Bruce Alexander - The Color of Death

With that, she seemed to lose control completely. She threw her head back and let out a tortured wail which seemed to ring through the room. Then more tears, more sniffling, more blowing. Those at the table nearest us looked at us rather disapprovingly. The server came and asked rather pointedly if there were anything he could do. I took that as a hint that he would be happy to see us depart. Flustered and intimidated, I told him we were just leaving and threw three shillings down upon the table, overpaying shamefully. I had Mistress Crocker up and on her feet, then out the door in a trice. Out in the Strand, she managed to calm herself quickly enough. One last great blow was followed by a few dabs at her eyes with a dry corner of the kerchief. She offered it back to me, and I urged her to keep it lest she have need again. She assured me she would not and insisted I accept it. With a shrug, I took the kerchief. Clearly, I had put aside the role of the gallant.

We walked along in silence for quite some distance. I noted those we met did now look upon us quite differently. If they noticed us at all, they seemed only to glance at us in a manner that conveyed a certain patronizing attitude, then did they look swiftly beyond us. We left Pall Mall and wandered a bit in St. James Park. To me, at least, Mistress Crocker seemed to have recovered completely from her attack of lachrymosity: She walked with a quicker step and even ventured a smile at me. I thought it possible at last to proceed.

“Mistress Crocker … Jenny, I was wondering if you could account for this.”

“How do you mean?” she asked, looking up at me quite innocently.

“How indeed. Well, I was referring to the fact that your name was his last utterance, and it was said with a smile. Why was that? Wliat was your relationship to him?”

“Oh, I had a very good relationship with good ol’ Arthur.” She said it in such a way that she implied a good deal more than she had actually said.

“Really,” said I, “can’t you be more specific?”

“Well, I suppose it’s all right to talk about it, Arthur bein’ dead and all, but I must say it u a bit embarrassin’ to me.”

I said nothing, but simply waited for her to continue, a device I had seen Sir John use countless times. Silence, he had said, can be a powerful weapon in the hands of the interrogator.

She had stopped in one of the paths which ran through the park. This one ran parallel to Pall Mall and afforded some degree of privacy in that we could see if others approached. She looked up the path and down and, satisfied that there were no listeners about, began her explanation.

“I noticed, Mr. Proctor,” said she, “that you look often at my bosom.”

I was quite taken aback. Had I stared? Had my attention been so obvious? “Why … why, no … er, well,” I stammered, “perhaps once or twice. I — ”

“Oh, think nothin’ of it,” said she, dismissing my chagrin with a wave of her hand. “It pleasures you so, and that pleasures me. It seems perfec’ly natural that it should. My point is, you see, that Arthur liked them, too. Oh, didn’t he though! Many’s the time I caught him starin’ at my bubs, and one time when I was tryin’ to get some time off so’s I might visit m’mum, I caught him glancin’ down as you was doin’, and I said to him, ‘Arthur, I see you keep lookin’ at my bubs. If you’ll give me the time off I want, I’ll give you a real good look at them.’ So he thinks that over, and he gives me a nod, and he says, ‘Done!’ And I unbuttoned and showed him right then and there.

“So it became a kind of game with us, it did,” said she, continuing. “Whenever I wanted somethin’ extra out of good ol’ Arthur, I’d let him have a look. But him being a man, it wasn’t long till he wanted to touch what he saw. Ah, but I wouldn’t allow that — not unless it was something very special I wanted, like St. Stephen’s Day off as well as Christmas. But that wasn’t often, and Arthur was always a gentleman about it.”

I was simply speechless. This was no questioner’s device to get her to tell more. On the contrary, I thought she had told me quite enough. I was amazed she had told me so much.

She looked at me, studied my face, and came to quite a reasonable conclusion: “I ain’t shocked you, have I?”

I denied it, of course. “Why, no, of course not.” Yet I’m sure I did not convince her.

Indeed not, for she went on then to justify herself: “Well, if you are, you shouldn’t be, for I’ve heard it that there’s a good many places in this world where the women don’t wear nothin’ at all up there on top. Arthur told me so himself.”

I had not only heard from her a great deal about herself, she had also told me more than I would ever have dreamed about Arthur Robb. He had never been more to me than the friendliest — certainly the gentlest — of all the butlers with whom I came in contact on my usual rounds about the city delivering letters and messages for Sir John. I thought some comment upon Arthur might be appropriate, and I believed I was sufficiently recovered from the surprise she had given me to make it.

“Uh, well, I daresay Arthur was a far livelier fellow than I had realized,” said I. “A soldier he was, and a … a — ”

“Ah, he was lively, all right,” she broke in, rescuing me. “He had a great sense of fun, he did.”

“And how did he demonstrate it?” I had not noticed that in him.

“He was a great tickler, for one thing. Oh, Gawd, the man was merciless! All he need to do was come at me or the kitchen slaveys with his fingers out like he meant to tickle us and we would laugh and giggle and he ain’t even touched us yet. And just let the master and his missus be out the house of an evening, and he’d be sneakin’ about, tryin’ to creep up behind us to tickle us near to death. Oh, he was a fright, he was.” Fittingly, she ended her recollection with a giggle.

We began walking once more and soon found our way back to Pall Mall, and from there thence to St. James Street and Little Jermyn Street. We talked little on our way back to the Trezavant residence, for most of what might be said had been said. But not quite all.

“I understand that your master and his mistress will be returning this evening or tomorrow morning at the latest.”

“So I hear,” said Jenny Crocker. “The new butler got word today.”

“Then Mr. Trezavant must have sent it off as soon as he arrived. Does that mean he patched things up immediately? “

“Not likely,” said she. “It probably means they called a truce, and she’s coming back to count up all that the robbers took.”

I laughed at that, though I should not have. Mr. Trezavant had caused far too much mischief in the last few days to be considered in any way amusing.

“I have one last question, Mistress Crocker,” said I to her as we entered Little Jermyn Street with our destination in view.

“And what is that?”

“Where were you when that band of robbers entered by the front door?”

“I was talkin’ with Cook, which I’d been doin’ for half an hour or more. You can ask her yourself, and she’ll tell you the same.”

That satisfied me. I might indeed ask for confirmation from Mistress Bleeker, but Crocker would not lie when she could be found out so easily.

“This was all just to find out if I was the woman told poor Arthur the tale and got him to open the door, wasn’t it?” She put it to me as a sort of challenge.

“Why, no, I — ”

She interrupted me: “Because if it was, you’d no need. You could of asked me the other night, and I would of told you the same.”

“I know, but then I — ”

“But then you’d not heard old Arthur speak my name, had you?” she said, speaking over my words. She sighed. “Well, I’m grateful you told me. That I could of given that good ol’ fella such pleasure just rememberin’ me whilst he was dyin’ is something I’ll remember till my own dyin’ day.”