The Masters of Bow Street (24 page)

‘Will you have some tea while I read this?’ Furnival asked. They were upstairs in the study.

‘I would rather go downstairs and see Silas Moffat and some of your men whom I know,’ Anne replied. ‘I will come back as soon as you call for me.’ She went out without giving him time to protest.

Furnival heard Moffat speak, and then lost himself in what he read. He was surprised by the conviction in his own words, surprised by the convincing remarks of some of the others, particularly Montmorency. He began to itch to pick up a quill and alter and add to those facts and figures, and when he was through he felt quite sure that this was a most powerful statement of the case both for and against his dream.

He had started reading again when Anne came back.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said quickly. ‘I had almost forgotten—’

‘That I was here!’ Anne’s blue eyes were at their happiest; even as a child she had been both the most serious and yet the most light-hearted of the family. ‘Do you think it good?’

‘I think it can be improved but basically, yes, very good. There is one thing: It will need at least four pages of print unless the print is to be uncommon small and tedious to read.’

‘My!’ she mocked. ‘It will be as large as an edition of The Daily Courant or the Dying Confessions of Jonathan Wild! John, will you work on it, and when you are ready, send it to me for the printing and—’

‘I can arrange for the printing,’ John interrupted.

‘Indeed you can. There is nothing the great John Furnival cannot do better than all others except possibly take a little help when it is proffered. John, I would like to bear the expense of this, and Will has told me that he will arrange for its distribution, without comment, to all the family and shareholders of the House of Furnival and associated houses, as well as shareholders of other banks and many merchants in the City. Yeoman will see that it reaches Walpole, as well as some of our more radical Members of Parliament and peers. We cannot yet give you all you want, but this we can do.’

‘Anne,’ said Furnival in a helpless way, ‘Anne, I have never been good at saying “thank you” - not even to you. But—’

‘Good gracious no, don’t thank me with words!’ she interrupted, her eyes dancing. ‘Thank me with deeds. Take Silas Moffat and this pleasant Ruth to the country for a few weeks. Silas is nearly seventy-five and he needs a rest even if you don’t bother. And you really do, you know. I noticed after you spoke to the family that you were exhausted. Take Ruth and her brood to St. Giles Farm, ‘tis empty but for the servants, and get them out of this contaminated city before it poisons them!’

‘Anne—’

‘You have not taken one weekend away from London except on business for ten years,’ Anne insisted, ‘and you need a rest.’

‘Anne,’ he insisted, ‘why do you say “take Ruth”?’

‘Because she is good for you,’ declared Anne. ‘Why, everyone expected you to have apoplexy last Sunday - we even had Doctor Anson in attendance. But you were so calm it was not natural. So I asked Moffat to explain why, and he explained enough.’ She paused and then asked in a sharper voice, more intent than before, ‘Did you know that Timothy was at the School for Young Men near Saint Paul’s?’

“Pon my soul, I had no idea!’

‘Well, your Ruth’s son and Sarah’s are school companions,’ Anne said, ‘and I’m not sure Sarah will approve but I do, John. I would even have James at Great Furnival Square when you were away if you would only go to St. Giles.’

‘I wish I could,’ John said regretfully.

‘What is there to stop you?’ she demanded.

‘A task unfinished,’ he replied.

‘Oh, John,’ she said. ‘Oh, brother, John, will you kill yourself for your cause?’

‘No doubt. As my father and his father killed themselves by overwork and overdrinking for theirs.’

‘I don’t understand - oh! You mean, they killed themselves because they could not rest from making money.’ She pouted momentarily, and then laughter crept back into her eyes and she went on: ‘I am not sure whose motive is the better, but I do know my big brother will kill himself if he doesn’t rest more often, and if he kills himself who will fight for his cause?’

‘That is what I have to be sure of before I go on to the next world,’ he said soberly.

‘Goodness! You make yourself sound almost serious!’

‘Never more so,’ John Furnival declared. He smiled at her gravely and the mischievousness died away from her eyes as he went on: ‘Anne, is Silas a sick man?’

‘He is an old man, and tired,’ she said.

‘Then I shall send him to St. Giles for a few weeks.’

‘He would be happier and so would I if you would go with him,’ Anne declared. ‘But I won’t press you, John.’ The laughter came again. ‘I must work on Ruth!’

Furnival found himself chuckling.

He went to Bow Street to see Anne off in her carriage, and as she turned the corner and disappeared, a coach swept around, not only too crowded and too far on one side of the road but also going too fast. Furnival looked with cold anger at the face of the driver of the team of six horses, angry because the man could so nearly have caused an accident to his sister.’ To his surprise the coach began to slow down, and he went inside, not wishing at that moment to tell the driver what he thought of him. He went to the back room, which was empty, left the door open and so heard the man who came from the coach call out: ‘I want Judge John Furnival. I have an urgent message for him.’

Moffat’s voice came quietly in reply, ‘I can take the message.’

‘I was told to see him myself,’ the man grumbled. ‘If you don’t tell him, let it be on your own head. He’s to send no more prisoners to Newgate until the Keeper raises the ban. There’s a bad epidemic of jail fever, and worse, there are two proven cases of cholera. I’m taking new prisoners from Newgate to the Fleet, and I stopped on the way. You tell him, now.’

‘I will tell him,’ promised Moffat. But as he turned towards the back room he saw Furnival and knew there was no need to pass on the news.

It was a year since there had been a serious outbreak of cholera in London and the realisation brought fear, for so many were stricken and there was so little to be done. Next to smallpox, which was always with them, it was the worst disease after the black plague.

‘There isn’t much we can do, Silas,’ John Furnival said, ‘but we will heed the warning, of course, and I will commit as few prisoners as I can to any prison.’ He knew that cholera seemed to carry itself from prison to prison, plague spot, to plague spot, and that it ran like fire through the already overcrowded hospitals.

The keeper would have warned the City authorities, of course, and they would have told the Middlesex and Westminster authorities; probably for a few days there would be a ban on travel between any of the places until the full extent of the outbreak had been discovered. If this epidemic proved comparatively small, only a few thousand would die of the evil disease.

The first that John Furnival knew of Moffat’s sickness was on the third day after the old man’s collapse. He, Furnival, had spent nearly a week conferring with other magistrates about general matters. He was particularly concerned by the continuing addition of laws passed at Westminster, now extending the death penalty to more than two hundred crimes, from stealing bread to murder. The government appeared to believe that by increasing the severity of the punishment they would discourage the crime.

It was true that many of the death sentences were now being transmuted to transportation for life, or, in some cases, only ten or twelve years; judges at the Sessions applied the capital sentence with much care. But it was said that half of those who set out on the transportation vessels died long before reaching port, either from disease or malnutrition, since the ship’s captain had an allowance to buy food and could be just as generous, or more often mean, with it as he chose.

Coming home in low spirits, for so many of the other magistrates appeared to side with the government, as if they actually enjoyed sending men through to the Sessions where the harsh penalties were passed, Furnival expected to see Moffat, but no one was in either the downstairs or upstairs apartments. The fires were alight in both, and kettles were singing and tables were laid against the time when he reached home. He felt exasperation. Why wasn’t Moffat here? Why wasn’t Ruth? He wanted the comforts he was coming to expect from her and when he glimpsed her coming from her cottage he did not notice her distress.

She came into the back room and he said gruffly, ‘Where is everyone this night? Go and see if Silas is—’

He broke off because of her expression and waited for whatever news she had to tell him. One of her children sick of the cholera, perhaps? Or one of them dead? He did not know what to say to help her.

She said in an unsteady voice, ‘Silas is in the hospital at Saint Bartholomew’s, sir. I have just come from there.’

‘You’ve just come from a hospital where cholera is rife? Are you mad, woman?’

‘I had to see Silas,’ she protested, ‘and I have been to my cottage and bathed in salt water they gave me at the apothecary’s and put on fresh clothes before coming here, sir. My girls are with Meg. All the boys at the school have been kept inside the walls because of the outbreak, and no case has yet been reported there.’ She stood in the doorway, helpless and entreating. ‘I had to go to Silas, sir. He - he was asking for you.’

Furnival exclaimed, ‘My God! And I blamed you.’ He raised his voice as she had never heard it raised before. ‘Godden, my horse at once!’ He turned to her and took her hands. ‘Where shall I find him, Ruth?’

‘But, sir, if you go—’

‘Where shall I find him?’

‘He is on the second floor, sir, the third bed to the left from the door. But let me come with you, I beg you.’

‘When I get back I’ll need to wash all over with that salt water and to change my clothes,’ he said gruffly. ‘And I shall be hungry. You get things ready for me, and if you can wait that long have your meal with me.’

‘I will do as you say,’ she promised and turned away.

But before she had taken a step he gripped her by the shoulders and turned her around, looked into her misted eyes and spoke in a grumbling voice, ‘Don’t you get cholera! Do you understand? Don’t you get cholera!’ He made to thrust her away but instead drew her to him and held her so tightly that she could hardly breathe. A moment later he turned and strode into the hall as Godden appeared; his horse was saddled and waiting.

Never had John Furnival seen such sights.

In Long Acre and Holborn there were few people and most of those, he suspected, were thieves or looters looking for easy pickings at the houses of the dead or sick. But as he drew near Smithfield and St. Bartholomew’s, the streets were crowded with young and old, men, women and children; and as the dogs clawed among the stinking piles of rubbish for food and so stirred up the noxious gases and smells which carried sickness, as if the cholera was not bad enough, the human beings struggled towards the hospital, and none could doubt that all were sick and many were dying, and that the only hope they saw was in the hospital wards.

At the approaches to the hospital was a line of dragoons, their muskets sloped, staring over the heads of the crowds, and in the entrance itself was a barricade manned by a dozen soldiers, with space for only one person or one horseman to pass at a time. In the pale afterglow and flickering lights, of torches the soldiers stood gay and bright. As Furnival slowed down at the barrier a young officer who looked little older than Timothy approached from the other end of the barricade.

‘John Furnival, justice at Bow Street,’ Furnival stated. ‘I have official business.’

The youth peered up as if doubting his claim and a sergeant, close by, saluted Furnival and said, ‘It’s Mr. Furnival, sir. Same gent as fined me a shilling for being drunk and belligerent, when some would have sent me to the Fleet to cool my heels.’

‘Take Mr. Furnival to the main door, sergeant.’

‘Right, sir!’

Furnival looked into the unshaven face of a man he could not remember having seen before and nodded his thanks. He dismounted and the sergeant tied his horse to a post and then led him to the closed door, guarded by four soldiers. They opened the door and as Furnival stepped inside it was like going into a place of death, some awful charnel house. For along the passages and along the stairs there were people, dead or dying; and there was a moaning sound which was like a chant of the damned. Here and there a woman or a man knelt by the side of a patient, and at the first floor was a desk at which sat an elderly woman giving instructions to messengers and answering questions of demented-sounding people who wanted news of husband, wife, son or daughter. Stretcher-bearers were taking some cloth-covered bodies away.

Furnival reached the second floor and went past a similar desk and scene into a great ward where the floor seemed to crawl with people. Only here and there was an oasis of stillness and of quiet, and one of those was at the third bed to the left of the door. At first glimpse Furnival thought that Moffat was already dead, he was so pale and lay so still. It was hard to believe a man could become so emaciated, so hideously thin, in such a short time; but for the unmistakable profile Furnival would not have recognised him, he was so wasted away.

As Furnival reached his bed some kind of awareness must have stirred in him, and he turned almost closed eyes towards his master and pleaded in a voice that was barely audible, ‘Send for Mr. Furnival. Please send for Mr. Furnival.’

Furnival took the bony hand gently and said very firmly, ‘I am here, Silas. You can go to sleep now.’

‘Mr. Furnival,’ Moffat spoke in a louder voice, and he tried to open his eyes wide. For a moment there was some kind of responding pressure in his hand but that ceased and his arms and whole body sagged as the wraith of life departed.

In the weeks which followed Moffat’s death, Ruth saw a side to John Furnival that she had never suspected. The high spirits and laughter had gone and were replaced by the constant sternness he showed to nearly everybody with whom he was in daily contact. He worked with an application and single-mindedness which affected everyone, and frightened many. Only with her and on occasional visits from Anne did he relax at all, but it was not the complete relaxation of those few, now precious, occasions when he had forgotten everything but Ruth. In court, Tom Harris and others told her, he took statements and made decisions more quickly than ever, giving lying witnesses little latitude, but giving more scope to accused men who he believed might be victims of conspiracy. He sent fewer men and women to Newgate and the Fleet, especially when a charge involved the death penalty.