The Thief-Taker : Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner (27 page)

“You are acting the fool,” he murmured. “The bloody fool. This is what women do to men in this world, and you know it well. You see it when it happens to other men. Do you suppose it's different for you?”

He was just about to go on his way when the door opened. Lord Arthur Darley came nimbly down the stairs, waving to Morton as though he were his dearest friend in all the world.

“Ah, Mr. Morton! What an unlooked-for pleasure. Do come up,” Darley said, crossing the street as though Morton were not of another class of society at all.

Morton could hardly refuse now, and accompanied Darley silently up the stairs. “You have just missed Mrs. Malibrant,” Darley told him, “and she will be unhappy to learn it. She was most set on seeing you today. I don't mean to pry, Morton, but I got the impression you'd had a quarrel. And poor Mrs. M. felt an awful guilt about it.”

Morton shrugged. “Something of the sort.”

Darley ushered Morton into the very room where he had first seen Halbert Glendinning lying, like a man dressed for a funeral. Morton soon found a snifter of smuggled cognac in his hand, and Darley served himself the same. They settled into chairs, Morton regarding his host rather warily. Why was the man so completely at ease?

“To the birds of the air, Mr. Morton,” Lord Arthur said suddenly, raising his glass.

Morton must have looked puzzled.

“A beauty we can admire but never possess, Morton. I hope you feel as I do.”

“Aye,” Morton said, and then broke into a wry grin. “What choice have we?”

They both chuckled and tasted their cognac. They sat and talked, then, almost like a pair of old friends, strangely comfortable with each other. Darley asked about Morton's search for Glendinning's murderer and the Runner found himself telling all that had occurred.

“That was a stroke of luck, finding the villain who attacked you. If he can tell you who sent them to assail you—assuming it was related to Halbert's death—then you might well have discharged your commission, and with great dispatch, too. Perhaps that will lift the gloom from Louisa Hamilton.” Darley raised his glass in salute. “Well done, Morton.”

“If it turns out so neatly. Nothing ever seems sure in my profession.”

“What kind of life would it be if everything was certain? I daresay, Morton, that you could have picked yourself a tame occupation, and had yourself a comely and constant wife. But you have chosen otherwise, and I must tell you, there are many who would envy you. No, there is much good to be said of uncertainty; believe me.”

When he returned to number 4 Bow Street, the Public Office seemed unusually deserted. Then one of the clerks came running across the way from the Brown Bear, telling him he was wanted, that there was something amiss.

Inside the Bear the atmosphere was sullen. People were gathered in the gloom, sitting around tables, speaking in near whispers. Not the usual mood, that was certain. Jimmy Presley met him at the bottom of the stairs, his face full of consternation.

“Morton! There you are, at last,” the young Runner said. “You'll not like what you'll see here.”

“What's this?”

Presley beckoned for him to follow and pushed his way upward toward the second floor, where Bow Street, incongruously, rented lockup rooms for its overflow prisoners.

“It must have just happened….”

On the stair men stood smoking and speaking quietly, though they went silent when they saw Morton and Presley. The hallway above was choked with police and flash men and their fancy women. Sir Charles Carey emerged from one of the rooms, accompanied by a stranger.

“Waste of bloody—” he was saying, but then spotted Morton. “Well, Mr. Morton, you won't be arguing with the surgeon this time,” he said as he passed.

Morton stopped in the doorway. The pock-faced man lay on the floor, arms akimbo, eyes glazed and gazing upward, mouth lolled loosely open. The dull light from a dirty glass chimney illuminated a pool of blood, quickly skinning over with brown.

“Sliced his pipes,” Presley muttered at his elbow.

Morton took a long breath. “Who? Who did this?”

“Don't know. Bloody patrole was on watch, but he was in some back room looking to get poxed.”

“Who was in here with him?”

“He was by himself.”

“And no one saw anything?”

“Oh, I expect plenty saw, but you know this crowd. Won't be telling us, now, will they? Mr. Townsend's been sent for, but I doubt even he will find a soul with a tongue. No, this one's gone, Morton; anything he had to tell he'll be telling St. Peter.”

Henry Morton banged a fist on the door frame in exasperation. It was certainly true that the whole matter
of holding prisoners at Bow Street lacked system. They sometimes “wandered off,” because no clear arrangement had been made as to who would watch them. Occasionally men even died at the hands of fellow prisoners in brawls. But no one had ever broken into a locked room and slit a prisoner's throat.

“One of us should have stayed with him,” Presley muttered regretfully, and Morton nodded in grim agreement. Easily enough said now.

Evening Police Court was in session. Morton no longer had anything to bring before the Magistrates, but if he waited, he could speak to Sir Nathaniel Conant when he emerged in about two hours' time. He could start to tell the Chief Magistrate some of his ideas about the Smeetons, about Bow Street and the Otter. The subject would have to be broached sometime.

But Morton decided against it. He still had so little in the way of concrete evidence to present. And Sir Nathaniel's first question would be about the assignment he had given Morton, and he had nothing at all to tell the Magistrate in that matter.

Evidence. It was proving hard to find—and even harder to keep.

H
e dined at Johnson's and did a round of
the flash houses between the City and St. James, hoping to hear something about the murder in the Brown Bear. Or to hear anything at all that might be of use to him. But even his most reliable sources all came up barren.

It was well after ten when he wearily returned to Rupert Street, and as he did, a shadowed figure darted away from an empty doorway. Morton watched him go. There was no point in pursuing, and he had little enthusiasm for the game at this hour anyway. Often enough it happened that potential informants hovered about his door, then lost their nerve and ran off.

He went around the front of the building and in at the main entrance. Mrs. Budworth presented him with a small object wrapped in oilcloth: the copied key that Valentine Rudd had dutifully left for him during the day. It was a Bramah, sure enough, by its distinctive cylindrical shape. Slipping it into an inner pocket, Morton went upstairs.

Although Wilkes should not yet have returned from Sussex, lamps glowed.

“Wilkes?”

It was not his manservant but Arabella who appeared, backlit by a flickering lamp.

She came easily into his arms.

“What an awful bloody woman you've chosen, Morton,” she whispered in his ear.

Morton shook his head, breathing deeply the fragrance of her hair. “It is the uncertainty,” he said. “I'm told it is opium to me.”

“What in the world are you saying?”

“Nothing, my love. Not a thing.”

But their kiss was interrupted by a loud knocking at the door that closed onto the staircase down to the rest of the building. At the same moment they heard foot-steps—numerous footsteps—on the balcony outside. They pulled away from each other in surprise.

“Henry?”
Arabella whispered.

“I don't know,” Morton replied. He stepped past her to an armoire and removed a pistol from one of its drawers.

The knocking was repeated; now there was hammering also from the back door that opened onto the balcony. Morton checked his priming, then stepped out into the hall with the weapon in hand.

“Who the devil is it at this hour of night!”

“Bow Street!” came the call from beyond. “Open, or we shall have this door down!”

“Vaughan? What folly is this!”

A second voice came then, quieter and more dignified. “Mr. Morton? No folly, sir. We have a warrant. Best open.”

Morton breathed deep in surprise, and turned to
Arabella, who hovered behind him in the doorway. “It's Townsend! Townsend with a warrant!”

Morton set his gun down on the hall table and unbarred the door. In came trooping George Vaughan and several of the constables of the Night Patrol, with John Townsend apologetically in the rear.

Morton saw the hard, still look in Vaughan's face, and began to realise what was happening. Vaughan had somehow recognised how things stood, and had moved first. This was deadly serious.

Townsend was bowing in courtly fashion to Arabella Malibrant.

“Allow me to apologise, madam.” Then he turned to Morton. “It wasn't my doing. Sir Nathaniel sent me along to see that things were managed properly.” His voice and expression were rueful.

“What the devil is going on!”

Now, however, the old Runner was required to behave in an official manner, and he did. His voice became more formal. “We bear warrants to search your dwelling, Mr. Morton,” he replied. “You may examine them. They were signed by Sir Nathaniel Conant but two hours past.”

“Search? For what?”

Townsend solemnly pulled out another paper, and then his spectacles.

“Shall we not begin?” muttered George Vaughan.

“I will satisfy Mr. Morton first,” Townsend retorted with noticeable coolness. He read from the paper. “ ‘Item: a fragment of marble, two and a half feet long by fourteen inches deep by three inches wide, carved in relief with a votive scene, portraying the goddess Ceres and—’”

“The antiquities stolen from Burlington House,” interrupted Henry Morton. “What is this foolishness? I
haven't found them yet, if that's what Sir Nathaniel is asking.”

“Have you not?” murmured George Vaughan.

“ ‘Item: a fragment of—’”

“Spare me the recitation, Mr. Townsend! I know the particulars.”

Townsend produced a neatly folded section of newspaper.

“From
The Morning Chronicle
of today's date, Mr. Morton. Permit me to read. ‘
Precious Goods
’—that is the heading—
‘of ancient provenance. God of lightning and Goddess of the sickle’
—a clear reference to the images of Zeus and Ceres, but cunningly indirect—
‘If grateful to a finder, apply upstairs, number seven Rupert Street, for hopeful tidings.
’” Townsend refolded the paper and turned his gaze to Morton, an eyebrow lifting.

“I did not place that advertisement, sir!” Morton said hotly. “Why on earth would I? It is absurdly inept! And to give my own address! What sort of fool do you think me?”

“That we shall discover,” George Vaughan said. “Proceed!” he ordered the patroles.

“Mr. Townsend,” Morton protested. “Anyone can place a notice in a newspaper!”

To which Townsend nodded gravely. “But search we must. I'm sure you see that.”

Vaughan let the other constables in from the balcony. They had come in absurd numbers. As they began their work, Morton stepped back and watched, wondering for an instant if he had fallen asleep and into nightmare. Then he remembered the figure he'd seen run off from the empty doorway. Vaughan's man, no doubt. A sickening possibility was occurring to him, and its cold hand
gripped his heart. He had sent Wilkes off to Sussex, leaving his rooms empty all day.

“Might we permit Mrs. Malibrant to return to her home, Mr. Townsend?” he asked quietly, hoping his anxiety would not be detectable in his voice. He felt Arabella look at him in surprise. “The matter hardly concerns her. The hour is late, and she was about to leave when you arrived.”

“Nay,” harshly said George Vaughan, stepping to the doorway from the next room. “They are together in everything. She's his whore, and as like they'll swing together, too, like that cully Smeeton and his sow.”

At this Arabella went white to the roots of her red hair, and Morton wheeled on Vaughan in fury. Two constables stepped between them.

“You shall rue this, George Vaughan! By
God,
I'll make you rue it!”