Bruce Alexander: Murder in Grub Street

“As you will, Sir John.”

“As I will, as I will,” he mimicked me. “Indeed, all of you seem eager to give me my wish in all things. What I wish is that this terrible thing had not happened; I wish that what seems to be so simple were not so complicated.

“Consider this, Jeremy. We have a prisoner who was taken with the murder weapon, or at least one of them, in his hand. How was he found? By backtracking a cluster of boot prints in blood tracked down from the upper floors. Did our man in the Bow Street strong room wear boots? Indeed he did not. He was barefooted when caught and had been walked barefooted by Constable Cowley to the lockup, probably on this same route we are taking now.

“Could one man have killed so many? I doubt it. The cries of some would have roused the rest. All were more or less murdered in their sleep. I think it unlikely that one man could have moved undetected and so quickly from one group of sleepers to the next. Yet there he was, axe in hand, a patch of vomit on the floor, looking for all the world like a murderer who had beheld his own work, and sickened at it. All agree to that. The patch of vomit is left, yet we no longer have the axe. Our constable left that — may he now have learned his lesson! — and it was no doubt taken as some sort of perverse souvenir of this awful event by one of that gang of helpers that afterwards rampaged through the Crabb house. They distributed their bloody footprints through every part of the building. I’ll have at least one of them up for obstructing an inquiry, I promise you that. This whole affair has been handled badly from start to finish!”

I had never heard Sir John speak so angrily. He puffed from the exertion of it, though he maintained his quick step. It was all I could do to keep up with him. And perhaps I gave a bit too much attention to that and too little to what lay ahead. I recall that we had passed the Cock of the Walk and, to my relief, found no crowd at the front of it. We were entering a dark and shadowy patch of street when, of a sudden, two men jumped out before us, one of them holding a wicked-looking cutlass. I grabbed Sir John by the arm and pulled him to a halt.

“What is it?” he asked loud, turning his head this way and that.

“Robbers,” said I in a whisper.

“Aye, robbers,” said one of them, so close he had heard. He grinned, urging his companion forward. “Robbers we are. Come forward, Tom, and see the fish we have caught in our net. Upon my soul, ‘tis a blind man and a boy. Come forward, I say.”

Although Tom was more timid than his fellow, it was he who wielded the cutlass. He advanced cautiously, the point of his cutlass aimed in our near direction, wavering from one of us to the other.

“It is clear,” said Sir John, quite cool to their threat, “that you know not who I am.”

“Nor do we care! Give over what you got.”

With that, I plunged my hand quite automatically into my pocket in search of my shillings, but it came up hard against the butt of the pistol. And quite as automatically, I pulled it from my pocket and extended it at the two of them. It took both thumbs to get the hammer back, but back it came. And then, even more difficult in those circumstances, I sought to show them that ferocious face I had put on at the door to the Crabb house.

Each took a step back in quiet respect to the small pistol. I cannot believe my face afrighted them much.

“Now, boy,” said the bolder of the two, “be careful with that thing. You could hurt somebody with it.”

“I am Sir John — “

“I have an evil temper!” I shouted at them, making my voice its deepest.

“But you have but one pistol,” reasoned the more talkative. “You can only shoot at one of us.” He inched a bit forward.

“At this distance I cannot miss!” There was but six feet between us. “Shall it be you who takes the shot?” I swung the pistol so that it pointed directly at the bearer of the cutlass.

“Sir John Fielding, I day, and I am — *

“No!” shouted Tom with the cutlass, and back he fell a full three paces.

“Or you?”

And I swung the pistol at the bold one. In truth, reader, I could not have missed at such range, for somehow the thing held steady in my hands, and my finger did not tremble on the trigger. Would I have pulled it? I know not, but I believe perhaps I would have.

He gave no answer but fell back with his fellow, Tom.

“Then if I may not kill either of you, I have only this to say…. Be gone!”

And so they were gone; they left, walking swiftly, arguing betwixt themselves, each accusing the other of cowardice. I watched them until they disappeared, and informed Sir John that it was safe to proceed. We went slower and with greater care than before, and I kept the pistol in my hand, guarding against their possible return.

Nothing was said between us for quite some time. At last Sir John said, “There were two of them?”

“Two of them, yes, sir.”

“They must both have been new to the city, don’t you think? That is, not to have recognized me — most unusual, most unusual.”

If I often found it difficult to keep abreast of Sir John on those frequent occasions when I accompanied him on his walks through the streets and lanes of London town, it was well nigh impossible for me to keep pace with Samuel Johnson as I sought to deliver him, as directed, to the magistrate, who awaited us at a coffee-house in the Haymarket.Dr. Johnson led the way through the streets, I hopping along at a jog trot beside him. As is well known, he was quite a large man, a good six feet in height and sixteen stone or more in weight, yet his bulk impeded him not at all. His stout legs were no longer than one might expect for a man of such proportions, yet he moved them with remarkable poser and swiftness for a man who was then in his sixtieth year.

Sir John had sent me forth to Johnson’s Court, letter in hand, not much more than an hour after our arrival at Bow Street. By then the sun had made a timid appearance and shone forth its light irregularly betwixt banks of swift-moving clouds. Armed with explicit directions provided by Mr. Baker, I made my way quickly across the city through streets that had eve then begun to fill with beggars, casual laborers, and workingmen on their way to their regular employment. It was then, as it is now, a working city, and the pulse of it had begun to beat right rapid. Strange it is to see our great place come alive. Even today it is my favorite hour in the city.

Greeted at the door I was by a female servant of Dr. Johnson’s. When I presented the letter, she bade me enter and invited me to sit on a bench in the foyer whilst she presented it to her master. There I waited — and waited and waited — until at last I heard sounds of snuffling and coughing from deep somewhere within the house. Then the maid came to me and ushered me into a dining room wherein the great man sat alone, breakfasting on bread and bacon. He invited me to sit with him at table and questioned me closely on the events of the night before, or perhaps better said, somewhat earlier that very morning.

I well knew how much Dr. Johnson had learned from the letter I had delivered, for it was in my own hand. Sir John had dictated it to me in the absence of Mr. Marsden. It explained that there had been a terrible crime of murder committed in Grub Street in the home of Mr. Crabb. An individual had been apprehended by a constable at that very location and was now being held in suspect, one known to Dr. Johnson, perhaps by reputation or perhaps even personally — by name John Clayton, a poet. Sir John requested Dr. Johnson’s presence at Preston’s Coffee House in the Haymarket that they might discuss said Clayton, as he had proved quite reticent in answers when questions had been put to him.