Jack, Knave and Fool (44 page)

At last the curtain stirred and bulged ever so slightly inward. She was at last where she ought to be.

“When will he return?”

“Oh, you’ll be seeing him soon, I’m sure.”

“He’s not been poisoned, has he?” She put it to him right boldly.

“Ah, now that was one of the things I was curious to know. I wondered, did your husband tell you anything of the little arrangement he proposed to me? Your question indicates to me that indeed he did tell you. The question, madam, is how much do you know?”

“I know enough,” said she, in a manner most sullen.

“That suggests to me that you know all.” He sighed somewhat dramatically. I speculated he might have practiced a few of these remarks on his ride to Twickenham. “Such a pity/’ said he. “I might have spared you had you said you knew nothing at all of the proposition your husband had put to me — though probably not, for a man in my position must expect the worst. I cannot, alas, afford to gamble.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean, madam, is that I fear I misled you a few moments ago. I led you to believe your husband was, let us say, healthier than he in fact is. I said that he sleeps peacefully in one of our best rooms. That is true, as far as it goes, yet he sleeps the sleep of death, lying on the carpet of my study. And when I said he had pains in the region of the heart, well, that much is true, lor I caused them by shooting him there. And that, dear madam, is where I now intend to shoot you.”

“Oh, dear God, what is that?” she shouted. “
A pistol?
”

With that, I grabbed at her body through the curtain. With a slippery hold on her, I pulled her back and down so that she tumbled upon me —and the curtain, ripped from where it hung, came down atop both of us. Nevertheless, there was a shot: it rang forth loud as a clap of thunder and sailed above us both, smashing through glass behind us before it came to rest in the far wall. And near simultaneous with it were two more shots, equally loud, from the two constables in separate corners. When the smoke had lifted, and I had fought clear of the weighty female form that rested on my chest, as well as the yards of cloth that covered us, I heard Sir John shout out, demanding a report as I myself took a look about.

“Mrs. Pugh is well, as I am, too,” I called out. “Is that not so, Mrs. Pugh? Speak up, please.”

“I’ve felt better than I do now after that fall on my backside, but I ain’t shot.”

“Well and good,” said Sir John, “and what about you, Mr. Bailey? And you, Mr. Perkins?”

“I’ll do well enough,” said Mr. Perkins.

“Good as can be,” responded Mr. Bailey.

“Which leaves our friend Arthur Paltrow. What is his condition, Mr. Bailey?”

“Well, Sir John, from the look of him, cringing and twisting there on the floor, I’d say he took Mr. Perkins’s ball in the upper arm and mine in the other shoulder.”

“I demand you take me to a surgeon before I bleed to death.”

“Oh, I doubt you will. Mr. Donnelly has treated his share of gunshot wounds. He’ll save you for the hangman.” Sir John then cocked an ear and listened. “And if I do not mistake, then that is our hackney returning to take us back to Bow Street. Gather up the prisoner, gentlemen. Put him on his feet and march him out to the coach. Mrs. Pugh, you played your part in our little drama quite well. Soon you will receive a subpoena to testify against this knave who took your husband’s life and sought to take your own. Extortion of the sort your husband attempted is a serious crime, but murder is far, far worse.”

It was in the course of our return journey to London that Sir John clarified all. From time to time, in the course of his explanation, he would prod Paltrow with his foot, demanding confirmation on this point or that —demanding but never receiving, for the pretender to the earldom, who lay on the floor in the space between the facing seats, kept an angry silence the entire distance as he bled onto the floor of the hackney. Sir John did not begin his disquisition immediately. He remarked upon the crowd we had attracted upon our departure. He inquired, that he might be reassured, whether Paltrow’s horse was tied securely to the rear of the coach. Then did he lapse into silence for a time. It was not until we were passing through Richmond that he commenced to tell just how he had reached his various conclusions. He directed his remarks to me, though all the rest, I’m sure (including Mr. Paltrow), were fascinated by what he had to say.

“Try as I might to keep an open mind in the matter, Jeremy,” said he, “I continued to suspect poisoning in the deaths of Lord and Lady Laningham. And since Mr. Paltrow here had most to gain, it seemed likely to me that he was the poisoner. Was that not so, sir?” he inquired of his prisoner. Paltrow merely grunted. “But to continue,” said Sir John, “because this was my state of mind, I was quite skeptical of the tale told me by this one here of him who had sworn vengeance upon the Laningham line. Though by my attitude I may have let show my skepticism, I nevertheless gave him practical advice on how he might protect himself—advice which, significantly, he never chose to follow.

“Yet,” Sir John went on, “I received a surprise —perhaps better put, a setback—to my line of reasoning. It was occasioned by Mr. Paltrow’s collapse at the musical evening soon after his aunt’s funeral. I say it was occasioned because the collapse — the vomiting and so on, so much in the same manner as those earlier deaths — did not surprise me. I had had a premonition, or perhaps just a feeling, that we had been invited there for a purpose —that is, to witness some great event. And so, when it came, the event itself did not surprise me, for I reasoned that the symptoms of poisoning could be produced with an ordinary emetic, one strong enough to produce vomiting of a quite violent nature. No, what surprised me and set me back a bit was the result of our little experiment with the wine drunk by Mr. Paltrow and the rats in the cage. I was forced to admit that it appeared that indeed Mr. Paltrow had himself suffered poisoning by arsenic. I was confused by that, quite at sixes and sevens, ready to take seriously the tale told us of that shadowy figure who had sworn death to the Laninghams.”

Then did Sir John prod Paltrow once again with his foot. “Thought you had me there, did you not, sir?” Yet again there was no response.

“But,” Sir John resumed, “Mr. Donnelly, or rather his former medical school professor, came to my rescue with that second letter of his. Do you recall it, Jeremy? You were most curious about it. Well you may have been, for that letter provided an explanation for Paltrow’s recovery from arsenic poisoning. No, it was not milk that rescued him, not entirely, though he assures me that it helped. Remember the letter came from Vienna —from Austria. The professor simply added to his first letter a matter he thought of general interest on the subject of arsenic. To wit: the people of Austria’s Tyrol region, mountain people they are, have the custom of eating arsenic upon their food. They believe it gives them strength. He went on to say that he knew not whether it made them stronger, though indeed they are a hardy lot, but it had been proven that the eating of it over a period of time made them resistant to doses of the poison that would prove deadly to any other man or woman. You will recall, Jeremy, that we went off directly to call upon Paltrow, ostensibly to inquire into his recovery. Yet I managed to turn our conversation to travel in foreign lands, and he admitted having visited the Tyrol region —quite enchanted he was by it. Well, the fact that he had visited there was in no wise proof that he had learned there of that curious local practice, but I revisited the Laningham residence in the company of Clarissa Roundtree —you recall the occasion?—and learned from the servers that Lord Laningham, as they called him, had been in the habit of sprinkling a white powder over his food, a powder which he called his medicine. He did this, of course, to build up his resistance to the poison, having foreseen that in order to escape detection as a poisoner, he would one day have to poison himself, or make some show of it, as he did when he took a bit of his uncle’s wine. In the past days, however—that is, since his fit of vomiting — he no longer made use of the powder. Those dark circles round his eyes, by the bye, which you mentioned to me, were said by Mr. Donnelly to be a likely result of arsenic eating.

“Well, what to do? If he no longer took arsenic —and he had no need to do so, for he thought he had already made his point —then he had no need to have it about and had probably disposed of it. Yet rather than gnash my teeth in frustration, I simply sat back and waited for him to make a mistake. That he did soon enough, but he must have congratulated himself beforehand on the marvelous opportunity he’d been given. He must have felt indeed that Mr. Pugh’s threatening letter and his eventual appearance provided a way out of all this nonsense he himself had created.”

“You mean, sir,” I asked, “the creation of that shadowy figure who had sworn to kill all the Laninghams?”

“Exactly, for the man who presented himself to Paltrow, if shot dead, could be offered to us as the avenger. Paltrow wished to be rid of this fiction he had formed from his imagination. The avenger had served his purpose. Now let him be destroyed, in the person of this troublesome fellow who sought to extort money from him. He had received a letter, and so had thought things out quite well by the time Mr. Pugh arrived. Yet when the visitor did arrive, he proved to be a good-sized, strapping fellow. And Paltrow— Mr. Perkins, what would you judge Paltrow’s weight to be?”

“Oh, not much more than ten stone, Sir John.”

“About what I had reckoned from his height and the sound of his voice. I doubted, of course, that such a one could so easily wrestle a pistol from another so much larger. And then, too, there was the information given me by Mr. Bailey when he checked to see if there was still some life in Mr. Pugh. What was it you whispered, Mr. Bailey? “

“I told you that judging from the spread of powder it looked like he’d been shot from a distance of about five feet or so.”

“And that would put it just out of arm’s reach — contrary to Paltrow’s testimony. Yet it was not until the butler presented me with the card of the man who lay dead in the Laningham study that all became clear. First of all, Mr. Pugh was a chemist. One who contemplates poisoning with arsenic needs a supply of it, and one who sprinkles it atop his food to develop a resistance to it needs a goodly supply. Now, where was he to come by it? Not in London, though it could be got there in any chemist’s shop, for those he intended to poison were well known in the city, as he would eventually also be. A London chemist might eventually remember Paltrow’s purchases, and should he become suspicious, report them. Then no, not London —he would go someplace far outside the great city and choose a chemist at random. His mistake was that in traveling to Twickenham, he did not go far enough, and in choosing a chemist, he happened upon one who kept up on all the news from the capital. I knew that once we knew whence Peter Pugh had come, we must make haste there, for Mr. Pugh wore a wedding ring, and that could not have escaped the notice of Paltrow. Mrs. Pugh may even have presented herself in the course of one or more of his visits. She would know what her husband had planned, and so she, too, must die. The rest you know, of course, for all of you played your parts well.”

Having thus concluded, Sir John sought confirmation from his prisoner one last time. “What about it, Mr. Paltrow? Would you care to add or subtract anything from my account of the matter? What have you to say?”

“I will neither add nor subtract from your account,” said Paltrow, giving an answer at last. “I would but point out to you that the deaths of both my uncle and my aunt have been put down as resulting from natural causes. It will be difficult to prove them otherwise.”

“Difficult, but perhaps not impossible,” replied Sir John. “But not difficult at all to prove willful homicide against Peter Pugh. That I’ll gladly leave in the hands of the judge and jury.”

Arthur Paltrow had no more to say, nor, as it happened, did Sir John Fielding. The magistrate fell silent for the rest of our journey. Mr. Bailey dozed, and Mr. Perkins kept a sharp eye on the prisoner. For my part, I went through each step of Sir John’s summary, and saw the logic of it. I appreciated, too, that though he may have had the suspicion, even the conviction, early on that murder by poison had twice been committed, it was quite another matter to bring convincing proof against Paltrow in these deaths. Having thus considered the question thoroughly, I concluded it most likely that Arthur Paltrow would be indicted and tried only in the death of Peter Pugh. And in that I was proven correct.

We came at last to Number 4 Bow Street. There I exited the coach in the company of Sir John, who left the prisoner in the charge of Constable Bailey and Constable Perkins. “Take him to Mr. Donnelly,” said he to them. “I trust the surgeon will have returned from his revels. Then back here with your charge, and into the strong room with him. I’ll see him in my court tomorrow. “

In the matter of the Crown versus Alary Brighton Bradbury, the Lord Chief Justice tried the case himself, as he had promised he would. That he weighted it at every opportunity against the defendant could hardly be denied; that he did so unfairly should also have been plain to any who heard it from beginning to end. That number, as it happened, included myself. I had been called as a witness for the Crown, as had Jimmie Bunkins. He gave his testimony early in the trial. I was not summoned until its second day but had to be there the opening day, for the trial was not expected to last more than a day. Few in those days that were tried before the Lord Chief Justice went so long.

That it had gone to such a duration was due largely to the diligence and eloquence of her barrister, William Ogden. She was allowed counsel, as the charge against her was technically one of treason, as the murder of a husband by his wife was and is judged to be. Mr. Ogden was then at the beginning of his great career, and I was quite inspired by watching him at work. There was a rumor about that Mrs. Bradbury had promised him twice his fee if he got her off the charge of murder, and nothing if she went to the gallows. Knowing that she had a small fortune from Mr. Bradbury’s sale of his father’s house, lands, and goods hidden away, and that she no doubt could not uncover it until she was released, I thought there was probably a good deal of fact to the rumor. Mr. Ogden must have taken a good look at the case against her and accepted the challenge — double or nothing. He went at it like a gambler, giving all to the great game of it; he tried the case not on Mary Bradbury’s guilt or innocence but rather on the merits of the case, which I knew to be weak.