Bruce Alexander - The Color of Death

He sighed. “No, I don’t. She’s an old chum of Nancy Plummer’s, she is. We sometimes take in orphans who got no place else to go — not just anyone off the street, you understand. They got to be vouched for, and Nancy vouched for her. Beyond that, you’d have to ask Plummer.”

“All right then, I’ll begin with Bunkins, if they’re through with class for the day.”

And that I did. I shall not linger over my interview with Jimmie Bun-kins — our acute embarrassment, his inability to provide details — nor shall I detain you long, reader, by reporting directly on what was said between me and the coach driver and the footman. It was all a great waste of their time and mine — or so it seemed to me. And of course it earned me their resentment, and perhaps also Mr. Burnham’s enmity.

They all told exactly the same story with exactly the same details. According to each and all, Mr. Burnham had retired to the drawing room to read. What was he reading? A book. What was the title of the book? The vicar of someplace or other. Who wrote the book? No idea. Then how could you be sure that this was the particular book he was reading? Because he kept running out to read aloud parts of it he specially enjoyed. (There was some intentional irony in Mr. Burnham’s choice of the book he purported to be reading that night, for it was my copy of The Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Goldsmith, which I had lent him.) According to them, Mr. Burnham would make regular rounds from the drawing room to the kitchen below, where the coachmen sat at the table, then up to Bunkins s room, every quarter hour or less; that was how they were all so sure he had been present through the entire evening and had not slipped out, robbed a house around the corner with his crew of black villains, and then slipped back in so that no one had noticed.

All of that struck me as a bit ludicrous, I fear.

As it happened, I talked to the coachmen in the stable behind the house. In all truth, they paid me little heed as I questioned them, for they were occupied in hitching up the team and otherwise readying the coach for a trip up the river to Richmond, where Mr. Bilbo had an appointment with the duke, no less. Indeed they left me behind, though not alone, for as I stood in the great, wide door, watching them go, I was joined there by the stable boy, a young country fellow of about fourteen who had not worked there long; whilst the coachmen had hitched the horses, he had labored at cleaning out the stalls. He smelled rather strongly at that moment, yet I stayed close, for just as I was about to leave he started talking. I was keenly interested in what he had to say.

“Can’t figure why Mr. Bilbo don’t take that trip on his saddle horse. That gray mare is just the prettiest and the best I ever did see. It’s a shame the master don’t ride her.”

I attempted to explain to him that seamen like Mr. Bilbo are often poor horsemen and shy about exhibiting their lack of skill. The boy, however, seemed not to listen to what I had said. He continued in the manner in which he had begun.

“If it wasn’t for Mr. Burnham, that mare wouldn’t get no riding at all,” said he. “He sits well in the saddle, I’d say. Wonder where he learned.”

“Does he take the horse out often?” I asked.

“Oh, not often, I wouldn’t say — two or three times a week, four at the most. Always on Sunday.”

“Did he have her out last evening?”

“Oh, didn’t he, though! He didn’t get in till near half after eleven and kept me up till near midnight, rubbin’ her down, coolin’ her off. Must’ve taken her on a pretty long ride.” The boy paused, reflecting upon that. “Well, if he didn’t, nobody would.”

I thanked him and, with a wave, walked slowly away. What I might have done instead was grab the young fellow and kiss him on both cheeks in the French style, then turn a couple of cartwheels, for he had turned my fool’s errand into a rewarding investigation. I could hardly contain myself as I returned to the house.

Yet I was not so excited by what had transpired that I failed to notice a familiar figure descending the stairs. It was none but Nancy Plummer, of whom I had recently seen a great deal. I hastened to overtake her, ere she disappeared. I hailed her by name. She turned and frowned when she recognized me.

“I’ve a few questions regarding Mary Pinkham,” said I.

“Well, I’ve a few questions for you regardin’ what you said to her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that soon as ever you talked to her, she come back to me, askin’ about you. And that she did whilst she was throwin’ everything she owned into her portmanteau. She left,” Nancy declared. “She left just like that, cursin’ your name, she was.”

It often seemed that Sir John Fielding responded rather poorly to news of the sort that a lad of seventeen would deem of the utmost importance. One such instance occurred upon my return to Number 4 Bow Street. I burst into the kitchen, thinking to travel through it up to his bedroom. But I found upon my entry that he was seated at the table, half-clothed, as Mr. Donnelly dressed his wound. As chance would have it, I had not been present previously during such an exercise. This was my first glimpse beneath the bandages since they had first been applied. To me the wound appeared rather ugly — red and puckered and scabbed over — but the surgeon seemed well-pleased with its condition.

Having first made certain that Annie was not within earshot, I blurted out the story of my visit to Mr. Bilbo’s residence: I told of the strange and quite unacceptably complex manner that had been devised to convince us that Mr. Burnham had been present in the house all through the evening; of the stable boy who, without malice and unintentionally, revealed that Mr. Burnham had been gone all through the early part of the night; and finally did I tell of my odd encounter with Mistress Pinkham and her hasty departure thereafter.

Sir John listened closely, as only Sir John could, squeezing his lower lip gently, stroking his chin. Nevertheless, when I had concluded that part of my report, his only comment came as something of a disappointment.

“Hmmm, yes, well, that is most interesting, isn’t it?”

Yet I was too excited and eager to impart what more I had to tell to be greatly discouraged. So I then launched into the remainder of my tale. I began by telling of my chance meeting with Mossman, the porter, and how he had informed me that Mr. Trezavant had departed to bring back his wife from the family manse in Sussex.

This information seemed to stir Sir John rather more than anything I had brought back from Mr. Bilbo’s residence. He was moved to comment, “Ah, yes, that gives us a day or two in any case.”

And I was moved to wonder, a day or two for what? Yet I said nothing and continued directly to the news of Mr. Collier’s sudden appearance as butler in the Trezavant house, and the tale told me by Maude Bleeker. I recall that I told the latter in great detail, though not, I’m happy to say, in such great detail as Maude Bleeker had given it to me. Attempting to inject a bit of drama into it, I concluded, “And she discovered that the man’s true name was John Abernathy when he appeared before you in the Bow Street Court below.”

“And he was the man she recognized among the robbers?”

“He was the man she had known as Johnny Skylark, yes sir.”

“She’s sure of that, is she? After all, the fellow she spied for a minute, or perhaps a little more, in the kitchen, had a black skin and not white.”

“True, but — ”

“And it does seem to me, Jeremy, that even given the possibility that he wore blackface as a disguise, his face might well have changed greatly under that dark paint in twelve years’ time.”