Jeremy, is all of this ours?”
“Unfortunately, no,” said I, “but one hundred fifty-one pounds and thirteen shillings of it is, which is more than you or I ever expected. I thought I would give you a glimpse of the full swack just to dazzle you proper before Mr. Deuteronomy takes his larger share.”
“How much larger?” she asked in a small voice. “How much is here exactly?”
“Well, there’s our hundred fifty-one pounds and Deuteronomy’s three thousand.”
“Three
“That’s right. He won on Pegasus, the horse he rode Easter at Shepherd’s Bush. He asked me to place a hundred-pound bet on Pegasus.”
“And what were the odds?”
“Thirty to one.”
“I’ve never heard of such odds.”
“Well, that’s what they were, and that’s what they paid.”
I then asked a question that had been at the back of my mind ever since she first gave voice to her plan for making us rich.
“Clarissa,” said I, “how did you learn about racing, and odds, and betting, all of that?”
“I learned about it from my father, of course. How else might I have done?”
Her reprobate father, the cause of so much misery for her, had, in this way, compensated in part for his mischief.
“He was a confirmed bettor,” said she. “He kept promising to take me to all the race meets round London when first I arrived here. Yet in the end he never did.”
I slapped the portmanteau together and buckled it up tight. “I doubt that I shall bet again,” said I, “unless I am well advised by Mr. Deuteronomy himself.”
’Twas not long afterward that Molly came down, rubbing her eyes and yawning. I made my excuses and, wishing to put off my report to Sir John as long as I might, I declared that I would sleep until summoned.
The summons came from Sir John and was brought to me by Clarissa, who was most agitated by the message she carried.
“Jeremy, come at once, oh do!”
I’d heard her footsteps upon the stairs and was sitting up in bed when she came a-rushing into my garret room.
“What? What is it?”
“Elizabeth is returned!”
“Who? Elizabeth? Who is-oh yes, Elizabeth Hooker.”
“Sir John wants us both with him. She’s evidently much the worse for her ordeal.”
“What ordeal? Tell me.”
“No, get dressed. You’ll hear about it on the way.”
I did as I was told. I could not have slept long-an hour or two perhaps-for my mind was foggy and my tongue was thick. There was little for me to say in such a state, and so I did the wise thing and simply listened as we sped across town to Number 5 Dawson’s Alley, where her mother kept a lodging house. She had sent a neighbor boy with the news of her daughter’s return. Sir John had got little from him, but that little he repeated to Clarissa and me as we rocked along over the cobblestones in our hackney coach.
“From what I gather,” said he, “she was in a rather bad state when she appeared at her mother’s door. She was not fully dressed, though in no wise naked-in her shift, as I gather. She was altogether gaunt-lost weight noticeably in less than a week-again, according to the boy. The mother is understandably upset but seems to know little more than we do. If we can just keep the girl away from others, and more or less a ‘clean’ witness, then we may learn a good deal from her.”
Clearly, this was his hope. He had often stressed to me the importance of seeing witnesses as quickly as possible and getting their story fresh from their lips. When many have talked to a witness before the investigator has his chance, then the story may have been edited in any number of ways to flatter the witness or to please the investigator. Or, worse still, the unauthorized questioner may suggest many things to the witness, which she, in turn, passes on to the investigator as having truly been seen or heard by her. Thus Sir John did continue to search for such a “clean” witness, though rarely did he find one.
Though I had not asked the time of anyone, from the position of the sun in the sky I judged it to be not much after eight in the morning when we arrived at Number 5 Dawson’s Alley. The streets were crowded with pedestrians, as I had observed through the hackney window: the residents of London were hurrying off to their day’s employment. My two companions went to the door as I settled with the driver of the coach and then hurried after them. Just as I reached the step, the door to the lodging house swung open and a man of large proportions presented himself.
“You must be Sir John of Bow Street,” he blurted out, “the Blind Beak, as they say.”
“Why? Is there but one blind man in all of London?” Sir John asked belligerently. He was not at all fond of the epithet.
The man who had loomed so large in the doorway now seemed to shrink before our eyes. “I didn’t mean no offense by it,” said he, stepping aside and opening the door wide.
Clarissa and I exchanged glances. I noted that she had pursed her lips that she might not break into snickers. I winked; she winked back.
“Jeremy?”
With that Sir John called me into action. In a trice, I was by his side, my arm extended that he might grasp it as we followed the man up the stairs to the first and then to the second floor. All during our climb, our guide talked ceaselessly.
“Aw, it’s a terrible thing, ain’t it?” said he, throwing the words back over his shoulder to us. “She come back in the middle of the night just weepin’ and cryin’ something terrible, and wakin’ up half the house. For myself-my room is right there next to where Mrs. Hooker dosses-I heard her right off. I was up and on my feet and sticking my head out my door even before she opened up to find out who was there.”
“What time of the night was this?” asked Sir John.
“Oh, I don’t know, round three, four o’clock at night, I reckon.”
“Could you be a bit more exact than that?”
“Oh I s’pose I could. It must have been closer to four than three, ’cause it wasn’t long till I heard the church bells strike four.”
We kept climbing. It was not long till we heard something of a buzz above us. There was little to say between us: each had his own notion of the number of people who waited above. Yet none, I think, was prepared for the many we saw crowded round the Hooker door. And there must indeed have been more inside, for the attention of those in the hall was directed past the threshold and into the apartment. I will say for them, however, that, for such a group, they were reasonably quiet-listening.
“. . and then did I at last admit to myself,” came a familiar voice, “that I could do naught but jump.” (It was Elizabeth, the heroine of her own story.)
“Brave girl!” responded one of the audience in the hall.
“You showed good English pluck, dearie. Didn’t she, all?”
And to that there sounded a great affirmative chorus, even a scattering of applause from her listeners.
“So I did what had to be done-and I
Then did the scattering swell to an ovation, the like of which I had heard exceeded only at Mr. Garrick’s Drury Lane Theatre.
We were not at their level, and though the crowd of people at the door, male and female, was even larger than I had expected, they were remarkably well behaved.
“How many would you say there are?” Sir John whispered.
“There are a good many, surely more than twenty,” I replied sotto voce. “Twenty-five at least.”
“I shall count on you to make a path for me.”
This was a task that so often came to me that I had developed a method for clearing the way for the magistrate. I did, first of all, speak in a voice much louder than was my wont. I kept in sight (though, naturally, I
