Bruce Alexander - The Price of Murder

Pamphleteers had first discovered Elizabeth Hooker when she disappeared. They brought her a sort of fame. They declared her the most beautiful and clever, the sweetest-natured, and above all, the most innocent of all maidens. How could such a one be stolen bodily from the streets of London? Was ours then a city so unsafe, populated by criminals, kidnappers, and the like? Et cetera. And then, when Elizabeth returned, telling her tale of abduction and imprisonment, word came to the writers of pamphlets, and they flocked to her, interviewing her (some did not even bother to do that), accepting her every word as truth and fabricating those she did not supply. Her captor, Mother Jeffers, looked every bit the wicked witch. Her imprisonment was like that of Rapunzel. Her escape from her tower was like unto that of a princess in some fairy tale set in the dim long-ago.

In all, some six or seven pamphlets appeared before and during the trial. Each of them extolled the innocence of Elizabeth Hooker and denounced the guilt of Mother Jeffers. Had the pamphlets any great effect? They certainly did much to form public opinion in the matter. There was a great crowd that assembled in Covent Garden in her behalf the very evening of her return. And, on the eve of the trial, there was a torchlight parade from the Garden to Old Bailey in which the marchers carried signs bearing legends such as “Punish the old whore!” and “God bless the innocence of our dear Liz.” It was an altogether impressive showing and some eloquent speeches were made. But did all this influence the outcome of the trial? You must read the next chapter if you wish to discover that.

We thought it odd when Mr. Marsden failed to appear next morn-odd, that is, because he sent no word by the landlord’s lad, whose responsibility it was to carry word to us when Sir John’s clerk felt unable to put in his usual day of work.

Mr. Marsden’s malady was a puzzle to us all. We had been assured that his was not a case of consumption. Still, his dry cough, which could, all of a sudden, explode into a racking, rasping spasm, was sometimes quite frightening and little different to us who heard it from that of the nasty illness that had half the population of London spitting blood upon the street.

Once I had asked him how he felt on those days when he was too ill to report for work. He answered me straightaway.

“Jeremy,” said he, “it’s the awfullest feeling you could ever imagine.”

“Oh?” said I, “can you describe it?”

“It’s like I can’t get enough air into my lungs, like they just won’t fill up, and I’m chokin’ to death right there in my room. A man can’t work when he feels himself in such a state, I’m sure you’d agree.”

“Certainly he cannot.”

He remained silent for a moment, reflecting. And then: “As jobs go, you know, this is a pretty easy one,” said he.

“But an important one,” I responded.

“Oh, I’ll grant you that-specially with Sir John being blind and all. But you’re used to writing letters for him and all kinds of other things. You’ll be able to do this job of mine better than I ever could.”

What an odd thing for him to say! Was he thinking ahead to retirement-or. . what? Yet I did not immediately ask him to explain, and he never gave me a later opportunity.

All this I rolled over again in my mind as I made my way to Mr. Marsden’s dwelling place in Long Acre. What I learned there saddened me no end.

When Mr. Marsden failed to respond to the landlord’s knock upon the door, the latter had let himself in with his key and found the clerk dead in his bed. His body was cold to the touch; there was no sign of breathing, nor of a heartbeat. Nevertheless, out of respect for one who had been a longtime resident, he sent for a doctor who lived nearby. The medico was still present and was filling out the papers that declared Marsden officially dead. I introduced myself and asked what he was listing as the cause of death.

“A stoppage of the heart,” said he.

“Indeed?” said I. “He had for some time been troubled by a difficulty of some sort in the lungs and had been under a physician’s care.”

“Which physician is that?”

“Mr. Donnelly.”

“ Mr. Donnelly, is it? Then he is but a surgeon.”

“Not so,” said I. “He is a graduate of the University of Vienna.”

He shrugged. “You may have him come and look at him, if you like.”

“Impossible, I fear. This very morning he and his bride-to-be departed for Ireland.”

“Then be satisfied with what I have put down here, for if this Marsden fellow’s heart had not stopped, he would, I assure you, be with us still today.”

When I returned to Bow Street, having made arrangements with the embalmer in Long Acre, I passed the sad news on to Sir John. He said I had done right in selecting a plain, board coffin to bury him in. (“Little would it matter to him if we were to put his remains in some grander box,” said Sir John.) Mr. Marsden would be buried out of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, in the same churchyard where Margaret Mary Plummer, Deuteronomy’s niece, had been laid to rest. A collection would be taken among the Bow Street Runners, all of whom knew him, to defray the costs of burial.

“I shall contribute something,” said I.

“As you will,” said Sir John, “but if there is a need, by custom it would fall to me to supply the deficiency.”

“How so?”

“My annual stipend.”

“Ah yes, of course-noblesse oblige.”

He grinned in amusement. “Something of the sort. But Jeremy?”

“Yes sir?”

“It will fall to you today-and until I can find a permanent replacement-to work as Mr. Marsden’s replacement. I fear we’ve used up a good bit of the morning in this painful business. You must get on with the interviews of the prisoners and the disputants. I know not how many there are, but. .”

“Of course, Sir John.” I rose and started to the door.

“Just one more thing, lad. What was it like, Mr. Marsden’s living quarters, I mean. Had he a good life, do you suppose?”

What an odd question, I thought, and what a difficult one to answer. “Why, I know not quite what to say, Sir John. Though it was but a single room, it was a large one-not lavishly furnished but comfortable. There was wood for a good fire. What more does one need?”

“Well, yes, I suppose, but. . did he have many books about?”

“Two or three law books, as I recall-all of them rather old.”

“When he first came to me,” said Sir John, “he wanted to be a lawyer.”

“The rest were all penny-dreadfuls-a great stack of them.”

“Oh dear,” said he with a sigh.

“And oh yes, there were a great many pipes about. He had quite a collection, so he did.”

“He was a great one for his pipes, was he not? I daresay that they were well kept, too.”

“Oh very. And another odd thing: When you entered the room, the first thing you noted was the smell of tobacco smoke. It seemed quite pervasive.”

That seemed to satisfy Sir John. “Then perhaps ’twas not such a bad life, after all-a bit of dinner, a bottle of ale, and a pipe or two afterward. Ah, but he was alone. I could never live so.”

As a consequence of Mr. Marsden’s death, I missed most of the trial of Mother Jeffers. We buried him upon the Monday the trial commenced. It continued through Tuesday and Wednesday, which made it quite a long session in court for those days. The length of the trial came as a result of Jeffers’s choice of counsel. She was wise enough (and wealthy enough) to have her solicitor engage William Ogden, to my mind the finest barrister in London, to plead her case. He was young, he was energetic, and his method was to throw out a net and bring in as many witnesses as possible. Then, having attacked the character-and therefore the testimony of Elizabeth Hooker-he launched a final assault in his summing-up before the jury.