“After dark, perhaps, though not at this hour.”
He lapsed into silence as we began our journey. He had traveled just as quietly to Field Lane.
Our destination, of course, was the shop that had formerly belonged to George Bradbury, who served as fence to Covent Garden’s most skilled and dedicated thieves. Mr. Bradbury died for his sins, and his widow sold the pawnshop, lock and stock, when she emigrated to the North American colonies. Since then I had called there perhaps two or three times to make the sort of search I had done more often up in Field Lane. The new owner, a man by the name of Garland, was too honest or perhaps too timid to engage in the sort of backdoor enterprise in which the former owners had engaged so eagerly.
In any case, the trip did not take a great deal of time, and we were deposited right in the middle of Bedford Street, which put us directly before Mr. Garland’s shop.
“Here we are,” said I to my companion. I climbed down and paid off the driver.
“Well,” said Mr. Collier, emerging into the light and looking the street up and down, “it doesn’t look so bad.”
“It is, as I said, a street like most in London until night falls and the villains and scamps come and claim the ale houses and dives as their own.”
At just that moment, a drunken wretch came hurtling through the open door of a low place next to the pawnshop; he landed in the gutter nearby. The innkeeper leaned out the door and snarled a few curses at the poor fellow before retiring into the darkness of the gin shop.
Mr. Collier watched the offender attempt vainly to push himself up to his feet. He turned to me. “You say it’s worse than this after dark?”
“Oh, much,” said I.
Pointing to the pawnshop door, I herded him forward and inside. The proprietor of the place, Mr. Garland, was there immediately to meet us.
“We should like to take a look around,” said I. “The magistrate has sent me.”
“I know who you are. I remembers you from your last visit,” said he.
Mr. Collier had already begun his inspection, looking at clocks and vases and other bits and pieces standing about the front of the shop. It did not take long. He simply shook his head in the negative and turned toward the door, presuming that we were done.
“We shall be looking in the back room, as well,” said I to the shopkeeper.
“Well and good,” said he, striving to contain his anger, “but I told you once I do not engage in such illegal trade. Why will you not believe me?”
“In a word, Mr. Garland, because he who preceded you had a long history of it. And his widow, from whom you bought the shop, put her very heart into such dealings. Of that I can speak from some personal knowledge.”
“I’ll not ask what that knowledge is. I’ve heard enough about her — murdered her husband, she did, or so they say. Heard about it a hundred times, at least.” He shrugged and waved a hand dismissively. “All I know is she gave me a good price on the place, and the stock. And that’s all I need to know.”
As we went thus at each other, Mr. Collier slipped past us and into the rear room, which I knew from my earlier searches contained most of the ticketed items in the shop. We followed him. And I noted immediately that Mr. Garland had done a great deal of work putting to order the chaotic jumble that earlier prevailed in the large rear room. That made Mr. Collier’s work much easier. He went swiftly through the room just as he had those in Field Lane. He lingered only at the two stacks of paintings mounted in their frames piled upright against the wall. Yet he did not linger long. He was done as quickly as I might have hoped. Mr. Garland was glad to see us go and said as much.
It took little to persuade Mr. Collier to continue the rest of the way on foot. We were soon away from Bedford Street, and out on the Strand, and into the swarm of humanity. Crowded it may have been, yet it looked a bit better and smelled better than what we had left behind. I know that my companion noticed the improvement, for he commented upon it.
“Ah,” said he, “how good it is to be getting back to my part of town.”
“Your part of town, sir?”
“Why, indeed! I may be but a humble butler, but all of my employment has been in that area in which you found me — St. James Street, St. James Square, Great Jermyn Street, the best addresses in London. There are few who would differ with me on that.”
“Well, no doubt they are very good addresses, Mr. Collier, but would it be fair to say that they were your addresses? After all, sir, to take the most convenient example, Lord and Lady Lilley no doubt would contest your claim.”
“Oh, no doubt they would.”
“They would say it was their address.”
“Ah, but I lived there, too, and ran the house.”
“Does that give you the right to claim it as your own?”
He considered my question. “Not the whole house, perhaps.” Then did he puff up a bit; his chin went up, and his chest came out, attracting curious glances from the passersby. “But the address was as much mine as it was that of the duke and duchess.”
“That much I’ll grant, but — ”
“You seem an intelligent lad,” said he, interrupting. “Let me tell you that I’ve been doing some thinking since I was thrown out so coldly from that house in St. James Street. I believe I shall avail you of a bit of it.” He paused but briefly, then plunged on: “I despise myself as I was there — far too eager to please, far too fearful of giving offense. I was an arse-kisser — or to put it less vulgarly, a toady, a sycophant, a … a …”
“A lickspittle?”
“Precisely! And why did I play such a role? Why, to curry favor, to seek recognition from my employer that I might be liked, well-treated, given greater responsibility. And, let us ask, who was my employer? One who was, in every way but two, my inferior. Which is to say, first of all, that he had a title, and secondly, that he had great wealth, more than he could ever spend in his lifetime.”
“I do not understand,” said I. “Since he has a title and great wealth, how can you claim to be superior to him in every other way? It may not be just, but that is how the world measures greatness. What other ways are there?”
“Well … well …” he sputtered, “taste for one thing. I believe I told you, young sir, that Lord Lilley valued his possessions purely according to what he had paid for them. Nor is he alone in that. There is not one duke or earl in the realm who can claim to possess even a modicum of personal taste. If it were not for Italians and Frenchmen here in London, and an occasional word from a butler” — he did then give a mischievous wink — “their houses would go unfurnished and their walls empty. They are so utterly without taste that, left on their own, they would not know what to buy.”
His long rant put me somewhat on the defensive. After all, I was well aware that our quarters at Number 4 Bow Street were rather bare of adornment. We had not a single picture on the wall, nor one piece of statuary, and the rooms were furnished with odds and ends left behind after brother Henry’s departure for Portugal (and his subsequent death). What use had a blind man for such? And Lady Fielding, for all her pretensions, was quite indifferent to the decorative or visual arts. In short, we lived well enough without taste.
“How can it be so important?” I asked in a manner which I meant to seem dismissive. (I began at this point to peer ahead, searching for a place where I might conveniently part company with this pouter-pigeon of a fellow.)
“Important? My dear boy, taste is more than important! Le bon gout e’ejt tout/” he declared, making a neat little French rhyme of it — then translating helpfully, “Good taste is all — everything!”
We had come to the end of the Strand and the beginning of Charing Cross Road, a perfectly suitable sort of place for me to send Mr. Collier on his way, a smile on my face as I delivered a firm pat to him on his back. I had more than begun the goodbye ritual, in fact had even delivered that final pat on the back, when he looked me in the eye and declared: “Young man, I am disappointed in you.”