Bruce Alexander - The Price of Murder

“Did you two write letters to each other? Did he invite you to come?”

“Stephen? Oh no, he didn’t know where I was, and I couldn’t write to tell him, because I never had any learning. But I just came to him, and we picked up just where we left off. It was beautiful. Course he’s angry-now, maybe a mite jealous, because I came down here to see you two.” She said nothing more for a moment, but thrust out her lower lip in a pout. “When are you two going to give me that message from Maggie I been waiting to hear?”

“In a while, Alice. It won’t be long,” said the constable. “Just one more question.”

“All right, what is it?”

“Whose idea was it to report Maggie as missing? Was it yours?”

“Oh no, nothing of the kind. Katy Tiddle thought it up. It was all her idea. She said it would keep people from asking a lot of questions when they noticed that Maggie was gone. I could just say she was stolen and I’d reported it to the constable.”

She waited, frowning. “Well,” said she, “I answered your last question. Ain’t I goin’ to hear now what Maggie has to say?”

Mr. Patley looked at me with great uncertainty. Clearly, he wished me now to assume the burden.

“Alice,” said I, “we didn’t say we had a message from Maggie. We said we had a message about her.”

“Well, all right, what’s the message about her then?”

The difficulty I was having putting the information that I had into words must have shown in my face. No doubt I looked terribly distressed, for that was indeed how I felt.

She read my face. For, of a sudden, the expression upon her own altered to one of alarm, then went beyond that to horror, utter horror.

“Oh, dear God in heaven,” said she, “Maggie’s dead, ain’t she?”

“I fear it’s true, Alice. You were deceived by Katy Tiddle and Walter.”

“What do you mean? Say it!”

“Uh. . well, it’s. .” I temporized, glancing at Mr. Patley and finding no help there, unable to find the right words, unwilling to say it plain. I sighed, then plunged on: “Alice, there was no nice couple waiting for Walter to deliver your daughter to them. Walter may have kept Maggie for his own use, or sold her on to someone quite rich. We think-I think-that the latter is the way of it.”

“Can you help us find Walter? He made a whore of her, Alice,” said the constable. “If he delivered her to someone else, then he can tell us who, so we can get to that someone else.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth? How do I know she’s really dead? Maybe this is just another trick to get me back to London.”

“A waterman pulled her body out of the Thames. I took it to the doctor who pronounced her dead, and then your brother had her buried in the churchyard at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden.”

“My brother? Deuteronomy?”

“That’s right. He’s right here in Newmarket. He’ll tell you everything we said is true.”

“No, keep him out of it. He’s always tellin’ me what to do.”

Having heard all that we had to say, she sat quietly, as if devising a plan of action. Neither Patley nor I spoke. We simply waited. I know not quite what we expected from her, yet certainly not what she gave us; in fact, she quite astounded us.

She began to scream.

I know not quite how to describe her cries, for there was naught of surprise nor fear in them. Call them, rather, screams of outrage: protests against the cruelty of fortune, the unfairness of fate.

In any case, they had an immediate and electrifying effect upon all there in the tap-room. Those at the tables and bar-thank God the place was not then greatly crowded-turned immediately, open-mouthed in shocked surprise. The innkeeper and the serving woman came running. And as for Patley and me, we had leapt to our feet and were making helpless gestures with our hands. Yet what more could we do?

“You must get her out of here!” shouted the serving woman at a volume that seemed to match that of the screams.

“Yes, but how?”

“I don’t care how you do it. Just do it!”

There was a rhythm to Alice’s cries, and they were of a predictable duration, so that as she halted to take a breath, Mr. Patley, a man of fair proportions, was able to clap a hand over her mouth and pull her to her feet.

He quick-marched her out. There was little for me to do but run ahead and get from the innkeeper the location of the magistrate’s court. This was a situation that called for desperate measures.

“I knew you was bringin’ trouble the moment you came through that door,” the serving woman shouted after us.

Luckily, I had with me the letter dictated by Sir John to the magistrate of Newmarket, Malachi Simmons. I had carried it round with me in the inside pocket of my coat since we had left London. I recalled well that there was a problem in using it, and that had to do with when it was presented to the local magistrate. It was best to use it only in an emergency, Sir John had said, but if it were offered too late, it had best be given with a good excuse as to why it had not been presented earlier. I believed I had just such an excuse.

Alice Plummer had quietened down a bit by the time we arrived at the magistrate’s court. Not that she had reconciled herself to the shocking news we had given her. No, indeed. I believe, rather, that the strain put upon her throat by her repeated screams had overtaxed it to the point that she could scarce speak above a whisper. Yet that was not immediately apparent to us, for at some point shortly after we three had left the Good Queen Bess she silenced herself altogether: she spoke not a word, nor did she scream again. And I thanked God for it.

The magistrate’s court stood upon that very street off Market Square that I had latterly overlooked; the name of that street, if indeed it ever had one, I have completely forgotten. We found the house quite easily, a couple of hundred years old it was, but large and imposing. I banged loudly upon the door, and as we waited for a response, I muttered to Mr. Patley that he was to let me do the talking. He nodded his understanding and agreement. We heard steps behind the door, and a brief moment later, it flew open to reveal one who was at least as tall and wide as Bow Street’s Constable Bailey.

“What’s your business here?” he demanded.

“We wish to have some words with the magistrate, Mr. Malachi Simmons.”

“And what about?”

I stifled the urge I felt to tell him that it was no business of his, whatever it was. Rather, did I smile sweetly and inform him that I had a letter to deliver.

“Must be a pretty long letter if it takes three of you to deliver it,” said he, then added, “From London, are ye?”

I said that we were.

“Well then, stay where you are, all three of you. What’s your name?” He pointed at me.

“Jeremy Proctor,” said I, “but I doubt he’ll know me. But say, we’re come from the Bow Street Court.”

“Stay here.”

Then did the fellow close the door, as one might upon a beggar, in our very faces. Patley and I exchanged looks, shrugs, and sighs of resignation. After a long wait, we heard footsteps once more and the door came open again.

“He’ll see you,” said the fellow. “Right this way.”

He led us down a long hall and another, so that we were at the farthest corner of the house from the door through which we had entered. Our guide moved at a swift pace, indeed so swift that Alice had some difficulty in keeping up. He was a strange sort of butler, was he not? Probably butler cum constable cum turnkey, and who could say what more? He knocked upon the door at the end of the second hall, waited a moment till he heard something beyond it, then opened the door, and nodded us inside.