The Masters of Bow Street (23 page)

She heard the men downstairs speak, heard his voice. Three prisoners were awaiting a hearing, Sunday or no Sunday, two of them for robbery with violence, the third charged with assaulting a curate who had been handing out hymn sheets at John Wesley’s meeting at Spitalfields. She had wished he could avoid the court but knew that he could not. She heard him walk along to the back room downstairs, which in a strange way had become their room, although she had shared his bed only on that one night. Since then, however, she had sensed a deeper affection, had felt that he wanted her and had been content. She had thought of Lisa Braidley and of his many ‘loves’ and had persuaded herself that these were a part of him different from the part which had become hers. She had known about them long enough, goodness knew! Why, she andRichard had laughed about them when he had described their appearance and their imagined charms.

Now, Richard was so far away in her mind, in some ways almost as if he had never been.

But he had been, and but for him she would not be living here in this great comfort, with James at the School for Young Men and her two daughters fed and clothed better than they had ever been, and looked after much of the time by Meg Fairweather, who was virtually a grandmother to them. The Fairweathers shared a cottage next door with Joe Godden, who was long since a widower. Everything in her present life stemmed from Richard’s love for John Furnival and Furnival’s affection for him. She could even remember the time when she had been jealous of John Furnival, for Richard had hero-worshipped him and had spent so much time working, hunting criminals down, and so little time even at night with her.

Now she was jealous of a hand she had glimpsed.

‘It cannot be so,’ she said clearly. And then with great determination: ‘It must not be.’

She sensed rather than reasoned that if she allowed herself to be jealous she might ruin the comfort she had, might rob herself of the daily grace of helping him, might make him reject her. It was madness. If she felt any twinges of jealousy she must overcome them within herself as well as never show the slightest sign of them to John.

John.

His voice sounded and she caught the words: ‘Where is Ruth?’

Godden answered, ‘She is in the library, sir, no doubt tidying.’

‘Room doesn’t want tidying,’ Furnival growled. ‘I want tea in the back room before I go and hear those accused.’

Ruth came hurrying down, not smiling but relaxed and comforted. She said, ‘The kettle is boiling, sir,’ and slipped past the two men and along to the back room. Furnival glanced at her but did not speak as he went to the bedroom, washed, and kicked off his shoes. By the time he was back the tea was made and she was holding a muffin in front of a warm toasting fire. He sat in his big chair and she rested the fork on an iron fender and held his slippers out for him, kneeling in front of him, and to her great relief her heart was light.

‘I’ll not need much to eat tonight,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I should eat those muffins, but no doubt I will. Some cheese and perhaps a piece of cold lamb and some coffee at eight o’clock, say. If you want a heartier meal, Ruth, will you eat between now and eight o’clock?’ And she nodded, eyes glowing, as he went on: ‘And will you ask Meg to keep an ear open for your girls tonight?’

Now her heart leaped, for he wanted her here.

‘Of course,’ she said, with a catch in her voice.

He leaned forward and cupped her dark head with one hand, then leaned farther forward and cupped her right breast with the other. They sat like that for several minutes until he smiled and withdrew his hands and she picked up the toasting fork again. Soon they were both spreading more butter onto the muffins.

Ruth, prepared for him to be hungrier than he expected, had a small cauldron of pea soup simmering over the fire when he came in, a little after eight o’clock, as well as a wedge of cheese from Wensleydale, a Yorkshire speciality to which he was very partial. She also had homemade bread, and butter which she bought from a stall in Covent Garden, knowing the dairy produce came from a nearby Hampstead farm and the butter, salted as he liked it, was churned fresh daily, while even on the hottest summer day the milk kept fresh in the red earthenware jars in which she stood the metal containers. Afterward there were fruit tarts with whipped cream and, something he had never tasted before, small tarts made of short pastry which melted in the mouth, filled with a deep yellow confection.

He tried one cautiously and his face lit up.

‘What have you been doing, keeping this from me?’ he demanded. ‘What is it, lass?’

‘Lemon curd,’ she answered. ‘My mother’s recipe, and one I have not used for a long time.’

‘In future, at least once a week,’ he urged, taking another and then another. ‘With this I could even make my sisters envious!’ He had never before mentioned his family to her, and had said not a word about what had happened that day. He drank more coffee and then patted his heavy stomach. ‘Now I’ve eaten too much,’ he declared. ‘You’ll have to discipline me, Ruth.’

‘Is there any man or woman who could?’ she asked meekly.

He laughed. ‘I know one who could discipline you!’ She was reaching out to collect the crockery, but he stayed her with a hand at her waist. ‘Leave all this and come and sit on a stool by me.’

She obeyed, and after pulling the table farther from the fire, she shifted the stool and he the chair so that she could sit against him and he could slip his hand beneath her bodice, more for comfort than for play.

After a while he asked, ‘Forgive me if this is a difficult question, Ruth, but I would like to know. Did Richard talk to you much about his work, and about Bow Street?’

‘There were times when I doubt he talked about anything else,’ she replied.

‘Did it weary you?’

She turned her head so that she could see him, and he could see her face, foreshortened, slightly flushed by the glow from the fire.

‘Only when it made him forget that I was a woman. And I confess—’ She broke off and looked away, doubtful whether she could go on with what she had started to say.

‘Confess,’ he ordered.

‘If I must, sir. I confess I blamed you more than him.’

‘For forgetting you were a woman?’ Furnival teased.

‘All he was aware of on such nights was Justice of the Peace John Furnival and the crusade for the law.’ She placed a hand on his, hers outside the bodice. ‘Does that affront you?’

‘It amazes me that any man of any age could ever forget that you are a woman,’ he declared, and laughed; and she flushed with the pleasure of it and yet felt an edge of shame because they were talking of Richard in a way which many would feel was one of disrespect. ‘Ruth,’ Furnival went on, ‘I’ve sent all three men charged to Newgate, to await trial, and they will be in that noisome place for at least six weeks before they are tried. Two men are common thieves, and if anyone deserves such a fate, they do. The other is a religious bigot, enraged by John Wesley’s preaching at Spitalfields. There should be a different place, to send such men who are awaiting trial. There should be. . .’

He began to talk, discursively at first, but gradually a pattern took shape and she could understand what drove this man, what powerful force of human passion was in his head and what cold contempt there was in his mind for those who opposed what he believed to be right.

He told her what had happened that day.

He told her what Anne had promised, so that she learned whose hand he had kissed.

He told her what he had said to Timothy, and the other youths who had been present.

After a long while he stopped talking and she thought he had fallen asleep, so she freed herself with great care and slowly and cautiously moved the table towards the door and into the passage, then went back and sat in a chair opposite him, studying the strength of his jaw, the shapeliness of his lips, the breadth of his forehead. A ‘bull of a man’ Tom Harris had called him but he was much more than that: a giant of a man. He did not look as tired as he had but he must be tired to drop off to sleep so quickly. Some coals fell in the grate and she got up to move them so there would be no risk of their falling on wooden floor or carpet, and as she turned around he opened his great arms and trapped her, pushed her bodice down with his chin and kissed her bosom, then lifted her as he rose from the chair and without a word carried her across to the sleeping alcove. He placed her gently on the bed, looked down on her, and then began to untie the tapes of her dress.

There was ecstasy and frenzy, there was warm comfort and contentment. It was as if this had always been and would remain forever. Her one anxiety was that he breathed so hard, afterward - but he did not speak of it. The peace was soon shattered, for there was a knocking at the door which she heard first; a knocking which did not stop. She eased herself to the foot of the bed and over the foot panel and wrapped a cloak around her as she went to the door. ‘Who is there?’ she called, and immediately fears for the children surged over her.

‘’‘Tis Tom Harris,’ was the reply. ‘And no matter how deep his sleep I must see the justice.’

She opened the door to see Tom’s big shoulders against the yellow light from the oil lamps and candles.

‘Come in, Tom, and I’ll call him,’ she said. ‘What is it that’s so important?’

‘I’ve something for his ears alone,’ Harris said.

When she reached the sleeping alcove Furnival was sitting up, and she brought a candle guttering in its stick and told him what Tom had said. His hair was ruffled and he had nothing on but the sheet up to his waist, so she helped him on with his nightshirt, in no way harassed by his urging her to hurry. Before she had finished pulling it down to his buttocks, he called, ‘Come in, man, come in! What are you behaving like a virgin for?’

‘I’ve news you’ll thank me for waking you to hear,’ said Harris, and excitement made his voice quiver. ‘You’ll never believe it, sir. Mr. Martin Montmorency was waylaid by a highwayman on his way home from Great Furnival Square tonight, on the outskirts of Westminster, and was robbed of his purse, containing thirty guineas, and his gold-topped cane. And his wife was stripped of her jewellery, valued at over a thousand pounds.’

Harris paused. Furnival stared up at him with a strange expression on his face and his lips pursed, as if he were fighting to keep words back.

‘And that is not all,’ Harris went on, his voice still quivering, and it seemed to Ruth that he was trying to keep back laughter. Why should such a thing amuse him? ‘The house of Mr. Cornelius Hooper was broken into while he was out this afternoon, his guards were attacked, and all his gold and silver plate was stolen.’

Furnival exploded with laughter. Harris, reassured, slapped his great hands on his stomach and rolled as if this were the best joke he had heard in many years. For a while their laughter was the only sound in the room, as Ruth moved slowly, placing small coals on the embers of the fire; they might catch without the need for kindling.

At last John Furnival said, ‘And I’ll wager you’d had a report on what went on this afternoon.’

‘Aye, sir - from one of the footmen.’

‘The man should be dismissed for gossiping, so whatever you do, Tom, don’t remember his name.’ Furnival gave another snort of a laugh but when he went on he was wholly earnest. ‘Now we’ve had our fun. Send out every man we have here and find out the name of the highwayman; I want him in irons by morning. If you have to pay to loosen some rascal’s tongue, pay what you must but make sure you get the truth. When we’ve caught him, and only then, see what you can find out about Hooper’s silver and gold plate. It’s probably on its way out of London by now; no one would steal such unwieldly valuables unless he had a ready market. If you can’t get word on it soon, let me know. Hooper will be hearing from a thief-taker soon and he’ll do a deal for the recovery of the plate rather than let it be known publicly that he was robbed.’ Furnival gave a great spurt of laughter again. ‘But we could tell The Daily Courant of the unfortunate episode, couldn’t we?’

‘Aye, we could spring a leak,’ Harris said, and he too was shaking with laughter when he went out.

‘Ruth,’ Furnival said, ‘I think I’m too wide awake to sleep. You get to bed and I’ll read for a while.’ He chuckled. ‘My, my! I would have given a fortune to have seen their faces and to have asked them whether they’d like a peace force now.’ He slid out of the deep feather bed, and as he stood up his mood changed and he looked down on her, frowning. ‘Highwaymen at the gates of the city. The two miles between here and Westminster are infested with them. It’s no laughing matter, Ruth, no laughing matter at all.’

For some reason that she didn’t understand, she began to laugh at him.

Tom Harris and a young constable named Brown were back in triumph within two hours, with the highwayman who had robbed the Montmorencys manacled between them. They had found him in the Old Cock Tavern, next door to Charlie Wylie’s brothel in the Strand, gambling his loot on a cockfight. They had two witnesses ready to swear his life away.

From the bench, wearing a long cloak over his nightgown, John Furnival said, ‘You must be made a lesson and a warning that our highways must be kept free for honest travellers, and I shall send you for trial at the next Session. Before your trial you shall be lodged in Fleet Prison.’

The highwayman, a fair-haired youth in his early twenties, actually shivered before he was taken away. For the Fleet, in many ways, was worse than Newgate.

In the middle of Thursday morning, a cold and blustery day with leaden skies reminiscent of winter’s snow, Anne Gilroy came.

Her first message was a greeting from his brothers and congratulations on the capture of the highwayman; her second to pass on a report that Hooper, whose gold and silver plate was still missing, was at his surliest with his business associates.

‘He will be a hard man to convert,’ Furnival said. ‘Those who believe in man’s inevitable evil and greed always are. Now! Do you have the renderings?’

‘Mr. Letchworth calls them extensions,’ she said. She handed him a sheaf of papers containing all that had been spoken in public on the previous Sunday, with some additions which, an explanatory note in exquisite penmanship said, had been gleaned from the private conversations which had taken place afterward. The general tenor of these was that no matter how bad the crime situation might be, an organised professional peace force paid by the State would cause more crime, rioting and anger and would have serious repercussions.