Bruce Alexander - The Color of Death

He peered at me. There was something challenging in his look.

I said to him, “I think I understand, sir.”

“Do you? Well, let me put it plain. I think you are more interested in pleasing Sir John than you should be, or you need to be. Sir John, on the other hand, has noted this, and he seems to withhold his approval for just that reason. He wants you to — ”

Just then the door did interrupt us. Annie was on the other side, pushing against it, returning from Mr. Tolliver’s stall in Covent Garden with a cut of meat judged worthy. Having bumped us out of the way with the door, she begged pardon and hurried past. Something seemed to be troubling her.

Mr. Donnelly and I did not resume our talk. With Annie gone, he held the door open for himself and smiled a goodbye smile at me. “Well, I’ve talked quite enough,” said he in farewell. “Let us leave it that you’re doing well, very well. Don’t worry that Sir John may not be pleased. Please yourself.”

And having said what he had intended, he departed, leaving me to reflect upon it.

The dinner, which was intended as something of a celebration, seemed hardly that, for Annie was ominously quiet throughout. She had cooked with her usual skill, no doubt of that — the beef roast that she had selected was perfectly prepared, with abundant dripping for the potatoes and carrots. Yet our group, which Sir John called his “family, ” was such that when one member was downcast or out of sorts he (or in this case, she) could bring down the rest. Not even the bottle of claret that Sir John had opened helped much to enliven the feast.

When we were done, Annie cleared the table and volunteered to do the washing up. Though Lady Fielding at first offered objections — (“She’s done enough cooking the meal, don’t you think?”) — Sir John overrode them and sent Clarissa and me down to the cellar in search of John Abernathy.

“Who is this fellow, Abernathy? ” she asked, eager to hear the worst. “How many did he murder?”

“Perhaps none, or so he claimed. Yet he was a dedicated and most active thief; what Bunkins would call ‘a village hustler,’ always on the scamp.”

“Ah, that’s flash-talk, surely. You must teach it me.”

Just then I threw open the door to the cellar. The profound darkness before us was rather intimidating, even to me; it inspired a wail of dismay from her.

“Oh, Jeremy,” said she, “must we? I had forgotten how frightening it can be down there. There are rats — or some such creatures that patter about in the dark.”

“Well, you must have been down there quite some time — long enough to change the files around, as I understand.”

“Yes, but I was with Annie most of the time — no insult to you intended, Jeremy — and she propped the door open.”

“Well, I can do that,” said I, and set about to do so. “And I’ve got a lighted candle. Here, I’ll light yours for you. That should give us as much as we need.”

And so, thus equipped, we descended the stairs, I in the lead, Clarissa behind, and each of us bearing candles burning bright; the open door also shed a bit of light below, but only a bit, for darkness had long since fallen on London.

Clarissa’s improvement of the filing system used by the Bow Street Court was simple enough, though there could be no doubt that it had made it much easier to find specific cases. Previously, individual cases were simply filed under the date upon which they were heard. Clarissa’s innovation was simply to list under the date the names of all those whose cases were inside the date folder; it was no longer necessary to look inside each folder to see which cases had been heard upon that day. It was a wonder to me that the files had not been changed in this way long before. That suggested to me what I had long suspected: that the files were very seldom consulted; for the most part, they were stored and forgotten.

In this way, Clarissa and I were able to go quickly through the files for 1760, the year designated by Maude Bleeker as the one in which her Johnny Skylark appeared before Sir John Fielding, magistrate of the Bow Street Court.

“What did you say this fellow’s name was?” Clarissa called to me from one end of the year’s files.

“John Abernathy.”

“I have it here,” said she, “ — tried on September 27th.”

“Really? Why, that was indeed quickly done.” Working from the beginning of the year 1760, I had myself only reached the middle of March.

“Shall I remove the case file from the folder?”

“No, I think not. We — what happened? ”

What happened was this: Either I had not propped the door properly, or someone had, out of ignorance or malice, kicked away the brick that I had used. The door shut of a sudden with a great bang, thus creating a great draft which swept down the stairs and blew out our candles, plunging the cellar into complete darkness.

A scream rose in her throat, which she barely managed to stifle. She made her way across the few steps that separated us. “Yes,” said she, “what did happen?”

I started to explain when a sudden scurrying of tiny animal feet sounded quite near to us. Just as sudden I ended my explanation, that I might better listen. Clarissa, on the other hand, let forth the scream she had only moments before stifled. She stood so close and screamed so loud that I was near deafened. Then did she throw her arms about me, pressing herself to me tight, squeezing me with all her strength, which was considerable. (She was no longer the frail little runaway from the Lichfield poorhouse.)

“Come along,” said I, “let go, and we shall find the stairway.”

“I’m afraid,” said she. “I do so hate those things.”

“Come along,” I repeated.

And holding her firmly about the waist, I took us to the stairs.

The location was well-fixed in my mind. I murmured to her encouragingly and got her up the first step and then the second, and so on, up to the very top. And when we reached it, I found the door was locked. Well, thought I, so much for the possibility of any accidental removal of the door prop.

I beat loudly and lustily upon the door. I raised my voice in repeated shouts to “open!” And Clarissa joined her voice with mine.

It was not long before I heard footsteps and then the sound of the key turning in the lock. The door swung open, revealing a surprised Mr. Baker. He stepped aside.

“Well, what are you doing in there, Jeremy? Or maybe I should say, how’d you manage to get yourself locked in?”

“I’ve no idea,” said I, though I immediately excused Mr. Baker from blame. We had always been on the best of terms.

“You all right, Mistress Roundtree?”

“Well, I got a bit of a fright.”

“I’ve no doubt of it,” said he. Then he turned and smiled at me. It was a most peculiar half-smile which communicated doubt, amused indulgence, and a certain manly understanding between him and me. He winked. Only then did I grasp that he believed that Clarissa and I were engaged in some adolescent version of the game of male and female — in short, that we were try sting for such purpose.

“We were searching for a file. When the door came shut — you see? I used this brick to prop it open — that blew our candles out.” I wanted all this understood.

“Ah, well, no harm done,” said he, and with a nod, he left us standing there at the door to the cellar.

“Do you know what he thinks?” said I rather hotly to Clarissa. Then did I notice the expression upon her face; it was quite like the odd smile given me by Mr. Baker. I was most surprised at that, and perhaps a bit shocked.

“Oh, I can guess,” said she. “But as he put it, ‘No harm done.’ “

“Well, I hope you managed to bring the file with you. Didn’t drop it in your great fright, did you? “