“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”
“No more than I am sorry to tell you. I thought, when I noted your eye roaming o’er the Vermeers and the Rubens in Mr. Zondervan’s gallery, ‘Now’, there is a lad who may not know much but who perhaps could be taught.’ But unfortunately …”
“I really must be going,” said I, “but you’ll be all right from here on.”
“Of course I will. But let us consider Mr. Zondervan. Now, the man has taste, no doubt of that — I should be the last to dispute it. Nevertheless, to keep his artistic treasures hidden away as he does and under lock and key, that truly seems most unfortunate. Who is he hiding them from?”
“Mr. Collier, I thank you for your cooperation, but now I must return to Bow Street.” I said it quite firmly. “Goodbye.”
“What? Oh, I suppose so. Yes, goodbye.”
With that, I turned round and left him where he stood, separate lines of pedestrians flowing on either side of him. Yet after a few steps I turned back for another look. I caught sight of him, moving along now, gesturing with his hands so that I was sure that he was still talking, even though I was no longer with him to listen. But then the crowd swallowed him up; he had quite disappeared.
He seemed perhaps a bit mad, pushed into that state by his rude dismissal. He had annoyed me, it was true, but far more than annoyance, I felt pity for the old man (he must have been forty or more).
I had a great desire to talk about him with someone. But with whom? It did not seem proper to discuss him with Sir John or Lady Katherine. Annie, it struck me, would have little interest in him. That left only Clarissa. Well, why not? She, at least, would see the drama in it. I wondered vaguely what she might have to say.
So you see, reader, the first day of my investigation may have gone quickly, as I said, yet it was not particularly fruitful. I vowed when I took myself up to bed that night that tomorrow I would do better.
Though I could only guess at what time of night it may have been, footsteps upon the stairs to my room brought me wide awake out of a deep sleep.
“Who is there?” I challenged the intruder.
“It is I, Jeremy.” The voice was Lady Fielding’s. She came to the open door of my room and leaned inside, no more than a light form against the darkness of the hall.
I rose up in bed to show that I was fully awake. “What is it?” I asked. “Is Sir John well?”
“Oh yes, but one of the constables has come with word of another great robbery. Jack cannot go, he simply cannot.”
“I agree.”
“I would not even wake him to tell him. I fear you will have to go and act in his stead.”
“It will take me no time at all to be ready. If anyone is waiting downstairs, you may tell him that I shall be there in minutes.”
And, indeed, I was. Fully dressed but with shoes in hand, I descended the stairs. At the bedchamber of Sir John and Lady Fielding I paused a moment to hear his steady breathing. As I did, she appeared and whispered, “Take care, Jeremy.” Then did she surprise me with a motherly kiss upon the cheek. And I continued upon my way.
Below, none other than Constable Patley awaited me. Mr. Baker, for his part, stood ready for me, holding two pistols in holsters, prepared to buckle them about my waist. As he did this, he cautioned me to hold my fire as long as possible, and aim carefully at the trunk. It sounded like good advice. I only hoped that in the event I should have the presence of mind to follow it. But, having been readied for the worst, I could now depart. After I thanked Mr. Baker, we set off into the night.
Constable Patley was my companion and my guide. As we made our way, he recounted to me all that he knew of the crime. It seemed that Mr. Bailey, the captain of the Bow Street Runners, had been his companion this night when again they were approached by someone, a servant of a house in Little Jermyn Street, that had just been sacked by a band of black men. Were there any injuries? Yes, a man lay dead, though he had not, strictly speaking, been murdered. In the course of the robbery one of the household staff had been taken by an attack of some sort — apoplexy or a sudden stoppage of the heart — and it had put him in such a state that he could not be revived.
Having heard this much, I asked the question which I was sure Sir John would have asked in my place. To wit: “Has the doctor been sent for?”
“He has, yes,” said Mr. Patley. “Soon as Bailey and me arrived, he took a look at the body where it was lying and sent the stable boy off on a horse to fetch the doctor.”
“Gabriel Donnelly in Drury Lane?”
“I b’lieve that was the same as before.” He was silent for a moment. “Yes, that was it.” He had grown a bit sullen.
“And you went to Bow Street to fetch …”
“Well, not exactly you — not you alone, anyways. I thought — and maybe Mr. Bailey thought, too — that the magistrate would be well enough to come.”
“But he’s not,” said I with great certainty. “He has sent me in his stead.”
“You know how to do all that asking questions and all?” He seemed rather dubious.
“Yes.” That seemed sufficient. I could see no need to convince him of my qualifications.
He was silent for a good long space of time. We must have crossed a number of streets before he spoke up again. Then, of a sudden, he burst out with something quite unexpected; it was as if he had thought long upon it yet held it back.
“I want to ask you something,” said he.
“Ask me anything you like.”
“How old are you, anyways?”
“How old am I? Why should that matter?”
“You said I could ask you anything.”
“But I didn’t say I’d answer.” I hesitated but a moment and thought better of what I had said. “Oh, all right,” said I. “I am seventeen years of age.”
“Well, let me tell you something, mister damn-near-a-magistrate, seventeen is how old I was when I took the King’s shilling. And I then had as fine an opinion of myself as you seem to have of your own self.”
Having heard that, I was about to interrupt with a counterattack before he had even properly begun. However, curiosity persuaded me to hold my tongue.
“Yet we differed in one partic’lar,” he continued. “And that was in respect of our elders. I soon found out that if I cared to live out the length of my enlistment, it was important for me to pay attention to what those who’d been in the regiment a while might have to say, and not go trying to tell them how I thought they ought to do things. I had much to be grateful for to them.
“Now, I know you had a bad opinion of that report I wrote out on that first big robbery in St. James Street. That much I heard from that man Marsden, the magistrate’s clerk.”
Finally, reader, I could hold my tongue no longer. “Mr. Marsden had a bad opinion of it, too,” said I, “and so would Sir John have had if he had sufficient sight to read it. Well, he couldn’t have read it — none could — not the way the words were spelled. You authored something unique! It seemed another language entirely. Not to mention the near total absence of facts and details.”
“Well,” said he, “I’m working on those reports — with Mr. Bailey. He’s showing me how to write them the way Sir John wants.”
“Can he teach you how to spell correctly?” It was, I blush to say, a question intended less to elicit a reasonable response than to antagonize. And antagonize it did.
“You ain’t going to leave me alone on that, are you? You would scorn me as a man for no more than some words ain’t spelled to your liking. Well, all right, young sir, you may discover there’s more to judge a man by than that. I’m not saying I’ll be the one to teach you, but I can damn near guaranty you’ll find out from somebody sometime, and it’ll probably be sooner ‘stead of later.”
I had offended him, which was bad enough, though to make things worse, I had offended him by intention. Of a sudden I saw this, which is to say, I had a clear picture of myself as an arrogant young puppy. The picture appalled me, and I might well have set about to make amends (which would have been proper) had he not grabbed my arm and jerked me to a halt. Instinctively my arms came up, and my hands formed into fists. If it came to it, I was ready to defend myself.