Jack, Knave and Fool (14 page)

“So we leave it that he sipped it. Now, tell me if you will, did Mr. Paltrow go with you to the stage of the Crown and Anchor at the time of your husband’s collapse?”

“Why yes, yes he did. It was the one bit of kindness that he showed me that evening. The crowd formed about Chrissie most immediately — the chorus and orchestra gathered round and others preceded us to the stage. Mr. Paltrow pushed his way through them and made a path for me. I doubt I could have made it to Chrissie on my own.”

What followed was a long —oh, an interminably long —silence from Sir John. Lady Laningham was made uneasy by it. She shifted in her chair, then turned to look at me questioningly. There was naught I could do but nod reassuringly. At last Sir John spoke.

“Lady Laningham,” said he, “what you have told me still leaves doubts in my mind. I believe poison cannot be ruled out as a possibility.”

“Do you mean Mr. Paltrow could somehow have …”

“I point a finger at no one direct. There is another possibility. The server himself might have slipped a potion in the bottle as he brought it to the stage. There are any number of possibilities, yet we cannot consider them until we know if Lord Laningham was poisoned, and there is only one way to be certain of that.”

“And what might that be?”

“By autopsy.”

“Do you mean cutting him open and examining his inwards?”

“That is just what I mean. A trained medical man like Donnelly would know from the condition of the organs how your husband died—that is, if his death did or did not come by natural means.”

“Oh dear,” said she.

“If you, as his widow, gave permission, the entire exercise could be handled overnight. It would not even be necessary to delay the funeral. When is it, by the bye?”

“Saturday,” said she, and then nothing more until: “I’m afraid I should have to give some consideration to this —cutting poor Chrissie open. It seems such an insult to the body, so …” She hesitated, looking for the right word. “Well, unseemly is what it seems to me.”

“Unseemly? Well, it could all be handled confidentially, in a single night, as I said.”

“No,” she said, rising slowly, as if beneath a great burden, “I’m afraid I shall have to give a great deal of thought to this —of the private sort, that is. Thank you for your directness, Sir John. I must go now and think. Goodbye.”

And with that, she made her way past me and out the door, perplexed, a bit overwhelmed. Her exit was in great contrast to her entrance.

The delivery of the cape brought by Lady Fielding from the Magdalene Home took place next morning. It was a good warm piece of clothing, one which she was proud to donate to Clarissa Roundtree, in whom she had taken a keen interest. I carried it over my arm as I marched the distance to Half-Moon Passage. Once arrived, I trod the long hall a bit more carefully than on earlier visits, that I might not be bowled over by some whoremonger come flying out a door at me. None did. The knock I gave upon her door was also a bit less peremptory than before.

“Who is there?” came the voice from beyond the door.

“It is I, Jeremy Proctor from Bow Street.”

“What do you want?” That, at least, was an improvement upon her previous invitations to leave.

“I have with me the cape which Lady Fielding promised you.”

She made no verbal response to that, but answered by pulling the peg from the staple and throwing back the hasp. All this I heard as I waited impatiently in the hall. The door came open, though it was not thrown wide to admit me; rather it was opened a distance of about two feet, which space she herself filled. She reached out an open hand.

“Give it me then,” said she.

Yet I held back the cape, fearful that she would slam the door soon as she had it.

“Your father has not yet surrendered himself,” said I.

“Oh? Well, I suppose he hasn’t.”

“Have you seen him? Have you passed on to him the offer made by Lady Fielding?”

“I … well …” She was flustered, having evidently prepared no reply to a question she should have known I would ask. Would she lie? Tell the truth?

And how would I know one from the other? But she managed to regain herself: “No, I have not yet passed it on.”

What she said rang as an untruth, but then I saw through her device: she had used the truth to tell a lie.

“I strongly suspect,” said I, “that you have not told him because there was no need to. I strongly suspect that he was present during our visit, hidden away in the closet behind the curtain. Now tell me, am I not right? Did he not hear all?”

“Oh, pooh!” said she. “If you suspected so much, why did you not capture him?”

It would have taken too much to give a proper explanation, and at that moment I felt she deserved none. “Let us say, Miss Pooh, that Sir John prefers that he surrender himself.”

She peered at me in a sullen manner. “Are you going to give me the cape, or are you not?”

I had nearly forgotten it in my fit of ill temper. “Yes, of course I am. Here.” I shoved it at her through the narrow opening she had provided me. “Lady Fielding wishes you well and prays that you will wear it in good health.” That was what I had been told to say, and I had said it.

She took it from me and, forcing a smile, said, “You may thank her for me. Tell her I thank her kindly. She’s a good woman, is she not?”

“She is, right enough,” said I; then, as Clarissa Roundtree began to ease shut the door, I remembered something more. “But a moment. / have also brought something for you.”

“You have brought something? And what might that be?”

“A book.” I delved into the pocket of my coat and brought it forth. “It should provide a change from those romances you read—a history and geography of the American colonies with many true tales and anecdotes of adventure.” I recited from memory. It was a book I treasured.

Then did she truly smile. She took the book from me most eagerly.

“It is from my personal library,” said I. “It is a gift to you and not a loan.”

“You have so many?”

“I have a few.” Puffing a bit.

“How could you know that we-” She halted abruptly, checking herself.

“That you … ?”

“Oh … nothing. It was but a childish fancy. My mother and I did oft read such books together. But I thank you, Jeremy Proctor. The gift of a book will ever be the best gift for me.”

“Then I am satisfied,” said I. “Goodbye to you.”

With a wave, I turned and started back up the hall. She called her goodbye to me. I looked back and saw her leaning out the door, still smiling, waving the book. All the way back to Bow Street, I turned in my mind what she had said —or no, it was rather what she had not said. Was it merely, as she had claimed, that she and her mother had read together such books as the one I had given her? Or was America the refuge chosen by her father in some grand plan of escape he had formed? The phrase she had blurted forth, “How could you know,” seemed somehow to suggest the latter possibility. But escape from what? Surely not a public drunkenness conviction. The means to settle that had been given him. What more could there be? That question would plague me for some days to come.

Some time after I had returned, whilst I was yet engaged in the onerous task of cleaning out the kitchen fireplace, Annie came back from her morning lessons with Jimmie Bunkins in tow. He had come, he said, in hopes that we might together visit Mr. Donnelly’s surgery. Only then did I recall his news that the human head we had viewed in St. Andrew’s Churchyard had been taken down and handed over to the medico that it might be preserved against further decomposition.

“I’m right willing to take you there, Jimmie B.,” said I, “but I must first finish my charwoman duties.”

“I can help,” said he.

“It’ll go faster if you do.”

And so together we finished the task, and together we hauled down two great buckets of ash and burnt coals, which we dumped in a deep hole dug in a corner of the yard for that purpose. After dusting off a bit, we were off to make our visit to Mr. Donnelly.

I had not been to see him since his move to Drury Lane. Yet I knew the location well from earlier trips to fetch his predecessor, Dr. Amos Carr, at that location. It was not far to go. And once arrived, I noted that the new surgery had the undeniable advantage of placement in the ground floor; the windows of Mr. Donnelly’s waiting room looked out upon the street; a plaque upon the wall next the door announced his residence in the building.

Within the waiting room three prospective patients sat —two women of middle age and an older man. There was naught that Bunkins and I could do but take our place among them. We had not long until Mr. Donnelly made his appearance. He came escorting a patient from his consulting room, a young woman of quality dressed for the street. Once he had sent her on her way with murmured words of encouragement, he turned to me with a questioning look and beckoned me to him.

“Jeremy,” said he in a whisper, “what is the matter? Has Sir John sent you?”

“No, he has not,” said I. Then I quickly explained the purpose of our visit in a tone of voice equally quiet. Bunkins, for his part, had risen from his seat upon a chair, yet hung back, hat in hand, waiting hopefully.

“He is your friend?” asked Mr. Donnelly, having heard me out. “You vouch for his serious intent?”

“Oh, I do. When first he looked upon the hideous thing, he told me that he believed he once had known him to whom it belonged, yet could not call him up exact from his memory.”

“So many have come in off the street demanding to look upon it that I have begun turning away all but those whom I judge to be here for the true purpose of identification. The rest seem to wish some perverse thrill. But so long as you vouch for him …”

Then did he wave Bunkins forward. “This will not take long,” he announced to those in the waiting room. “It is a court matter.”

He led us through the door into the consulting room, which seemed to me to be grandly equipped with all manner of medical paraphernalia, then took us beyond into his private quarters, consisting of two good-sized rooms and a small kitchen. Into the kitchen we went. Mr. Donnelly produced a key, and with it he unlocked a cabinet. Reaching in with both hands, he pulled out a large and heavy glass jar and placed it carefully upon the counter below. He stepped back to reveal that which Bunkins had come to view.

“There you are, young Mr… . Bunkins, is it?”

“Yes sir.”

“Have your look then. It is naught but how all would appear, were their heads separated from the rest of them.”

“Yes sir,” repeated Bunkins, and he settled himself upon the counter to stare face-to-face, as it were, at the head which floated in the jar.

I myself took not much more than a glance at it. More I would not have wished. The thing looked to me much as it had looked before, except that in the clear solution the hair attached to the scalp fanned out and floated free around the head in a kind of unholy halo.

Mr. Donnelly seemed impressed by the intense concentration with which Bunkins studied the face in the jar. He saw no trace of a smirk upon his features, heard no sly remark or chuckle from him. This was to Jimmie B. a matter of the utmost seriousness. The surgeon was moved to be helpful.

“You should think of the living face as narrower than what appears before you now,” said he. “The time spent in the sewer water, the process of decomposition, and the solution in which it is now suspended would all tend to loosen and thicken the features of the face.”

“Is that gin it’s in now?” asked Bunkins.

“No, a solution of pure alcohol. The nose, especially, would have been broadened, the cheeks loosened. The face you see now is distorted from the original.”

Then did Bunkins shut his eyes and thus concentrate with the same intensity. And opening them, he stood and said with some degree of certainty, “Bradbury.”

“You believe you know him? I should be very happy to bury this with the rest of his parts if they can be found. Oh, I would indeed.”

“Well, I ain’t absolutely sure,” Bunkins replied. “But what you said about the face puffin’ up, like, gave me the clue. The top of his napper and around the eyes is like him I knew when I was out on the scamp.”

“Pardon?” queried Mr. Donnelley with a blink of his eyes. “Scamp? I don’t quite understand.”

“Thievin’,” said Bunkins, “which was my trade in my younger days. I was a proper village hustler. When you said I should think of the cod as thinner, I thought of him so, and out come Bradbury. He had a pawnshop on Bedford, and he would take naught but ticks and rings and such. Very particular he was.”

“Stolen goods?”

“Oh, he weren’t particular about that. He was a proper fence. Every scamp and dip in London knew him.”

“You’re sure about this, then? This is a positive identification?”

“Well, now, I don’t know about that. Positive means sure certain, don’t it, Jeremy?”

“Sure beyond a doubt,” said I.

“Well, maybe I ain’t that sure. The thing is, I seen him on the street not so long ago. He was healthy enough then.”

“How long ago, Jimmie B.?” I asked a bit breathlessly.

“I’m tryin’ to think —a month, maybe more. How long’s he been like this, Mr. Donnelly, sir?”

“It’s difficult to be exact, but judging from the degree of decomposition, probably about a week.”

“There, see? Maybe I’m wrong.”

“Well,” said the surgeon, lifting the heavy jar and replacing it in the cabinet, “let us place it, then, at a strong suspicion as to the identity of this poor fellow. That, I should think, would be sufficient to report to Sir John, wouldn’t you say so, Jeremy?”

“I would indeed,” said I.

He locked the cabinet, pocketed the key, and said, “Now I must attend to my patients. It would not do to keep them waiting long.”

With that, he led us back the way we had come. Yet in the waiting room as Bunkins stepped out into the hall, Mr. Donnelly held me back long enough to say, “I’m much intrigued by your friend. You must tell me about him when next we meet.”

Bunkins said nothing until we reached the street. Then did he turn to me and mutter, “I don’t think we should go to your cove just yet, chum.”

“You don’t? But why not?”

“Well, I’d feel right foolish if the cod was still alive, walkin’ the street and tendin’ his shop.”

“I see what you mean. Well, what do you propose?”

“Simple enough. We go to his shop, and if he comes out, we’ll know it ain’t him floatin’ in that jar. I tell him I was just passin’ by and thought I’d. inquire how he was gettin’ on. I gives him a shake and a wink, and we shove our trunk right on out of there.”

“And if he isn’t about?”

“Then …” He paused. “Then we’ll see.”

“That sounds like a reasonable course of action,” said I, “and it shouldn’t take long. I’m for it.”

So off we went to Bedford Street — down Long Acre and James Street, cutting the corner of Covent Garden; it was not a long walk, and Bunkins did amuse me as we went by telling tales of his thieving days and particularly of his dealings with Mr. Bradbury. It seemed he only -went to him when he was eager to rid himself quickly of stolen goods —“when the hornies was hot after me,” he explained. “Reason was ol’ Bradbury was a skinflint. He would rather lose a finger than pay an honest thief a fair price.”

“In the end he may have lost his head for it.”

“Now that’s a possibility, ain’t it? There’s highway scamps wouldn’t stop at such if they thought they’d been cheated. But there’s so many dips and hustlers workin’ in Covent Garden they’d keep him well supplied, most of them too lazy to take a tramp to Field Lane, where there’s so many pawnshops which are, truth to tell, just fences.”