Bruce Alexander - The Price of Murder

“I’m indeed looking forward to it, sir, but. . well, may I ask, is there perhaps something wrong?”

“Wrong? How do you mean that, Jeremy?”

“You seemed so silent, so removed.”

“Oh, I heard you well enough, but my mind was, I admit, upon other matters. It being Easter, I found myself thinking upon this Plummer case-the little girl pulled dead from the Thames, perhaps sold by her mother to a fate so hideous it cannot, should not, even be mentioned. I wondered what, if anything, God thinks of all this-if He may wonder from time to time if it was all worth the trouble.” He sighed a deep-oh, a profound sigh. And only then did he add, “I received Mr. Donnelly’s final autopsy report today. Mr. Marsden read it to me. It seems then that in spite of all that was done to her, Margaret Plummer died of asphyxiation. She was smothered.”

With that, I bade him goodnight and went down to claim my dinner. A considerable slice of that glorious ham, of which Clarissa was so proud, had been warmed for me upon the fire in a pan. The potatoes and carrots, more difficult to warm, were served to me cold by her.

Ah, but Clarissa was afterward anything but cold. We did hug and kiss, squeeze and fondle, for now that we were engaged to be engaged, she allowed me liberties (indeed, took a few herself) which were never before offered, nor even requested. Such was our situation: we carried on a courtship under the very noses of Sir John and Lady Fielding, altogether certain that they guessed naught of the change in our relations. But perhaps they knew more, and knew it earlier, than we had supposed.

Next day, when I met with Deuteronomy Plummer at the Haymarket Coffee House, I spread out before him on the table all the numbered stubs and tickets that I had found in Katy Tiddle’s room.

He glanced at them indifferently, shrugged, and said, “What about them?”

“Well, what are they? I’ve studied them, and all I can tell you is that the numbers were written by diverse hands, and that, no matter how they are arranged and rearranged, they make no sense. That is to say, there was no code discernible. But how could there be, with so many numbers in so many different hands? After all-?”

“Leave off, leave off,” said Mr. Deuteronomy in a way somewhat gruff. “You mean to tell me that you’ve no proper notion of what these here bits of paper might be?”

“None at all.” I hesitated. “It’s been suggested to me that these may be pawn tickets, though somehow I doubt it.”

“Well, that tells me more about you than it does about this Katy Tiddle woman. Of course they’re pawn tickets. Did you never pawn?”

I was annoyed at the lordly manner he had, of a sudden, taken on. “What does that tell you about me?” I demanded.

“It tells me you was brought up as a child of privilege, for one thing,” said he.

“If it tells you that, it tells you false, for I am an orphan and nothing more. I work as I do for Sir John to pay my keep. I am the servant, and he my master.”

That, reader, was by no means a fair summary of where I stood with regard to Sir John, nor he with me. If you have read thus far, then you know that he was to me far more in the nature of a teacher. And the things he taught did often exceed lessons in the law. It would not have been too much to claim him as my stepfather, yet I would not do so to Deuteronomy Plummer, for his remark had irritated me beyond telling. Child of privilege, indeed! I had all manner of household duties to perform. I served as Sir John’s amanuensis, writing the letters he dictated to me and often delivering them, as well. I served as the magistrate’s eyes during investigations of every sort, and, upon occasion, also as his bodyguard. And, finally, I had lately played substitute for Mr. Marsden, Sir John’s court clerk, during his recent bouts with influenza. And so on.

Yet I told Mr. Deuteronomy none of this, for he gave me little opportunity to speak out, blurting forth so swiftly that I doubt he heard my voiced reply at all.

“And what it tells me of Katy Tiddle is that she is a woman made poor by her drinking, as is my sister. I’ve met the woman upon occasion, she livin’ next door to my sister, and that is the opinion of her I have formed. Those numbered stubs and tickets-call them what you will-is from pawn shops hereabouts. It took two days time, and you still hadn’t figured out what they were, nor where they was from. Anybody don’t know what pawn tickets look like is a proper child of privilege, as far as I’m concerned. And anyways, why should we be chasing after what this woman pawned? Why ain’t we out chasing after Alice herself?”

“Just how much did Sir John tell you about Katy Tiddle and how she fits into this case?”

“Well, I. .” He hesitated, unable for a moment to express himself. Then did he begin again: “Truth of it is, after I heard about little Maggie, how she died and all, I didn’t get much after that. I remember he said something about Tiddle, but I’m afraid I didn’t take in what it was.”

“I can understand that. But listen, we’ve good reason to think that Katy Tiddle brought the man who took Maggie away to your sister. She served as a sort of go-between. It seemed to me that he came back and killed her to keep her from naming him.”

“How do you know this?”

“From things she said when she identified the body. I thought we might go out to the pawn shops, at least a few of them, there around Seven Dials and take a look at the things she pawned to see if they give us any hints.”

“Hints of what?”

“Hints of just who this man was.”

“Well, all right,” said he. “There’s a couple of places, taverns and inns thereabouts, places Alice drank, where we can stop and ask after her. But, well, she’s been gone awhile, ain’t she?”

“She has,” said I with a sigh, “but drink up, and we’ll get started.”

Having thus compromised, we set off for Cucumber Alley. It seemed best to work out in a sort of circle from there down into the heart of Seven Dials. And so we did. In a manner of speaking, there was little difference between the territory we explored and Bedford Street, which I knew far better. Yet there was this about Seven Dials: it attracted a lower class of inebriate. After observing the puffed faces and bleary eyes of passersby and of those sitting about on doorsteps, I asked him quite direct why he had chosen such a place as this to install his sister and niece. (This was a question, reader, which had plagued me ever since I had heard he paid the rent.)

“That is a question easily answered,” said he, “for truth to tell, I did not choose it. She did. When at last I come to find her, she’d had Maggie and was sharing a room with a whore. I tempted her out of that situation, but she would not leave Seven Dials-oh no, young sir, she would not . So I got her into that room you saw and gave her a little each week so she wouldn’t have to whore.”

“But what about Maggie?”

“What about her?”

“Well, such circumstances could not have been good for the child.”

“No, they wasn’t, but Maggie never seemed to mind much-just so long as she had her dollies to play with. Truth to tell, Maggie wasn’t quite right in the head. I had a suspicion that Alice dropped her once or twice whilst she was carryin’ her about-but she said she never.”

Though I have since heard worse, I recall thinking at the time that in the bare facts just given me by Mr. Deuteronomy, I had the saddest, squalidest, most wretched story I had ever heard. I recalled, too, something told us by Katy Tiddle when she went unwillingly with me to Mr. Donnelly’s surgery to identify the body of Maggie Plummer.

“I am reminded,” said I to Deuteronomy, “of what was said by Katy Tiddle of the man who took your niece away.”