Theft of Life (15 page)

She heard the smile in his voice. ‘Mr Crowther made that point early in his testimony. And insisted that Trimnell died immediately on the blow being struck, rather to the foreman’s irritation. They have compromised on the fact that no one saw what time he left his lodgings.’

She frowned and watched the man she took to be the foreman. He glanced once at Sir Charles while she watched. Drax had shifted in his seat and was looking at Mr Palmer and herself. He did not quite stare, but Harriet had the distinct feeling she was under observation. She was about to ask Palmer some further question, but he interrupted her. ‘Mrs Westerman, would you do me the kindness of frowning as if I am saying something surprising and perhaps a little unwelcome? … Thank you, and now if you would perhaps look down and nod a little while you absorb the force of my arguments? …
Excellent
. I am obviously very persuasive, but remember to keep looking displeased. Thank you. One more thing. I suspect there will be a little drama before the session closes. Please do not get caught up in it, and drag Mr Crowther away by the ear if you have to.’ Her eyes narrowed and she looked up sharply at him. ‘Trust me, Mrs Westerman. Now perhaps if you might sigh and nod, then I will say goodbye and we will part with reluctant politeness.’

She obeyed, but by a slight pressure on his arm prevented him from rising. ‘Why are you here, Mr Palmer?’

‘I wish I knew,’ was all he would say. She released his arm and they shook hands. She felt him press something into her palm, but not until he had left the room and Drax had turned away again did she look to see what it was. It was Palmer’s visiting card, though she noted that it gave neither address nor title. It was simply his name, with
Admiralty Office
printed below it. She knew a little of what Palmer did there; following the way the winds of war and change blew across Europe like an exquisitely sensitive weather-vane. The image amused her, and as she turned the card over she was smiling. He had written on the back only three words.
Berkeley Square, midday
. Her smile faded. It would be difficult to tell Mr Palmer she wanted none of this case. He had done Crowther and herself some expensive favours over the last few years. Also, Mr Palmer, like Crowther, had an uncomfortable habit of being able to tell what she was thinking. They would guess she was already curious. If Trimnell was going to show his cronies the mask, why then did he not arrive at the coffee shop? If he meant to spend the evening elsewhere, why carry the mask? Did the people around her really believe a footpad in London went armed with a whip, and equipment to stake out a man?

There was some movement to her left. A child was pushing his way through the crowd with an air of urgent intent. She watched his progress then lifted her eyebrows as she saw he was approaching an African man on the extreme edge of the room. The African was wearing a long riding cloak and had his hat pulled low over his face, but she was at once surprised she hadn’t noticed him before. He was a head taller than the other men standing about him and the breadth of his shoulders suggested he had strength to match. He was dressed like a gentleman – it was not livery or a coachman’s uniform he wore, though he stood among the poorer class of people who had come to watch proceedings. She saw him bend down as the boy tugged at his arm. At first he waved the boy off, but the child persisted and eventually with every movement suggesting deep annoyance, he followed the small figure from the room. Harriet looked out of the window to her right and saw the child leading him towards a hackney carriage. There was a short conversation between the African and the man inside, then the former climbed in and the carriage drew away. Harriet was fairly certain she recognised Mr Palmer’s profile as it passed.
What are you about, Palmer?
she wondered, and tucked his card into her glove.

Mrs Trimnell concluded her evidence with an account of her father coming early to fetch her to the balloon-raising. She then returned to her chair, whereupon there was a sound of shouting in the passageway outside. All present immediately turned away from the coroner’s instructions to the jury to see what was happening.

A pair of city constables were pulling a man through the chamber towards the coroner. His skin was pale brown, his coat and trousers ragged and dirty. Harriet thought he could not be more than twenty; he had the long-limbed and awkward appearance of a young man not yet fully grown. He was thin, and his eyes stared out wide and suspicious from his smooth, rounded face. His hair was cut close to his skull.

The coroner looked at the two constables with considerable irritation. ‘What business do you have here? Who is this boy?’

‘This is your killer, Mr Bartholomew!’ the elder of the two constables said with relish. He looked around the room as if making sure everyone in the attentive crowd had the chance to see and remember his face. ‘Me and Higgins here pulled him up out of the doss-house not an hour ago, acting on information given that he’d pawned a watch belonging to a slaver and got drunk on the proceeds. He was boasting as it was the first wages he’d got for his work. A concerned subject of His Majesty came to us with this information.’

Everyone began talking at once. Everyone, that is, except the boy. He remained with his head down while shouts and brays swept through the room. The monkey on Drax’s shoulder danced onto its hind legs and applauded with its tiny leathery paws.

‘Enough! Some quiet!’ Bartholomew called, and enough of those present listened to him to allow him to be heard asking the constable if the watch had been found.

The constable lifted his chin. ‘
This
was found on his person!’ He produced a slip of paper with the panache of a huckster unveiling his miracle pill. ‘We went to the pawnbroker and he showed us the watch that was given for it.’

‘Is it here?’ Bartholomew said impatiently.

‘Mr Thirkle!’ A spindly gentleman emerged from behind the second constable and blinked at the court through thick glasses.

‘Are you the pawnbroker, sir?’ Bartholomew asked.

The spindly man bobbed an assent and then darted forward and put something into Bartholomew’s hand. ‘And is this boy the one who pledged you the watch?’ It seemed the pawnbroker was not enjoying his sudden celebrity as much as the constable was. Harriet could not hear his reply, but guessed it from Bartholomew’s change of expression. The coroner stood up from his chair and walked over to where Mrs Trimnell sat. She looked at what he held in his hand and nodded. Bartholomew turned away from her again and addressed the young man, still hunkered between the marshals.

‘What is your name, boy?’ He whispered something. ‘Speak up, there’s a good lad.’

‘Guadeloupe.’

‘And you have heard what these gentlemen are saying, Guadeloupe? Do you understand them?’

‘I never killed no man,’ the prisoner said with sudden fierceness. ‘Not on these shores.’

The answer didn’t do him any good with the crowd. There were shouts of ‘monster,’ and ‘savage’ around the room. He bared his teeth at them. Harriet was uneasy. With Bartholomew and the constables there, the boy would not come to any physical harm, and this must be the scene Mr Palmer had spoken of in which they should not intervene. She was beginning to believe, however, that removing Crowther quietly from the place might require some particular effort. She looked around her for some help. A pair of young women were lounging a little way behind her. They were finely dressed, but Harriet knew a woman of the town when she saw one. She slipped out of her seat and approached them.

Bartholomew shouted for quiet again. ‘Where did you get the watch?’

‘Found it.’

‘Found it where?’

Guadeloupe shrugged and looked at the coroner as if he thought him rather simple, then he pointed to the world outside the windows. ‘Out there.’

Bartholomew sighed. ‘Have you anything else to say? Anyone to speak for you?’

‘I have nothing to say. I wish to go back to my own country.’

Crowther seemed to be studying the boy with considerable interest. Harriet nodded to the two girls, one of whom immediately and with no apparent cause or embarrassment began to scream. All attention turned towards her. Harriet felt a brief spasm of sympathy for the coroner. She made her way up to Crowther’s side and plucked at his sleeve. On the other side of the room and apparently out of pure sympathy, another woman began to scream as if in fear of her life. ‘Come, Crowther, we have to leave.’

He looked irritated. ‘Nonsense. I want to examine that boy’s hands.’

‘Gabriel, please.’ He hesitated, but the use of his Christian name had the desired effect. He stood up, offered his arm to her, and while Bartholomew and the constables were still trying to gain control of the room, they edged their way through the crowd and out of the building.

Crowther thought he noticed the female who had started screaming and was now apparently in full hysterics on the flagstone floor look up and wink at Harriet with every sign of sense and health as they passed, but he thought it best not to remark on it.

F
RANCIS WAS WOKEN BY
the sounds of women moving around the room. Mrs Perkins and her servant were beginning their day. For a moment he was a boy again, ten years old and sleeping in Norfolk Street. The daily dread of his old master stirred under his ribs. Then he remembered he was a grown man with a trade, independence, freedom; his hands began to ache and his throat to burn. He remembered the fire and tasted ash. Life without Eliza, without hope of Eliza, opened out in front of him, bleak and broken.

He dragged himself up to his knees. The grocer’s wife smiled at him and pointed at the pitcher and ewer set out on the table. He wiped his face on the cloth and inspected the bandages on his hands.

‘Don’t pick at them, Mr Glass,’ she said. ‘Don’t want the London air getting into the cuts for a day.’ She set down a tankard in front of him, and when he tried to thank her, his chest ached and he retched. ‘What’ll happen to the lad?’ she said when he’d recovered himself a bit, nodding towards the apprentice in the corner.

‘I might take him on,’ Francis said. ‘Or rather, recommend to Mr Hinckley that we take him on.’ Mrs Perkins hid a smile. ‘Miss Eliza said he was a willing boy and I think Ferguson would welcome an apprentice compositor. She got him out of the Foundling Hospital.’

It was the one thought that held any comfort for him – that he could at least look after those she had cared for. The boy was still sleeping hard, his arms flung about as if he’d been fighting flames in his sleep. The grocer himself came in while they were still talking. He was in his coat and had the smell of the fresh air about him.

‘Mrs Smith’s been taken out of the house,’ he said gently, taking his place at the table and picking up the knife. Francis saw him glance at the maid and he continued in a stage whisper: ‘The poor woman couldn’t be known. The ceiling beams collapsed right where she was lying. Smashed her skull, the constable said.’

Francis felt it first, then understood his wider meaning. Her body would not testify. The only thing that said she had not died in the fire and by an accident was his own memory of that wound in her eye and the coldness of her skin.

‘And the cashbox?’ he asked.

‘No sign of it, or the maid,’ Perkins said. ‘But it’s a terrible state in there, and I was thinking, perhaps Penny just got scared and ran off. Maybe it was an accident?’ His voice sounded hopeful and he sighed heavily when Francis shook his head.

Within an hour, and having changed and washed the rest of the smoke off his skin at his own lodgings, Francis was back behind the counter in the shop. He did not know what else he could do. Ferguson, the two printers and the clerk had all heard about the disaster and the death of Mrs Smith. They knew her, liked her and liked Francis, so were solemn and kind. They patted him on the shoulder and welcomed young Joshua into the place. Cutter the clerk brought Francis coffee he had brewed himself in the back kitchen. He had never done so before, so Francis took it that Perkins was right and people had spoken well of what he had done in the fire. He watched Ferguson lead Joshua up to the print room, his broad hand on the boy’s shoulder, and smiled briefly. He remembered being led that way himself and the hours of back-bending work that followed, undoing the dabbers every evening and soaking them in night lyme to keep them soft, the dampening of the sheets for the next day’s printing. He was disposed to like the boy. Joshua had wept hard when he woke and remembered that Miss Eliza was dead, and Francis reckoned it was more out of grief for her than worry for himself. He had practically burst out dancing though, when Francis had suggested he might serve out his apprenticeship at Hinckley’s.

‘Real books!’ he had shouted, then obviously fearing that this was some disrespect to his old mistress, looked fearful and deflated as if he had been flattened by the palm of some invisible justice. ‘I do like helping to make the pictures with Mrs Smith too. But I can’t draw, so I know I’d never make an engraver, sir.’ Francis assured him that he understood. Walter came by very early, stinking of last night’s gin but pale with worry about his friend. Francis was touched, but sent him home to sleep off the fumes.

The shutters were only just raised when a well-dressed gentleman whom Francis did not recognise entered the shop. His face was set and angry and he was marching in front of him the strange boy, Eustache, who had invaded his shop on Saturday morning.

‘Stand there!’ the gentleman ordered, and the boy obeyed, his chin on his chest. The man stepped forward to the desk and put out his hand. ‘Mr Glass? My name is Graves. I own Adams Music Shop on Tichfield Street.’

Francis nodded. ‘I am glad to know you, Mr Graves, and I would shake your hand if I could.’ He lifted up his bandaged hands and Graves lost his stern expression and looked at Francis with new attention and concern.

‘What on earth happened?’ He peered at him. ‘God, your eyes are red as Hell.’

Francis looked away. ‘There was a fire last night. Mrs Smith was killed. I believe she and Mrs Service, the lady who was with the children yesterday, were friends.’