Theft of Life (6 page)

Crowther fished a shilling from his pocket and turned it between his fingers so it caught the sun. He heard a step behind him and realised Mrs Westerman had come to join them. The boy watched the coin and licked his lips.

‘Tell me what you saw. All of it,’ Crowther said slowly.

‘Bloke laid out there.’ He thrust his arm through the railings to point at the patch of ground. ‘Simon crouched down next to him.’

‘What else?’

The boy shrugged. ‘There was a mallet on the ground by his foot. I fought Fred Moore for it, but he’s bigger than me and got off with it before the constable turned up.’

‘What sort of mallet was it?’

‘Ordinary. He got sixpence for it from Mother Brown. He’d have got more from Old Beattie, but Mother don’t ask questions or tell tales. There were a couple of short sticks too, like the one his ankle was tied to. People took ’em as keepsakes.’

‘Did you see his clothes?’ Harriet asked.

The boy thought hard, then shook his head decisively. ‘No. Nothing like that. He just had his shift on, and that was torn at the back.’ Crowther flipped the coin and it sailed over the railings. The boy reached out and caught it with such grace that Crowther smiled.

‘Thank you, young man.’ The boy nodded then sprang off into the crowd, disappearing as neatly as the coin had done. ‘Well, Mrs Westerman?’

‘I am thinking of ordering a man to strip, Crowther, though I would not confess it to anyone other than yourself. Coat, waistcoat, breeches, shoes and hat. They must have bundled them away while Trimnell was still alive, or something would have been left behind with the mallet. I wonder how many pawnshops there are in London?’

He looked up at the broad flank of the Cathedral, the weight of its stone, the tumbling heights of it frowsting in the London smoke. A movement caught his attention and he saw the verger who had played the corpse for him bustling towards them. ‘I suspect the coroner has finally arrived, Mrs Westerman.’

F
RANCIS GLASS WAS TYING
a parcel for one of their provincial customers when the young people dashed into the shop. He was trying to ignore the conversation passing between Cutter the clerk and Francis’s friend, the engraver, Walter Sharp. Walter was a fine artist and Francis valued his friendship, but wished he would spend a little more time at his work rather than guessing at the identities of the aristocrats and notables whose scandals were hinted at in the latest
Town and Country Magazine
. Still, the shop was relatively thin of customers, it being early in the day, so he swallowed his irritation and tried to focus on his knots.

The two small figures darted into the shadows on the far side of the main staircase. Francis finished tying up the parcel and addressed the label in his perfect copperplate handwriting; then, as the children did not leave, he came round the edge of the counter and crossed to the corner whence the suppressed giggles were coming. His arms were folded and he was prepared to be stern, but the children surprised him. He had expected to see some of the pinch-faced and dirty specimens that travelled singly or in packs through the streets, rummaging through the waste piles or holding out their hands with tears trembling in their eyes while their friends dipped in your pockets for your valuables, but these two, it was obvious from their dress, were gentry. The girl could not even be properly called a child – being, he guessed, some fourteen years or so of age. The boy was perhaps a few years younger, nearer ten, and though he was rather slender and thin about the face, there was no mistaking these children for vagrants.

‘Oh, sir, do not give us away!’ the girl said in an urgent whisper. There was no fear in her voice, only mischief. ‘We have only just slipped the leash.’

Francis narrowed his eyes. Even though there were more Africans in London since the end of the war with America, he found that white children still tended to fear him. They saw him frown, thought of the stories of cannibals they had heard, and became quiet and willing in case he ate them. This young girl showed no sign of fright, however. She continued to look up at him with a confident, trusting smile. He found he had to speak.

‘Miss, you cannot dash about the place like this. Even with your brother.’

She was peering past him into the street. ‘Oh, he’s not my brother, he’s my uncle. Ha! Eustache, I told you, no one follows. No more studying improving volumes while they prose on about female education over their tea. Liberty! Now we may run up to Barbican and see the balloon after all.’

Francis raised an eyebrow. He knew now exactly where they had fled from. Eliza Smith’s shop was a minute’s walk away. There she sold any number of volumes on the proper way to educate children, both boys and girls. Her shelves groaned under the weight of moral tales adapted for the improvement of young minds, as well as dictionaries and books on geography, mathematics and music. Her walls were decorated with prints, created in her house, of children personifying Christian virtue, and her rooms were always full of well-dressed and enthusiastic mothers with slightly downcast children following in their wake.

‘You have abandoned your guardian at Mrs Smith’s establishment, I understand.’

The girl’s face fell. It was difficult not to smile, so sudden and complete was the transformation from exaltation to despair, but Francis remained impassive. ‘How did you know? Oh, do not carry tales, sir! I’ve had nothing but lectures all morning and I just wanted a moment to breathe. Mrs Smith is very nice, but she looked so disappointed at me, then led Mrs Service away upstairs to “discuss my behaviour”. Then Mrs Smith’s maid said she hoped I was not a bad girl and gave me such a look, and she made us sit in a corner with a prayer book while we waited. And I could
not
.’

Francis knew Mrs Smith’s maid, Penny, and knew how the girl had made her money before Mrs Smith had taken her in. He felt a little burst of sympathy for the young woman in front of him.

The boy did not seem to completely share her delight in his freedom. ‘I don’t want to see the balloon. If you didn’t want to be lectured and looked at, you shouldn’t have got sent home from Miss Eliot’s, Susan.’

‘I’d like to see you or Jonathan or Stephen stand half an hour in that place, Eustache,’ she replied. ‘Those stupid girls! I did very well not to tear all their hair out on the first afternoon.’ She looked up at Francis with wide blue eyes like a cat begging for scraps. ‘I tried, sir! But Miss Eliot was shocked,
shocked
at everything from morning till night. “A lady should never say this, a lady should never do that …”’ The girl had transformed herself in a moment into a female three times her age, rigid with disapproval. Francis could not help enjoying the performance, though he was careful not to show it. ‘Seems to me Miss Eliot thinks a lady should not do any damn thing at all.’

‘Susan!’ the uncle said. ‘You must not swear.’

‘Bah! I’m sure this gentleman doesn’t mind.’ She looked up with absolute confidence into Francis’s face, but obviously did not find the confirmation she expected. Her voice faltered. ‘Oh! You do mind.’

He nodded. ‘I do not like bad language, that is true. I think words are too important to be used carelessly.’

She recovered herself well enough, though Francis was glad to see she had the decency to blush. ‘Then, my apologies.’ She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin in a very passable impression of a grand lady speaking to her inferiors. ‘Do you sell music here, sir? I would be very happy to see your selection if you have any before I leave.’

‘We do, and you are free to examine it,’ Francis said, ‘but I shall not pass over this “slipping of your leash” so quickly, so stop giving yourself airs.’ The uncle snorted and the girl pouted. ‘Who have you left worrying for you at Mrs Smith’s? Come, tell me and be quick about it if you wish us to be friends, miss.’

A deep, weary sigh. ‘Mrs Service. She has charge of us today and I do love her, but she has been so cross with me all morning. And yesterday. And the day before. I wanted to go to the balloon-raising but am not allowed to do anything until I apologise, and I won’t! It was a stupid school. I don’t know what the Duke was thinking, because he is usually quite a nice and sensible man.’

Francis decided he did not need to understand completely everything the young lady said at this moment and turned towards the boy. ‘And you, sir? What harm did Mrs Service do to you that you should abandon the poor lady so?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘I couldn’t just let Susan run off on her
own
.’

‘It would have been better not to let her run off at all.’

The boy became indignant. ‘That’s not fair! If I keep quiet, then Graves and Verity and Mrs Service all lecture me, and if I don’t, then Susan and Jonathan say I am a tattle-tale. I wish everyone would just leave me
alone
.’ He looked very angry and the girl saw it.

‘Crybaby,’ she muttered. Francis held up his hand.

‘That is an unpleasant thing to say, miss, after he followed you.’ He spoke sharply enough to shock her, and the boy looked surprised and pleased. Francis spoke on while the girl was still at a disadvantage. ‘I suppose matters could be worse. I am certainly glad you didn’t tumble into Mrs Humphrey’s gallery across the way.’ The girl’s face lit with sudden curiosity and she tried to look past him into the street. He raised his eyebrows and she gazed down at her hands, a model of polite submission. ‘I am afraid I cannot allow you to leave unaccompanied. There are scoundrels enough to eat children like you alive between here and there.’ He looked over his shoulder. The engraver was grinning at him. ‘Walter, would you be so kind as to go to Mrs Smith’s and tell Mrs Service that Miss …’ He looked back at the girl.

‘Thornleigh,’ the girl mumbled.

‘… Thornleigh has just stepped in to see what music we have, and she and her uncle will wait for her here.’ The girl looked as if she would cry now. Francis smiled at her. ‘We have a clavichord under the window, Miss Thornleigh. No balloons, but it is better than prayer books, is it not?’ She nodded.

The man behind the desk wrinkled his nose, however. ‘I’d do anything to oblige you, Mr Glass, but I still owe Mrs Smith work. Daren’t show my face there. Every time I try and draw one of her examples of angelic children, they go cross-eyed.’ The girl giggled damply and Walter winked at her. Francis sighed and retreated behind the counter again to fetch his coat.

‘I’ll remember this,’ he murmured to Walter, who only grinned, then he said to the children, ‘I’ll return in a little while.’

In truth Francis did not greatly mind having an excuse to leave the shop for a moment. It made a pleasant change from the bills, appeals for credit, advances against copyright and negotiations with ink- and papermakers that made for the bulk of his life as a printer and seller of books. He touched his hat to his neighbours and received their greetings in turn. Respectable people going about their respectable business in a respectable corner of town, and he, by good luck and hard work, was one of them. His employer, whose name was inscribed above the door of the bookshop, had spent thirty years in the London booktrade and had prospered. Francis had been his lieutenant for the last five, and while Mr Hinckley now lived in quiet retirement in Hampstead, giving good dinners to his favourite and most impoverished authors, Francis managed his business with great success. He commissioned works, he supervised their printing, placed adverts in the papers and cultivated friendly relationships with the reviewers and gentlemen of letters. When he read something he liked, he suggested that Mr Hinckley ask the author to dine. The authors always accepted and came back bursting with that gentleman’s praises. Francis suspected they would have felt a little differently if they knew they had been invited on the recommendation of Mr Hinckley’s African clerk, but there was no need to mention the fact.

He turned the corner at the end of Ivy Lane into Paternoster Row. The maid, Penny, who served in the shop when needed, was standing on the doorstep looking up and down the street. Francis made her a shallow bow. ‘Miss Weeks, if you are looking for a young lady and gentleman who just dashed out of here, they have taken refuge at Mr Hinckley’s. I have come to inform their guardian.’

The girl puffed out her cheeks, relieved. ‘Little devils. I only turned my back a moment to serve Mrs Rule.’ She looked at Francis for a long moment then stepped aside to allow him into the shop. ‘Mrs Smith is upstairs with Mrs Service in her private parlour. You know where that is, of course.’ She winked and Francis passed her with the barest nod and climbed the stairs to the first floor two at a time.

Mrs Smith was serving tea and bread and butter to a far older lady. Mrs Smith rose as soon as he entered and took his hand. She was a good-looking woman of not more than thirty, plumper than most Englishwomen, and with a pale, heart-shaped face. She was soberly dressed and her chestnut hair, as always, a little untidy. She smiled a great deal and there was something in her walk that suggested she might be about to start dancing at any moment. She was in truth a spinster, but like other ladies who went into business, she took the title ‘Mrs’ as a sign of her independence. Her guest was a thin, gentle-looking female with a friendly smile. The introductions were made, and when Francis explained his mission, Mrs Service looked more sorrowful than angry and put down her cup.

‘Thank you, Mr Glass, for coming to fetch me. I am very sorry that the young people have been a trouble to you.’

He bowed, enjoying the sound of her neat clipped vowels and the evenness of tone. ‘Not at all, madam. Their company is … enlivening. And please do not cut your visit to Mrs Smith short on my account. I am happy to keep watch over the young people until you are ready to collect them.’ Mrs Service looked uncertain, then grateful and gave him her thanks. He was ready to leave again with the satisfaction of a Good Samaritan, but in the doorway Mrs Smith stopped him.

‘Francis, dear …’ She was blushing furiously, spots of red showing through the thin pale weave of her skin in a way Francis thought charming. ‘I have something here I wish you to read. It was given to me by an acquaintance and is not at all in my usual line, but I would be most grateful to have the authority of your opinion.’