Bruce Alexander - Person or Persons Unknown

Deciding it would be useless to ask further, I set off across Covent Garden for Number 4 Bow Street. Had I known Mr. Tolliver’s dwelling place I would have gone there and looked for him. No doubt, I told myself, the man was ill; yet if he were so, it would be the first time in my memory — and he seemed right enough the night before.

Thus I fretted as I went, worried that his absence would weigh heavily against him in Sir John’s mind. Surely he could be found at home, or barring that, he would show himself in a day or two.

I found Sir John ensconced in his chamber, a bottle of beer on his desk which Mr. Marsden would have fetched for him from across the street. He bade me sit down and give my report, and that I did. He listened, giving little outward sign of his response. In truth, he seemed listless and a bit distracted, as if his mind were on other matters. And as it happened, that was so.

“Jeremy,” said he, “I fear I gave you a bad example today.”

I was a bit surprised to hear that. Though he had complained that his day in court had exhausted him, I had thought him most specially shrewd and ingenious on the bench.

“In what way, sir?”

“In my treatment of that young villain, Tribble.” He sighed. “First of all, I should not have thrashed him. Had Constable Fuller done that — or Mr. Bailey, or Perkins, or any of them — they would have received a stern reproof from me. But, dear God, did you hear what he said? ‘She was my wife and my whore’ — as if that gave him the right to do whatever he liked with her, alive or dead.”

“I heard that, yes, sir.”

“All the way back to Bow Street, I labored hard to think of some suitable charge for what he had done, and none came to me but the one I used against him. Yes, disturbing the dead is a hanging offense meant to discourage grave robbing — but it should not be. Murder should be, I suppose — though even in willfully causing the death of another there are more mitigating circumstances than the court generally allows. What is done to a body after death is not near so serious as killing. Perhaps in that depraved mind of his, he truly did have some vague intention of giving her a proper burial from the proceeds of his sales, a revolting idea but practical, I daresay. Who can reckon such matters?” A pause, a shrug, and then: “Well, a judge and jury must. They will be shocked, no doubt, and as horrified as I — and they may be all for hanging him. But he should not hang — not for that which he did. It would be unjust. Tomorrow morning, Jeremy, we shall compose a letter to the Lord Chief Justice, giving the facts of the case, but also giving some emphasis to his burial plan. I shall plead for leniency in sentencing, suggest transportation for a period of years. Perhaps they can work some of the nastiness out of him in the colonies.”

“You had already said you would do that if he helped recover the … missing organs.”

“Oh, he has already done so — gave two names and even an address. There was no end to his helpfulness. I’ll send two constables to bring them in tonight.”

“I could go to Mr. Tolliver’s tonight and offer your invitation. I believe Mr. Bailey has the location.”

“No, I’ll have one of the constables attend to it — and it will be, as I promised you, just an invitation to come in and talk — tomorrow sometime.”

I rose from my chair. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“No. Why not go on to Mr. Perkins? He tells me you’re quite an apt pupil, that you grow more dangerous by the day.”

I laughed in embarrassment. “Hardly that, sir.”

“But, Jeremy,” said he, “never be a bully.”

The mention of that word reminded me in a flash of my experience earlier that day in that very room.

“Oh, Sir John, there was a matter I thought I ought mention to you. When you sent me earlier to fetch that broadsheet from your desk drawer, I noticed that in the drawer you had left that bag of booty I brought from Polly Tarkin’s room. I thought perhaps you’d forgotten it was there. I have no idea how much is inside, but it seemed a goodly amount.”

“You’re right. I had forgotten. I’ll hand it over to Mr. Marsden for the strong box until we decide what’s to be done with it. And …”

“Yes, Sir John?”

“Thank you for reminding me.”

Mr. Tolliver had quite disappeared. Constable Lang-ford returned that night from the butcher’s place of dwelling on Long Acre with this dismaying revelation as the four of us — Sir John and Lady Fielding, Annie Oakum and I — sat at table. We had just completed our evening’s meal when his footsteps sounded on the stairs and his knock came on the door. I jumped to open it, and the red-waistcoated constable asked permission to enter. Sir John bade him come ahead, and Mr. Langford doffed his hat, stepped inside, and blurted it out. And those were his very words: “… disappeared he has, sir. There is nor hide nor hair of him to be seen.”

In my surprise, I looked at Lady Fielding. Her eyes were wide, as indeed my own must have been. Surely Mr. Tolliver could not have fled as some fugitive might. I could not, I would not believe that.

The constable continued his report: “I banged on his door right hard and failed to raise him. Now of course that meant nothing; he could’ve been out to sup or wet his whistle or both. So I started through the house to get some word of him from his neighbors, and that way I happened upon his landlord, who dwells at the same address right below this Tolliver fellow. He tells me he was out last night and as he was coming in, he run into his tenant hauling a portmanteau and in a great hurry. ‘Where are you off to?’ says he to him. That’s my own affair, ain’t it?’ says Tolliver, who, says the landlord, is often inclined to be rather short. He noticed that he turned off in the direction of Covent Garden. Now, the landlord — his name is Coker, got it all down in my book — he was right puzzled, for he says all the years this Tolliver lived there, he never knew him to go off like this on a trip, and the way that portmanteau was stuffed, he meant to stay a while.

“Well, Sir John, I asked this man Coker if he had a key to Mr. Tolliver’s place, and I convinced him this was a matter of some importance to you — ‘a court matter,’ I told him — ”

“And quite right you were to do so, Mr. Langford,” said Sir John.

“He opened the place to me,” said the constable, proceeding, “and accompanied me inside, which was quite proper, as I reckon. I was quite taken with the size of it, I was. There was two large chambers — one for sittin’ and one for sleepin’, and a smaller, separate place for cookin’. The thing that struck me, sir, was that sittin’ room and — what would you call it? — the kitchen were clean and neat as a pin. Don’t often see that when a man lives by hisself. But the bedroom, now that was a different matter. The bed was made, right enough, but there was clothes thrown atop it, all helter-skelter. I looked inside the wardrobe, and in a chest at the foot of the bed, and I saw he’d quite emptied them, he had, and just grabbed up the clothes he wished to pack and left the others lie. I says to the landlord, ‘It looks like your tenant left in a great hurry.’ And he says to me, Tt does indeed.’ “

“Did you happen to notice a packet of knives about?” asked Sir John. “They would have been wrapped in… How were they wrapped, Jeremy?”

“In soft chamois,” said I, feeling quite the traitor.

“No, sir, I never seen such, but then, I didn’t do a proper search of the place because, for one, I hadn’t been told to, and for another, I’d no idea for what to look. Anyway, that’s what happened, for I left then, and telling the landlord he might be hearing from you later on.”