Bruce Alexander - The Price of Murder

“He said that, did he?” asked Sir John. “Do you feel that he was serious about this?”

“Oh, I do,” I assured him, “for he told me that once when she had been drinking she told him that she had met Maggie’s father there at Newmarket. She’s a simple soul, sir. She probably believes it will all happen again just as before.”

“Perhaps,” said he, “yes indeed, perhaps.” He seemed troubled; nevertheless, I knew not what seemed wrong with what I had just told him. Yet he explained: “The trouble is with the magistrate of Newmarket, you see. It could be difficult to arrest Alice Plummer, or even to remove her to London for questioning. The magistrate seems to feel that unless a crime be committed in Newmarket, it is no true crime at all. I have had dealings with him before, but each time matters had to be negotiated. Oh, he can be-”

Sir John halted at that point, for a voice, a very familiar one, intruded. From the sound of Clarissa’s voice and her hastening footsteps, I could tell she was most agitated.

“Sir John! Jeremy! I’ve news for you!”

The magistrate, now risen from his chair, seemed perturbed, unhappy with the interruption. “What is it, child?”

“Elizabeth is missing.”

It became clear, after a few moments of awkward sputtering, that Sir John had no notion of just who Elizabeth might be. Clarissa and I set about to explain it to him, yet, between us, I feared that we may only have made things a bit worse.

“Now, please, both of you,” said he, “let me see if I have this properly now. Elizabeth is a girl whom you knew back in Lichfield,” now addressing Clarissa. “Yet about the time you came here, so did she. Is that correct?”

Of course, it was. Nevertheless, he took us painstakingly through all the information that we had heaped upon him, getting confirmation for each bit and fact until it became evident to me that he had used this as a device to slow things down a bit.

“And you say that she has now gone missing?”

“Indeed she has,” answered Clarissa. “Her mother brought this distressing news just now.”

“Is she here?”

“Oh, indeed sir-and terribly distressed.”

“Well, bring her here, child, bring her here.”

Needing no further encouragement, she set off down the hall at a dizzying clip. When she returned, she had with her a woman of no great age, yet one who bore a face that was lined and careworn; it was plain that the woman had been crying.

Sir John rose, bidding her to sit down. Once he had resettled himself behind his desk, he leaned forward and asked her name.

“Jenny Hooker,” said she.

“And you are the mother of Elizabeth?”

“I am, sir, and she don’t have nobody but me. Her father died a few years past. I’m a widow now.”

“I see. Well, could you tell me how long she’s been gone? All the circumstances of her disappearance as you’ve been able to discover them?”

The tale that she told must have been common enough in London at that time, when such disappearances were reported almost monthly. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was not some faceless name, but rather someone I had met, someone you might say that I knew. As Mrs. Hooker told the details, she began to snivel till Clarissa hastened to her and supplied a kerchief that she might blow her nose.

It seemed that both mother and daughter had been invited to Mrs. Hooker’s sister’s home in Wapping for Easter dinner. Mrs. Hooker’s duties at the lodging house made it impossible for her to attend, but she encouraged Elizabeth to take the walk there and spend the day with her uncle and aunt. This was what she did, enjoying herself greatly, eating her fill-and then some. She did, in fact, stay so late that her aunt feared that it would be dark before she reached home. Why not stay the night? Yet Elizabeth insisted that she go, for she was certain that the long walk would greatly help her digestion, and so she started out. That was the last anyone had seen of Elizabeth Hooker.

Sir John listened patiently to Mrs. Hooker and allowed her to tell everything at her own pace. He waited until he was sure that she had done with all. Only then did he lean forward and ask a few questions which he deemed necessary.

“Now, Mrs. Hooker,” said he, “how do you account for your delay in notifying me of your daughter’s disappearance?”

“Well,” said she, “I waited all through Easter Monday, expecting her to come along just anytime, for I’d assumed, you see, that she’d stayed the night with her aunt and uncle. But the day passed, dark came, and at last I made up my mind that I must go out to Wapping early next day and find out what had happened to her.”

“And did you do that?”

“I did, sir, and what I found was that they were as puzzled as I was and had no better idea than me just where she might be. Because they had not heard from me, they thought she had got home without a problem.”

“And then you came here to me, did you?”

“Not direct, sir, no, I didn’t. I went first to Elizabeth’s employer, Richard Turbott, a silversmith, who had just returned from an Easter holiday with his family.”

“And explained the situation to him?”

“Just so, sir.”

At that, Sir John fell silent, as if he had, for a brief moment, fallen asleep. I had often seen him in such a state, and Clarissa, too, had witnessed this strange behavior of his. So neither she nor I was concerned overmuch when, of a sudden, he seemed to have vacated consciousness. Mrs. Hooker, however, fell back with her hand to her heart, obviously unsure of what might happen next. Clarissa leaned forward and gave a reassuring pat to the woman’s hand.

What happened next was simply that Sir John then roused himself and put a question to the woman; one of a more indirect sort.

“What sort of complaints has your daughter?”

“Complaints?” Mrs. Hooker echoed, puzzled. “Do you mean illness, sir? What do you mean?”

“Not physical complaints, no. But as you say, she has no one but you. Does she confide in you? Is she satisfied? If not, why not? What are her dissatisfactions with life?”

“Oh, she has none.” She seemed quite taken aback with the suggestion that Elizabeth might indeed be in some way unhappy with her lot in life.

“Let me put it another way. How old is your daughter?”

“Fifteen, sir. She’ll be sixteen in October.”

“Fifteen and she has no dissatisfactions? no complaints? What sort of girl is she?”

“A very good girl, sir.”

“I’ve no doubt of it, but has she no dreams? no. .” He ended in a shrug, hands uplifted.

“Oh, no sir. Her father and I, we knocked all that sort of foolishness out of her long ago. We used Clarissa here as an example of what happens to a girl when she. . well. . You understand, I’m sure. You did rescue her from the poorhouse, as I’ve heard.”

I glanced over at Clarissa and rolled my eyes in despair. The woman was quite impossible, was she not? Clarissa’s description of Elizabeth-utterly vapid and without purpose-rang once again in my mind. What I had supposed to have been said in a mere fit of pique might well have been accurate, if Mrs. Hooker was to be credited.

For his part, Sir John could do little more than sigh unhappily.

Mrs. Hooker gave him a moment, then did she ask: “Will that be all, sir?”

“I shall require some addresses from you,” said Sir John, “and that, then, my good woman, will be all.”

One of those addresses was that in Wapping, of Elizabeth’s uncle and aunt, the last to see her on that fateful Sunday. It fell to me to take the hike along Wapping Dock to find their place in Green Dragon Alley, tucked in between a brewery and one of the many timber yards of that district.