“Saying. . what?”
“Oh, they wondered what sort of price I might fetch. The one called Dick seemed to doubt whether I would be taken at all, kept insisting that I was not pretty enough, nor was my bosom sufficient.”
“All right. I’ll accept that,” said Sir John. “Let’s get on with it, shall we. You entered this old house in the company of the two men, and then what?”
“We went round the back and entered through the kitchen. I remember they knocked upon the door and said who they were. Bobby and Dick, they said, and the door was opened to us. Waiting for us there in the kitchen were three people-a man about forty, a young girl who was fair pretty, and a woman with the ugliest face I did ever see. It was her, the ugly one, that the two men who brought me bowed and scraped to. She looked me over proper, pinched my arm and my bosom and just all over. And finally she says to me, ‘What about it, dearie? Will you join us?’ Which I took to mean, will you follow the Devil’s path? And then-”
At this point, Mr. Tarkington, unable to contain himself further, interrupted, calling to his chief, the silversmith Turbott: “Sir, that sounds like Mother Jeffers’s house to me-from the look of the house, the way she describes the old harridan herself.”
“You’ve been there?” Turbott demanded.
“A time or two.”
“What about it, Elizabeth?” cried Turbott. “Was that the woman’s name?”
“I. . I think so. Yes, perhaps it was. When I said no and declared I would have no part of her life she slapped my face, took my dress from me, and said I should be thrown into the garret. Then did the two men say, ‘Yes, Mother Jeffers.’ That was it! Mother Jeffers!”
The room then fell into complete turmoil. Mrs. Hooker was shouting out in praise of her daughter for resisting the Devil and his minions. Mr. Tarkington shouted, “Well, let’s go out and get the old witch.” Joe the apprentice urged that they bring a rope. And Mr. Turbott cried, “Let’s see if some of those people out in the hall might wish to come along.” But Sir John, alone of them all, resisted these calls for swift justice and sought to restore some order.
“Listen to me,” said he who could outshout them all. “I warned you, gentlemen, that you must leave if you did not keep silent-and you agreed to my terms. Now you have violated your side of the agreement, so I must ask you to leave this room most immediate.”
“Oh, we shall leave right enough,” called out Mr. Turbott, “and we shall head for Clerkenwell. You may command in this room, sir, but once outside it, we shall command, as you will see.”
“I put you on warning, sir, that all who defy the law will be punished severely, and that includes yourself. I will not allow rule by mob in my precincts.”
The difficulty-as Sir John well knew-was that he could not confidently speak of “my precincts,” for, truth to tell, though there was no strict division of territories, as a matter of custom, it would generally have fallen to Mr. Saunders Welch, as magistrate of Holborn to deal with this matter; Clerkenwell, after all, was near to Holborn. All this and more we discussed once we had returned from that memorable visit. Yet as we four-Elizabeth, Clarissa, Sir John, and I-rocked back and forth along the way to the house at the four corners in Clerkenwell, we spoke little amongst ourselves. The reason for this, of course, was the presence of Elizabeth, whom we had come to regard in a different light from before. No longer a hapless victim, she now seemed to be hiding more than she had disclosed, altering facts to suit her, and generally providing unreliable information. There was but a brief period at the beginning of our journey when we, the Bow Street contingent, felt free to speak our minds, and that was when Mrs. Hooker was preparing Elizabeth for the trip as we awaited the putative victim in the hackney coach. ’Twas then that Clarissa opened the discussion with a confession.
“Never, I believe, have I been so mistaken about a person,” said she, “as I have been about my old friend Elizabeth.”
“Oh?” said Sir John. “Mistaken in what way?”
“In every way. I thought her dull and commonplace, unimaginative and without ambition-oh, specially without any sort of intellectual ambition.”
“And now what do you think of her?” I asked. “You were signaling something to me from across the room of her consistency.”
“Oh yes, that! Yes, of course, it proves my point.”
“What do you mean by saying that it proves your point?” asked Sir John.
“Simple enough,” said she. “You remember when she claimed to have been beaten about the head by one of the two who had abducted her? She said she was in a daze for quite some time afterward.”
“Yes, naturally I remember.”
“Well, the midwife-what was her name? Goody Moss, I believe-she wanted me to stand close and observe all that she did. It was all most interesting.”
“Yes?” said I. “Go on.”
“Oh, of course. I was also near enough that I might look down upon her head, and I can assure you that there was no sign that she had been beaten in the way that she said.”
“No scabs? No scars?”
“Nothing of the kind. In truth, her hair had been washed, so that indeed I would have seen such, had there been anything to see.”
“Interesting, yes, very interesting indeed.”
“And another thing-though I hesitate even to mention it. I went with the midwife to the door, so that she might explain all that she had done and seen. And what she whispered to me was the most remarkable thing of all. She said that Elizabeth was pregnant. I don’t think I could ever have supposed such a thing of her.”
“She told us the same,” said Sir John. “And I-”
“Caution, sir,” said I. “They are on their way now.”
Mother and daughter approached the hackney, but only the daughter entered the door, which I held for them. Sir John inquired of the mother if she were not also coming. She declared that she was not.
“’Twould be worth my immortal soul to step inside such a place,” said she with a great shudder. “I think it a great shame that Elizabeth should have to return.” Then did she depart.
Then, only minutes later, the caravan pulled out of Dawson’s Alley. It was a rather strange array, which moved forth on the way to Clerkenwell. There were two coaches-our own hackney and another, which I understood Mr. Turbott rented more or less regularly from a nearby stable. In a trailing line were five or six on ponies and nags that had been rented or borrowed for the occasion.
As we traveled, Sir John took the opportunity to question Elizabeth further. There was not much left for her to tell. For, once she was locked in the garret, she stayed there, a prisoner, for over a week. She had naught but a pile of straw to sleep upon and a thin blanket to keep her warm. She was fed thin gruel and water once a day and visited by the one she now called Mother Jeffers. Elizabeth was asked by her again each day if she would join their company, and each day she refused. This continued so until the night before, when she at last managed to loose the window that overlooked the great pile of leaves in the yard. Then, waiting till all was silent within the house, she perched upon the window sill and leapt down into the leaves. With only the blanket to wrap round her and her shift beneath it, she started south and found her way home to her mother’s place in Dawson’s Alley.
“How many do you reckon were in the house?” Sir John asked.
“Well,” said she, “I saw four, but there were probably a couple more.”
“So, six in all? And how did they divide between men and women?”
“Probably four women and two men. Something like that.” She seemed curiously indifferent of a sudden.
“But you could only identify four?”
“If that.”
Sir John accepted that and put no more questions to her. And in no more than a few minutes’ time she was asleep in the corner of the seat. It seemed to me strange that she could sleep so peacefully as we bounced about so wildly. Clarissa evidently wished to resume our conversation regarding Elizabeth. Sir John must have sensed this, for when she began to address him, he shook his head in the negative and put a finger to his lips, thus calling for quiet. With that gesture, he communicated his suspicion that her sound sleep was feigned.