The Masters of Bow Street (63 page)

The wooden floor was firmer than when he had moved in, for he had replaced many of the boards with more substantial ones from buildings which were being demolished; he got much pleasure from using tools and the wooden cleats fitted perfectly, while all the joints were level. The fireplace was part of the reredos from St. Hilary’s Church; he had found it in a builder’s yard, covered with chippings. On the floor were Persian carpets bought from sales at the old Somerset House before its demolition.

He loved the room, but just now he was too distraught by what had happened to take pleasure in it. Ten thousand thieves plague the river, Simon had said; many of them might have been drawn from the river that night.

Leaning back more comfortably in the chair, he closed his eyes. A clock at St. Mary-le-Strand Church began to strike: one, two. Two o’clock. He began to doze. . .

It was daylight when he woke to heavy banging on the door. For a moment he stared at the door, too startled to move, and saw its stout oak timbers shaking and the big iron key quivering up and down until suddenly it fell out. Then, as he slid his feet off the stool, there came a cry.

‘Richard! Are you there?
Richard!’

That was Simon’s voice!

He called out hoarsely, ‘Coming, coming!’ Startled to full wakefulness he crossed to the door as a man said, ‘He answered.’ He could hear the breathing of several men outside, then Simon’s voice, clear and authoritative.

‘Wait until we see it is he. Then go about your business.’

Richard opened the door.

Simon stood in the middle of a group of five men, two with staves, two carrying muskets. There was little light on the landing except that from the windows behind Richard, and this shone into Simon’s face, showing his eyes, glassy and red-rimmed, his sweaty, bloodstreaked cheeks, his torn jacket - it looked as if a sword or knife had slit it across the stomach; inches deeper and it would surely have disembowelled him.

Despite his obvious weariness, his smile was warm.

‘I couldn’t find you among the dead or injured,’ he said, ‘and I wanted to make sure you hadn’t been carried off as a hostage. Three men were but we got them back. This was a well-organised affair and I don’t know yet who was behind it, but I had sufficient warning to prepare a hot reception.’

Richard stood aside, scarcely comprehending.

‘Are you really all right, Simon?
I
am as well as I look.’

‘I need a wash, some breakfast and twelve hours’ sleep,’ declared Simon. ‘When I wake I’ll be as good as new. May I use your closet?’

‘Of course.’ Richard opened the drawer of a chest and took out a clean towel, made sure there was soap in the basin, and left Simon to his ablutions. He himself went down two floors, where the maids who looked after his room were already up. He ordered breakfast for both Simon and himself and went back upstairs. Only now was he beginning to think clearly and the foremost thing on his mind was Simon’s obvious anxiety for him. In this past few hours he had seen a different Simon, much more mature and sophisticated. How could a man change so much in one short year?

But
had
he changed? Or was he only now showing his real self?

Richard heard him splashing and spluttering and peered into a square mirror with a rosewood frame which could swivel on brass hinges to any position he desired. He needed a shave and a wash but the shave could wait. Then Simon came out and Richard said, ‘Breakfast will be here soon.’

Simon, still clutching the towel, remarked, ‘Did you see Rackham last night?’

‘As well as you did.’

‘The man is a dangerous fool,’ Simon declared. ‘He argued, and will plead, that only by summary justice could he prevent a much worse slaughter and that the men, who were out of control, would have done the hanging anyway.’

Simon had hardly finished when footsteps sounded outside: one of the maids with tea, which he, Richard, liked first thing in the morning. She put this on a table as Simon finished drying himself and while Richard went into the closet.

Almost at once he heard the girl exclaim, ‘Oh, sir, I beg you, no.’

He stood very still and listened, wondering whether Simon was going to reveal another facet of himself, knowing that if he were then he, Richard, would have to intervene.

She was a buxom girl, not yet seventeen, wearing a square-necked dress, not as daring as most, yet showing the deep swell of her bosom. As she straightened from the table Simon stepped behind her and slipped an arm around her waist, hugging her close to him.

‘Oh, sir,’ she gasped, ‘I beg you, no.’

To her great relief, mingled with some strange awareness of regret, he released her.

‘Why are you not pouring out some tea?’ he asked, laughing.

In a gasping voice she said, ‘Mr. Richard likes to pour out his own, sir.’

‘I like mine poured by a pretty wench,’ declared Simon, ‘and you’ll pour it or I’ll know the reason why.’

She was giggling when at last she backed away, and when she was on the stairs she stopped and adjusted her bodice, placing her hand where his had been. Then the cook called her and she hurried down to fetch breakfast for Master Richard and this tawny-haired stranger who had so affected her.

Leaning back in the chair in which Richard had spent the night, Simon stretched out his long legs. He sipped tea slowly and had half a cup left when Richard came out of the closet, looking much fresher. Richard leaned against the foot of the bed and poured himself tea while Simon grinned up at him.

‘So you were in the wars, too, were you?’

‘I saw most of the fight from the top of a house,’ Richard answered. ‘I also saw—’ He broke off, and then asked, ‘How long have you been an expert swordsman?’

‘Since I was adopted by the House of Furnival,’ answered Simon. ‘Any man who spends much time on the river and in the City at night has to know how to defend himself. So you saw me employing my skills.’

‘I saw you stop that hanging, as I said.’

‘Ah. So I proved I am a law-abiding man. And so I am, so I am.’

‘You say you expected the attack last night?’

Simon nodded. ‘Yes. I have spies in many places, and several reports reached me - and in any case, only a fool would have been unprepared for trouble on such an occasion. I half expected the scoundrels to go to the river thinking that we would have taken most of our men away from there; had they done so they would have had as rude a shock there as they had at Great Furnival Square. Richard, if you’ve taught me anything it is that the only way to overcome criminals is by organisation. Only I’m afraid we have greatly postponed the day of a police force for London. The government will take heart, tell us what a magnificent job we have done, and command us to continue. But I have one good thing to tell you.’

Outside there was a rattling of knives on a tray, of pottery clinking. Richard moved towards the door to open it, saying, ‘I’m glad of that, anyhow. What is it?’

‘There will be a river police force within a month, and the government will sponsor it soon afterward. I talked to Patrick Colquhoun, who now has the ear of at least three Ministers. That man is a great worker! It was not until recently that I realised how much he does for charity as well as reform. Do they not call him the King of the Soup Kitchens for the Poor?’

Richard laughed as he opened the door and the maid came in, shooting one glance towards Simon, then hurrying with the laden tray and the wooden platters to a table beneath one of the windows. She set out steaks and sausages, eggs, butter, new bread, cheese and tankards of ale, then scurried out.

‘She is terrified of you,’ Richard chided.

‘Terrified? You are not used to the ways of wenches. There is nothing she would like more than a tumble with me, and she has you to blame for missing such a delight!’ Simon hitched his chair forward and went on musingly: ‘You don’t have to be a celibate in order to be a saint, Richard!’ He laughed at Richard’s expression and began to eat fastidiously, speaking from time to time. ‘I cannot imagine what you would think of me if we were to see more of each other. I suspect you would often be shocked! . . . I am told by Mr. Timothy that I have at least
some
of your grandfather’s half brother, Johnny! . . . Come, man, that was not meant to hurt. If all I hear of Johnny is true, he would have been a great man but for one twist in his character, and in many ways he was the most lovable of individuals. Do you know his son, Peter? I thought not. He is a good and able young man without a touch of brilliance or a touch of badness, likely to be the most worthy of servants of the House of Furnival. Will you understand me, not think me disloyal, if I say that as a family the Furnivals have not done well in their bloodline? I suspect that at some time several of them married the wrong women and lost the fire in the blood.’ He drank deeply from his tankard, and for the first time paused to concentrate on what he was saying instead of flinging out remarks with indifference to their effect. Looking very straight into Richard’s eyes, he asked, ‘Did you see Hermina Morgan last night?’

‘What man could fail to?’

‘No man worth calling a man! Now there is a woman with fire in the blood. I am determined to marry her, Richard.’

Richard eyed him with the same directness and asked dryly, ‘Is she aware of her good fortune?’

Nothing in his voice or expression betrayed the contraction of his heart and the pain which Simon’s announcement caused him. He had never known himself so affected by a woman as by Hermina. Had never dreamed of one, nor drawn her into his fantasies, as he did Hermina.

He had to make himself listen to his friend.

‘It would not surprise me if she had not already determined to marry me,’ Simon replied with a gust of laughter. ‘She is a woman so used to getting her own way that if she has, then I shall have to show a proper reluctance.’ The words hovered in the air until suddenly he brought his fist crashing down on the table, making everything on it jump, and in a taut voice he went on: ‘To hell with reluctance! I’ll not stoop to devious ways with her. But we’ll marry. And our children will put new blood into the line of the Furnivals. How is that for a grand jest, Richard?’

‘Is it not how all great English families have remained strong?’ asked Richard mildly. He was beginning to feel less acutely and realised that for a long time he had expected some such news as this.

Simon threw back his head and roared with laughter.

It was eight months before a Marine Police Force was set up for London’s river, sponsored by the merchants, on the plan drawn up by Patrick Colquhoun. James Marshall read the details of the force in
The Daily Clarion
immediately after its formation. There were to be sixty full-time officers, all paid enough to make sure they worked with ‘utmost zeal, vigilance, prudence, discretion and sobriety’. Within days a marked improvement became visible in the conditions on the river. Thieves and mudlarks no longer found it easy to raid ships and warehouses, pilferers found it more, difficult to get away with their loot, prostitutes, with whom most of the thieves worked as bullies, found themselves hounded from doorways and dark corners and kept away from ships. In months, the trade on London’s river was nearly free from the depredations which had been costing, some authorities declared, at least fifty thousand pounds a month. In less than a year the government began to prepare a bill to take over the force, and by the year 1800 the Thames River Police became a public body through an Act of Parliament which won the overwhelming support of the House of Commons and of the Lords. A new Police Office was opened at Wapping Steps, with three magistrates: a police force was actually in operation in London!

Yet one evening in September of that same year, when Richard was at the Chelsea house, where a room was now set aside for his special use, James was more angry than he had been for many years, and his voice was vibrant as he said, ‘It must now be only a matter of time before disaster strikes unless we have the police force the whole of London needs, Richard. Not simply the river.
Everywhere.
Oh, I know, progress has been remarkable in the past decade, but it is not enough. The present situation is an invitation to disaster—’

He broke off, coughing.

‘James,’ said Mary in a subdued voice, ‘you should not excite yourself.’

‘I am tired of not exciting myself,’ declared James crossly. ‘I cannot sit here and say and do nothing while I watch the situation deteriorate. I would like to go on the river now that it has been cleared of such a horde of criminals, and then I would like to go to those places in London where the paid criminals have repaired to. For the river police have not thrust them into the Thames and let them drown, I presume. They do still exist. They have to survive and they will feed off other sections of the populace. We need a police force for the City and the rest of the metropolis more desperately than ever.
Make the authorities understand that.
And I will try to make Timothy—’

He began to cough again, and Mary pushed her chair back and moved towards him, but James waved her back.

‘I will try to make Timothy use his influence, while you, Richard, exert yours on Simon,’ he went on. ‘I am told that Simon is a remarkable man, a giant among today’s Furnivals, more like my - my stepfather than anyone - anyone - anyone—’

Once again he began to cough, and this time he dropped back into his chair and began to breathe very heavily. Richard called one of the gardeners and together they carried him up to his room, where Mary and the housekeeper got him to bed, and a lad was sent to fetch a doctor.

‘He has caught a chill and is grievously ill with congestion of the lungs,’ the doctor diagnosed. ‘Only with constant surveillance can there be any hope for him. I judge the crisis will come in the early hours of the morning. I will send a reliable and experienced woman to help, while you, Mrs. Marshall, must rest, or you will also become ill.’

But Mary stayed up throughout the small hours while James fought for life. She was with him, and so was Richard, when he died as the first light of dawn spread from the other side of the river.