Pickpocket's Apprentice (9 page)

“You wanted to see me, Mr. Colquhoun?” she asked, and at the sound of her voice, the magistrate ceased to wonder at Pickett’s insistence as to her social status.

He inclined his head in acknowledgement. “I did, although I hope you will be pleased to see me, as well. I have something I believe belongs to you.”

He withdrew the emerald necklace from the inside pocket of his coat, and held it out to her. She gave a little gasp of recognition.

“Why—why, this is good news indeed!” she exclaimed, although there was nothing in her strained, white countenance that would give credence to this assertion. “Where—wherever did you find it?”

“Where do you think?”

“Heavens, how should I know?” She gave a nervous little laugh. “Some pawnshop, I suppose. Isn’t that where stolen jewels usually turn up?”

“I don’t know; you tell me. Is it?”

The smile froze on her face. “I don’t understand.”

“I think you do, ma’am. This was found in a pawnshop in Great Hart Street, where the proprietor recalls a veiled lady—”

“A veiled lady! And this lady must naturally be me! Really, Mr. Colquhoun, I don’t think—”

“—A veiled lady, as I say, selling it to him for twelve guineas.”

“Twelve guineas! Why, it is worth three times that amount at the least reckoning! Why should I let it go for so paltry a sum?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Colquhoun, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. Now that I look at it more closely, I very much doubt that this necklace is mine.”

“Perhaps your husband will be able to identify it. If it is indeed yours, I trust he will reimburse me the sum of twelve guineas, since I was obliged to pay the pawnbroker to redeem it.”

“No!” She put up a hand as if to ward off a blow, and when she spoke, all attempt at pretense was gone. “Mr. Colquhoun, I must beg you to say nothing to my husband of this! I—I went to a card party—the play was deep, and I was certain my luck would turn. But it did not, and by the end of the evening, I was horrified to discover that I had lost almost two hundred pounds. I will not receive next quarter’s pin money until July, so I thought if I could only find some way of making a partial payment until then, when I will be in a better position to repay the whole—but never mind that! The fact is, Mr. Colquhoun, that my husband is being considered for an important government position. Any hint of scandal at the moment might be fatal to his chances. So you see why he must know nothing of this.”

She clutched his sleeve imploringly, but he remained unmoved. “I recognize your dilemma, ma’am,” he said, bending a stern look upon her, “but I confess I would be more sympathetic to your plight were a certain lady’s maid not living in hourly expectation of being arrested for a theft that never took place.”

“Oh, but I would never let anything happen to Betty!”

“My good woman, what makes you think you would be able to stop it?”

“My husband is not without influence—” she began, but Mr. Colquhoun interrupted her.

“Oh, but we mustn’t trouble him, must we? Only think of the scandal!”

She did not respond at once, for sounds beyond the door indicated the return of Mr. Albert Cranston-Parks, and his errant wife’s ears seemed to prick up like a fox who hears the baying of hounds in the distance.

“What a muddle it has all become!” she exclaimed, pressing trembling hands to her cheeks. “When I told my husband the emeralds were missing, I never thought that he would send for a Bow Street Runner, much less that your men would be able to connect me with their disappearance. Whatever shall I do?”

“I know what
I
shall do: I shall have a word with your maid—Betty, was it?—and then I shall present your husband with an invoice in the amount of twelve guineas, payable to the Bow Street Public Office. What you choose to tell him in the meantime is entirely up to you. But if I may make a suggestion, the truth, along with a sincere promise not to repeat the mistake, might be the best course, as well as the simplest.” His voice was stern, but there was a hint of a twinkle in his blue eyes as he added, “Nothing is so complicated as to keep a lie straight in one’s head—much less a series of lies, for it always becomes necessary to tell another one, you know.”

“Yes—that is, I’m beginning to,” she said, answering the blue twinkle with a rather shamefaced smile. She reached for the bell pull and gave it a tug. “Wilson,” she addressed the butler who entered the room in response to the summons, “tell Betty that Mr. Colquhoun of Bow Street would like a word with her. And—and if that was Mr. Cranston-Parks returning from his club just now, pray tell me where I may find him, for I—I have something particular to say to him.”

If the mistress was nervous, the maid was frankly terrified. She took one look at the magistrate and shrank back in horror, clearly convinced that the hour of her arrest was at hand. She was younger than Mr. Colquhoun had expected, surprisingly young to have attained the status of an upper servant. He found himself wondering if she had served Mrs. Cranston-Parks as a girl before that lady’s marriage, and had come to Park Lane along with her mistress after the wedding.

“Betty, is it?” he asked, with a smile intended to put her at ease, although he saw no evidence that it had the desired effect.

“Y-Yes, sir.” She nodded in acknowledgement, or perhaps she was shaking so badly it only looked that way. “Am I—am I going to be clapped into Bridewell, then?”

“No, not at all,” he assured her. “In fact, that is what I wanted to tell you.”

“I see,” she said, and although she was quite pale, her voice was resolute. “I’ll tell you what I told that other one, then. I’m a respectable girl, and I won’t do it, not for you nor that other one neither, not even if you were to arrest me a hundred times!”

He was about to point out to her that she could not be arrested twice for the same crime, much less a hundred times, when the significance of her protestations began to dawn.

“My good girl,” he demanded, “what the devil are you talking about?”

“Then you’re not—you don’t want to—to have your way with me?”

“Most certainly not!” he declared, although the fierce scowl that accompanied this avowal robbed it of any reassurance it might have given her. “I’d like to know how you took such an idea into your head.”

“It was that other one,” she said. “He told me I was as good as found guilty already, but that he might be able to get me off if only I would—I would—”

“Yes, well, never mind that,” Mr. Colquhoun put in quickly, sparing the girl’s blushes. “I can assure you that we do not operate that way in Bow Street, and any man who thinks otherwise will very soon learn his mistake! No, I came to tell you that your mistress’s emeralds have been recovered, and that you no longer have anything to fear on that head.”

“Recovered, sir? Then—then who stole them?”

“No one. It was all a—an unfortunate misunderstanding.”

“I—I see,” she said slowly, and Mr. Colquhoun, seeing her pensive expression, suspected she probably did. “I wondered, when Mrs. Cranston-Parks asked for that black gown and bonnet she hadn’t worn since her mama died, whether she was in some sort of trouble. But if you say the emeralds have been returned, mayhap we can all be easy again! Truth to tell, I was afraid that fellow wasn’t trying very hard to find them, him being more interested in getting under my skirts.”

“And I will certainly have something to say to him on the subject,” he promised her. “But it might interest you to know that it was not he who found them. In fact, your mistress owes their recovery to a chance encounter by a young fellow who is not even connected with Bow Street, except as a collier’s apprentice.”

“You don’t say! Maybe
he
should be a Bow Street Runner, then, instead of that other one.”

“Yes,” the magistrate said slowly, frowning thoughtfully as an idea began to take form in his brain. “Yes, maybe he should.”

In Which Mr. Colquhoun Barters

for the Soul of John Pickett

“I have news which I believe you will find pleasing,” the magistrate informed Mr. Foote upon his return to Bow Street. “Mrs. Cranston-Parks’s emeralds have been found and restored to their rightful owner.”

A startled and by no means pleased expression crossed the Runner’s face ever so briefly before being swiftly replaced by an ingratiating smile. “Have they? That is good news, sir. Who found them? Pringle, I suppose, or else Dixon.”

“Wrong on both counts, Mr. Foote. In fact, we owe their recovery to an old acquaintance of yours. Do you perhaps recall a young fellow by the name of Pickett?”

It had been five years since he had apprehended young John Pickett for stealing an apple from the market in Covent Garden, but Foote had never forgotten the humiliation he himself had suffered in the aftermath; in fact, Mr. Colquhoun’s glowering disapproval kept his shame ever before him. Indeed, he suspected that, had he not acquired an influential patron in the person of Lord Dunsmere, whose eloping daughter he had located and restored to the bosom of her family, he would have been given the boot long ago. Yes, he remembered John Pickett as clearly as if he had arrested him only yesterday. Now it appeared that he was to be vindicated at last.

“You don’t mean to tell me that thieving scrub took them!” he exclaimed in shocked satisfaction. “Quite a step up from pinching apples in Covent Garden, isn’t it?”

“In fact, he did
not
take them, but it is certainly to him that we owe their recovery. He read about the case in the
Hue and Cry
, and remembered seeing the lady pawn the jewels at an establishment in Great Hart Street. As for it being a step up for him, I certainly hope he will consider it so. I mean to bring him to Bow Street and give him a place on the foot patrol,” Mr. Colquhoun added by way of explanation, conscious of taking an entirely unprofessional pleasure in making this announcement.

“
What?
” demanded Foote, quite forgetting, in his indignation, whom he was addressing.

“It appears we need some new blood, as certain of our present officers are more concerned with getting under a female’s skirts than in seeing justice done.”

“I—I know it must seem that way, sir, but I was only trying to—to—”

“I have spoken to the female in question, and I know very well what you were trying to do,” Mr. Colquhoun informed him. “Know this, Mr. Foote: I have no desire to create the sort of controversy that would arise by dismissing you—not from any inclination to preserve your sorry hide, mind you, but because I know too well that your fellow Runners would all be tarred with the same brush. But neither will I permit you to abuse your authority in such a manner. One more hint of misconduct from you, and I will sack you and damn the consequences, do you understand?”

“But—but—
John Pickett
, sir? Why, he’s a pickpocket and a thief!”

“All the more reason to want him on our side, wouldn’t you say?”

Leaving Mr. Foote sputtering in incoherent rage, he turned and left the Bow Street office without a backward glance. There was one more stop he needed to make before approaching John Pickett with this plan for his future, and it entailed a visit to Mr. Elias Granger, coal merchant of Cecil Street.

He found the prosperous tradesman just rising from the dinner table, Mrs. Granger having long since given up her fruitless attempts to persuade her husband to adopt the fashionable habit of dining late. Upon requesting a private interview for the purpose of making a business proposal, Mr. Colquhoun was ushered into the back parlour (site of so many chess games), whereupon the merchant inquired jovially into the nature of his business.

“Not thinking of setting up as a collier, are you?” he added, chuckling at his own attempt at humour.

“Not at all,” the magistrate assured him.

“And a good thing, too, for I shouldn’t doubt you would put me right out of business,” Mr. Granger put in.

“As a matter of fact, my business concerns your apprentice.”

“You’ll be pleased to hear that all is going well with young John,” the collier assured him. “In fact, he’s been working like a fiend for the last year. Not quite sure what’s got into the boy, but I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Elias, for that’s exactly what I’m going to ask you to do.”

“Eh, what’s that?” Mr. Granger scratched his grizzled head in bewilderment.

“As I recall, there are two years remaining in his apprenticeship. I want to buy them out. I am prepared to pay you twenty pounds to release him—two years at ten pounds per annum, which is, I believe
,
the rate you quoted to him a year ago.”

“Now, look here,” the merchant protested. “I can’t do that. It isn’t just that he’s a good worker, you know. He also gives me a damn good game of chess from time to time of a Sunday afternoon.”

“
Chess?
” echoed Mr. Colquhoun incredulously. “Do you mean to tell me the boy plays
chess?
”

“Aye, that girl of mine taught him shortly after he came here, and if she’s ever won against him, I’ve yet to hear of it. I’m hard pressed to do so myself, and even then I’m never quite sure he didn’t lose to me on purpose.”

“Chess,” muttered the magistrate, wondering what other hidden talents the boy possessed—talents that would never be discovered, so long as he was obliged to spend his days hauling coal.

“So you see why I don’t want to let him go,” continued Mr. Granger.

“And two years hence? When he’s done with his apprenticeship?”

The merchant shrugged. “I daresay Tom may be ready to retire by that time. Or if my business continues to expand, I might even buy another wagon and set him up with a crew of his own.”

“That’s certainly something for him to look forward to,” Mr. Colquhoun remarked with unconcealed sarcasm, feeling vaguely ill at the thought of a keen mind shackled to a lifetime of drudgery—a prospect which he himself had arranged, believing he was doing the boy a favour
.