The Price of Murder (27 page)

“Jeremy?”

With that Sir John called me into action. In a trice, I was by his side, my arm extended that he might grasp it as we followed the man up the stairs to the first and then to the second floor. All during our climb, our guide talked ceaselessly.

“Aw, it’s a terrible thing, ain’t it?” said he, throwing the words back over his shoulder to us. “She come back in the middle of the night just weepin’ and cryin’ something terrible, and wakin’ up half the house. For myself—my room is right there next to where Mrs. Hooker dosses—I heard her right off. I was up and on my feet and sticking my head out my door even before she opened up to find out who was there.”

“What time of the night was this?” asked Sir John.

“Oh, I don’t know, round three, four o’clock at night, I reckon.”

“Could you be a bit more exact than that?”

“Oh I s’pose I could. It must have been closer to four than three, ’cause it wasn’t long till I heard the church bells strike four.”

We kept climbing. It was not long till we heard something of a buzz above us. There was little to say between us: each had his own notion of the number of people who waited above. Yet none, I think, was prepared for the many we saw crowded round the Hooker door. And there must indeed have been more inside, for the attention of those in the hall was directed past the threshold and into the apartment. I will say for them, however, that, for such a group, they were reasonably quiet—listening.

“. . . and then did I at last admit to myself,” came a familiar voice, “that I could do naught but jump.” (It was Elizabeth, the heroine of her own story.)

“Brave girl!” responded one of the audience in the hall.

“You showed good English pluck, dearie. Didn’t she, all?”

And to that there sounded a great affirmative chorus, even a scattering of applause from her listeners.

“So I did what had to be done—and I
jumped?
!”

Then did the scattering swell to an ovation, the like of which I had heard exceeded only at Mr. Garrick’s Drury Lane Theatre.

We were not at their level, and though the crowd of people at the door, male and female, was even larger than I had expected, they were remarkably well behaved.

“How many would you say there are?” Sir John whispered.

“There are a good many, surely more than twenty,” I replied sotto voce. “Twenty-five at least.”

“I shall count on you to make a path for me.”

This was a task that so often came to me that I had developed a method for clearing the way for the magistrate. I did, first of all, speak in a voice much louder than was my wont. I kept in sight (though, naturally, I never used) the cosh that Mr. Marsden had given me; and, in general, I chose my words carefully.

“Make way, one and all,” I shouted, “for Sir John Fielding, magistrate of the Bow Street Court. All who dare impede him in the discharge of his duties by thought, word, or deed, do so at their own risk. All here are answerable to him and punishable by jail terms of up to ninety days to be served in Newgate.”

Having thus said my piece, I felt a little like the crier for some Oriental potentate. And, indeed, that could not have been far from the impression I created, for all fell silent and opened the way before us three to the Hooker rooms. Did I say that
all
fell silent? Not quite, I fear, for, behind me, I heard a few ill-suppressed giggles and knew they could only have come from Mistress Clarissa Roundtree.

Even Elizabeth seemed to hang upon my words. She half-lay upon a love seat, ensconced beneath a comforter. Her mouth was half-open as she regarded the three of us.

“Clarissa,” said she, “how nice of you to come and bring . . . your . . . your employer.”

“Jeremy,” said Sir John, “close the door that we may have some modicum of privacy as we question Mistress Hooker.”

As I turned to do as he bade me, Elizabeth jumped up from the little nest she had made for herself upon the love seat and waved dramatically at the crowd outside the door.

“Friends,” said she, “I ask you to remain, and I shall finish the story. You will hear all!”

There were unhappy groans as I shut the door.

“Mother,” Elizabeth called out, “do you think they will stay?”

Mrs. Hooker came forth from a dark corner of the room. “’Twould be better, daughter, if they did not. Your worry should be naught but making sure all is told to Sir John.”

“Thank you for that bit of advice, Mrs. Hooker. Your daughter would be well-advised to follow it.” He turned left and right as if he were looking round the room. “I have the sense that the room is in disorder. Has the furniture been moved?”

“It has, Sir John,” said I. (I was long past wondering how he managed such feats.)

“Then move things back again, will you?”

With a little help from Clarissa, and Elizabeth pointing the way, we managed to do just that.

“Now bring me a chair.”

I placed one under him and indicated to Elizabeth that she was to resume her place upon the love seat just opposite Sir John.

“Are we ready to proceed?” he asked. Then, hearing our assent, he began. “Elizabeth, we are aware that you attended Easter dinner with Mistress Quigley at the home of your aunt and uncle in Wapping. Is that correct?”

She hesitated, then said, “Yes sir.”

I glanced over at Clarissa. She, in turn, nodded toward Elizabeth’s mother. The woman was visibly shocked. Nothing of this was known to her.

Sir John took the girl through all that we had learned of her actions up to and including the moment that she departed from Kathleen Quigley at the Theatre Royal and took off across Covent Garden in the company of the two young gallants.

When she acknowledged that this, too, was true, it was altogether too much for the Widow Hooker. She had suffered in silence up to then. Now she cried out her daughter’s name as you might wail the name of one who was lost, near dead, or drowning.

Sir John turned to her. “I must caution you against making such a disturbance again. If you do, you must suffer the consequences. Is that clear?”

She said that it was, yet even so, she whimpered and sniffled all through the interrogation. Afterward, he conceded to me that his threat to her was but so much bluffing, and that the mother’s presence was probably a good thing, for she served as a balance to the stern manner he had adopted.

“My question to you, Mistress Hooker—and I charge you to speak only the truth in answering—is this: What happened to you after you left your friend, Mistress Quigley?”

“The two young men, as I should have known, were black-guards, plain and simple,” said she. “No sooner was I separated from Kathleen than the two of them fell to arguing between themselves about me.”

“About you? In what way?”

“Well, the whole question seemed to be whether or not I would do.”

“Do? Again, in what way?”

“Whether I would—how shall I put it?—make the grade. Whether I should, well, qualify.”

“Qualify for what?”

“That is what I earnestly sought to discover. They talked of me as if I were not present, as if I were an animal of some sort.”

“I don’t quite understand,” said Sir John.

“Well, Dick—he was the one on my left—kept repeating that my bosom was not of sufficient size to be interesting. Bobby—it was him on my right—he insisted it was. Or, what he said in all truth was that it didn’t make much difference. Dick said I wasn’t pretty enough. Pretty enough for what, I wanted to know.”

“And you did ask them?”

“Well no, not directly. I wanted to know where they were taking me, for I have a fair sense of direction, and I could tell they weren’t taking me the right way.”

“Which direction were they taking you?”

“Well, north, it seemed to me—which was just opposite of the way I wanted to go.”

“And did you inform them of this?”

“Oh, I did! I told them they were making a great mistake if they thought they could take me some other place but home. They laughed at me. I dug in my heels and told them I would go no further. They did not then laugh, but they dragged me along for thirty or forty feet until I started to scream.”

“And then what?”

“They became quite cross with me. Dick went so far as to shake his walking stick at me and threaten me, telling me what he would do to me if I did not cooperate. But I laughed at him and screamed again. That was when he belabored me about the head, and I fell unconscious.”

“You actually fell upon the ground?”

“Well, not quite, I suppose. They held me up, one each side, and I s’pose I was making my feet go. But I was dazed, unable to know where we were headed. Oh, I was in a terrible state!”

“No doubt you were, but—”

At that moment, a knock sounded upon the door to the hall. Had I not made it sufficiently plain with my threats that we were not to be disturbed?

“Jeremy, see what that’s about, will you?”

“Certainly, Sir John. Shall I send them away?”

“Let’s see who it is first, and then decide, shall we?”

(It was on such occasions as this that he often made me feel like an utter fool.)

I went to the door, opened it, and found a small woman of a size not much larger than Mr. Deuteronomy. She was old, about sixty, and swarthy of complexion.

“Tell her that Goody Moss is here,” said she to me.

“Tell who?”

“The Widow Hooker. ’Twas she who sent for me.”

“Remain here, please,” said I and closed the door.

I went back and announced the woman. Elizabeth’s mother caught her breath. “Oh, the midwife, of course! I completely forgot that I had sent for her—to examine Elizabeth. I thought you would want that, Sir John. It should not take long for her to be pronounced intact. You do want that, I assume?”

He sighed a great sigh and rose from his chair. “Yes, all right,” said he. “Jeremy, come along. We’ll wait out in the hall. Clarissa, I’d like you to remain to serve as witness to these proceedings.”

And so I opened the door once again and beckoned Goody Moss into the room. Then did I see Sir John out and into a corner some distance from the door. About half of those who listened with such sympathy to Elizabeth’s account of her escape had stayed on to hear the tale told complete; they stared at us timidly. I commented upon this to Sir John.

“Indeed they seem quite fascinated by her,” he commented. “But why not? She is quite the actress.” He hesitated, then: “And I hoped for a ‘clean’ witness!”

We waited impatiently. In particular, Sir John seemed most unhappy with the interruption and the consequent delay. He tapped his foot and sighed. At one point he did speculate: “I wonder what reason that woman, Mrs. Hooker, could have had to summon the midwife.” And then, a moment later, he answered his own question: “She must have been so certain of her daughter’s virtue that she wished to demonstrate it to me.”

And that was how we passed our brief exile in the hall—whistling, tapping our feet, asking questions of ourselves. Yet, as I say, it was but a
brief
exile: It was not long before the door was opened to us and Goody Moss came forth and made her way to us.

“You, sir,” said she to Sir John, “would want to know, and so I shall tell you.”

“Please do.”

“Though her maidenhead is long gone, there is no sign of entry . . . recently.”

“When you say recently, what does that mean?”

A knowing smile. “Oh, a day or two perhaps—or a night and a day.”

“Is that what you told Mrs. Hooker?”

“I told her what she wished to hear. To you I tell the truth. I whispered to the girl—what is her name? Clarissa?—all the details. She’s a good girl, very smart. She can tell you all you need to know—if you need to know more.” She gave us a wink. “Goodbye, then, eh?”

She started for the stairway, but stopped, turned, and came back to us.

“You did know that she was pregnant, eh?”

“We knew nothing of the kind,” said Sir John.

“Indeed she is—about a month or two gone, I would say. Not so she would show. She may not even know. But we have ways of knowing.”

And then she left us. I watched her go, wondering what those ways of knowing were. From her dark face to her bright garb, she seemed an altogether mysterious sort. Her name did not fit her, nor did her slightly odd manner of speech.

“Who is she, sir? What is she? Her accent of speech was something new to me.”

“Goodwife Moss is a Gypsy, my lad. I do know that mode of speech, for a number have appeared before me in Bow Street, though not many are to be found in the cities. They are, for the most part, country people, traveling people. And did you notice the striking odor of the scent that she wore?”

“Now that you mention it, yes.”

“All Romany females seem to wear it—from the youngest to the very oldest. But let’s go inside, shall we? I cannot say how this bit of knowledge she gave to us will change anything, or if it will at all, but it is certainly of considerable interest, is it not?”

Without awaiting my agreement, he started to the room we had left. I offered him my arm, and in we went. Sir John entered with a question, thus beginning precisely at the point at which he had earlier been interrupted.

“As I recall, in response to your screams, you were beaten upon the head with a heavy walking stick by one of the two young men who had promised to see you home. Is that correct?”

“Yes sir.”

I know not why, but just at that moment I happened to glance over at Clarissa, and noticed that she was sending me a message. Emphatically was she shaking her head in the negative. I noted that neither of the Hooker women could see her in the place she had chosen. Answering with a single affirmative nod, I resolved to discuss the entire matter of Elizabeth’s abduction with Clarissa at the earliest opportunity.

“Then, as you said, you were in a dazed state, not quite fully conscious, yet still moving your feet and stumbling along between the two men. And you were moving in a northerly direction. Is that correct?”