Murder by Candlelight (10 page)

*
Hunt suspected that Thurtell and Probert misled him concerning the amount of money found on Weare's body in order that they might divide a larger sum between themselves. It is very likely that they did “well it” at Hunt's expense; but no proof of the deception has survived.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A Deeper Abyss

Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than in the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. . . .

—
Shakespeare

A
little after six o'clock the next morning, John Harrington, a laboring man, and his partner were at work in Gill's Hill Lane, engaged in widening the road. Two men passed by them, a tall one and a short one. They went down the lane and stopped not far from a maple tree. Harrington watched as they “grabbled in the hedge.”

When they came back up the lane, the tall man spoke to Harrington's partner. “Are you going to widen this lane?” he asked.

“Yes, as wide as we can.”

“I was nearly capsized here last night.”

“I hope you were not hurt.”

“Oh, no, we were not thrown out.”

The two men went on their way, and Harrington and his partner resumed their work. When, afterwards, Harrington went over to the place where the men had grabbled, he found a hole in the hedge and a quantity of blood. Something in the cart-rut caught his eye. It was a knife. It had two blades, one of which was broken, and it was covered with blood.

When Mr. Nicholls of Battlers Green came up the lane, Harrington showed him the knife. They searched among the brambles, and Harrington found a pistol. There was clotted gore on it, in which some hairs had become stuck.

Susan the cook was on her way to the kitchen to get breakfast ready when she met Thurtell and Hunt coming up the steps from the garden. Their boots were dirty.

After breakfast, the roan gray was harnessed to the gig, and Probert brought out Weare's carpetbag, backgammon box, and gun. Thurtell said he would come down the next day to dispose of the body for good. He and Hunt drove off, and Probert went for a walk with his dog, intent on retrieving the knife and pistol. But the presence of Harrington and his partner, who were still at work on the road, disconcerted him. He wished them good morning and said it was a good job they were doing, before he turned around and went back to the cottage.

Thurtell got out of the gig in Oxford Street, fearful lest he should meet Upson, the Bow Street officer who had a warrant against him
for defrauding the County Fire Office. He made his way by back streets to the Coach and Horses. Hunt drove on to his lodgings in King Street, Golden Square, where he hid Thurtell's greatcoat under the bed, for although it had been copiously sponged, it was still “a great deal stained with blood.” He then returned the horse and gig and walked to Conduit Street, where he met Thurtell. Together they went to an ironmonger's in Warwick Street to purchase a spade. Afterwards, they dined in the Coach and Horses; Hunt, in high spirits, told the company that he and Jack had been netting game, and had left Probert holding the bag. “We Turpin lads,” he said, “can do the trick.”
^*

On Sunday morning, Thurtell and Hunt drove back to Probert's cottage. Hunt took out the spade and threw it over the hedge to conceal it. When Probert came out, Hunt asked him whether there was a room in which he could change his clothes. Probert showed him to a room upstairs, and a little later Hunt came down dressed in a black coat and waistcoat. Thurtell smiled and told Hunt that he looked very smart, quite like a Turpin. He then jested that Probert “would never do for a Turpin.”

Probert and Thurtell went down to the garden and the pond. Thurtell asked whether the body had risen. Probert said no—it would lie there for a month. When they returned to the house, they found a neighbor, Mr. Heward, at the door. He was on his way to Mr. Nicholls's farm at Battlers Green; there was a rumor afoot that something had happened in Gill's Hill Lane the other night. Probert went down with him to Battlers Green.

*
Dick Turpin, poacher, thief, highwayman, and murderer, was hanged on the gallows at Knavesmire, York, in April 1739.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Turpin Lads

It had been good for that man if he had not been born.

Matthew 26:24

T
hey were now doomed; the deed could not be undone. When Probert returned from Battlers Green, he took Hunt into the garden and told him of Mr. Nicholls's saying to him that a gun had been fired in Gill's Hill Lane on Friday night. Another farmer said he had heard pistol shots, while still another heard groans and a man crying out “O John, for God's sake, spare me. . . .” Such was his fright, Probert said, that his hand began to tremble, and he was afraid he would drop the glass of gin-and-water Mr. Nicholls had given him; but he concealed his agitation and asked Mr. Nicholls what time the shots had been heard.

“About eight o'clock.”

“I suppose some of your friends wanted to frighten you, sir.”

When Thurtell came into the garden, Probert repeated the story.

“Then I'm baked,” Thurtell said.

“I'm afraid it's a bad job,” Probert continued, “for Nicholls seems to know all about it. I am very sorry it ever happened here. I'm afraid it will be my ruin.”

“Never mind,” Thurtell said, “they can do nothing with you.”

“The body must be immediately taken up from my pond, John.”

“I'll tell you what I'll do—when they are all gone to bed, you and I'll take and bury him.”

Probert shook his head, saying it would be “bad if they buried him in the garden.”

“I'll bury him where you nor no one else can find him.”

“Probert,” Hunt said, “they can do nothing with you, or me either, because neither of us was at the murder.”

They dined in Probert's cottage and afterwards played whist; but the game ended when Thurtell threw up his cards, saying they ran cross. He sat up late with Hunt, and when the house was quiet they went out to dig the grave. They began to shovel the dirt with the spade, but the work was hard, and the barking of the dogs unnerved them. It seemed to them that someone was lurking nearby, observing.

The next morning—it was Monday, October 27—Jack showed Probert the grave he had begun to dig. He confessed that he had second thoughts about the wisdom of burying the body, and was inclined instead to take it away and dispose of it elsewhere. He might, for instance, take it to Manchester Buildings, and when the opportunity arose throw it into the Thames. If the corpse should float on the river, it would, he reasoned, be so changed as to be unrecognizable.

Probert expressed a fear that the boy Addis had seen too much. Thurtell said he would take him to London on the pretext of finding
him a “place”—a job—there. He and Joe would then come back to Radlett and take the body away. “That,” he said, “will be the better for you altogether.”

The boy Addis was duly taken to London, and in the evening Thurtell and Hunt, who had shaved off his whiskers, returned to the cottage for the last time. Probert was in a frenzy. There were ominous reports in the neighborhood, and he wanted to abandon the cottage altogether.

When supper was finished, Thurtell and Probert went out, leaving Hunt to entertain Mrs. Probert. They drew the sack from the pond and took out the body. After they cut away the clothes, they left the body naked on the greensward and went to fetch Hunt. When they had put the body back into the sack, they dragged it to the garden gate and put it into the gig. Thurtell and Hunt climbed in and drove off; Probert burned the clothes and scattered the remnants about the hedges.

On the same night that Thurtell and Hunt threw Weare's body into the brook at Elstree, Sir Walter Scott was at Abbotsford, his estate near Melrose in the Scottish Borders, looking forward to the feast he and Lady Scott were to give their tenants and retainers on the morrow, in thanksgiving for the harvest.

Sir Walter was fifty-two in October 1823. In two decades of literary toil, he had changed the face of Gothic romance. Horace Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe had set their romances in imaginary Italies; Scott wrote about places he knew intimately. As a young lawyer he had ridden out to the wilder districts of the Scottish Borders, hoping “to pick up some of the ancient riding ballads” which were said to be still preserved in those remote regions. Saul, seeking asses, found a kingdom; Scott, hunting up old songs in shepherds' huts, found the materials for a literary empire. In his “raids,” as he called them, into the unfrequented recesses of the Borders, he
gathered up a rich plunder of minstrelsy and balladry, myth and folklore, the forgotten music of a people. In 1802, at thirty-one, he brought out his
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
, which contained the first fruits of his excursions into Auld Scotland. Three years later, in 1805, he published a verse romance,
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
, based loosely on Border legends of a pernicious goblin; in 1814 came the first of his prose-romances,
Waverley
.