The Bride of Newgate

by John Dickson Carr

  “Evidence?”

  “Yes, m’lady.” Townsend chuckled loudly. “Which he did. Which I did. Gummy, how easy! Hadn’t even to crack a stile or use a dab. But I got the evidence against a certain ‘coach-man’.”

  Some of these words, gibberish to Caroline, went unheeded. She ignored them. Her gaze was fixed so steadily on his that even Townsend, an eccentric character and therefore privileged, shifted and lowered his eyes.

  “Then, Mr. Townsend, since you are an associate of criminals …”

  “Criminals!” said the confident of Royalty, revolted. “I never associate with them low people! Never!”

  He touched his fashionably dressed white hair. Though still he exuded benevolence, his eyes were harder.

  “But Lord Darwent, m’lady,” Townsend went on, “he done me proud in the matter o’ money. There’s ears at Bow Street, a lot of ears. D’ye think we hadn’t heard of this coachman long ago?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why! A gentleman dressed in that rig, who’s been a-playing the dirty—thief tricks, but most for spitefulness to enjoy

  I Off hisself—through Covent Garden and St. Giles’s for the past twelvemonth! Not a flash cull, mind; a nob! Knows everybody there, or seems to!”

  Suddenly Townsend took out of his baggy side pocket a pistol stamped with the crown and broad arrow. Then becoming sensible of the impropriety, he thrust it back again.

  “Well!” he said. “When this nob hires the Fancy to put the black on Lord Darwent, there’s gin inside half of ’em and ale inside the other half. And ears a-listening. What could I do but put a postscriptus on my letter to his lordship? And warn him?”

  “Then you … you know who the ‘coachman’ is?”

  “I do now” chuckled Townsend. “Gummy, how it’ll surprise ‘emit’

  “Who is he?”

  “I can’t tell you, m’lady,” answered Townsend respectfully. “You ain’t my client.”

  This was the point at which Thomas dropped the case of pistols with a crash on the bare floor. He had been holding it too long, like a box of stolen goods, under Caroline’s eyes; conscience loosened his fingers.

  Again they all became aware that this was a room tidied and swept for death. In the intense hush which followed, while Caroline’s hand went to the great ruby hung as a necklace at her breast, they all clearly heard—tinkling and riffling, without attempt at melody—the keys of a spinet.

  A spinet.

  Caroline looked up at the ceiling. Just behind the green drawing room above her head, there was a music room seldom used except for routs or smaller parties. But it contained a spinet, among other musical instruments.

  “Thomas,” asked Caroline, “who is playing that spinet?”

  It was not being “played”: there were only merry and unskilled tinklings of notes picked out with one finger. Thomas, who was as Norman-dark as Alfred was Saxon-fair, exchanged a glance; and in both their eyes was apprehension.

  “Who is playing that spinet?”

  Alfred took a step forward, still holding the saber.

  “May I beg leave to explain, my lady?”

  “Pray do. That is what I desire.”

  “You may recall, my lady, that Mrs. Raleigh was to take precedence over Mrs. Demisham,” he meant the housekeeper, “in domestic matters?”

  “Yes; well?”

  “Both Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh,” said Alfred, “fell fast asleep about ten o’clock.” He cleared his throat. “If you’ll forgive me, my lady, it’s hard to blame them. They’d been for near two days and nights without sleep. Then—er—that is, Miss Spencer got up.”

  “Got up?”

  “Yes, my lady!” Alfred’s voice was growing louder. “After all, you did tell Mrs. Demisham the young lady could get up and try on some of your gowns …”

  “I told Mrs. Demisham nothing of the sort,” retorted Caroline truthfully. “I said to Miss Spencer that she might have half a dozen gowns if she remained abed until tomorrow. She is still in great danger.”

  Alfred’s ruddy face lost some of its color. “But Miss Spencer said …!”

  “Thomas!” Caroline interposed sharply.

  “Yes, my lady?”

  “Go upstairs at once. Awaken Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh. The girl must be returned to bed, with the ice bandage about her, if it has to be done by force. —Did you hear me?”

  “Yes, my lady!” And Thomas was off at more than dignified speed.

  Mr. John Townsend, believing that serious business had now ended and that he could air some of the social graces acquired from the Regent and old King George, uttered a bleat of approval.

  “How lovesome a heart is her ladyship’s!” cried the old runner, beaming. “Believe me, m’dear, the English language flows more beautiful from me pen than from me tongue. I could write a poem to it. Damme, I did write my memoors, which they asked for; only I thought the Duke of Clarence said amours; and a devil of a scrape it landed me in at home. But this! The young lady who’s ill: how fond you must be of her!”

  Then he started back involuntarily.

  “Fond of her!” said Caroline; and then controlled herself.

  “I care not a windlestraw,” she added, “what happens to the girl, now or in the future.” Caroline was biting at her lips to control her eyelids. “But my husband, if he were here, would wish it so. Very well; that is enough. Now, Mr. Townsend, let us speak of ‘clients.’”

  Townsend’s own expression changed instantly.

  “Eh, m’lady?”

  “As I have always understood it, you are an officer of the law attached to the magistrate’s court?”

  “Forty years,” assented Townsend, cheerfully but warily.

  “You are paid your wages for this?”

  “Hum! Well! If you could call ’em that.”

  “But your duty is to arrest criminals? At least to denounce them? Not, in heaven’s name, to say you can’t speak because you have a ‘client’?”

  “M’lady, you don’t understand!”

  “Then make me understand!”

  “Come, now,” Townsend soothed her, with confidential air. “’Ow many Bow Street men (the sharp ’uns, that is) can make a living? ’Course,”—and here he meditated—“it’s forty pound for a runner as takes a man in highway robbery or housebreaking; and you can always get up evidence against somebody if you need the money bad enough.

  “But that’s not downright honest, m’lady,” declared Townsend, who really believed himself to be a man of honor. “And besides you only touch the real rhino when you ‘hire out’ to a private person. Which is legal, m’lady; which is legal!”

  “My husband hired you. Is that it?”

  “That’s it, m’lady. Some likes the evidence disclosed; and I discloses it. Some likes the evidence supper-essed; and I supper-ess it. There’s a price both ways; but what’s fairer?”

  “Then you would hide the name of the filthiest murderer who ever lived, if you were paid to do so?”

  “Some gets rich,” Townsend pointed out, “and some don’t.”

  “Suppose I were to hire you too?”

  “Ah!” murmured Townsend, and rubbed his hands. “That’s different!”

  Again Caroline’s hand, in the crumpled and mud-stained white-lace glove, went to the great ruby at her breast. Her thoughts moved up to the jewel case in her bedroom, and out toward Hookson’s Bank by Temple Bar.

  “My husband,” she swallowed, “is sometimes … very foolish.”

  “Ah!”

  “He won’t confide in anybody. He won’t accept help. But he must! We can’t live under the shadow of this coachman forever!”

  “That’s a true word, m’lady.”

  “Of course,” and Caroline drew a deep breath, “he is not in danger now. I thank God for that. He escaped even injury in the riot at the Italian opera tonight.”

  Outside the street door, clearly heard through the front hall and the open door of the dining room, the door knocker five time
s rapped heavily and harshly.

  Both Alfred and Thomas, the latter of whom had returned unnoticed from his errand upstairs, started for the door. But they had taken only a step when it opened. A man in the conventional black evening cloak, his gold-embroidered cocked hat half squashed over one ear, entered so hurriedly that he left the street door partway open.

  Seeing the glitter of the chandelier in the dining room, Jemmy Fletcher turned left and hurried there. But he stopped well short of the threshold.

  Jemmy must always be first with the latest tidbit of gossip of course. Jemmy must be this, Jemmy must be that; his hyacinthine locks must float beside Fashion’s. Caroline felt a stab of dread only when he stepped inside the doorway, and she saw his face.

  The face, long and blue-eyed, was not that of the court fool. To Caroline it was a face of real incredulity and collapse.

  “What is it?” she said. She was not aware that she had almost screamed.

  Jemmy moistened his lips. “It’s … about Dick.”

  “Yes? What about him?”

  Jemmy had sworn to himself that he would break this gently: that, afterwards, all men and women should admire his tact and grace. But now he could see only Caroline’s expression.

  “What about him, Jemmy? What’s happened to Dick? What is it?”

  “He’s dead,” blurted Jemmy.

  Chapter XIX

  —and Dolly on the Staircase

  AN OUTSIDER, WATCHING THAT group who stood silent for perhaps thirty seconds after Jemmy’s announcement, might have found it vaguely ridiculous.

  There was Alfred, head down, holding the saber as though it burned him. There was Thomas, his gaze on the floor. There was little old pompous Townsend, his hands in the pockets of the baggy coat, his white trousers three inches above his ankles, face doleful because he had lost a good client. There was Jemmy, stricken, his cocked hat half crushed over one ear.

  Finally, there was Caroline.

  She showed nothing at all, only blank face and eyes. Perhaps, then, she felt nothing. Caroline stood just under the chandelier. A drop of hot wax fell on her bare shoulder, but she did not even notice.

  It was Jemmy who broke the silence, babbling as though words might drive back their feelings like loud-voiced dogs.

  “Fool,” whispered Jemmy, seizing at the front of his own cloak to indicate himself. “Wouldn’t have said that. Like that. Not for anything. Positively. No sense. Never had.”

  He looked slowly round, avoiding Caroline’s face. It was as though muted fierce questions had been flung at him—though still in silence—and he answered them.

  “Dick was right as a trivet, you know. Positively. Stake m’dem life on it! He and Will chased the dem Fancy a-whacking out of the third-floor tier. Everybody says so, anyway. Then this coachman, the one everybody’s talking about …”

  A kind of shiver went through Alfred. His fingers crept round the saber hilt. But nobody spoke.

  “The coachman,” blurted Jemmy, speaking faster, “jumped over the box ledge into the pit. Dick followed him. So they say. Anyway,” and Jemmy’s voice rose with a kind of tearful but grisly triumph, “I saw the next part from Ned Firebrace’s box. Second tier. Side box. Ned wasn’t there. But Harriette Wils …” His delicacy would not let him name a harlot in public.

  The unspoken questions pushed at him, harried him.

  “Dick had got back up again to the box. Fact! Don’t know how! Left his sword on the ledge. Picked it up again. Looked down at the pit. Then this coachman—it was all queer dark light, lamps swinging backstage—the coachman crept up behind Dick, so quiet and soft you’d hardly see him, and stabbed Dick in the back with a knife.

  “He stabbed three times, I think it was. Oh, damme! Dick tried to sit down in a chair, but missed it and fell on the floor. Coachman; dunno. Must have made a flit by the north stairs.”

  Now the weight of silence became too heavy.

  “Oh, it’s true,” Jemmy cried almost angrily. “They’ve taken his body to Stephen’s Hotel.”

  (“They’ve taken his body to Stephen’s Hotel.”)

  To Caroline, standing there without expression, these were the first words which seemed true. They had finality. They were like limbs straightened, a sheet drawn up over an empty face, the sense of a loved one gone forever.

  Believing herself quite calm, she opened her mouth to ask a question. Whereupon, suddenly, it was as though she had lost all control over her muscles. Her lips trembled like a paralytic’s; she could utter only unintelligible sounds.

  Thomas, after a quick look at her, lifted his hand to draw down a chair from the piled furniture. Alfred, far more tactful, gave him a savage glance which stopped him.

  Caroline turned round. As though casually, she moved over to one of the front windows. Her whole body felt drained of blood; she must, must reach that little shelter before they noticed. Opening one of the heavy velvet curtains, she slipped inside and drew the curtains.

  Caroline pressed her forehead against cold glass. She saw nothing; not even the black night outside. Her mind was too numb. But despite herself a voice (how short a while ago, in time!) would whisper in her ear and in her brain.

  “That among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Or again, more poignant:

  “An estate in Kent, with shallow streams of soft greenish-brown woods. If I could take you there, beyond sight of the world …”

  Caroline bit at her lips and clenched her hands.

  “I could live with you there forever,” she had said.

  Stop this! Stop it!

  Through her dulled mind came one resolution: that she would accept no sympathy, even from a close friend. As soon as she achieved complete calmness, in a minute or two, she would go out of these muffling curtains. She would walk quietly upstairs, and lock herself in her room for days or weeks or months. Let the flapping crows, ill-meaning carrion like Townsend or well-meaning carrion like Jemmy, say what they liked.

  Yes, and let the world say what it liked! That was Dick’s view; it should become hers.

  Whereupon a very small thing, as small things will, almost upset her dry-eyed resolution.

  Outside the curtains, in the dining room, silence had become an intolerable weight. Caroline heard the small, soft rattle as Alfred gently put down the saber on the sideboard. She felt she could almost hear Alfred’s blunted mind move. Thoughtfully, with intense reserve, Alfred spoke.

  “He was a werry brave man, the governor.”

  Silence.

  “Ah,” agreed Thomas in the same tone. “Daresn’t meet him face to face, did they?”

  And the tears would sting into Caroline’s eyes, and she would rage in her heart. Furtively she brushed away tears with one edge of the curtain. But this, she felt, was good; this had brought her to her senses, and away from ignobility.

  Before locking herself in her room, two matters she must arrange. She must find a carriage to go to Stephen’s Hotel and bring back … She closed up her brain. Also, there was another and just as imperative duty.

  Throwing back the curtains, she marched out into the room. All four of the men moved back a step. Thomas’s foot involuntarily knocked against the fallen case of pistols; and one of the pistols, loose from its bedding in blue velvet, rolled out on the floor.

  “Thomas,” said Caroline, “you will go out into the street and get me …”

  She paused. Her eyes lifted toward the ceiling at the back of the dining room, as did the others. The spinet was being “played” again upstairs in the music room. One finger tried to pluck out a tune, merrily, while the other merely ruffled at the keyboard; and the tune, grotesquely, was something like, A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go.

  “Thomas,” Caroline repeated in a different voice.

  “Yes, my lady?”

  “Did you deliver my previous message upstairs?”

  “Yes, my Lady. Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh are awake. But the young lady …”

  “Well, Thomas? The—yo
ung lady?”

  “My lady, she says she’s well! She says she’s not needing that bandage thing! She’s put on a very fine gown. She won’t …”

  Caroline raised her hand. “Ignore what I told you a moment ago,” she corrected. “Present my compliments to Miss Spencer, and ask her if she will come downstairs at once.”

  Alfred took a step forward. “My lady! If I may …”

  Caroline’s head twitched round. “Was your opinion called for, Alfred?” she asked gently.

  “No, my lady.”

  “Then have the goodness to keep it to yourself. —Thomas!”

  And now, almost as unheard of as unheard, the soles of Thomas’s shoes could be heard clacking on the floor as he ran.

  Caroline’s soft body seemed now as rigid as marble. Two spots of color burned in cheeks as white as those of one afflicted with the wasting sickness. Will you say that, in sickness of heart, she was striking at the person nearest at hand? Striking at a girl she hated? Well; but that is human nature, too. And another matter burned in he mind.

  “Mr. Townsend!”

  “Here, dash it, Caroline, now!” interrupted Jemmy Fletcher, taking off his squashed cocked hat and hurling it into a corner. How could there be a fine, touching story for him to tell at the clubs, if the dem woman didn’t scream and go off into a fit of the megrims? “Damme, this ain’t natural!”

  “Please be silent, Mr. Fletcher.”

  “Dash it, can’t you even call me Jemmy?”

  All this time, after making a mouth of sympathy at news of Dick’s death, the old Bow Street runner had been looking thoughtfully at a corner of the ceiling.

  “No doubt, Mr. Townsend,” said Caroline, “you are thinking to whom your information about the coachman could best be sold?”’

  “Now!” protested Townsend, as though shocked. “Come, now! M’lady! ’Ere!”

  A film came over Caroline’s eyes.

  “Di—Lord Darwent,” she went on, “had many beliefs which I thought I did not share. Well! For good or ill, I share them now.” And Caroline pressed her hand under her breast.

  “It’s strange,” she added in a puzzled way. “Even this morning (or was it years ago?) I thought I did not share his belief in vengeance against those who had wronged him. I pleaded against it. I did not understand.” Her eyes moved first toward the pistol on the floor, then to the saber across the sideboard. “But I understand now.”