T.F. Banks: The Thief-Taker

The incongruity of the two addresses, as much as the poise and confidence with which they were announced, raised all three sets of eyebrows on the panel again in an almost comical fashion.

“Your age?”

“Twelve,” promptly replied Lucy. Morton noted with an inward smile the rounding upward of this carefully worked-out number.

“Is this… place you formerly lived,” now began Francis Beadwell, “also called the Otter House?”

Lucy looked straight at her questioner to respond. “Yes, si-my lord.”

“How long were you living there?”

“One year and seven months.”

“A maid like this!” now breathed out Sir William. “In such a place! Did she have any… did you know what sort of place it was?”

Lucy turned solemn eyes to him. “A very bad sort of a place, my lord. A flash house.”

Now, however, there was a harsh interruption from the other side of the room. “Ask her what she did there,” George Vaughan said scornfully. There was a low ripple of laughter from the men around him that spread after a few moments into the rest of the room. Male laughter. The clerk rapped with his rod.

“I carried the glasses to the tables,” defiantly replied Lucy. “I cleaned and swept. And…” She faltered as Morton's heart sank. He did not want this, not even if it was to save his life. But they had told Lucy to tell the truth, and this was very precisely what she was going to do. She pressed bravely on. “… and only sometimes, if Joshua thought they were square coves and kindly, I would go upstairs with the gentlemen, and-”

“You need say no more of that.” Sir Nathaniel Conant gruffly prevented her from going on.

Into the hush came George Vaughan's sarcastic mutter. “Only sometimes…”

“Silence, sir!” The Chief Magistrate turned again to Lucy. He pointed one massive black-draped arm across the room toward Vaughan. “Lucy Hammond,” he rumbled, “did you ever see that man, who just spoke? Did you ever see him in the Otter House?”

Lucy's eyes fixed on Sir Nathaniel. She knew the importance of the question as well as anyone else in the room.

“Yes, my lord. Many times. He was master there.”

“Do you know his name?”

“It is Mr. Vaughan.”

Beadwell came in now. “How do you know he was master?”

“Everyone obeyed him.”

“Did he ever pass a whole night there?”

“Yes, my lord. Many times. He slept in the room at the top of the house.”

“What about the circumstances under which you left that house,” proceeded Beadwell. “How did you come to be in Portman Square? How do you come to be here?”

With no further prompting, Lucy began to tell the story of her escape with Morton. It matched exactly with the narrative Morton himself had provided minutes before, and Morton could sense the Magistrates registering this. He could sense, also, the growing amazement that was filling the whole court-an amazement, almost to the point of wonder, at Lucy's eloquence and self-possession. No matter where she came from, or how true her tale, this was clearly a marvelous child, an accident of nature.

Sir William described in overly elaborate detail the sculptural fragment that was missing from the Elgin antiquities. Had she ever seen it?

“Oh, yes, my lord. It was part of the swag that Mr. Vaughan had Bill and the others steal from a rich lord. It was kept with the rest of the things they stole in the place under the stairs, until they decided to put some of it in Mr. Morton's rooms.”

“My lord-!” Vaughan broke in scornfully, but Sir Nathaniel held up his hand.

“Peace, sir. You shall have your chance to speak.” He went back to Lucy. “How do you know that they decided to do such a thing? Did someone in the house tell you that?”

“I heard them talking about it, my lord.”

“You were a party to their discussions?” Sir Nathaniel allowed himself a degree of incredulity.

“I was in a little place I had in the room, my lord. They never knew I was there. Other times I heard things when I was carrying their glasses. They did not care what I heard.”

“Who was there when this particular action-the one concerning Mr. Morton-was decided upon?”

“Mr. Vaughan. Bill. Joshua. And…” Lucy seemed to try to remember. “… some of their… friends. I did not know what their names were. There were a lot of men I only saw once or twice.”

Morton finally raised his own voice. “My lords. I believe that this witness can provide extensive information about an entire criminal ring, centered in the Otter House and commanded and organised by George Vaughan. She can tell of thefts arranged, and property sold back to its owners. She can describe abductions, murders, and other crimes arranged and often even perpetrated in that house. Such detailed testimony is perhaps not necessary for our present purposes. There are two specific crimes, however, I would like her to tell you about, as they would both demonstrate the considerable range of activities practiced by Mr. Vaughan in the Otter, and shed light on two matters currently being enquired into by the Bow Street Office.”

George Vaughan was shaking his head in disgust. But Sir Nathaniel Conant seemed to have acknowledged that, at least for the moment, Morton had the upper hand.

“Proceed, sir,” the Magistrate growled.

Morton turned to Lucy, who looked up at him with the same frank and ready gaze. Morton felt a wave of intense and grateful emotion for this wonderful girl. He breathed in deeply a moment, so that this feeling did not discompose him, then smiled again at her.

“Lucy, do you remember ever seeing a man in the Otter House named Caleb Smeeton?”

She nodded. “Yes, he was there many times.”

“What was the opinion of Mr. Vaughan and Bill and the others of this Mr. Smeeton?”

“They thought him a cull. They called him Brother Hodge, or Captain Cully.”

“A cull is a fool,” Morton explained for the benefit of two of the Magistrates. “What happened to Mr. Smeeton?”

“Oh, they dished him up,” calmly replied Lucy. “They did that to people. Mr. Vaughan called it putting a man in a play.”

“What did he mean by that?” Sir Nathaniel bent forward to ask.

“I don't know, sir. But Mr. Vaughan would say, ‘I think he's earned a part onstage.’ And then the man would be arrested and hanged.”

This caused whispering among the crowd, and the panel responded as well.

Morton took up the questioning again. “So what did they do to Caleb Smeeton? Mr. Vaughan and Bill and the others?”

“They told Mr. Smeeton there was a draper's panney that would be very easy to rob, and that he could make a pot of gold. They told him the address and they gave him the crow to break open the door, and … and something else. Oh, I know: the phos bottle to light their lantern with when they were inside. They told him to bring his wife to help. Then after Mr. Smeeton had gone home, they started to laugh, and made a plan to have them caught by the Bow Street Runners. Mr. Vaughan said he would set young Mr. Presley on him. And he would get Sir Galahad to be there, too, so it would look square.”

Morton cleared his throat, his face slightly hot.

“Lucy?” Francis Beadwell said in a surprisingly soft voice. “Who was this? Sir Galahad?”

“I don't know, si-my lord. A man they didn't like, though. They often said so.”

Sir Nathaniel raised an eyebrow to Morton.

“I believe it is a reference to me, my lord,” Morton admitted, and there was a small titter through the crowd. Morton turned back to the baffled Lucy. “What happened to Mr. Smeeton, then? Did they talk about that?”

“Oh, yes, sir. He and Mrs. Smeeton were caught, just as planned. They were stretched-I mean hanged. And Mr. Vaughan told the others how much money they were going to get once the rewards were handed out. They got twice as much because there were two people. They were all very contented about that.”