The Bride of Newgate

by John Dickson Carr

  A new voice, speaking as though out of the air, answered him softly.

  “Then suppose,” it said, “you were to be offered fifty?”

  The candle flames had burned down to mere blue hoverings, with a red spark inside each, above masses of grease. Darwent felt his heart contract, and a breath of pure superstitious terror, before he realized the truth.

  A jailer’s keys rattled. The voice which had spoken, outside the grill, was a thin, dry, elderly voice, very precise.

  “My name is Crockit, Elias Crockit,” the voice continued. “I am one of those who have been obliged to wait. I offer fifty pounds to the prisoner if he will do a small service which cannot trouble him.”

  “Fifty pounds!” breathed Darwent.

  “Not a penny more,” the dry voice warned.

  To the amazement of the Ordinary, Darwent did not merely rise up. He sprang to his feet, stung and strengthened by nervous energy and brandy. He stood amid the straw, with an air of lazy lordliness that ill matched his dirt and bloodshot eyes. That spurt of strength would last for only an instant, but it sufficed.

  “You may admit Satan,” said Darwent.

  Chapter IV

  The Bride of Newgate

  CLANG SMOTE THE DISTANT, muffled bell at St. Sepulchre’s Church. It rang out three strokes. In less than an hour, now, there would be daylight.

  Mr. Crockit, holding out horizontally a neat leather case which contained writing materials, had just finished a concise, blunt explanation of what he wanted. Fresh candles for the lanterns had been bought from the turnkey Blazes.

  “Please come in, Miss Ross,” the little shriveled lawyer called. “The condemned man has consented.”

  “And I should think so!” a woman’s voice was heard to mutter.

  Caroline Ross entered the cell with (outwardly) an air of careless indifference. Over her white satin gown she had drawn a long gray-silk cape, lined with scarlet, and its peaked hood was now thrown-back to reveal the fair complexion, the short brown ringlets, and the long-lidded blue eyes.

  Caroline’s white satin slippers had sunk into the mud of the floor. But this, she afterwards confided, was not what turned her stomach and almost made her run away. It was the reek of a condemned cell.

  “We must make haste, Mr. Crockit,” she said, singling out that unhappy gentleman and pouncing. “Don’t you find this delay really intolerable?”

  “Patience, madam! We must have patience.”

  Caroline barely glanced at the prisoner; he was not worth noticing. She did not look at him now.

  “He … does not have to touch my hand, I hope?”

  “The bridegroom,” answered Mr. Crockit, “must put the ring on your finger. I have the ring here.” He tapped the leather case. “It cost only three and fourpence,” he added dryly. “You need not wear it long.”

  “Damme, m’dear,” growled a heavy, rather sullen voice from beyond Caroline, “can’t you move in and make room for a fellow? I want to see this.”

  “Ah, and Sir John Buckstone,” Mr. Crockit said hastily. “Please enter!”

  “Thanks, Little Small-Clothes,” observed the voice, with a touch of sarcasm. “Kind of you to let me. Well, what have we got here?”

  And Buckstone, Jack Buckstone of legend, ducked his high, buff-colored, heavy-crowned hat under the arch of the door.

  As one in the position of being half sporting buck and half dandy, he prided himself that his facial muscles seldom moved. His little black eyes, in the ruddy face of a man who eats too much, would have been bright if he had not kept them under a glaze. There were those who said he had no intelligence, but they were wrong; he had a first-class intelligence. It was merely that he had never been called on to use it, or to use any quality except cunning.

  “And that’s the bridegroom,” said Buckstone. “Gad, let’s have a look at him!”

  Pushing one of the lanterns to the other end of the cell, he picked up the other and held it high. Buckstone wore the clothes which were almost a uniform of fashion by day: the high collar and white cravat; the blue coat with brass buttons, cut away from the waist and falling into tails behind; the waistcoat colored according to taste—Buckstone’s was striped—and the white leather breeches with polished black top boots.

  He held the lantern in Darwent’s face. He lowered it along the clothes. He moved it sideways, his little black insolent eyes frank with curiosity.

  “Sir John!” interposed Mr. Crockit, rather nervously.

  “Eh?”

  “If you will be good enough to stand back, sir, we may be able to proceed.”

  “Oh, anything to oblige you,” assented Buckstone, moving back. He pronounced it “obleege,” and his agreeable contempt for Mr. Crockit was most edifying. “Damme, though,”—he pointed the lantern toward Darwent—“what ails the fellow?”

  “Ails him?” repeated Mr. Crockit.

  Ever since he had given his assent to Mr. Crockit’s bargain, Darwent had not uttered a word. He still stood upright, stricken cold sober. Even under the dirt they could see that he was as white as one of the new candles.

  “Jack, be quiet!” interposed Caroline. Despite her imperious tone, she was so badly frightened that she said the first words that came into her head. “Mr. Crockit! Who was speaking to you a moment ago?”

  “Speaking to me, madam?”

  “In—in this cell; A man’s voice. Of rather fine quality, I thought”

  Then Caroline’s eyes, grown used to the gloom of the cell, suddenly found the Rev. Horace Cotton. The big clergyman, breathing slowly, now stood against the same wall as Richard Darwent.

  “Oh, how stupid of me!” murmured Caroline, and gave him one of her archest smiles. “It pleases me you are here already, reverend sir. It was you who spoke, of course.”

  The Rev. Horace made a violent effort, and remained calm.

  “No, madam,” he answered. “I did not trust myself to speak.”

  “You did not …?” Caroline’s eyebrows went up.

  “As I apprehend the matter, Miss Ross, you send this man to his death at least four days too early. You do this, madam, because you are impatient for a hasty marriage, a hasty death, and the fruits of a great fortune,”

  Mr. Crockit, in his ancient three-cornered hat, intervened smoothly and yet with authority.

  “Come now, reverend sir!” he said in his dry voice. “I must remind you that these matters are no concern of yours. They concern only the personage I serve.”

  “Sir,” replied the clergyman, “they also concern the Personage I serve.”

  “Allow me to mention,” said Mr. Crockit, “that the act was my own doing. If you blame anyone, blame me.”

  “Blame you?” exclaimed Caroline, with real surprise. “One moment, Mr. Crockit!”

  Her gesture made him subside, with a slight bow. Anger kindled the beauty of her face with soft color, and sparkled in the long shiny-lidded blue eyes.

  “For some reason, Mr.—?”

  “Cotton, madam. The Rev. Horace Cotton.”

  “You appear to think, Mr. Cotton, that I am doing some ill service to a wretch who, forgive me, is better dead. Like these other poor degraded people at Newgate.”

  Caroline gave a shiver of disgust. There was a short, sharp rattle of Darwent’s chains, but he did not speak.”

  You also appear to think,” Caroline went on, with the same faint astonishment, “that I should consider his welfare. Why should I? I don’t know him. He will get his money.” She turned and appealed to Buckstone. “Jack!”

  But Buckstone, for the moment, was not listening.

  Standing near the door, he still held up the lantern to inspect Darwent against the opposite wall. Buckstone’s boots and breeches were dust-stained. He had ridden hard from Oatlands, country home of His Royal Highness the Duke of York, in response to a fast messenger from Caroline. From his right wrist hung a riding crop, with a short thong like a whip.

  “But, damme,” he insisted, “what does ail the
fellow?”

  “Jack! If you please!”

  “Went to see Bedlam once,” Buckstone explained. “Watched all the madmen dance and howl. Damme, that was sport! This ain’t. Is the demnition convict a deaf-mute? Why don’t he speak? Or can’t he?”

  This time there was a reply.

  “I can speak, sir,” Darwent informed him, so that Caroline started involuntarily. “If only to remark that your manners are almost as bad as your grammar.”

  “My dear fellow!” the Rev. Horace cried out in expostulation.

  Buckstone, with a perplexed look, pushed his buff-colored hat to the back of his head.

  “Impudent, ain’t he?” Buckstone inquired of Caroline.

  Buckstone was not angry. He was only puzzled, as though a peaceful-seeming mongrel dog had shown teeth at him. He shifted the lantern to his left hand, and strolled forward. Without rancor, but with a heavily muscled arm, Buckstone lifted the riding crop and slashed it viciously across Darwent’s face.

  “Jack!” Caroline cried out in protest. She had not meant to speak like this.

  They saw the felon’s eyes and mouth working with pain. He staggered; the heavy weight on the leg iron nearly tripped him; and his long, greasy hair fell forward. After a moment, with what effort nobody knew except himself, Darwent straightened up.

  “May I ask the name of the sportsman,” he said, “who strikes a fettered man?”

  Buckstone did not trouble to reply. He merely lifted his hand, and again slashed viciously across the face.

  Darwent tried hard, tried frantically, but there was no strength left. He fell on his knees, with a bony broken thud, and rolled sideways in the straw.

  Buckstone addressed Caroline in a tone of reasonableness.

  “Gently, m’dear! He’s got to learn not to be impudent, ain’t he?”

  Carefully placing the prayer book in the wall niche, the Rev. Horace Cotton moved out in front of Darwent and addressed Buckstone.

  “Sir,” the clergyman said quietly. “Observe that I am even less a weakling than yourself.” Then his tone changed. “Raise your hand once more; and by God’s grace I will flog you through Newgate with your own whip.”

  Blazes, the turnkey, his fiery nose and popping eyes pressed in the aperture of the partly open door, waited for the explosion. Licking his lips, he felt that this explosion would rock the walls of Newgate.

  But, if any man thought he could get the better of Jack Buckstone, that man was always much disappointed.

  Pushing his hat back still further, letting the riding crop swing free, Buckstone eyed the Rev. Horace up and down without curiosity.

  “Parson feller,” he said. “Got to respect the cloth, damme, or where do any of us stand?” Buckstone was not in the least intimidated, for who could defeat him? He merely stated what he thought.

  “’Fraid I can’t touch you, old boy,” he added coolly. “Now let’s have no more nonsense. Fetch out your Bible, or whatever you use, and we’ll have done with this business.”

  “Mr. Crockit, I believe,” said Caroline, looking at the parson, “has a document which—which suffices for both Church and State. It must be done.”

  “Not by me, madam. Not by me!”

  Mr. Crockit, though rather pale, intervened swiftly.

  “You decline to perform this ceremony, Mr. Cotton?”

  “No!” interposed a weak, muffled voice from the straw. “Do it, Padre!” Then, after intense struggle: “Assist me. On my feet.”

  The Ordinary, not without effort, lifted him up. Darwent stood there swaying, with no light in his eyes. Of two weals across the left side of his face, one oozed blood and dirt at the corner.

  “You still wish me to do this?” asked the Rev. Horace.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  “Then I cannot refuse you.”

  “There, m’dear!” And Buckstone spoke to Caroline, not without complacence. “A taste of the proper medicine, and he does as he’s told. Never you fear.”

  “Yes. But I rather wish …” Caroline paused, and compressed her lips hard.

  “What’s that, m’dear?”

  “Nothing. I am stupid. Must I not think of my own future?’“

  Caroline had opportunity to say no more. The clergyman gave curt instructions. Both Buckstone and the turnkey, who had edged into the cell as the second witness, removed their hats with deep solemnity. Mr. Elias Crockit opened his case of writing materials.

  “‘Dearly beloved, we are g-gathered here together in … in the sight of heaven …’”

  Up high in the wall over Darwent’s head, where no one had observed it until now, was a small, deep, heavily grated window. Mr. Crockit, with an apprehensive glance upward, noticed it only because the sky outside was now faintly gray.

  The Rev. Horace’s voice, after faltering, went on strongly. Mr. Crockit could have wrung his hands. If Miss Caroline Ross and Sir John Buckstone were seen leaving the prison in daylight, how limitless were the possibilities of scandal!

  With a movement of head and eye, Mr. Crockit directed Caroline’s attention to the window. He saw her own start of apprehension. Buckstone swore softly, and whacked the brim of his hat against his leg.

  “Repeat after me. ‘I, Caroline …’”

  “I, Caroline …”

  She did not even flinch when Darwent—moving and whispering mechanically, a man who seemed witless—put the ring on her finger. Her eyes would lift toward the window, and back again to the prisoner.

  Darwent’s brain only partly cleared. He could not explain that, when he fell against wall and floor after the lash, he had reopened the old wound in his head. He heard the scratching of a pen, and presently a pen was put into his hand. Even his blunt senses felt the gasp of thankfulness from the visitors.

  “Then that is finished,” said Mr. Crockit, too loudly, “in most satisfactory fashion!” Gold sovereigns chinked in a pouch. “I gave you the money, reverend sir. The—the other person seems unable to take it. Pray give me the evidence of marriage.”

  The Rev. Horace handed it over.

  “Turnkey!” he said sharply.

  “Sir?”’

  “Please escort this lady and this gentleman to the wicket; and return here. Meanwhile, leave the cell door unlocked.”

  “Sir, I daresn’t do that!”

  “I accept the responsibility. All of it.” The Ordinary turned to Caroline and Buckstone, nodding with dignity toward the door. “And now, if you will be good enough?”

  St. Sepulchre’s clock struck four. The hour of the execution was set at five.

  Buckstone, immensely relieved and now in an almost playful mood, strolled up to Darwent.

  “A-doo, as the Frenchies say,” he remarked without inflection, and playfully cuffed the felon with his open hand. “No hard feelings, I hope? Had to keep you in your place, that’s all.”

  A film seemed to lift slightly from Darwent’s eyes.

  “You damned swine,” Darwent said.

  Buckstone’s expression did not alter. But his hand swept back. It was Blazes the turnkey, terrified that a too-angry Buckstone would not give him more than a shilling at the gate, who averted danger then.

  “Sir John,” he bawled, “if you and the lady wants to get out, you’d best get out now! The crowd’s a-packing together in the street, and you won’t be able to make way through ’em!”

  “We must cross the street,” Caroline said hastily, “in any event.” Suddenly the words seemed to choke her. “After all, have you forgotten our champagne breakfast?”

  The iron door shut with a clang behind the three of them. Caroline and Buckstone and the turnkey. Blazes did not lock it. The Rev. Horace Cotton sat down heavily in the wall niche, his prayer book in his hand.

  “Padre!”

  “Yes?”

  “One small matter,” the dull voice continued, “which I am now half-ashamed to mention. I can’t repent of murder, for I have committed none. But your Deity, Padre: with all my heart I believe in Him.”


  The Ordinary, in the act of wiping sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his gown, stopped and stared.

  “You believe—” he began with a rush of joy; and then stopped. “Why do you say that?”

  “You defended me, Padre. If men like yourself believe in Him, then I were a fool not to believe too.”

  “Man, man, but this is not faith or belief! This is only foolish gratitude for a trifling … a trifling …”

  The wandering voice paid no attention.

  “Was the man’s name Buckstone? I think someone mentioned it, even before I asked. Was he named Buckstone?”

  “Yes, yes! But—!”

  “I would give ten years of the life I don’t possess,” said Darwent, “to meet that coxcomb face to face with sabers. The woman, I think, is worse. I would … but it makes no matter. I am beaten. I only dream. Those who are beaten must always dream.”

  The Rev. Horace stood up.

  “I asked for the door to be left unlocked,” he said, “because I wish to speak to the Sheriff in his lodgings. Then I shall return.”

  “Return? Go? But you said—!”

  “I wish to speak on your behalf. No! I tell you nothing, because I offer you no hope. But if you would have me credit your so-called belief, show charity even towards the creatures you spoke of.”

  “Padre!”

  The iron door opened and closed softly. Darwent was alone.

  The second set of candles had burned out, in gushing smoke which blackened the sides of the lanterns. Through the high window, the gray light was tinged with clear white. After taking a step forward and falling down, Darwent decided it was better to sit down quietly.

  “Charity,” he thought.

  Certain fibers of his brain, or so it seemed to him, were settling back into place after the crack of his head against floor and wall. Only a little blood trickled through scalp into hair: at least, where he could feel it. His eyesight was better, too.

  But, when a great shiver ran through his body, it was caused by more than the chill of dawn. A hanged man, they said, could feel his face blackening until the blood spurted from his very eyeballs.

  Beside Darwent, upset but still corked, lay the bottle of brandy. He considered it, carefully and deliberately weighing one course against another.