Bruce Alexander - The Color of Death

In fact, I considered the matter even after I arrived at the surgery in Drury Lane. Mr. Donnelly, as it happened, was not present when I came banging upon his door. There was naught to do but wait for him there on his front steps and think more upon this matter of Jenny Crocker.

Had I acted callously toward her? I thought not, though perhaps she would have been of a different opinion. Was I sorry for the awful fate that had taken her? Of course I was, yet I felt sorrow in the manner that anyone might if shown the lifeless body of one who had died so young. And to have died in a manner so squalid! Why had she been murdered? What was she doing out there in her petticoat? Did I feel a sense of loss, as Sir John had suggested I might? No, merely a sense of bafflement.

As I posed such questions to myself and attempted to dig deeper that I might solve the mystery surrounding Crocker’s death, my eyes registered the curious street life before me there in Drury Lane. Though the theater (across the street and off to the right) had discharged its audience sometime before, there were many pedestrians teeming the walkways on both sides of the street. Most of them gave the impression that they were casual strollers, moving with easy indifference up and down the street. Nevertheless, I, who had by then lived years hard by Covent Garden, knew very well that though they seemed so unconcerned, they were truly a great gang of sharpers, pimps, whores, and pickpockets out on a darkey and on the lookout for flats and cods easily caught. The same faces appeared in the street from night to night; many of them, men and women, had spent nights in the strongroom at Number 4 Bow Street.

And as they sauntered and ambled, all the while the coach horses hurried along, hooves and shoes clip-clopping on the cobblestones. Hackneys and private coaches with teams of two and four pranced smartly up and down the lane. I found the scene before me somewhat hypnotic. As I waited, I continued to watch. And as I watched, my head began to nod, and my eyelids drooped. I might have fallen asleep right there on Mr. Donnelly’s doorstep (and had my pocket picked right down to the last farthing as I dozed), but I was fortunate in that Mr. Donnelly chose that moment, when I was about to topple headlong into the arms of Morpheus, to make his return.

And indeed, reader, he made it in style. He arrived in no mean hackney, but rather in a coach-and-four painted black with a great orange-colored device of some sort painted upon the door. Thus I could not be certain that Mr. Donnelly was within until the footman came round the coach and opened the door. And even then there was naught but a leg visible to the eye. Since I had never given particular attention to the shape of Mr. Donnelly’s leg, I was no better off than before. Nevertheless, the voice that came to me through the open door was recognizably his own. What the words were I could not be quite certain, yet the laugh that followed them I knew quite well. But whose was the other voice, the one that boomed forth from deep inside the coach? I had never heard a laugh to equal it in volume or grand hilarity. Such a laugh as that would bring a smile to the face of a mourner, or brighten the sour countenance of a Scottish judge.

I rose to make my presence known and advanced toward the coach that I might catch a glimpse of Mr. Donnelly’s companion. As it happened, a glimpse was all I could manage, for just as I came near enough to see within, Mr. Donnelly finished with his leave-taking and climbed down; the footman slammed shut the door behind him.

“Jeremy!” he exclaimed. “Is it you? What news do you bring? Nothing dire, I hope.”

“Ah well, a body for you to examine, I fear. We must go to the Trezavant residence in Little Jermyn Street.”

“The Trezavant residence? Is it my employer who has been killed?”

“No sir — one of the servants, rather.”

“Well, just give me a moment. I’ll go upstairs and get my bag.”

With that, he disappeared into the building. I heard him rushing up the stairs, and not much more than a minute later, I heard him rushing down again.

As I had described earlier, Drury Lane was so lively at that hour that there proved to be no difficulty whatever in finding a hackney coach available. We were thus on our way to the livery stable where I might hire a wagon and a driver, then on to Little Jermyn Street.

Once we were settled in the hackney and bouncing about, Mr. Donnelly remarked to me that it was only by good fortune that he had returned at such an early hour.

“Whose good fortune?” I asked in a bantering mode.

“Why, yours, if you were determined to wait, and mine because I was given the chance to escape from a most dreary dinner party.”

“Oh? Whose dreary dinner party was that?”

“Lord Mansfield’s.”

“Truly? I’d always felt that the Lord Chief Justice was anything but a dreary conversationalist — rude perhaps, even upon occasion dictatorial, but never dreary.”

“Oh I know,” said Mr. Donnelly, “but he had made his invitations to the party a month ago, and since then he has taken on that blasted Somerset case, which has all London talking. All London, that is, except for Lord Mansfield.”

“I don’t quite follow,” said I.

“Well, since he is the presiding judge, and since the case is still in trial, he absolutely refused to discuss it, nor would he allow it to be discussed at his table.”

“But Mr. Donnelly, that is quite customary.”

“Well, I know, but the Somerset case is all his guests wished to discuss. Couldn’t he have loosened his restrictions for just this one night?”

“I don’t think so. It wouldn’t have been proper.”

“Well, perhaps so,” said he, the exasperation he had felt lending a certain tone to his voice, “but really, there must have been twenty of us there, and you’ve no idea what pathetic attempts were made at table talk. The evening would have been a total loss had it not been for that Dutchman.”

“Dutchman?”

“Indeed,” said he, “Zondervan is his name. He began telling some of the joiliest and funniest tales that ever I have heard. We were to imagine ourselves in this place — probably of his own invention — there in the lowlands. Oh, what was the name of it? Dingendam, something like that. But he told the stories, and he acted out all the parts, even the women. Oh, he did the women very well indeed, all in falsetto. Dear God, the man was do entertaining!”

(This was high praise indeed, considering that it came from Mr. Donnelly, for he himself was one of the most entertaining men at table I have ever known. Many is the evening that he had us all rocking with laughter with his own tales of Dublin, Vienna, and the Royal Navy.)

We were drawing near to the livery stable, but I was determined to pursue the matter that I might have my answer as swiftly as possible.

“Mr. Donnelly,” said I, “this name, Zondervan, is it a very common one among the Dutch?”

He took a moment to think before answering. “Why yes, it must be. I’ve known of a few in my time — one in Vienna, another in New York — used to be New Amsterdam, did you know that? The Dutch had it first. Did you know that, Jeremy? “

“Uh, yes sir, I did, but — ”

“Why do you ask? “

“Well, I’d come across the name myself in the course of my investigations in St. James Street. Would it be the same Mr. Zondervan?”

“Oh, I daresay it would. In fact, it was he who took me home.”

“The man with the laugh?”

“Indeed he does have a great, booming laugh, does he not? When he rose from Lord Mansfield’s table and said that he must be off to the wharves to check the manifest of a ship arrived today, I gave my apologies, as well, saying I must look at a patient of mine in St. Bart’s. We were both excused and left together. He offered me a ride to Drury Lane, saying that it was on his way, then he kept me laughing the entire distance with another tale of those fools of Dingendam.”