Blind Justice (5 page)

“… And a good day to you, as well, dame Margaret.”

“Ah, Joseph! Business going well, I hope.”

Et cetera.

We continued on our way, then turned onto the Haymarket, which surprised me by its great size and what I judged to be the modishness of its strollers. The women who walked there were powdered and painted and, to my young eye, quite pretty; they were decked out in the gaudiest raiment that ever I beheld. They offered smiles quite readily.

Sir John must somehow have perceived my interest. “You have observed the plenitude of unaccompanied females hereabouts?”

“I have. Sir John. Who are they?”

“Unfortunates,” said he, and hurried me on.

Although that seemed not a suitable description of their state, I offered no word of contradiction. However, I noted that he seemed quite well acquainted with several. In fact, one, whom I detected to be a bit senior to the rest, halted him with a hand to his arm and after exchanging a few pleasantries and being introduced to me, lowered her voice and said in an earnest tone, “I would only say to you, Sir John, that I received a letter from Tom—all the way from India. He asked to be remembered to you.”

“Ah, Kate! How good to hear it. And how is the boy?”

“Quite well, I think. He claims to have grown three inches in the year he’s been gone—though I can hardly credit it.”

“Oh, quite possible. At his age they sprout just so.”

She inclined her head in my direction. “Is he for the Navy, too?”

“Jeremy? No, I think not. The lad has a trade, and I should like to see him pursue it.”

She addressed me directly: “And what might that be, Jeremy?”

“Printing, ma’am.”

“Well, you’ve a fine man to look after your interests in Sir John. None better.”

“I know that, ma’am.”

“You’re too kind, Kate,” said he to her.

“Don’t talk to me about kindness, John Fielding. Why, the way you dealt with Tom was more than I could …” Her voice trembled. Through all her paint I saw her on the verge of tears.

He seemed slightly abashed at the display of emotion he sensed. His feet shuffled, and he beat the walk with his stick. Clearly, he wished to be on. “He’ll make you proud of him, Kate.”

“I believe it. I do. Well … oh, just one more thing.”

“And what is that, Kate?”

“I’ve moved to a more respectable location at Number Three Berry Lane. There is a side entrance that is quite discreet. I should be pleased—honored—to have you come for tea some weekday afternoon. Only as a friend,” she added, “to show my gratitude.”

“Very kind of you. By all means I shall try to accept your invitation.”

And then with a goodbye and a God-bless-you she hurried away. Without a word to me, he started off suddenly, and I ran to catch him up. He said not a word for quite some space, and I wondered that he even knew I was by his side. But at last he addressed me: “You may have wondered, Jeremy, that I characterized these women of the Haymarket as unfortunates. I offer Katherine Durham as an example—a widow of intelligence and breeding forced to pursue this life on the street. It is a sad matter indeed.”

“Her son was one you sent off to sea?”

“He was—and it was not easy arranging it. He and his two fellows were guilty of a theft in which severe bodily injury was inflicted upon the victim. They truly wanted to hang those boys, Jeremy, and not a one of them older than you.”

The thought made me most uncomfortable. “But you sent them to sea?”

“Two of them.”

I dared not ask what became of the third.

He remained silent until we emerged from the Haymarket and turned onto Pall Mall. I exclaimed at the sight, and he brightened considerably: “Ah yes, I wanted you to see this. Isn’t it beautiful? It certainly smells beautiful. So much of London could be like this, and so little of it is.”

I looked about me. There were trees and flowers—gardens as I had never seen them—and gentry as I had never imagined them. They were dressed finely but not so gaudily as the courtesans and their gallants whom I had seen in the Haymarket. Ladies and gentlemen ambled carelessly along as we passed them by, and there were groupings of a few posed most decorously here and there, all of them conversing in modulated tones. Even the horse traffic differed notably from what I had seen elsewhere. Only carriages and single mounts seemed to be allowed here. I saw no wagons or drays.

We walked Pall Mall up one side and down the other, which gave me a glimpse of Green Park and St. James and of many fine houses along the way. It was all so much more than I had expected that I felt quite the bumpkin there. Even Sir John, whom I had judged to be well dressed, seemed plain by comparison to the gentry around us. And here he did seem to be treated with a certain cold indif- ference. Little notice was taken of him, and he received no salutations. When attention was given, it came in the form of rude stares. And thus, much as I was impressed by what I saw there, I was relieved when at last we turned down Charing Cross and found our way to the Strand.

There was a swarm of people before us, the great ocean of humanity in full tide. Sir John halted there at the head of the great street, listening, smelling, taking it all in. “Is it not wondrous?” he asked. “This great gang of people before us, all of them so different and yet all human and therefore much the same. Is it not glorious? A man who has written many foolish things and a few wise ones once said that when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford.”

“That must have been one of the wise things he said.”

“Indeed it was. He, by the by, is the man whom we shall now seek on your behalf.”

“Who is that, Sir John?”

“Samuel Johnson.”

”Dictionary Johnson?”

“The same, my boy, a man of many admirable qualities, though overvalued in certain respects.”

“Which respects are they?” For I had only heard good spoken of him by my father, both natives of Lichfield, after all.

“For his wit, chiefly. He feels qualified to speak to every subject, including the law, in which he has no foundation, and when he speaks he wishes to be listened to by all and sundry. The man is a bore, and he has the way of all bores: that practice of talking at you, not with you. Even in literature, where he is held to be a great judge, his opinions are quite fallible. Mr. Johnson—or Dr, Johnson, as he styles himself—had the audacity and bad sense to write ill of my brother and his work.”

Reader, you will recognize this last as the true cause of Sir John Fielding’s restrained animosity toward Dr. Johnson, though I did not for many years. One should rather have spoken ill of the King in Sir John’s presence than criticize his late brother.

“But let us be off, Jeremy,” said he. “It is dusk, and we must try to find him at the place he often takes his supper, an inferior eating place frequented by scribblers and their masters that is known as the Cheshire Cheese.”

And so we plunged into the throng there on the Strand, swimming along with the tide, he calling my attention to shops for the gentry along the way. I was then quite surprised when, somewhat past these, my nose was assaulted by a stench as foul as any I had known in the country. Involuntarily, I exclaimed at it.

“At last you smell it, do you?”

“Would that I did not, sir!”

“That is the Fleet River, so called, yet hardly more than a stream flowing into the Thames. Actually, it is little better than a sewer running beneath Fleet Street, open at some points, one of them nearby. I he odor will lessen somewhat as we leave here, so let us do that with haste.”

At last he halted me at a small alleyway hardly noticeable from the street itself. “Just here, I believe, is it not?”

I looked down the alley and in the gathering dark I saw a sign giving announcement to the Cheshire Cheese. I conveyed this to him. Yet how could he have known his location so well?

“Johnson lived just around the corner in an alley square, and he takes his meals here. His housekeeper is, by all reports and unlike Mrs. Gredge, a foul cook. I have no wish to knock upon the man’s door in search of a favor, but I had thought, were we to meet and talk with him at his eating house, it might be easy to present you and your predicament to him. He is not without good qualities. I’m sure he would be moved to help.”

With that we proceeded to the Cheshire Cheese, yet just at the door he halted once again. “One more thing, my boy. When we meet Johnson he may be in the company of one James Boswell, a popinjay and a libertine who calls himself a lawyer. He is visiting and has attached himself to Johnson as a veritable lamprey. My point in mentioning this to you is that Boswell is a Scotsman from Edinburgh and has that manner of speech common to his countrymen. You must in no wise laugh at him, nor even show notice, for he is very vain.” I promised, and we entered.

Although outside darkness had nearly fallen, inside it was darker still. Sir John found a waiter and inquired after Dr. Johnson. He was informed that although the lexicographer had not yet arrived, he was expected and that Mr. Boswell awaited him in the Chop Room. Thence we were conducted. The man whom I rightly took to be James Boswell jumped to his feet and welcomed us—or rather, the magistrate—with great ostentation. In truth, his accent was not much pronounced. It could be detected, certainly, in his rolling of the letter “r” and in the flat nasal inflection he put on nearly all his vowels. However, I found him not in the least amusing.

If Dr. Johnson was a bore, what was I to make of this man who claimed loudly and at length to be his friend? A popinjay? No doubt, and a gossip and a wiseacre, as well. I am aware of the tradition that charges us to speak well of the recently dead, and in the main I hold to it, yet I saw this James Boswell exhaust the time and patience of Sir John on so many subsequent occasions that I find little good in my heart to say of him. Worse still, later, as a young man, I myself heard him deride the chief magistrate of Bow Street, and I hesitated not to take him to task for it directly. Yet I anticipate somewhat. I cannot pretend that my first estimate was as fully formed as this nor as prejudiced. He seemed to me then only a tedious and long-winded man, one so keen to make a good impression on Sir John that he would continually solicit the opinion of the magistrate, and before it was half-stated rush in with his own.

It was thus they discussed a range of topics, chiefly the then notorious John Wilkes, the Parliamentarian who had previously been jailed for fomenting riot. When Boswell noted to Sir John that Wilkes had recently been returned to Parliament in absentia, he then swore the fellow should be clapped in the stocks forthwith, but it soon turned out his objection to the riotous Wilkes was due chiefly to the latter’s abusive pronouncements against the Scots.

“Is it true that he went to you to recover the blasphemous papers His Majesty’s Government had seized?”

“Why, yes,” said Sir John, “he—”

“He had the gall, had he? Why, if you were to ask me, I …”

Et cetera.

They went from Wilkes to the French and on to Boswell’s book on Corsica, which he advertised shamelessly to the magistrate; they spent over an hour on the voyage. I was by this time quite famished. Sir John must have perceived this, for he managed to silence Boswell long enough to order a steak and kidney pie for me and a joint of beef for himself. By that time the place was quite packed, but there was no sign of Dr. Johnson.

Sir John, in fact, remarked on that to Boswell, mentioning only that he had expected to encounter the lexicographer. Was he expected?

“Aye, indeed he was and is expected,” said Boswell. “He’ll not be long.”

At last our dinner arrived. And shortly behind it, to my great surprise, came none other than Benjamin Bailey. I was barely three bites into my pie when his tall figure filled the doorway of the Chop Room. He ducked through and proceeded direcdy to our table.

“Mr. Bailey,” I exclaimed, “why—”

He touched me on the shoulder, perhaps with the intention of silencing me: In any case it had that effect. He then leaned over and spoke at some length in Sir John’s ear. I watched the magistrate’s expression change from one of shock to stern resolution. At the end of the whispered speech, he nodded and rose.

“Forgive me, Mr. Boswell, but we must take leave of a sudden.”

“What is it, Sir John?” Boswell’s interest had been whetted. “Riot? Wilkes?”

“Nothing so grave. This errand is all in a night’s work for a poor magistrate.”

With that we left, Mr. Bailey leading the way and Sir John close behind. I mumbled my goodbye to Boswell, who had given me no notice whatever, then grabbed up a few slices of bread from the table and ran to catch up with the others. I found them at the door. Sir John was just pushing past a stout, red-faced man with a large nose who greeted him by name and made attempt to open conversation with him.

“No time now. Sorry,” blurted Sir John. “Something I wish to discuss with you later, though.”

As we hurried into Fleet Street, I asked the identity of the man at the door.

“Oh, that one,” said he. “That was Johnson.”

“I’ve a hackney carriage waiting,” Mr. Bailey called from ahead.

Waiting and open. He held the door at an attitude of attention. All that was lacking was the salute. As I, too, stepped up and in, I turned curiously and asked, “What is it, Mr. Bailey? What’s happened?”

“Never you mind, lad. In with you now.”

With a word to the driver, Bailey himself jumped inside, and we were under way.

“I think we may as well tell Jeremy since he must accompany us,” said Sir John. And then to me: “There has been a shooting at Lord Goodhope’s residence. He himself is apparently the victim.”

We alighted from the carriage: I first, then Mr. Bailey, and Sir John last of all. Although no word had passed between them, I soon enough learned that the house at which we had stopped was situated on St. James Street, inside the precincts of Westminster, which was then the jurisdiction of Sir John.

It was indeed a grand house from the last century and can be judged so today, for still it stands on that street, though now dwarfed by others even grander. Lately, while investigating the details of this matter to write its account, I ascertained what was then common knowledge: to wit, that although the Goodhope family had great holdings and a manor house in Lancashire, Lord Goodhope was known to spend most of his time in London, sometimes in the company of Lady Goodhope, though more often without it.

For all our haste in getting to the place. Sir John showed no immediate hurry in proceeding to the door. As Mr. Bailey took a moment to instruct the carriage driver to wait, the magistrate simply stood on the walk before the house, his head tilted slightly upwards. As I observed this, it occurred to me that were it not for his affliction, I should have thought him to be staring at the Goodhope residence by the dim light of the street lamp.

“Mr. Bailey!” he called out.

The thief-taker hastened to his side. “At your service, Sir John,” said he.

“Would you describe for me this house we are about to enter?”

“Well, it’s a big ‘un. ‘S’ truth, it is.”

”How big, man?”

“Three floors up,” said Bailey. “That’s counting the ground floor as one of the three. But wide, sir, wide.”

Rather than ask how wide. Sir John c ailed me to witness: “Perhaps you can contribute something to this, Jeremy.”

“I’ll try, sir.” And I did so, noting its brick construction, and the fact that its upper floors were Hve windows across, with the space of a yard between each, and a yard to each corner. The place of a window in the center of the ground floor was taken by a large double doorway to which three steps led.

“Very good,” said Sir John. “And which of the windows is lit?”

“None, sir, that I can see. All the windows seem to be shuttered.”

“Ah, well! They’re keeping old customs then.” With that, he plunged toward the house, his walking stick ahead of him slightly, seeking contact with the lowest step. “Mr. Bailey, give that double door a sound rap, and let them know we have arrived.”

It was oak-upon-oak as Bailey beat thrice upon the door with his club. As we waited for admittance, he gave me a wink and a smile, as if to assure me that he bore no grudge that I had bettered his performance in description. He was a small man in neither size nor spirit.

In less than a minute, the door opened a crack, and the face of a man was partially revealed.

“John Fielding has come,” announced the magistrate, “to inquire into the calamity that has befallen this house.”

Both doors were thrown wide, and we entered. The black-clad butler, dressed as a gentleman to my eyes, showed us immediately into a sitting room just off the spacious hall. There Lady Goodhope awaited us. She rose and walked directly to Sir John. Although the light from the single lit candle within the room was quite dim, I saw that she was well, though discreetly, dressed in the style of the day, a rather thin woman w ith a countenance not so much of great beauty, but rather one that displayed a certain purity. I also noted that her eyes were dry.

“It was very kind of you to come. Sir John, and so promptly. I trust my call did not greatly interrupt you.”

“Nothing that cannot keep.” He groped forward with his hand, found hers, squeezed it sympathetically, and brought it to his lips. “I am deeply shocked at what I’ve heard. I offer my condolences.”

Lady Goodhope had given neither Mr. Bailey nor I so much as a glance. She did not inquire into our presence but stared at Sir John, waiting.

Having waited a space himself, Sir John resumed: “We must view the remains, of course. Mr. Bailey here will assist me in that, due to my obvious deficiency. And, if it is not too much to ask. Lady Goodhope, I should also like you to give me a statement as to how you became aware of the deed. That, however, can be put off until such time in the future as you may feel more capable.”

“I am quite capable, thank you.”

“Then you wish to speak?”

“Yes,” said she bluntly. “Let’s be done with it.”

Benjamin Bailey fetched a chair for Sir John, and after Lady Goodhope had taken her seat again, settled him down into it. They were not five feet apart, each facing the other.

“When I heard the shot—”

“I do sincerely beg your pardon,” said Sir John, “but it will be necessary for me to interrupt you from time to time to ascertain certain facts. I must do so now. At what time did you hear the shot? Where were you? How were you engaged at that moment? Be as detailed in your account as you can be.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, “I understand.”

“Then proceed.”

“It is difficult to be exact as to the hour,” she began once more. “There was no clock at hand, and I have not viewed one since. In all truth, I have no idea of the time at this moment.”

“Mr. Bailey, you have your timepiece with you?”

“I do, Sir John.” Mr. Bailey stepped forward to the candlelight, squeezed the egg-sized orb from a small pocket in his breeches, and announced, “It is just on eight o’clock, three minutes to the hour.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bailey. Now, Lady Goodhope, reckoning backward, how much time would you say has elapsed since the fateful moment?”

She was silent for a moment. “About an hour, I should judge. There were minutes of confusion, which I shall describe, but once I was sure what had happened, I sent a footman with the news to Bow Street.”

“You did well. So let us fix the event at seven, past dark, in any case.”

“Yes.”

It was just about that time, I reflected, that the coxcomb Boswell had begun his recital at the Cheshire Cheese. Such a waste of time!

“Very good. And where were you?”

“I was above in my chambers, reading.”

“You and Lord Goodhope maintained separate apartments?”

She hesitated. “We do, yes. Or we did.”

“Continue, pray.”

“I heard a sharp report, though somewhat muffled. I was not immediately aware of its nature, for I have no familiarity with firearms. I thought perhaps something had fallen below, and so I laid aside my book and went to investigate. Halfway down the stairs, I was met by Potter.”

“Potter?” queried Sir John.

“The butler. He met you at the door.” Then she continued: “Potter was in a greatly agitated state. He had quite rightly recognized the sound I had heard as a gunshot and wished my permission to enter the library.”

“From which the sound had emanated?”

“Yes.”

“Why should it have been necessary to seek your permission? I should think in such a state of alarm, he would have entered immediately.”

“He asked my permission because it was necessary to break down the door. I of course gave it, and—”

“Lord Goodhope had locked it from the inside?” Sir John seemed a bit perplexed by this.

“He had, yes.”

“Was this his custom?”

“Perhaps not his custom, but he did so frequently.” She stopped and sighed. “Lord Goodhope was … somewhat secretive in his habits.”

“I see. And so you gave permission, and the butler sought to force the door.”

“It was not an easy task,” said she. “This was the period of confusion I mentioned earlier. I stood by, waiting, quite beside myself with fear, as first Potter, then Ebenezer, the footman, attempted it with no success. At last, they thought to use a log of wood from the hall hearth. With that, they at last broke the lock, and the door swung open.”

“That was when you viewed your husband’s corpus.”

“That was when I … had a glimpse of it.”

“You did not enter the room?”

“I stepped just inside, saw what I saw, then leapt back.”

“And what was it you saw?”

“I saw the figure of a man. There was a great deal of blood, and I had an impression of terrible disfigurement. The posture of the body was such that he could only have been dead. That was when I sent Ebenezer to Bow Street.”

“Then you, yourself, have not looked upon the corpus in such a way as to be certain it is your husband?”

“I could not,” she said. “I cannot. In any case, Potter made certain identification, and Ebenezer has confirmed it.”

“I see,” said Sir John. “And having sent the footman off, what did you then do?”

“Then I came to this room and waited for you. Here I have been since.”

“You sent word to no one else?”

She seemed quite puzzled at that. At last she asked, “To whom?”

“Oh, to friends, those as might give you bolster in such an hour.”

“I have no friends in London,” she said simply. “Richard’s friends—Lord Goodhope’s—were not mine.”

With that, Sir John nodded and rose to his feet. “Naturally,” he said to her, “I’ll not ask that you reenter the library.”

“Potter will show you inside.”

“That will be most suitable. I do ask, though, that you remain here until we have finished our inspection. There may be further questions. We take our leave then temporarily with thanks to you for your assistance in this painful matter.”

He turned then and made straight for the door, we trailing behind. Behind us. Lady Goodhope called out the butler’s name in a voice that seemed almost unseemly loud. Yet there was little need to summon him. Potter was there at the door to the sitting room, his appearance so silent and swift that it seemed likely he had been eavesdropping.

“At your command, Sir John.”

“Potter?”

“The same, sir.”

He was a stout man of a little more than average height. Bowing, clasping his hands, he was the very picture of servility.

“You will take us to the scene, please.”

“Gladly, Sir John. This way.”

The butler then cupped his hand at his elbow, thinking to conduct him thus down the long hall. But Sir John shook off his hand, just as he had mine earlier while walking in the street. He pointed forward with his walking stick and said, “You lead. We’ll follow.”

Potter looked questioningly at Mr. Bailey, who answered with a firm nod, then he set off, looking back solicitously and often until he himself bumped into a chair along the way.

“Careful,” said Sir John.

“Uh, yes, quite.”

A few steps bevond his mishap, the butler stopped at the last door off the hall. It gaped open, leaning slightlv, half off its upper hinge.

“Just here. Sir John, to your left.”

Hesitatingjust slightlv, the butler stepped inside and waited. But the magistrate delayed, examining the splintered wood at the doorpost and then the broken lock on the door.

“Hal” said Sir John. “You did well to get it open at all, Mr. Potter. This is a verv stout bolt. \bu were aided in this … ?”

“By one of the footmen, Ebenezer Tepper.”

“Is he about?”

“He should be, certainly. Shall I summon him?”

“Not now. Perhaps later.”

The butler, just inside the room, looked uneasily to his left. Something like a shudder passed through him. He turned quickly away, a look of pained distaste on his face. There had to be the body of Lord Goodhope, just out of our view.

“At what time did you hear the shot fired?”

“Just at seven,” said he with great certainty.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I have a timepiece.”

“And you consulted it immediatelv? That seems passing strange. I should have thought your first concern would have been to get this door open to see what might be done to help your master.”

“Oh, it was!”

“But you delayed to check the time?”

“Now I remember I” The man was quite flustered by now. “When Ebenezer and I went to fetch the log from the fireplace near the front door, I noticed the time on the clock on the mantel.”

“And it said seven?”

“Uh, no, just after. It indicated just after the hour.”

“So you merely calculate that the shot was fired at seven.”

“Just so. sir,” said he. deflated.

“And with Ebenezer Tepper’s help, how long would you say it took you to break through the door, using the log as a battering ram?”

“A verv short time, sir.”

“And where is the log you used?”

“Just here, on the floor. We threw it aside as we rushed into the room.”

“And the corpus is exactly as you found it?”

“Exactly, sir.”

“Very good. Potter. That will be all.”

“Sir?”

“We have concluded,” said Sir John. “Thank you. Be gone from here.”

“I thought …” He hesitated. “Yes, sir. As you wish, sir.”

With a look of embarrassment at Sir John and then at Mr. Bailey and myself, he slipped past us and walked swiftly down the hall.

“I shall no doubt have questions for you later,” Sir John called after him.

The butler merely half-turned and nodded as he continued on his way.

“All right, Mr. Bailey, let’s inside and be on with it. Jeremy, you may wait, if you choose, or enter. You’ll no doubt see worse sights if you remain in London.” He then stepped through the door and into the room.

Mr. Bailey followed him inside. “Watch the log, sir. It’s just ahead.”

Sir John touched it with his walking stick and nodded. “As he said.”

“Very harsh you were on that Potter, sir.”

“Oh, I suppose so, but the man had obviously been listening at the door earlier and had decided to give precise witness to what his mistress merely reckoned. He had no better idea than she what time the event occurred, timepiece or no. Put a bit of a scare into him because I didn’t want him about, neither with us nor just outside the door.”

“He’ll not come back.”

“No. Well, come along, Mr. Bailey. Describe the room for me.”

And the two of them left the doorway and my sight as I held back, still standing in the hall. I was strangely filled with trepidation. As I look back on my state of mind at the time, I believe it was my father’s recent death that restrained me. That, and perhaps also the look on the butler’s face when he glanced into the depths of the room. In any case, I soon mastered my unease, squared my shoulders, and marched into the library.