by S K Rizzolo
“You find that ridiculous apparently,” commented Buckler. “And I suppose it was an attitude that would win her enemies, yet she must have had courage.”
“She did,” replied Wolfe, serious now. “When you listened to her speak, the least likely things sounded not only obtainable, but utterly desirable.” His mouth twisted mockingly. “A pity, isn’t it, sir, that such delightful fancies trouble so few of us?”
“How did you obtain knowledge so intimate?”
“By any means possible. I make it my business to know my subjects. It’s the only way I can create, the only way to stimulate the imagination.” He paused, pointing to the man he had been sketching who sat nearby staring into the fire.
“That man in the shabby cap was once an able seaman in His Majesty’s navy, that is before he killed someone in a drunken brawl. I could have guessed something of the sort brought him to this pass without his telling me. It’s there to read in the face.”
“And what was there to read in Miss Tyrone’s face?”
Wolfe squirmed a little. He seemed to be weighing the odds, playing out his hand. Buckler’s sympathy evaporated as the silence lengthened.
“Sir, your wife has told me of your visit to her lodgings on the night of the murder. You implied you had discovered some potentially ‘useful’ intelligence which concerned Miss Tyrone?”
Silence.
“If you choose not to be frank with me, there’s really nothing more to say.” Buckler stood. He had the feeling Jeremy Wolfe had been leading him a dance during this conversation. He didn’t like it.
“No need to take one up so quickly,” the artist said, motioning Buckler to resume his seat. “But isn’t that just like a woman? Discretion seems to be a virtue which escapes the best of wives.”
“What of the sketches the authorities found? They were hardly discreet.”
“Part of my artistic process, sir. I envisaged Miss Tyrone as the beautiful Saint Catherine of Alexandria. You know the tale?”
“Did she not convert the fifty philosophers the pagan emperor brought to debate her? And then was bound on spiked wheels because she still would not renounce her Christian faith and marry the emperor.”
“Exactly. But God smote the machine with fire, slaying her executioners, so the emperor ordered her head chopped off. It’s said that milk flowed from her body, not blood, and that the angels bore away the corpse to be buried at Mount Sinai. Catherine went up to heaven to be espoused to Jesus himself. Anyway, I was trying to capture Miss Tyrone’s powerful will as well as the fires she kept well banked.”
“From what I’ve heard, your impression is not exactly in keeping with her reputation.”
Jeremy fingered his creased neckcloth. “I still say I pegged her nature right.”
Buckler said flatly, “Mr. Wolfe, you must see that your refusal to cooperate in the magistrate’s inquiry has added in no small measure to your difficulties. If you will tell me of your whereabouts throughout Monday evening and early Tuesday last, I may be able to help you.”
Before Wolfe could respond, the door was flung open. A second turnkey entered with someone else in tow. When Gus pointed out Wolfe and Buckler, the turnkey’s companion advanced into the ward, gesturing at both prison officials to stay back. He was a small man wearing a dark coat over a waistcoat embroidered in large daisies. In one gloved hand he held a packet of herbs, which he wafted continually under his nose. The other hand clutched his overcoat and cane as if he feared someone might wrest them from him.
“Jedidiah Merkle, solicitor,” he said as they stood to face him. “I find you in good…health and…spirits I trust, Mr. Wolfe, in spite of this lamentable…error.”
He bowed to Buckler. “It is my charge this day to…report that Mr. Wolfe will not be in…need of your…services, after all…though it’s indeed a…pleasure to meet you, sir. I’ve heard of you, for you have earned quite a…name in some…circles.” He placed a card in Buckler’s palm and bowed a second time.
There was something terribly irritating about Merkle’s measured speech, particularly in contrast to the hand fluttering about his face. “I regret I cannot return the compliment, sir,” Buckler replied, glancing at the card.
The solicitor took Jeremy Wolfe’s arm. “You will be eager to depart this foul…den, so ruinous to the…health. Let us not waste an instant, sir.”
Gus made a motion toward Jeremy, but the other turnkey intervened. “Leave be, Gus. This one’s bought and paid for. He’s off with this carrion bird to Bow Street.”
“What?” said Buckler.
“Quite simple, sir. A witness has come forth with… testimony completely clearing my…client. The… gentleman with whom Mr. Wolfe was playing cards on the evening of Monday last has been…located. He was at first a trifle… reluctant to come…forward, but was induced to see reason once he apprehended that the life of an innocent…man was at…stake.”
“One moment.” Shrugging off Merkle’s arm, Wolfe picked up his sketchpad and approached Buckler.
“I am grateful, sir, for your kindness and hope to offer you better hospitality should we meet again.” Relief and triumph mingled in his voice. He shook hands, adding, “I cannot but think that the authorities will find another pigeon to pluck, but apparently I’m to keep my feathers for the present.”
With that they were gone.
“You’d best be off too, sir,” said Gus, “’less you want to stay and feed on any of these carrion.”
***
“Been expecting me, I see,” said Noah Packet as he slid into a chair. From under Noah’s broad-brimmed beaver, his muddy eyes flicked from table to table, to the doorway, and back again.
Chase pushed a full glass of gin across to him. The smoke hung like fog about the room, each breath bringing the varied and pungent odors of humanity mingled with the sweetness of tobacco. The din of voices swelled.
This was the Russian Coffee House, vulgarly known as the Brown Bear, a most disreputable flash house where the underworld plotted iniquitous acts only a few yards from Bow Street public office opposite. Here John Chase would come for good drink, mostly unadulterated, and for the occasional arrest. Today he sought information. Someone had gone bail for Jeremy Wolfe. He wanted to know why.
“Buck up, Friday-face.” Packet threw back the gin in one swallow. “Though it queers me how it all come about.”
Chase looked at his companion. Noah Packet was most certainly a thief, though in a small way only. Because he was one to keep his ear close to the ground, he often came by useful tidbits of news. Of indeterminate age, he was slight with bowed shoulders, neatly dressed in a black suit. His complexion bore the pasty, haggard finish common to night creatures.
Packet always had money, but never much, so he was glad to get a dram or two of liquor in exchange for his assistance. It was well known at flash houses that certain of the Runners would nurse a culprit along until he “weighed forty,” or was indictable on a capital offense, his ultimate conviction garnering the officer a portion of the forty-pound reward. But Chase knew Packet trusted him as far as that went. In a strange way they had become friends.
“Wolfe knows something, Noah. Curse him.”
“You’d best let it lie. You got plenty else on your plate, I warrant. If you want to find the one as nobbled the gentry mort, I’d smoke out that necklace what’s missing. That’s my advice. And have another.” He saluted Chase with his empty glass and grinned, showing a mouthful of rotting teeth.
When Chase ignored him, he continued, “Besides, I hear the Tyrones are sure it was some lackwit as put her away. It may be so. I ain’t heard no whispers.”
“Better a random attack by a lunatic than scandal visited on the family. Sir Giles has made it quite clear my inquiries are unwelcome.”
“There you are then. Forget the artist. Go for fences, pawnshops, and such. Why flog a dead horse, especially when those most concerned ain’t prepared to pay for your trouble?”
“Too many unanswered qu
estions.” Leaning forward, Chase captured his companion’s gaze and forced Noah’s flitting eyes to halt. “I want to know, Packet.”
“If that ain’t the main thing I can’t abide in you, Chase. You always got to know. Like some kind of plague from God, you is. You don’t quit.” Gesturing to the serving maid to refill his glass, Packet sat back, trying to look innocent.
“Have you learned anything about the fellow who laid Wolfe’s alibi at Bow Street? Arthur Bennington claims the two of them spent the entire evening of the murder together enjoying an intimate supper and a few hands of piquet.”
The thief smiled.
“You know something, Noah. Out with it, or you’ll be clapped in irons before morning.”
Packet gave the hoarse rattle that served as his laugh and coughed, gaze on the door again. He never looked Chase directly in the face when about to spill information.
“Word is tradesmen are starting to dun ’im.”
“Bennington? Deep play?”
“Dunno.” He shrugged. “He lives high, but it’s a hollow purse if you take my meaning.”
“Anything more?”
“Well, it’s a curious thing: Bennington’s servants can’t precisely call your man’s face to mind. And it seems Bennington himself were home on the night in question nursing a cold in the head. Ain’t likely he felt up to entertaining.”
“Perhaps I ought to pay Mr. Bennington a visit tomorrow just to determine if he’s recovered from his indisposition. What do you think?” He dropped a few coins on the table, gulped his drink, and picked up his coat and hat.
“I think you’d do well to leave be before someone decides to shut your bonebox for you,” said Packet mournfully.
Chase pushed back his chair. “If Bennington’s fortunes are at low tide, perhaps he was bribed to provide an alibi. But where would Jeremy Wolfe have found the money? See what else you can discover, Noah.”
He left Packet sitting over his gin.
***
After dinner Chase bid his landlady Mrs. Beeks good night and went upstairs. Closing the door behind him, he removed his boots and waistcoat and trod to the bureau to find a clean nightshirt. As he was rummaging in the drawer, his fingers touched a small packet wrapped in cotton wool.
He removed the wrappings to examine the miniature by lamplight. Framed in silver, it showed a young woman with blue eyes, wide and intense, looking levelly at him. Straight nose, a smiling mouth. Full lower lip, the upper thin but with an attractive lift. Her rounded chin had the tiniest pocket of excess skin. She was wearing a pale muslin gown trimmed in ribbons that just matched her eyes. Chase cataloged each feature, thinking, as he always did, that the artist had done fine work; he had not made Abigail too pretty.
The child held standing on her lap was much like any other infant, for an artist’s skill can do little with features as yet unformed. Clutching his rattle, he looked like any other fat, happy baby captured for posterity. Yet perhaps the artist had caught something in the set and shape of the eyes, or perhaps Chase merely imagined the likeness. Carefully, he wrapped the miniature and replaced it in the drawer.
He poured himself a brandy and wandered into his sitting room to stoke the small fire and recline in the armchair drawn near. Strange how the memory of Constance Tyrone’s empty eyes had troubled him for a moment during dinner when Mrs. Beeks had inquired about the business. He had thought almost simultaneously of Abigail’s eyes, brimming with life, but most of all asserting the proud independence that was peculiarly her own.
It was her independence and his stubbornness that had separated them, he realized. For Chase had not wanted to return with Abigail and her father to her home in Boston, and she refused to accompany him to England. Her father was aging, she said, and needed help in his business. And never mind that she was pregnant with Chase’s child. She could manage.
Abigail was good at managing. She had saved his leg, after all, when he was invalided out of the navy with an injured knee after Aboukir. Nelson’s victorious but wounded fleet had anchored in Naples, and while the hero was off being coddled by his mistress, Lady Hamilton, Chase had found his own haven.
An American woman a few years his senior, Abigail nursed him back to health, and they fell in love. For both, it was the first time. Chase’s father, a poor country parson with five children to establish, had secured him a place as a cabin boy at the age of thirteen, and Chase had spent his youth in the West Indies and the Mediterranean, protecting the British merchant fleet and fighting a war. He had eventually advanced to first lieutenant. Abigail, a thirty-three-year-old spinster, had traveled widely with her father, somehow never finding an opportunity to settle.
They parted amicably enough, he supposed, in spite of Abigail’s rejection of his marriage proposal; it hadn’t proved so difficult for him to give up a child he had never seen. He made his way back to England, tried rusticating for a few years, and ended up in London working for Bow Street. One of the magistrates, whose only son was a naval officer, had offered him the post over eight years ago.
And Chase’s son had just reached his twelfth birthday.
Chapter Five
A massive dark wall guarded the London docks from the infectious touch of thieves and scavengers. Since its construction, the district had grown ever more dangerous, for those who once preyed upon the vessels now resorted to assault or begging. These were hard times. Napoleon’s Continental Blockade had crippled the country’s European commerce, war with America appeared likely, and the harvest had been poor. Many would go hungry this winter.
It was here on the Ratcliffe Highway in Wapping that the hackney deposited Chase. Intent upon his own business, he wended his way purposefully through a crowd of stevedores, watermen, coopers, and rat catchers. Sailors, pockets to let after a few weeks ashore, swaggered: bored, drunk, and quarrelsome. The smell of fish mingled with the waft of the Thames. East and West Indiamen and a plethora of other craft creaked at anchor.
Just outside the great barrier in an alleyway off Old Gravel Lane, Chase paid his gate fee and entered a warehouse. Dust hung thick in the morning sun streaming from a window overhead. He could feel this was a cavernous place, empty of goods, though the upper floors and the far walls were lost in shadow. He looked about, experience having taught him that caution was in order at gatherings like these, for the quick flash of a blade might be the only warning of trouble. English and foreign seamen skirmished often; just last month a Portuguese had been fatally knifed.
Even so, mingling with the pickpockets, dock workers, and sailors were a few of the Quality: wild, young blades and sporting types, willing to brave the stink in order to gorge on a different sort of energy. Chase, too, felt it, but also sensed a new edge. Over the last few months he’d noticed a subtle shift in the working men he encountered. Hard to pinpoint but definitely there, a certain wariness toward anyone in authority, a surly cast to the countenance.
At one end of the warehouse, men clustered about an excavated area where someone had contrived a round, sunken stage about ten feet in diameter, ringed with a low bulwark to prevent the combatants from fleeing. As Chase approached, voices crested in excited shouts, and he caught the stench of fowl. Arthur Bennington stood a little apart, scuffing his Hessians in the dust.
Bennington wore a long driving coat and a belcher handkerchief. His artfully arranged hair surrounded a well worn, cynical face. Chase knew his like. Aging London exquisite, a favorite for rounding out the numbers at dinner parties, someone a hostess could count on to be suitably amusing. And Bennington was said to be a devotee of all blood sports. Probably added a little spice to a life immersed in nothing more important than the cut of his coat. He didn’t look up until Chase was upon him.
“A word with you, Bennington.”
The dandy eyed him up and down.
“John Chase, Bow Street. I should like to ask you a few questions, sir.”
“If you are here to inquire further about Wolfe, I thought we’d dealt sufficiently wit
h the matter.”
A few of the men nearby turned their heads.
Chase moved closer. “I’d speak softer if I were you. I’m not for trouble today. Unless you are?”
Bennington, perhaps two or three inches the taller, looked down his long nose as if Chase were an insect buzzing for notice. “What can I do for you?” he said after a moment. “Ah, another battle. You’ll have to talk whilst I observe.” He stepped closer to the bulwark.
Two men, the “setters-to,” entered the makeshift cockpit, each holding a fighting bantam. Chase caught the glint of steel gaffles, cruel spurs attached to each cock’s legs. As the birds, one black and one red, were brought into the ring, guttural sounds issued from both and echoed from the crowd.
“Black,” Bennington murmured. “Observe that one,” he said to Chase. “Excellent bottom. Not too large, nor indeed too small. See how he holds his head upright and crows vigorously.”
The two cocks were brought beak to beak. Making eye contact, they struggled in the grip of their handlers who drew back to either end of the ring. Men called out bets. Upon the birds’ release battle was joined as they struck at each other, turning and twisting for dominant position.
“Nothing to choose between ’em so far,” said Bennington, satisfied.
Chase tried to curb his impatience. “Wolfe played piquet at your house into the morning hours of Tuesday last?”
Bennington didn’t bother to look at him. “So I have informed your superiors.”
“An intimate of yours?”
“No, acquaintance merely. Town is thin of diversions at this season, and a snug game of cards passes the time. Who wants to be abroad in such weather we’ve had of late?”
“I take it you and Wolfe passed a tolerable evening in spite of no servants to wait at table?”
Bennington swung toward him. “What the devil is that supposed to mean?” Then, as more betting erupted, he concentrated again on the cocks. A thin trail of crimson oozed from the black’s left eye.