Antonia Hodgson - The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins

‘No! I swear!’

‘You’ll inherit a fortune now he’s dead. Now he can’t marry Alice Dunn.’

‘I didn’t kill him,’ he sobbed into the wall. ‘Please, sir! Don’t hurt me.’ His narrow shoulders trembled beneath his father’s coat.

I sighed and stepped back. Damn it – what was wrong with me, torturing a grieving boy? And yes – despite expectation, I could see a deep and honest grief in Stephen’s eyes. But that did not preclude his guilt. ‘I’ve no wish to harm you, Stephen. I am not your father.’

He cringed, ducking his head away.

‘He beat you quite savagely, did he not?’

‘I deserved it,’ he whispered, miserable. He would not meet my eye.

‘That is not what I heard.’

Ned had told me the story the night before, over those two bowls of punch. So much had happened since then I had near forgotten it. He told me that Stephen had been desperate to leave Covent Garden. His father was building three houses near Grosvenor Square. Why not settle the family there? It was a fashionable and respectable part of town, and Burden was always grumbling about the decline of Russell Street: the brothels, the gin shops… the disreputable bookshops. There would be no need to lock and bar the house so early in a better neighbourhood. Judith would be able to walk the streets in safety.

Burden had refused – he claimed it was more Christian to stay in the Garden and work to restore its reputation. The Society for the Reformation of Manners relied upon decent citizens to live amidst all this vice, and inform on those breaking the law.

Stephen had persisted. He was a gentleman and this was not a gentleman’s address. His school friends mocked him for living amidst the lowest wretches on earth. They made lewd comments about his sister and the experience she must have gained just from looking out of her window each day. For the sake of the family’s reputation – could his father not see that they must leave?

Burden had grown angry. He would not be lectured to by a mewling child. He knew what was best for this family. He seized the terrified boy by the neck and pushed him downstairs into the workshop – threw him across the bench and ordered Ned to hold him down. Then he’d taken a leather belt and thrashed his son without mercy. When it was over, and Stephen crawled weeping across the floor, Burden grabbed him and pushed his face into a pile of sawdust.

‘This is what pays for your schooling,’ he snarled, as his son choked in the dust. ‘My hard sweat. All those years and what do they send back to me? A primping fop with porridge for brains. Well that’s an end to it. I shan’t pay another farthing. You will stay here and learn how to be a man, like Ned.’

That night Stephen had lain awake whimpering on his bed, battered and bruised, unable to sleep from the pain. And so he had been the first to hear Alice scream thief . The first to hobble out on to the landing. The first to enter his father’s room and discover Burden in bed with Alice. The hypocrisy. The injustice . No wonder he’d taken his revenge the next day in front of Gonson. ‘ Are you sure I should tell them what I saw, Father? What I truly saw last night? ’

And now I wondered: why had Joseph Burden been so determined to stay on Russell Street? There was something disproportionate in Stephen’s punishment – even for a father as stern as Burden. Ned had told me that Burden had never beaten his son so cruelly before. And for what? Asking for something perfectly natural – a decent home for himself and his sister. A chance for improvement.

Why had the thought of leaving Russell Street provoked such fury in Burden? Had he feared they would mock him – his new neighbours on Grosvenor Square? While his son had been transformed into a gentleman, Burden was still a craftsman, with battered hands and a rough demeanour. Was it that simple? Was he afraid of being humiliated by his betters? Here on Russell Street he was free to look down upon his neighbours. Out west they would look down upon him.

The story made me uneasy, even so – the old bear snapping and snarling and refusing to leave his cage. I wondered if he were concealing a darker truth – some pressing reason why the family had to stay on Russell Street. Perhaps the cage was locked.

I looked down at Stephen, weeping in his father’s clothes, and felt wretched for the boy. Wretched for myself too – there was no honour or decency in this. And I would gain no more from him now. I left him, crossing the landing to Judith’s room. I could hear Felblade speaking with an older woman: Mrs Jenkins, who ran the bakery across the street. Of course. She would have scurried here as soon as the news reached her, eager to offer comfort and lap up the drama. A foul-weather friend, Kitty called her.

I tapped lightly upon the door and entered unobserved save for Felblade, who offered me a dry, mirthless grin. Judith lay beneath the sheets, face to the wall. Mrs Jenkins sat beside her, murmuring the usual platitudes. Your father was a good man. He ’ s at peace now, my dear.

‘Twice a day, Mrs Jenkins,’ Felblade creaked, holding up a bottle filled with a viscous brown liquid. Opiates, I supposed, mixed with molasses. Or coal tar, knowing Felblade.

‘I must speak with Miss Burden before she drinks that,’ I said from the doorway.

Mrs Jenkins gasped as she saw me. ‘Oh! You devil! Have you come to murder us?’

It was only then that I realised I was still clutching the dagger. Unfortunate. I slipped it in my coat pocket. ‘No indeed, Mrs Jenkins.’

‘My heart! I shall die of shock!’ she declared, clutching her bosom and looking sturdy as a carthorse.

Judith sat up as if waking from a dream. Her dark hair hung lifeless about her face, falling into her soft grey eyes. She seemed shocked and frightened – just as she had the night Sam had stolen into the house. The night she’d discovered her father was sharing a bed with Alice.

I gave a short bow. ‘Miss Burden. My deepest condolences.’

Her brows furrowed. ‘You were arrested.’

‘A misunderstanding. I have been charged with investigating your father’s death.’

‘But you hated my father. No… no… do not deny it.’ A desolate look crossed her face. ‘I hated him too sometimes. There were times when… When I wished him dead.’ She began to shiver. ‘Wicked,’ she murmured under her breath. ‘Such a wicked girl.’

I sat down upon the bed, in the warm dent left by Mrs Jenkins. Judith cast me a timid look, pushing the hair from her face. Her left eye was bruised and swollen.

‘Who did this?’

She twisted the sheets beneath her hands. ‘It was my fault. I couldn’t stop crying. Stephen had to strike me, to calm me down…’

‘Stephen’s a good boy,’ Mrs Jenkins interrupted. ‘I’m sure he feared you might have another fit.’ She gave me a sharp look. ‘Judith is a delicate girl. We must all be very gentle.’

‘Unbalanced. Melancholic,’ Felblade agreed, packing away his bag. He slurped his tongue across his teeth. ‘A bleeding will restore her. I shall return tomorrow…’

‘No… no!’ Judith cried in alarm. ‘No more blood. No more blood.’ She closed her eyes and began to shake.

‘Shame on you, Mr Felblade,’ Mrs Jenkins tutted. ‘We will have no more talk of blood and knives, or corpses butchered like pigs in a market. We must not speak of such things! Murderers creeping about the place in the dead of night. Poor Mr Burden stabbed and stabbed again with a vicious blade. Murdered in his own bed while everyone slept! Where is your sensitivity, Mr Felblade? Miss Burden is not sick – she’s tired and frightened. And who can blame her after what she saw this morning? Oh! It makes me dizzy to think of all that blood… You’ve been very brave, my dear,’ she called across to Judith. ‘I’m sure I should have fainted clean away if I had seen my father with a blade plunged in his heart. Warm broth and bed rest, that’s what’s needed.’