Bruce Alexander - The Price of Murder

He had hit home. He had upset her. He had penetrated the bravado that had heretofore supported her so well. Her lower lip began to tremble as her eyes began to tear. She was about to lose that edge of containment that had sustained her and made it possible to resist him thus far. Yet she found it in her to strike back.

“How should I know why no one stopped those two and challenged them?” she cried out, holding back the tears. “Ask them, all those people who paraded by me and did nothing to help.”

“But of course you ask the impossi-”

“Wait! Wait!” She shouted it out, interrupting, insisting, attempting to regain control. “Now I remember. There was a man who stopped us and asked to know what was wrong with me. I didn’t get much of a look at him, for I was in that half-conscious way, but I had the idea that he was a watchman or a constable.”

“Oh? And do you recall how your condition was explained?”

“Certainly I do. They said I was drunk.” At that she forced a laugh.

Her mother came to her defense: “Ne’er a drop of the devil’s drink has ever touched Elizabeth’s lips,” said she.

“And never will!” her daughter declared.

“Admirable,” said Sir John. “But let us get back to that constable, or whatever he might have been. Did he give his name?”

“No, he did not.”

Then did a loud, insistent knocking come upon the door. Who could that be? I hurried to open it, and I had barely accomplished that when the door flew out of my hand, and, for a moment, I found myself pushed against the wall.

That moment was just enough to admit three men I recognized from the silversmith’s shop in Chandos Street. They were Mr. Turbott, the proprietor; Mr. Tarkington, the journeyman; and the apprentice who was in his last year, named Joe; these were the three I saw pouring silver at the back of Turbott’s shop. They rushed forward as if to rescue Elizabeth.

“Who is here?” shouted Sir John as he jumped to his feet, ready to do battle, if need be.

Mr. Turbott gave him little attention but rushed to Elizabeth’s side that he might comfort her. It should not be necessary to quote him here, for the words he used were not particularly well chosen. I will say, however, that watching them together gave me a good idea of just who the father of the child growing within her might be. Nevertheless, he managed, after some moments, to tear himself away and identified himself to Sir John as “Elizabeth’s employer.”

“And, I assume,” said Sir John, “that having just heard of her return, you rushed here from your shop to learn as much as you can of all this. Is that correct?”

“Quite right,” said he.

“Well, I, sir, am Sir John Fielding, magistrate of the Bow Street Court, and I am conducting this investigation. I have no intention of going back over what we have heard from her already. It would be unnecessary for me, and, no doubt, quite painful for her.”

“Oh, no doubt you’re right.”

“I will, however, briefly summarize what has already been established.”

And this he proceeded to do in his impressive and inimitable fashion. None but Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice himself, could even begin to approach Sir John’s powers of summary. His, I do honestly believe, was the more logical mind. When he had concluded with that, he made an offer to Mr. Turbott.

“Sir,” said he, “I shall allow you and those who have come with you to remain and hear the rest of this sad tale. But I do so only on the condition that all three of you will keep silent and allow me and only me to conduct the interrogation. There will be no additions, interruptions, or comments. Do you agree to this?”

“Oh, certainly! And without reservation. I speak for myself and my employees,” said the silversmith.

“All right then, I believe that Mistress Hooker was about to tell us that she was taken to a house in. . Would you say Holborn or Clerkenwell?”

“I think that Clerkenwell is the more likely,” said she.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, I’ve visited there once or twice on errands for Mr. Turbott.” She turned to him and offered him a smile. “And I was less dazed than before. I took note of my surroundings, you see, and it was all quite familiar-the fields and that.”

“I understand,” said Sir John.

“But there was a house at a crossroads-I can’t say where any better than that-and that turned out to be the place we were headed.”

“And what did it look like? What was its appearance?”

“Its appearance was ordinary. It was just a house.”

“Come now. You can do better than that, surely. Was it a house of one story or two? Had it been painted? What color had it? What of the yard-large or small? Please, Elizabeth, you must make a blind man see that house.”

Quite inappropriately, she giggled at that last request of his. Yet she soon brought herself under control and gave a fair description of the place. It was, she said, a house of two stories and a garret. (“How well I remember that garret!”) One would not call it a house in good condition, for it was unpainted-or if indeed the house had once been painted, any trace of color had long ago disappeared from it. There were trees in the yard, though none of them of any real size, and a great pile of leaves, left over from last autumn. And one final detail: As she had declared earlier, it was a house at a crossroads; there was another, a proper farm house, at the opposite corner. It was well built and well maintained-all that the house she described was not.

(So fixed was my attention upon Sir John and Elizabeth that I had not noticed until she began her description that Clarissa was taking down all that was said by her with paper and pencil. This was something new.)

“Now,” said Sir John to Elizabeth, “you have given a fair and complete description of the place to which you were taken, but I note that much of it, perhaps most, could only have been noted by you from a distance. You seemed to have known in advance to which house you were headed.”

“Well, I didn’t!” said she rather hotly. “Whilst I was prisoner in that house I had much opportunity to study the details that you eagerly sought. But for that matter, my two captors talked of it in such a way that I knew we were close.”

“Saying. . what?”

“Oh, they wondered what sort of price I might fetch. The one called Dick seemed to doubt whether I would be taken at all, kept insisting that I was not pretty enough, nor was my bosom sufficient.”

“All right. I’ll accept that,” said Sir John. “Let’s get on with it, shall we. You entered this old house in the company of the two men, and then what?”

“We went round the back and entered through the kitchen. I remember they knocked upon the door and said who they were. Bobby and Dick, they said, and the door was opened to us. Waiting for us there in the kitchen were three people-a man about forty, a young girl who was fair pretty, and a woman with the ugliest face I did ever see. It was her, the ugly one, that the two men who brought me bowed and scraped to. She looked me over proper, pinched my arm and my bosom and just all over. And finally she says to me, ‘What about it, dearie? Will you join us?’ Which I took to mean, will you follow the Devil’s path? And then-”

At this point, Mr. Tarkington, unable to contain himself further, interrupted, calling to his chief, the silversmith Turbott: “Sir, that sounds like Mother Jeffers’s house to me-from the look of the house, the way she describes the old harridan herself.”

“You’ve been there?” Turbott demanded.

“A time or two.”

“What about it, Elizabeth?” cried Turbott. “Was that the woman’s name?”