Bruce Alexander - The Price of Murder

“Why, he’ll win, bless you lad, he’ll win.”

“And he’ll collect the prize of fifty pounds for his owner,” said Mr. Patley. “But I wonder if it ain’t your friend, Deuteronomy, deserves it more than the horse.”

“Remember what I said just before the heat started?” said Baker. “About the horse? I said, he’s got the stuff to win, but he’s headstrong. If he just runs the kind of race his jockey tells him to run, he’ll do just fine. Well, he proved he can follow orders, so it’s a good bet he’ll win the final heat.”

And that, reader, is just how it went. The only real test offered Pegasus and Mr. Deuteronomy that afternoon was in the last heat at the “Distance Post”-in other words, just beyond the cover afforded us by the cart. Horse and rider had then to establish their primacy, nor did they shrink from the task. They rode into the tight turn at near top speed. Deuteronomy fought his way forward by flailing left and right with his whip. And Pegasus did his part well by biting the leader that crowded him on the inside, causing the horse to shy into our cart and sending us into a frightening tip. Yet, thank God, we righted and saw Pegasus speed away from the tight turn. After that, they gave him space aplenty.

Indeed, as predicted, Pegasus did win and this, I found out, was the first time ever he had raced. He received a drum-and-fife salute. His owner stepped forward to accept his fifty pounds, all of it in a jingling bag. When I spied the face of him who claimed the prize, my eyes widened and my face gave expression to my dismayed surprise.

“What’s got into you, Jeremy?” Mr. Baker asked. “You look like you just bit into a sour apple.”

“I feel like it, too. That man up there, the one who just collected the fifty pounds, he was damned rude to me when I asked him the time of day.”

“Well,” said Mr. Patley, “there’s rude and there’s damned rude. Now, what was it qualified Lord Lamford for felony rudeness?”

“ Lord Lamford, is it? Wouldn’t it be so?” said I. Then did I proceed to tell them of the incident. And in truth, told so, it amounted to little. I could tell that neither man was greatly impressed by my anecdote. Yet had they been there and received his verbal slap in the face, I was certain that each would have reacted as I did.

“Yes, well, Jeremy, these lords and ladies, they get pretty tetchy when you approach them just as you might anyone,” said Mr. Baker.

“Oh, I know that, and I was polite as could be. It’s just. . Oh, let’s end it right there, shall we?”

“Perhaps we’d best,” said Patley. “We got to collect our winnings before the oddsman does a scarper on us. We’ll meet you right here, and we’ll all ride back to town together. Suit you, Jeremy?” Then, as an afterthought: “Deuteronomy, by the bye, rides mostly for Lamford.”

With that, they left me where I stood, and I moved a few steps closer to Lord Lamford-close enough, in any case, that I might hear him boast to his fellows in his self-assured drawl of how he had won the race:“. . told my man to hold him back till the last heat, and then- then did you see him go?” And did they not all crowd round him to listen to his braggadocio! One would think that Deuteronomy Plummer had just sat astride Pegasus all afternoon because the rules required it: all two-year-olds must be accompanied by an adult-something of that sort.

As my mind went to Deuteronomy, so also did my eyes. He stood, saying naught, holding loosely onto the reins of the horse. I studied him at a distance of forty or fifty feet. He talked to no one and looked neither right nor left until; all of a sudden, he turned in my direction and looked straight at me. It was as though he had known all along that I was there. Then, staring at me in the expressionless manner he had looked at us when we applauded him, he handed the reins to a nearby groom and came straight over to me. When he arrived, he looked me up and down and said naught for a good long bit. When at last he did speak, he expressed doubt.

“Are you really the Beak’s assistant?”

“Yes,” said I, “yes I am. If you want to hear that confirmed, you can wait for those two men I was with to come back. They’re both constables at the Bow Street Court.”

“No, if you say so, then I’ll believe you. Just keep that in mind, though, ’cause if you lie to me, I’ll find out, and then I’ll never believe you again. Even if you told me today was Easter Sunday, I’d say it wasn’t.”

“All right, what do you want to know?”

“I want to know if he’s going to do something about all this that has to do with Alice and-you know-my niece. Is he going to do something, or just shake his head and go on to the next thing?”

“That’s not his way. If you’d seen him when I brought him word, then you’d know that.”

“Did he shed a tear? I wept for that child all night long.”

“No, that’s not his way, either. He can’t cry. It’s to do with his blindness.”

“All right, put it like this: Has he got anybody working on it?”

I hesitated but a moment. “I’m working on it right now.”

He sniggered in spite of himself. “You? What’re you doing here? Investigating the horses?”

“No, Sir John sent me here because he believed you were capable of killing your sister when you left him yester evening. He thought it would be good if I showed up here, so you’d see me and know that we were keeping an eye on you.”

“I b’lieve I could have done her in if I’d come across her then .”

“But not now?”

“No, not now. Whilst I was busy shedding tears, I did some thinking. And it seemed to me that he-and prob’ly you, too-are better at investigating than I’ll ever be. So the best thing would be if we was to investigate together. You help me, and I’ll help you.”

“After all,” said I, “whatever you think of your sister, it wasn’t she who killed her daughter. We’ll need her to find the one who did.”

“That’s where I come in,” said he. “I’ve got some ideas where she might be. And I thought we might go together, that is, if you. .”

“I’ll need all the help you can give me, Mr. Deuteronomy.”

“All right then, what say we get us together and meet at the coffee house that faces onto Haymarket Square-say about eleven o’clock.”

“I know the place. I’ll be there at eleven.”

With that, he nodded, turned, and walked away. Well, I thought, there’ll be a lot to talk about with Sir John when I get back to Bow Street.

On the contrary, my report to Sir John was given to him quickly in his study. He listened carefully to all that I had to say, nodding thoughtfully but making no comment. Even when I came at last to the offer made by Deuteronomy Plummer to join in the search for his sister, Sir John’s immediate response was simply a grunt. ’Twas only as I completed my recital and rose to return to the kitchen that the magistrate commented upon the information I had given him.

“I take it you accepted Deuteronomy’s offer of help?”

“Why, yes I did,” said I. “Is that not as you would have it?”

“Oh yes, certainly it is. But let me give you a bit of advice.”

“Please, sir.”

“Simply put, it is this: Though he may have said that you know more than he about how to conduct an investigation, he will nevertheless try to wrest control of the investigation from you. Don’t allow him to do that. Remember that you have something specific that you had intended to attend to. One way or another, with him or without him, you must attend to it. You will, won’t you?”

“I will, sir,” said I, yet still I hung on, unwilling to leave.

“You may go, Jeremy. Your dinner may be cold, yet I think you will deem it one of the best you’ve eaten.”