Bruce Alexander - Person or Persons Unknown

“Yes sir, as you directed — though, I confess, not lately.”

“But you market nearby at the other stalls for vegetables?”

“No, I buy generally from those closer by.”

“Well, I wish you to go there to his stall and give it a good sniff. If he left in a great hurry, as he says, there would have been meat left inside, all locked up, and it would rot and raise a great stink. There would be complaints. If there is no bad odor, then I have found another discrepancy. I will have Mr. Fuller take him round to the coach house, and let Mr. Tolliver prove that he rode that night coach.”

“But — ”

“No, Jeremy, do as I say. I know your liking for the fellow, but it is just on seven. He is not likely to be about. He will be lolling in bed with his new wife. All you need do is go to his stall and take a good sniff.”

I was off then to perform another task which I found disagreeable. It had been given me, and I would perform it, though not without misgivings. I hurried across Covent Garden, there being little in the way of a crowd to impede my way. The stalls and carts from which the fruits and vegetables would be sold that day were being prepared and arranged for the flood of buyers who would soon fill the immense empty space. There was a good deal of loud talk between competitors, most of it of the bantering sort. The street merchants filled their pushcarts and barrows and argued with their suppliers. Thus did the Garden come alive in hoots and shouts.

Mr. Tolliver’s stall was at the far end near Henrietta Street, where it was that he had hailed Mr. Bailey and me and informed us of the body he had found in the passage. I had visited it few times since his departure for Bristol and first on an errand I had also found disagreeable. It was as I had seen it then, shut tight and padlocked. I went round it carefully, using my nose freely, sniffing about like some hunting dog on a trail. And indeed I felt rather foolish doing so, particularly as I noticed I had caught the eye of the unpleasant woman who sold vegetables from the stall next his.

“Here, you,” yelled she most rudely, “what’re you about? If you’re thinkin’ of grabbin’ that stall for your own, it ain’t available. Him what rents it has gone off, but he’ll be back. You can be sure.”

Clearly, she had no memory of me from our earlier conversation. Just as clearly she took me for a possible competitor and wished to keep me away.

“You misunderstand,” said I. “I come from the Beak on Bow Street. Have there been any unpleasant smells issuing from this stall?”

‘^Smells?” said she suspiciously. ”What kind?”

Having cited the magistrate as my authority, I made to use it: “Just answer the question, madam.”

“No smells,” said she. “He’s a butcher, he is, though why he ain’t in Smithfield with the rest of them I don’t know. The truth is, it smells better with him gone than it did when he was here.”

That, of course, according to Sir John’s reasoning, was disappointing news for me. I thanked her and turned away. Yet as I did, whom should I spy but Mr. Tolliver himself coming my way. He had also seen me; in fact, he gave a careless wave. There was no pretending I had not seen him. I went forward with a greeting, not knowing what else I might do — or more I could say.

“Lookin’ for me, were you?” said he. “I s’pose His Majesty has summoned me for another talk. He said he’d not done with me.”

“I thought you might be open for customers,” said I, avoiding a more serious lie.

“Not today, but tomorrow. I shall have a job of washing up to do. Then I must buy my meat and fix delivery. It takes a day to start up again. But in truth, Jeremy, I’m glad I ran into you.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“I’m afraid I was a bit short with you last night. Short? I gave you no greeting at all! I was put out of sorts by the magistrate. Put plain, he seems not to believe me. Why, I don’t know — unless it be something personal.”

“Oh, I think not,” said I. “It is just that having captured one killer, he came to discover there was another.”

“He told me of that, said you were quite the hero in the matter — given a reward and all.”

“Half a reward, for there is still one to be caught, and Sir John feels great urgency that he be apprehended before he kill again.”

“Well, you can tell him for me that, beggin’ his pardon, but I ain’t his man.”

He growled that out so loudly in his deep voice that the rude woman in the next stall turned to look.

“I believe you, Mr. Tolliver,” said I stoutly. “I would not, could not, think ill of you. Nor could Lady Fielding. We have both spoken oft in your behalf.”

He grunted a rumbling bass grunt. “I must say she treated my wife well. You may tell Kate for me that I’ll not forget that, nor will Maude.”

“Maude?” I asked a bit dully. My mind, reader, was at that moment on a much weightier matter. I was laboring to make a decision.

“My wife,” said he, explaining the obvious. “Maude Whetsel she was, and Maude Tolliver she is now. I tell you, Jeremy, it’s a sad thing to bring a woman you’ve just married back to a terrible muddle like this.”

Then did he shake his great head as one would in a state of awful perplexity. What was to be done? What could be done? In that moment I felt that only I could help him.

“Mr. Tolliver,” I burst out, at last giving in to the impulse with which I had been grappling these last moments, “is there any way that you can prove that you were on that night coach to Bristol? That you did not wait till the morrow to travel there?”

He looked at me queerly, as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes and he saw now clearly what he had before only dimly perceived.

“So,” said he, “it all comes down to that, does it?”

“Tell me what you told Sir John, if you would, please. What did you do after you left us there on Henrietta Street?”

“Why, I went home.”

“Back to your rooms in Long Acre. Continue — all the details, please.”

“Well, coming in to my place, I found a lettered been slipped under my door. It was from — ”

“Stay a moment,” said I, interrupting. “Do you know how the letter came to be there?”

“Not for certain, no, but Fve an idea. Fve a neighbor, Mr. Salter, who manages the backstage at the Theatre Royal. A man in a position like that, he gets a fair share of post from all over, so he stops by the letter office two or three times a week to pick up his packet. It’s known that I live at the same address, and so the odd letter comes now and then for me they give to him for to pass on. He tucks them under my door.”

“Good,” said I. “Will you find out from Mr. Salter that he did in fact deliver that letter from Bristol so?”

“I can do that, yes, if he remembers. It was more than a month ago.”

“Well and good, you found the letter, you opened and read it. Why did you decide so immediate to go off to Bristol to meet the woman who was to become your wife?”

“Sir John asked me that, too, and I told him polite that it was a personal matter, and Fd keep my own counsel on that. And we argued a bit, but since it’s you askin’, Fll tell you. Fve had terrible luck tryin’ to marry again. I came close once” — he gave me a look I would term significant — “yet that went for naught. Mostly it is that women who are respectable want nothing to do with a butcher. I don’t know why, for they’ll eat a good cut of meat ready enough. Yet I courted a few, and it all come down to that — bein’ a butcher was somehow disgusting to them. So Fd put this advert in the Shipping News in Bristol where it was I grew up, and I made it plain in it butchering was my trade, and I swear to you, Jeremy, hers was the only letter I got back. And it was a grand letter, so it was. I saw her as an intelligent woman who’d had terrible misfortune visited upon her, lost her husband and two children, yet managed to support herself and keep her self-respect. And so she is and so she has — she’s a grand woman is my Maude. And… well. ” He came to a full stop and looked away.