Theft of Life (29 page)

Harriet cleared her throat. ‘How can I have known nothing about this, Mrs Service? The sale and all the unpleasantness?’

The old lady put out her hand and patted Harriet’s knee. ‘Dear Mrs Westerman, this was all the winter poor Captain Westerman died. You had grief and concerns enough of your own. By the time you were yourself again, the matter was dealt with and we were all only too pleased to forget about it.’

Harriet fidgeted with her ringlets. ‘I am glad you set them free.’

‘It was the right thing to do. And we received a number of very dear letters from former slaves, or letters written on their behalf. Some African gentlemen also wrote to the newspapers in support of Graves, which was very kind of them. Yet I know Graves frets still over selling the land.’

‘Why is that, Mrs Service?’

‘Because now it is worked by another man’s slaves. Part of him wishes he could have kept it, worked it with free labour to demonstrate the lie of slavery, but there was so much to be done and no one who could be trusted to go there and manage the place. He said he felt he was merely washing his hands of old blood rather than doing any active good, though judging by the letters I think the men and women whom he freed were glad he did so much.’

Harriet remembered Oxford’s sneers and the hints of Mrs Jennings. ‘So that is why the West Indians dislike him so particularly.’

‘Oh yes, and they’ve made things very difficult at times. Papers going astray at the bank, things forgotten or letters “accidentally” misdirected.’ She sighed. ‘They have great power, these people, Harriet. And I believe they are growing afraid that slavery will no longer be tolerated by the British people. That makes them rather dangerous. When rats are cornered, they tend to show their true nature.’

F
RANCIS TOOK A LANTERN
with him. He should have thought earlier and harder about the maid, Penny. Francis had always viewed the whores of London with particular distaste. Now he tried to remember the girl without that distaste clouding his vision. Neither plain nor pretty, she was a little hard around the eyes and not one for smiling much, but she had always been civil. She had done her duty for all those weeks when it had been sworn up and down that she would be off with everything of value in the house before she’d slept more than two nights in the place. Did she kill her mistress? Francis tried to imagine it. Perhaps too much God and sin from Eliza and the woman had broken under it and picked up that tool. Perhaps it had happened when she took up the supper tray. It was possible, but the supper tray had been left outside. Would she have replaced the tool in its case, taken the tray away again and left it at the head of the stairs and locked the door behind her, waited till the boy was asleep and set fire to the place? All that without taking the money waiting in the bureau drawer behind a weak lock? No, it didn’t make sense.

Perhaps in the smoke and noise the girl had been afraid, then simply run back to her old way of living and her friends – innocent of the murder, but unwilling to return now her mistress was dead. He had almost convinced himself of this when he reached the sorry ashy ruin on Paternoster Row. Even if she were innocent, she still must know who had visited Eliza after he himself had left. Penny knew, so Penny must be found. Perhaps the handbills would do their work.

He nodded to the men guarding the house and they stood aside to let him enter. He went into the kitchen, sodden with shadows and smeared with smoke, and lifted his light. Here was Joshua’s place, near the stove. His bedroll was still laid out and rumpled. A little further away was a wooden rocker, high-backed like a nursing chair, a work-basket next to it. He looked about the room for the place where Penny had slept. There was a cubbyhole under the back stairs with a door to it; inside, just enough room for a woman to lie – and there was her mat on the ground with a good blanket over it, not disturbed by a sleeper.

She might have run, he said to himself again. She might have run on smelling smoke, then ashamed that she had not tried to save Joshua or her mistress, slunk away to the Rookeries and left everything behind her. There was very little in the hole apart from the bedding; a print, tacked to the wall, too smudged to sell but still one could make out the bearded Jesus, lights beaming from His forehead and before Him on the ground a woman asking for mercy. If Miss Eliza had put it there, it would have been a clean copy and framed. This had been saved from the waste and taken, therefore it was a private shrine, and more likely sincere. A small bundle of clothes lay in the corner, he noticed. What poor girl would leave those behind, even in a panic? Francis crouched on his heels and considered. The light from his lamp seemed to make everything golden; it gave even this tight neat corner the air of a refuge. He remembered what it was like to be poor, rejected and alone only too well. He himself had slept in a space like this with his one possession, the copy of
Robinson Crusoe
that he tried to puzzle more out of each day, tucked under his pillow. Everyone has a treasure they keep close. It could be nothing more than a polished stone, a shell, a ribbon – but something you could look at from time to time to remind yourself there was beauty in the world somewhere, a talisman like the ring which glinted on his finger. He felt under the place where the girl’s head rested, touched something metal and drew it out. It was a simple token of a tin heart on a cheap chain. He turned it over between his fingers. The back was engraved with the letter M, but it had been touched and stroked so often it was almost worn away. Francis put it into his pocket, then stood out of the cubbyhole, his heart heavy. Penny had kept and loved that trinket for years. Not unless it were on fire itself would she leave it.

He returned to the body of the shop and tried to think. A visitor had come in the early evening and left again. Then after supper, with the apprentice Joshua already dreaming, someone else had arrived. Penny had opened the door to this visitor and turned to lead him upstairs to her mistress. What had the visitor done then? Francis looked to his left on the counter; just as in his own shop, the ink-bottle stood next to the stand. He picked it up. Full and heavy. He moved it into the light. There was blood on its edge.

Within half an hour Francis had raised Constable Miller and dragged him, sleepy and fire-warm, from his house to the butcher Scudder’s place. The men took Walter Sharp the engraver out of the tavern on their way. Only when they were all seated round Scudder’s table in his comfortable kitchen was Francis ready to explain, and then he did it so fast they did not get the sense of it at first.

‘Hold, hold, Francis,’ Walter said. His eyes were pink with gin, but he was trying to fight the fog of it. ‘Someone killed Mrs Smith.’

‘Yes, they locked her door and left her there. Now the fire may only have been burning for a few minutes when I got there …’

‘Not more than half an hour, I’d say,’ Miller put in.

‘… but her flesh was cold. She must have died some time before, so I believe it was that first caller who killed her.’ Francis leaned across the table towards them, his palms open and reaching in the air, as if gathering them in. The men nodded, following him so far. ‘Then Penny took up her mistress’s supper and left it at the door, thinking her at prayer – but it was falling on that tray cut up my hands, and the glass of lemonade was full. That is my second reason for thinking it was the earlier caller who killed her: the tray untouched outside the door.’

‘Say on,’ Scudder said, folding his arms.

‘So whoever killed Eliza leaves, knowing she must eventually be discovered, Penny having seen him into the house. Perhaps he did not mean to kill Eliza and it was just some moment of rage. He ran at first, but then he had time to consider his situation. He thinks of fire. So he comes back, Penny lets him in again – and he strikes her down, using the ink-bottle. Then he goes upstairs, puts the graver that went through Eliza’s eye back in its place, and sets the fire to hide the all. Bundles Penny out of the place and is gone.’

‘Why not just leave Penny for the flames?’ Miller asked. ‘It would be a risk to carry her from the house.’

‘More of a risk to leave her there,’ Scudder said. ‘This way we all thought in our black and jaded hearts she’d done the thing.’

‘The lad Joshua did not,’ Francis reminded them, and the other men nodded.

‘He must have had a carriage – no, a wagon maybe,’ Walter said. ‘Couldn’t just walk through London with her.’

Constable Miller had sunk his chin on his chest. ‘Left her clothing and treasures behind and blood on the bottle. I see it clear. Wish I didn’t, Mr Glass, but I do.’

Francis felt a wave of tiredness sweeping through his bones. His mind was sore with thinking, and he was glad to hear them take their turn at the problem.

Miller continued: ‘He’d want to get her away, but he needs to move fast. Got to be somewhere just far enough. Got to head north, somewhere quiet between here and Islington.’ He paused and looked steadily at Francis. ‘We’re looking for a grave, ain’t we?’

Francis nodded. He put the blanket from Penny’s sleeping place on the table. ‘Mr Miller, do you know anyone with dogs that can follow a trail?’

‘I do,’ the constable said. ‘I know a fellow in Hackney. He’ll lend a hand.’

Scudder rasped his fingers over the stubble on his chin. ‘You running the fire sale tomorrow, Mr Glass?’

‘That is my intention,’ Francis replied. ‘I’ve taken Eliza’s private things away, what could be saved. I want everything ready for her brother George when he arrives, so he need do nothing but grieve.’ He passed the back of his hands over his eyes. ‘But Penny must be looked for.’

Scudder studied him a moment. ‘It’s not all on your shoulders, Mr Glass. You do as needs doing in town and leave the search to us.’ The butcher then turned to Walter. ‘As for you, you’re staying here where the gin can’t find you.’

Walter shrugged, but seemed compliant. ‘Dogs, eh?’ he said, and whistled.

‘Trust me,’ Francis told him. ‘A good dog can find anyone.’

M
RS MARTIN STARTED HER
days early. The earlier the better. She would wash in her room then be in the kitchen as soon as the fires were lit and sit at the head of the table with her tea and her pocketbook as the other servants gathered. It gave her the chance to observe discreetly those under her authority; their tempers and manners in those first hours of the morning when the night was still clinging to the streets told her a great deal.

Today, when she had glanced in on the store cupboards and meat lockers, the pantry and the linen cupboards, and walked through the family rooms putting back the shutters, she made her tea, took her place at the table and licked the end of her pencil. This morning she was considering what should be sent up to Mr Crowther for breakfast. Mrs Service had persuaded him to give Graves back his office and take the Yellow Bedroom. She would ask William to take him his tray. Cow’sfoot jelly and toast. But then his jaw was so inflamed perhaps more soup would be better. She had just decided on this when she heard someone cough in the shadows and almost leaped out of her skin. From the shadows extended a pair of legs in black riding boots. They shone.

‘Morning, Bessie.’

She watied until the pace of her heart had decreased a little. ‘Good morning, Lucretius. You startled me.’ She turned back to her pocketbook. ‘And it’ll be “Mrs Martin” please, in my place of employment.’ She heard him chuckle, heard the hiss of a taper in the fire and smelled tobacco. ‘I would ask how you got in, but I’m not sure I wish to know.’

‘No damage done.’ There was a pause as he got his pipe glowing as he wanted it. ‘How are them upstairs?’

Mrs Martin put down her pencil and turned round so she could look at him properly. Molloy sat close to the fire. His face was deeply lined, cracked all over like cheap china, a tricorn, worn and greasy, pulled low over his forehead, and his green black cape as always wrapped around him, summer or winter as if he distrusted the sun itself. He probably did.

‘Aside from Mr Crowther being beaten and Mrs Westerman chasing all over town making new enemies?’ she said tartly.

He leaned back and crossed his ankles. Mrs Martin wondered why he always wore riding boots. She’d never seen him anywhere near a horse. ‘Aye, aside from that.’

‘Lady Susan has been thrown out of her school in Golden Square and Master Eustache was caught stealing.’

He laughed, a full-throated laugh that ended in a cough. Mrs Martin almost smiled. She knew Molloy had a wife and children of his own living respectably in Stoke Newington on the proceeds of his rather dubious activities. She also knew he never slept there, but moved through the shadows of London obeying some obscure morality of his own. At some stage he had developed a grudging fondness for the family Mrs Martin served, and they a liking for him.

‘It’s not to be laughed at, Lucretius. Mr Graves is tearing his hair out over them, and Mrs Graves is expecting, and resting in Sussex, so he has that to worry over too, even though she writes him a line every day to tell him she is happy and well.’

‘She’s a good girl, his lady. Has sense enough for both of them, thank the Lord. His fretting won’t do her any favours. What of young Westerman and his sister?’

‘Stephen’s tutor is taking Holy Orders, so I think he is to go to school. Anne is a good child when she has her way, and has a fondness for Master Eustache. He’s at his best when he’s taking care of that little girl.’

He nodded and stretched like a cat. Mrs Martin could hear the bones in his knees crack. ‘Why are you here, Mr Molloy?’

‘Mr Crowther sent for me.’

‘He won’t be awake for hours yet. Why did you come so early?’

Molloy knocked his pipe out on the fender, blew down it and tucked it back somewhere in the depths of his coat. ‘It’s not early, you daft female. It’s late.’ He stretched out his legs again, pulled down the brim of his hat and wrapped his cloak around him. ‘Wake me up when His Lordiness is ready to receive.’