We awaited him upon our feet: I, respectfully ready to surrender my chair to him, and Sir John already offering his hand. Lord Mansfield accepted Sir John’s hand and gave it a wiggle, but he declined my offer of a chair. He would remain standing (so, naturally, Sir John and I had also to remain upon our feet).
“This won’t take long,” said he.
“What then?” said Sir John. “How may we serve you m’lord?” There was an unmistakable touch of irony in that. Lord Mansfield ignored it.
“I have stopped here on my way to Old Bailey to ask why in the world you did not return an indictment against that woman, Mother Jeffers? She is, as I understand it, naught but a madam, a keeper of bawds in a house out in Clerkenwell. Is this correct?”
“Oh, no doubt,” said Sir John. “She did not deny that in so many words to me.”
“Then why did you not indict her?”
“Because, Lord Mansfield, that was not the complaint against her.”
“Well, what was the complaint?”
“I suppose that ‘unlawful imprisonment’ would have covered it.”
“Then why did you not charge her with it and pass her on to me?”
“Because, Lord Mansfield, I did not believe the complainant. She is a girl of no more than fifteen or sixteen, pregnant, two-faced, and caught in a number of lies in the course of a tour through that bawdy house in Clerkenwell. In fact, there is some doubt as to whether she had ever been through that place before her visit yesterday.”
“You seem terribly certain, Sir John.”
“Well, I am not, for I give no greater credence to Mrs. Jeffers than I do to Elizabeth Hooker. The old woman claims never to have seen the girl before. Well, I do not believe her. There is something-a great deal, perhaps-that she has held back. In such a circumstance, how could I bind over anyone for trial? No indeed, the only proper course to follow is to delay, allow things to cool off a bit, and investigate further.”
“Well and good,” said Lord Mansfield, “and in theory I agree with you. Nevertheless, you know as well as I that I must consider other factors besides the law-not above the law, simply along with it. Among those factors is public opinion. I have heard from a few individuals on this matter of Mistress Hooker already. If I were to allow you to follow the course you propose-and mind you, sir, in many ways I think it the best one-I have good reason to believe that I would hear from many more.
“Therefore,” he continued, all but shaking a finger in the air, “I have decided to relieve you of responsibility in this matter and present it to Mr. Saunders Welch. It has been pointed out to me that he, as magistrate for outer London, has some claim upon the case anyway, for the crime, if crime it be, was committed in Clerkenwell. You were called in, as I understand, because of some previous acquaintance of one of your staff with the girl in question. Is that correct?”
“More or less.”
“Then you can see the sense of this. I shall represent it so.”
“Not on my account, I hope.”
“Of course not. And let me assure you, Mr. Welch has made no overtures to me in this, nor has he made any sort of claim upon the case. I have, in fact, not spoken with him on this at all.”
“Well, then,” said Sir John, “I am relieved of a burden.”
“Good. Do think of it so.”
Then, having spoken thus, the Lord Chief Justice said his goodbye to Sir John, and departed-click, click, clicking away down the hall, leaving as he had come.
“Close the door, Jeremy.”
I did as Sir John said and we resumed the chairs we had held till the coming of Lord Mansfield.
“So,” said he to me, “what thought you of that?”
“I thought it a terrible mistake-on Lord Mansfield’s part, of course. But at least Saunders Welch did not go behind your back to solicit the case.”
“Oh? You think not? Well. .” He shrugged. “Perhaps it was just as the Chief Justice said, though if Welch got wind of this, he’d be off in pursuit of it like a hound. That’s my view of it.”
“Why do you say that, sir?”
“I say it because I believe it to be so. And why not? I’ve been hearing for about a year that he secretly covets a seat in Parliament and would run in a trice if ever a suitable seat came open. That man is a political animal, no doubt of it. He is hot after whatever will bring him notice.”
“But is it not so with all men?”
At that he pulled a sour face. “Not so with me. Comical, when you think of it, eh? To have a case taken away because you insist on following proper legal procedure.”
There he let it rest. The visit of the Lord Chief Justice had so sullied the atmosphere that I thought that the present moment might be an even more propitious time to deliver to Sir John the news of my previous evening’s conversation with Mr. Bennett. He might then have something to cheer him.
And so I told the magistrate just what I had heard from Bennett, and though I made no mention of the reason that brought me to Mr. Deuteronomy’s quarters for my meeting with Bennett, my report to Sir John was as full as otherwise could be. I told him of Bennett’s tears, his self-acknowledged guilt in the matter, and his plain-spoken accusation of Lord Lamford in the death of little Maggie Plummer.
As for Sir John, he listened even at the beginning more carefully than I had known him to do before. By the time I told him of Bennett’s summons to the “big house,” he did hang upon my every word. To the extent that it was possible, I quoted Bennett exact. Yet I tried also to give some sense of my own reaction to the words of the man. Sir John was quite overcome.
“Ah,” said he, “if only these poor, ruined eyes of mine permitted to weep, I would drown us both in a river of tears. What a sad, sad story you’ve told me.” He paused briefly. “And what an evil sort is this Lord Lamford! I have never met the man, have you?”
“Yes,” said I, “and I can honestly say that I detested him right from the start.”
“All England will detest him when he is brought to trial. He will be hated as none other before him, I should hope.” The thought of it seemed to give him pleasure. “But tell me again,” said he, “why was it he declined to return with you here to Bow Street? I did not at first understand.”
“’Twas because he feared that he shared some part of the blame and would surely be sentenced to a term in Newgate.”
“Considering that he had disposed of the little girl’s body, he was right in that.”
“I tried to persuade him, but it was useless. He said that if he were to go to prison, he would need all the money he had to bribe the guards.”
“Pathetic, is it not, that a man must prepare for a term in prison by gathering together all the ready cash he has that he may make his situation tolerable?”
“Indeed so,” said I. “’Tis said that they have prices set for all ‘courtesies.’ For instance, removing manacles and chains, a single shilling, et cetera.”
“Disgraceful,” said he. “I fear that one day there will be a great retribution to be paid. When did this fellow Bennett say that he was coming by?”
“He didn’t say, actually. Though I encouraged him to name a time, he would not. I asked him to come in the morning, yet he would not even allow himself to be committed to that. I believe he feels that he must sneak away, and Lord Lamford keeps him rather tightly under his thumb.”
“Then I shall keep you close here at Bow Street through the day. Bring him to me soon as ever he appears.”
He was as good as his word. During that morning and most of the afternoon, we two kept busy answering letters and filing reports. It is the sort of work that collects, piles up, and ultimately may bury us completely if we do not, from time to time, dedicate a single day to disposing of it. This was that day.
Mr. Marsden was present on that day, no better but no worse than he had been on most other days that month. And so, in addition to dictating, Sir John conducted his usual court session at noon. Because there were no serious cases to be tried (that is to say, none to pass on to the Felony Court at Old Bailey), it was a fairly short session. And afterward, Sir John and I attacked what remained to be done to that now-dwindling pile of letters.