by S K Rizzolo
Chase jiggled the lid. “Where is the key?”
“The wound,” she moaned hoarsely as if he hadn’t spoken. “Is it mortal?”
“The gashes do bleed but little, mum,” cried Mrs. Croft. “As to their being mortal, I shouldn’t think so, but what do I know? I do know as I didn’t bargain for the likes of this when I let my parlor to you. ’Tis clear some lunatic is after your lady, and me and my boy might have been killed for our pains.”
Hastily, before Gore could repeat her absurd allegation about the Devil being the attacker, Chase began to inquire about the layout of the house, its entrances and exits. Satisfied on that score, he made a rapid search of the shabby parlor, poking behind cushions and checking under furniture. Mrs. Croft was not a careful housekeeper, and Chase’s hands were soon coated with dust. Then under one of the matching needlepoint chairs near the settee, he found it: a silver and horn penknife. Only about four inches long, it boasted a metal carrying ring, which would attach to a belt. Chase ran a finger over the tiny retractable blade.
“Does this belong to Miss Barnwell, or to either of you?” he inquired, holding it up by the ring.
Mrs. Croft studied it with interest while Janet Gore merely looked appalled. But they shook their heads.
“Rebecca has a pen-knife, of course, but much finer than that,” faltered Mrs. Gore.
Carefully, Chase wrapped the little knife in a bit of paper and put it in his pocket. Interesting that in both attacks the weapon had been a blade, in this case the sort of everyday implement many people possessed, often ready to hand. He wondered what that meant, whether this choice of weapon might perhaps indicate a lack of premeditation on the part of the assailant. He thought, too, that unlettered footpads and other such scum did not carry pen-knives.
“Does Miss Barnwell keep anything of value in her lap desk? The lock seems to be secure, yet could it be the attacker was after something kept inside?”
There was no reply. Judging that he had permitted Mrs. Gore enough time to collect herself, he crossed the room to her side. “I would inquire about another matter, ma’am. You once provided a character reference for a footman called Dick Ransom, who was, I believe, a frequent guest at your Westminster fancy house?”
She stared at him, her magnificent eyes blazing fire, but then the door banged open, and a gentleman wearing a frock coat and carrying a small black case entered. He went immediately to the settee to lift the cloth. “Ah. I had expected worse.”
Janet Gore swept forward in a swish of skirts. “The babe, Doctor? May we hope it has not been injured? What with the terrible shock she has sustained, might not Miss Barnwell deliver the child before its proper time?”
“We shall see. You may stay to assist me.” He nodded to Mrs. Croft. “Fetch a fresh basin and cloths.”
The medical man barely acknowledged Chase’s introduction, making it clear his presence was superfluous, so Chase accompanied Mrs. Croft into the corridor.
“I should like to have a look around while the scent is yet fresh,” he told her and hurried away before she could resume her complaints.
Taking himself down to the kitchen, he surprised a young drudge at her scullery pots. In barely comprehensible English, she insisted that she had been there the entire afternoon and that no one had come in or out the area door. Afterwards, Chase made his way above stairs again and out the back entrance to a weed-choked garden. Patches of blue had appeared in the sky as a brisk breeze blew away the storm clouds. From somewhere close by, a thrush warbled cheerfully.
As he stood drawing in the fresh air and pondering his next move, he suddenly felt eyes upon him. A twig snapped, and he turned his head to peer toward an overgrown lilac hedge. Chase dropped to his haunches on the mired ground. In a small, raw hollow that looked as if it had been torn out of the hedge by sheer force huddled a child.
Two eyes regarded him, one hand curling around a dirty, tear-streaked cheek.
“Come out of there.” Chase thrust out his hand, but the child shrank back. “I’ll not hurt you,” he added, not troubling to mask his impatience.
When the mite stood before him, Chase saw that it was a boy of seven or eight years. A wiry figure in nankeen trousers and a snug bottle green jacket, he was all knees and elbows, as was often the case with children that age.
“Your name’s Croft, I believe.”
In response, the boy threw back his shoulders and thrust out his sharp little chin. “Jimmy Croft,” he said clearly, then, as an afterthought added, “sir.”
“Well, Jimmy,” he heard himself say in an over-hearty voice. “John Chase, Bow Street. I’ve been speaking with your mum. She is looking after a lady who’s been hurt, and it is my duty to find the man who did it. I was hoping you could help me.”
“I’ll try, sir.”
Chase felt himself curiously at a loss. He didn’t wish to come right out and demand an explanation for the tears and the hiding place, for he thought that might wound the child’s dignity. On the other hand, his business was pressing.
“Have you been in the garden for a bit, young ’un?”
“Mum told me to stay back here. She didn’t want me in the Green with all the carrying on today.”
Chase jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Anyone come through that door?”
Color flooded the boy’s sensitive skin. “Yes, sir. He near bowled me down, he did. I…I didn’t know what to do, so I hid in the bushes…in case he would come back. I thought my mum would call if she needed my help.”
“Were you hurt, boy?”
Jimmy shook his head, the misery on his face so acute that Chase wanted to swear. “That’s all right then. If you were worried about your mum, she’s fine, and it looks like the lady who was injured will come through as well. Tell me about this man you saw.”
“Oh, he was tall. Tall as an oak tree. He wore a big black coat that covered him all up. And he had eyes that would burn you up if you looked in ’em, I guess. But I didn’t look. I jus’ kept my head down till I heard the latch on the gate shut.”
Burning eyes? Either Jimmy’s imagination had gotten the better of him or someone had been priming the pump. “You been talking to anyone? Maybe one of those men in black suits that accompanied the preacher lady?”
“No, sir, I stayed right here, as my mum bade me.”
“Do me a favor,” said Chase, getting to his feet. “Keep your tongue between your teeth about what you saw.”
Chapter XV
John Chase went out the gate into a timber yard that ran along the rear of these houses, but, though he found several men at work with large axes, no one reported having seen anything out of the ordinary. He then penetrated some little distance into Clerkenwell Close, pausing at a rather ugly church built on the foundations of the nunnery, according to the garrulous clergyman to whom he spoke.
The clergyman gave him the name and direction of a retired brewer who took his constitutional in the close at this hour each afternoon and might have noticed something, but this fellow too was of no help.
When Chase hurried back to the Green, he found that much of the crowd still lingered awaiting news, singing hymns that seemed to float through the luminous air.
“What news?” said Thorogood.
“The doctor is with Miss Barnwell.” Chase cupped his hands around his mouth. “Your attention, my good people. Give me your attention.” It took a few minutes, but finally the noise died down enough that he could make himself heard.
“I am from Bow Street. I will seek Miss Barnwell’s attacker, I promise you, but if there is anyone here who saw aught suspicious, let him come forward now. I am ready to listen.”
He waited, and when after a long, uncomfortable moment no one responded, he continued, “In that event, I say you do no good here and may do harm if you provoke riot and rumpus in the streets. The prophetess is injured, true, but it is thought not seriously. It may be she will recover. Take yourselves off and hope to hear good tidings of her soon.”
Their protest clamored in his ears. Half shrugging, Chase turned to Thorogood, who said, “You did your best, sir, but these people seem harmless enough, and I believe the local authorities are here as well. There was one asking to speak to you a moment ago.”
“I would we had not lingered before seeking out Miss Barnwell after the speech. I might have prevented all this.”
Thorogood eyed him keenly. “Fata obstant. The Fates oppose.”
The door to Mrs. Crofts’ house opened, and the doctor emerged. As soon as they caught sight of his frock-coated figure, the crowd surged forward to call out questions about his medical verdict and the state of the Messiah. Swishing his cane around him to clear his path, he at first did not choose to answer, but when several of the most determined interrogators surrounded his hack, he swung to face them, his countenance darkening.
“How dare you. Get out of my way, at once, you hoi polloi.”
“The child. The child,” they moaned piteously.
Chase reached his side. “Your pardon, sir, for this inconvenience. Can you tell me how you find Miss Barnwell? Not in danger of her life, I trust?”
The doctor met his eyes and spoke in a lowered tone. “Nothing of the kind, man, though she has yet to rouse from her swoon. She’ll do well enough, as I told that Mrs. Gore, so long as she is not disturbed for a day or two.”
“No tragic consequences to be feared?”
“You refer to the pregnancy? I’ll say nothing on that score, as her handmaiden outright refused me permission to conduct a thorough examination. Seemed to feel Miss Barnwell’s modesty would be outraged.”
Nodding briskly, he turned to mount the steps into the coach, but the knot around the horses’ heads had tightened, and the doctor was swept away from his goal, his hat tipping over one eye. “Get away from me,” he cried, practically foaming at the mouth in his rage. “You are all the biggest fools in Christendom. A simple woman of farm stock, and you lot credit this Banbury tale about a Messiah…”
Chase’s heart sank as the doctor’s words spread through the crowd like a bolt of lightning, no doubt becoming garbled in the process, as they were repeated from mouth to mouth. Then he heard the low cry of anguish that welled up from a hundred throats. “He says there’s no child,” said one bewildered woman. “The Devil has taken the baby. Satan, I tell you. Satan has stolen away our Savior.”
This time when Chase wanted to swear, he did, long and with vicious pleasure, until Thorogood coughed gently. “Mr. Chase, I think perhaps we are at the end of our usefulness here. Let us just assist the good doctor to mount into his carriage and then locate some form of transport for ourselves.”
“You go. I must first speak to Mrs. Gore. I’ve not had an opportunity to explain to you, but she is somehow involved in the business with Dick Ransom.”
He cleared his throat. “Er…I spoke to the poor distressed lady myself and was able to satisfy myself on a number of points. You will be glad to hear—”
“You take too much on yourself, Thorogood, when you know nothing of the facts. I’m sure you’d be interested to learn that your lady in distress is a brothel madam who is likely up to her eyebrows in treasonous plots. But never mind that now. Where is she?”
One look at the lawyer’s guilty expression told him everything he needed to know. “She’s gone, isn’t she, and you let her go? Hell and damnation, Thorogood, with friends like you, a man has little need of enemies. Unless you ask me to excuse you on account of her beautiful eyes?”
“She said she must make haste to employ a nurse to remain with the prophetess until she may be moved. You forget I had every reason to believe you had already questioned Mrs. Gore closely when you removed to the house together. I merely carried her box to the coach, detained her some few minutes in conversation, then bid her Godspeed. What would you have if you don’t confide your plans to a trusted confederate?”
“Her box?” Chase echoed with foreboding.
***
John Chase waited in the flickering half-darkness at the arched entranceway to the George Inn yard. The night was blusterous, the cobbles beneath his feet slick with horse effluent and damp. Flambeaux, high on the wall, provided just enough light to make out fellow Runner Dugger Farley, who stood conversing with the local constable a few feet away.
Here just off the north side of the Strand, their quarry might have picked any number of bolt holes. Yet even in the heat of pursuit he had chosen well—a large inn yard with bustling traffic and innumerable places for a clever thief to hide such as bedchambers, pantries, wash rooms, stables, kitchen, attic, and nooks and crannies throughout. They’d be extremely fortunate to locate him at all, if he hadn’t already fled.
Droplets of misting rain struck the brim of his hat as the earlier storm resumed. Chase glanced over at Farley, whose breath came in sharp white puffs. The thrill of the hunt had fired him, too. After posting a man at the back entrance, they had cleared the area of inquisitive patrons, serving maids, and ostlers, sending them all to the rightabout with instructions to keep their doors shut and locked. The landlord, bristling with indignation at this interference to his custom, had been persuaded to retire to his parlor.
Bending down, Chase massaged his bad knee. The rain always made it fiercely stiff, as if someone had strapped a board to the back of his leg. He hoped they would not have to pursue this fellow, for over-exertion, rather than loosening the knee, only seemed to freeze it and cause agonizing jabs of pain to shoot up to his thigh.
Not for the first time it occurred to him he wouldn’t be able to do this job forever. The thought didn’t trouble him overmuch, although he wasn’t sure what he’d do with himself when the time came. Once, newly retired from the Royal Navy, he had tried country life and found it dismally flat for a still-young man, despite nearly twenty years in the floating wooden world. Maybe rural existence would strike him otherwise should he try it again. Nowadays, he lived frugally; he had almost enough savings for a small cottage somewhere where he could…his mind shied away.
After leaving Clerkenwell Green, Chase had stopped by Bow Street office to speak to Graham. The magistrate was intrigued by his tale of the West Country prophetess, who, it seemed, might have served as the catalyst of whatever fate had overtaken the Jacobin Dick Ransom. If the prophetess Barnwell had once been confined to a madhouse, might she yet be dangerously homicidal? After all, she had been in possession of the presumed murder weapon. But then who had attacked her this afternoon?
Graham had commented doubtfully, “She may have stumbled upon the presumed murder weapon the night she was apprehended by the parish authorities, that is if you yourself had missed it in your examination of the garden, Mr. Chase. It’s possible the real culprit had dropped it there, eh?”
In the midst of this exchange a group of citizens erupted into the court with a prisoner, a well-known thief called Harper, in tow. With great excitement they reported that the neighborhood of Newcastle Street was in great alarm after a watchmaker’s shop window had been broken into and robbed by a gang of four men. The watchmaker and his neighbors had pursued the thieves, taking Harper, but the others had escaped when one of the band had produced a pistol and threatened to “blow a hole in any fool who got too close.”
The gang had dispersed, but a few minutes later one of the thieves had been spotted running into the George Inn yard near Little Drury Lane. Unable to locate him, the citizens had come seeking Bow Street’s assistance.
Chase and Farley found themselves setting off hotfoot for the Strand, led by the watchmaker. About sixty years old and portly, he nonetheless set a spanking pace.
“They took a rope and tied the door knocker to the scraper and railing so I couldn’t get out of my shop to follow,” he huffed. “A neighbor saw and sounded the alarm.”
“Lucky for you,” said Farley.
“The sheer audacity of the villains. They first thought to break into the linen-draper’s shop, actually knocking on the door and pretending to ask if their friend lodged
there. When Jamison wouldn’t open up, they smashed my shop window and made off with what they could carry.”
“What was taken?” asked Chase.
“Fobs and seals. Two gold watches.”
They had reached Little Drury Lane, where a crowd was gathered at the entrance to the George.
“This scum ain’t gonna walk into our arms, Chase,” Farley said now, “and I can’t say I’m partial to the wet.”
“I take there’s something else you’d rather be doing tonight?”
“Only about a hundred things.” The raindrops began to pelt down now, and the cobblestones grew even slicker.
Farley lifted his blunderbuss. “Let’s go.”
Chase drew one of his pistols. It felt cold and heavy against his palm. “Right.”
Farley stepped under the arch, Chase dropping back a few feet to cover him as they proceeded up the narrow carriageway and into the yard proper. The inn, including stables and outbuildings, sprawled around the courtyard on three sides. Rising several stories above the pavement in the galleried style, the main structure, solid and imposing, looked especially warm and inviting this evening. Apparently, word had spread, and it seemed as if every window in the place was lit up. Heads peeked over the banisters from above, and a suspicious number of waiters and yardboys had found excuses to linger in the court. Perhaps our fugitive isn’t yet to be congratulated, after all, thought Chase, nodding politely to a bewhiskered gentleman who had edged open the taproom door.
“What next? Start knocking?” Farley flung out an arm to indicate the row of closed doors.
“Let’s begin out here.”
For the next ten minutes they poked into every corner of the yard, looking behind dustbins and piles of old boxes, even shining a torch down into the well. Nothing.
“How about I go inside and check the coffee room, the taproom, and the kitchens while you do the stables?” said Farley when they had exhausted the yard’s possibilities.
Chase nodded absently. Yet as Farley sauntered off it seemed to him that the stables in a busy inn would be one of the worst places to hide. At any time of day or night, there would be arrivals and departures, people either requiring stabling for their horses and equipages or calling on the ostlers to produce transport.