even so, his voice was thin and wheezy, and he seemed to speak only when it was absolutely necessary. I was worried about him; and Sir John, though he voiced no doubts, did not demand much from him.

  The magistrate took me aside and told me that I might continue with my packing, for he accepted Mr. Marsden’s assurances that he was well enough to finish the week out. I was to alert Mr. Patley that all would be proceeding as planned.

  Before leaving, I sat down in Sir John’s chambers and took down a letter from him to the magistrate of Newmarket, explaining who Mr. Patley and I were and what purpose we had there in the town. He asked the cooperation of the magistrate in our efforts and assured him that we would respect his jurisdiction in all matters.

  When he had signed the letter, and it was sealed with his official seal, he handed it over to me and told me to tuck it away someplace safe.

  “Between us I will advise you only to make use of this if you get into trouble with his constables. You will then have to explain why you did not present the letter the moment you arrived.”

  “And what shall I tell him?” I asked.

  “Anything you like,” said he with a sly smile. “Lie, prevaricate, give him the best sort of story that you can make up quickly. But at such a distance, I warn you, I cannot help you much.”

  “I noticed that you said nothing in the letter about firearms. Am I to take it that that means we are to take none with us?”

  “You have taken it correctly,” said he. “Mr. Patley may take his club, and you, I suppose, that God-awful weapon you secretly carry with you wherever you go.”

  “The cosh?”

  “That’s it. But you may make use of them only in the most extreme situation. You understand that, do you?”

  I assured him I did.

  “And you will pass it on to Mr. Patley?”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Then Godspeed to you, Jeremy. Come back with Alice Plummer, and we’ll be much closer to solving this case. I believe that to be true with all my heart.”

  With such a leavetaking as that, you may well suppose that I was determined to do my very best, and I took the hand he offered me in both of my own and gave his a proper squeeze.

  “Good lad,” said he.

  I left his presence and took my place just outside the door to Number 4 Bow Street, my new portmanteau at my feet, and there I awaited the arrival of Mr. Patley.

  After bouncing along for the entire night, we came at dawn to Cambridge. Though not so grand as Oxford, the towers of the university there gave it the appearance of some fairy-tale city of a past that never was. Then, as we approached, the rays of the rising sun caught them so that for a minute or two they shone quite brilliantly. The early morning sun can make even London look thus enchanted.

  There we stopped, and, as the great bags of mail were tossed down, I myself descended to the cobblestones and helped down two of the passengers-an elderly man and his much younger wife. The couple had grumbled all the way from London at the roughness of the road and the speed of the horses. I was glad to be rid of them. I walked about then in the early morning cold, glad to have the chance to stretch my legs a bit. In the distance, I could see what I took to be the university buildings, yet I was not to get much closer to them than the coachyard, on that trip. Then came a call from the driver, and I hopped up into the coach and closed the door after me.

  Through it all, Constable Patley had slept. I, on the other hand, had dozed only fitfully, and that during those brief periods wherein the horses were walked that they might rest a bit. Yet we were not long beyond the outskirts of London when the constable had fallen into a dreamless sleep-no mumbling, no tossing nor turning; he was simply dead to the world for the duration of the journey. Later, I asked him how he had accustomed himself to sleeping so soundly under such conditions. He told me that it was a skill (if that be the word) he had developed whilst serving in the army. “Oftentimes,” said he, “’tis necessary to take your sleep whenever you have the opportunity-and such times come more often in the army than you might suppose.” Mr. Perkins, who had the same sort of ability, told me much the same thing: he developed it in the army.

  Not far out of town, we came upon the river Cam and followed it alongside until Newmarket was visible in the distance. It is no match for the Thames, as you may suppose; by comparison, it is hardly more than a stream. Nevertheless, the river and the bankside greenery are as pretty as any could wish. Indeed, some of the scenes I saw along the way were quite beautiful in the quiet way of the English countryside.

  As it grew brighter, Mr. Patley began to stir. He stretched, flailing round him slowly in ever-widening circles. He blinked his eyes open, saw that we were alone there in the coach, and let out a moan.

  “Ohhh, Jeremy, I’ve a terrible piss must be taken.”

  I banged upon the ceiling of the coach and felt the conveyance grinding to a halt most immediately. Yet Patley did not wait for a complete stop. He jumped out the door as soon as it was safe and ran to the side of the road.

  “Why didn’t your friend do his business back in Cambridge like the rest of us?” the driver called down to me.

  “He was asleep,” was my reply.

  “Asleep, was he? Well, I’ve half a notion to leave him where he’s now standin’.”

  “You do that,” said I, “and you’ll have Sir John Fielding to answer to back in London.”

  “What’s he to do with you two?”

  “You’d find out soon enough.”

  I would go no further with my threat. Truth to tell, I thought perhaps I’d gone too far already. We were headed into territory in which Sir John’s name had not quite the weight that it carried round Covent Garden. From this point on, I promised myself that I would use his name much more sparingly. But now was Constable Patley returned, and there was no need to wrangle further with the driver. He hopped inside and closed the door after him.

  “Ah, I’m a new man,” said he.

  “I hope not,” said I, “for I liked the old one pretty well.”

  “Let me tell you something, Jeremy, old lad. There’s few in this world who I owe anything to-but you’re one of them.”

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “I can write as well as any of the constables now, which ain’t to say I can write perfect. And I can even read a bit now. It’s a great time-passer, it is.”

  I, who had no difficulty passing the time, had never thought of reading in quite that way before. What he had said struck me as funny-and so I did what may have struck him as rude: I laughed. Yet he took no offense.

  “No, it’s true,” said he. “You take a fellow like me, he gets out of the army, and all he knows to do when he ain’t workin’ is go out and drink as he used to do in the army. And y’see that ain’t right, for it’s too easy to fall in with the same element you’re keepin’ an eye on whilst you’re on the job-the whores and the robbers and such-if you get my meaning, and that ain’t right.”

  “Oh, I understand,” said I-and indeed I did. ’Twas the first time I had considered the matters he spoke of.

  “Now I know for fact that readin’ ain’t just to pass the time. You got all your learning, which is considerable, out of books, didn’t you?”

  “Well, not quite all. A lot that isn’t facts and some that is I got from Sir John.”

  “And him,” he laughed. “He was just born with it, I reckon.”

  “Indeed,” said I, “he must have been.”

  “But
whenever I come to a word I don’t know, I just take a look into that Johnson dictionary you gave me-and there it is. I know what it means, and I know how to spell it proper. I want you to know, Jeremy, that giving me that dictionary is about the most considerate thing anybody ever did for me. And I’ve read that Robinson Crusoe book twice through, I have!”

  “Well, it’s about time then that you got another, don’t you think so?”

  “You just tell me what to get, and I’ll get it.”

  “Well,” said I, “let me give some thought to that.”

  “You do that.”

  Then did Constable Patley sit back, blushing with excitement at having said his piece. He nodded a good, firm, manly nod.

  “I just wanted you to know.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Patley.”

  We finished the rest of the trip to Newmarket in complete silence-or near it.

  Yet, as we entered the town of Newmarket, Mr. Patley pointed off to the left and called my attention to the heath just beyond us.

  “It’s there they run the race,” said he. “It’s the longest and the fastest, and the only one that’s run on a permanent course.”

  Of the events that followed-our arrival and search for the Good Queen Bess, and our disappointment at learning Mr. Deuteronomy and his party had not yet arrived-I shall have nothing to say. Such mundane details have little place in such a report as this, for they seem only to clutter the narrative. Let me begin this section, rather, with our first survey of the race site. We were, I suppose, searching for Alice Plummer, yet neither Mr. Patley nor I expected to find her quite so immediate. And, truth be known, I do believe that both of us would have been disappointed if we had found her quite so soon, for we must then have turned round and taken her back to London without ever having viewed the great race for the King’s Plate. I had told Patley of Mr. Deuteronomy’s bold boast that he would win, riding Pegasus, and we were both greatly impressed by that. We would see him win-sister or no.

  In my case, after we had rested ourselves a bit in the room provided us, we went out to get a proper view of the race course and a sense of the town. Newmarket itself was not much-nor is it today, if what I have heard of it still pertains. The surrounding countryside is pretty enough, but the buildings in the town have to them a rather decrepit air, as if a good, strong wind might blow them all down. The main street in town is the same road we took from Cambridge. It is withal, as its name implies, a market town- and probably has been such for near a thousand years. There is a central square, and in it, foodstuffs-fruit and vegetable-are sold. Though not so grand as Covent Garden, I do believe a greater variety of growing things are sold there. Yet what the town of Newmarket may or may not be matters little, for it is known not so much as a town (there must be half a hundred or more like it) as it is a location for the greatest horse-racing to be found in all of England. Without its race course, it would be simply another market town.

  The King’s Plate race was still a few days into the future, yet there seemed to be more people in the area surrounding the course than in the town proper. Was it always so? Their number would doubtless increase on race day. Where had they all come from? Where did they sleep? These visitors must have surely doubled the population of the town already.

  As we merged with the crowd, Mr. Patley and I noticed a number of familiar faces from Bedford Street and Seven Dials in London: whores and pickpockets they were, and in such number as I had not seen before. The whores flirted one with another. The pickpockets dipped their hands each in the other’s coats and waistcoats. It was a carnival for thieves. We came at last to a rail fence that marked one of the limits of the course. Coaches and carriages were parked there, hard by, and the dukes and earls stood atop them, observing the activity out on the track through telescopes and spy-glasses. Each seemed to boast a surrounding retinue of a sizable number. There was a good deal of teasing comment that passed back and forth between them. It was for the nobles, as I saw, that this pageant was played out. But what was it they watched so intently out there on the course? I put the question to Mr. Patley.

  “I don’t rightly know,” said he. “I reckon, though, that they’re studying their horses out there-not so much for speed as for gait and behavior on the course and whatnot. There’s a lot to learning a course like this one.”

  “Why this one, especially?”

  “Well, because of its length and the many rough places out there on the heath.”

  “Not an easy course then, eh?”

  “Oh, no. Ain’t a bit of it easy.”

  We had a good view of the horses on the track-though not so good as the nobles and aristocrats atop their vehicles. We had found a spot between two coaches, somewhat protected from the crowd. From it, I watched and took in all that Mr. Patley had to say about the racing of horses in general, and the racing of them at Newmarket in particular. In the course of my days in Newmarket, he passed on to me a wealth of information. It all began, as I recall, with a question I asked about the number of horses out on the track. There was a great swarm of them following those on which the owners had their spy-glasses trained. They were moving along at a ragged pace and with no style whatever. It was almost as if this second line of riders were hoping that some reflected glory might be cast back upon them from the first.

  “They can’t all be running in the King’s Plate race, can they?” I asked Mr. Patley.

  “No, not at all. But it’s one of the faults of this race that there’s far too many in it.”

  “They put no limit on the number?”

  “Well, in a practical way I s’pose they do. They put the entry fee up so high, there’s not so many can afford it. But those who can are free to get out on the course and ride round it as often as they like.” He smiled and shook his head. “It makes for a pretty crowded field, don’t it?”

  “It does indeed.”

  We watched on as the leaders and the pursuing line of stragglers reached the farthest point from us. Then did Patley lose interest (or so it seemed to me) and began looking up and down the rail fence, as if for something he knew had to be there. Having found it, he pointed down to our right.

  “There, Jeremy, just take a look.” There was a line of horses, with overweight riders perched on top awaiting the arrival of the mob of horsemen so that they might join them.

  “What about them?”

  “Well, just look. They’re waiting to take their trip round the course, and there’s none checking to see if they got any right to be here at all, much less to tour the track.”

  “So right now anybody could get on the course?”

  “As long as he’s got a horse to ride.”

  I looked them over, those waiting impatiently for the mounted mob to make the circle complete. I had one more question, the last for a while.

  “Who are those people waiting their turn on the track?”

  “Local gentry.” He spat it out as if it were an oath or an obscenity.

  As near as I could tell, the entire event was staged simply for the entertainment of the local gentry. The nobility-that is, those who owned the horses running the race-seemed to take it all quite earnestly.

  When Mr. Patley announced his hunger to me, I realized that I, too, was hungry, and suggested we return to the Good Queen Bess where we might find us something in the tap-room. And so we started back, pushing our way through the crowd, which had grown a bit during our time at the rail. We pressed on, hands in our pockets, holding tight to our money bags. Just then did we spy the early odds posted at a turf-accountant’s stall. ’Twas Patley saw it first; he gave me a proper nudge in the ribs and pointed out the slate to me.

  “There,” said he, “that might be of some interest to you, Jeremy.”

  And, indeed, it was of interest-though not so much for the entries it carried as for the one it did not. I studied the list, then, having noted an omission, I studied it again.

  “Mr. Patley,” said I. “Pegasus is not here on the slate.”

 
“I see he ain’t,” said he, attaching little importance to the fact.

  “But why should Mr. Deuteronomy tell us he would be here, and then fail to arrive?”

  “Oh, if he said he’d come, I for one believe he’ll be here. You see, Jeremy, they can’t post odds on a horse unless he’s present and officially entered.”

  I nodded, accepting Mr. Patley’s explanation, yet not quite put at ease by it. I wondered what it was had held them up.

  The turf accountant’s stall was at the very fringe of the area surrounding the race course. We went from it quickly through town and arrived at the Good Queen Bess in less time than it would take to tell.

  “I believe I’ll inquire at the desk and find out if Mr. Deuteronomy has yet arrived to claim his room,” said I.

  “Do as you like.”

  Thus did we companions separate-I to make my inquiry, and he to the tap-room. Having no luck at the desk, I turned away, and who should I then spy entering the front door of the inn but Deuteronomy Plummer himself.

  We greeted warmly with much hand-slapping and back-slapping. He asked me if all was right with my room, and I assured him that it was. Then did I inquire after his trip to Newmarket.

  “We took it nice and slow,” said he. “Arrived just as intended.”

  “And Pegasus is in good fettle?”

  “Ah, ain’t he though! Every morning I give him a good talking-to, telling him just how he’s going to win this one.”

  The idea of a conversation with a horse struck me as rather funny: I laughed, again in spite of myself. For his part, Mr. Deuteronomy was somewhat taken aback at my response.

  “You think he don’t understand me? Well then, sir, you think wrong. Ain’t a smarter horse in the world than Pegasus!”

  “Well, I’m sure that’s true, but. .” I left the sentence unended and hanging in the air. “Mr. Plummer, could you wait just a moment? I’ve a companion in the tap-room. He’s a Bow Street Runner, and a great enthusiast of your riding. Let me get him, and-”

  “No, I’ve got to get these horses stabled,” said he, interrupting, “and watered and fed. Bring him to the track real early tomorrow. We’ll be out there at dawn, or close to it, learning the course.”