never used) the cosh that Mr. Marsden had given me; and, in general, I chose my words carefully.
“Make way, one and all,” I shouted, “for Sir John Fielding, magistrate of the Bow Street Court. All who dare impede him in the discharge of his duties by thought, word, or deed, do so at their own risk. All here are answerable to him and punishable by jail terms of up to ninety days to be served in Newgate.”
Having thus said my piece, I felt a little like the crier for some Oriental potentate. And, indeed, that could not have been far from the impression I created, for all fell silent and opened the way before us three to the Hooker rooms. Did I say that
Even Elizabeth seemed to hang upon my words. She half-lay upon a love seat, ensconced beneath a comforter. Her mouth was half-open as she regarded the three of us.
“Clarissa,” said she, “how nice of you to come and bring. . your. . your employer.”
“Jeremy,” said Sir John, “close the door that we may have some modicum of privacy as we question Mistress Hooker.”
As I turned to do as he bade me, Elizabeth jumped up from the little nest she had made for herself upon the love seat and waved dramatically at the crowd outside the door.
“Friends,” said she, “I ask you to remain, and I shall finish the story. You will hear all!”
There were unhappy groans as I shut the door.
“Mother,” Elizabeth called out, “do you think they will stay?”
Mrs. Hooker came forth from a dark corner of the room. “’Twould be better, daughter, if they did not. Your worry should be naught but making sure all is told to Sir John.”
“Thank you for that bit of advice, Mrs. Hooker. Your daughter would be well-advised to follow it.” He turned left and right as if he were looking round the room. “I have the sense that the room is in disorder. Has the furniture been moved?”
“It has, Sir John,” said I. (I was long past wondering how he managed such feats.)
“Then move things back again, will you?”
With a little help from Clarissa, and Elizabeth pointing the way, we managed to do just that.
“Now bring me a chair.”
I placed one under him and indicated to Elizabeth that she was to resume her place upon the love seat just opposite Sir John.
“Are we ready to proceed?” he asked. Then, hearing our assent, he began. “Elizabeth, we are aware that you attended Easter dinner with Mistress Quigley at the home of your aunt and uncle in Wapping. Is that correct?”
She hesitated, then said, “Yes sir.”
I glanced over at Clarissa. She, in turn, nodded toward Elizabeth’s mother. The woman was visibly shocked. Nothing of this was known to her.
Sir John took the girl through all that we had learned of her actions up to and including the moment that she departed from Kathleen Quigley at the Theatre Royal and took off across Covent Garden in the company of the two young gallants.
When she acknowledged that this, too, was true, it was altogether too much for the Widow Hooker. She had suffered in silence up to then. Now she cried out her daughter’s name as you might wail the name of one who was lost, near dead, or drowning.
Sir John turned to her. “I must caution you against making such a disturbance again. If you do, you must suffer the consequences. Is that clear?”
She said that it was, yet even so, she whimpered and sniffled all through the interrogation. Afterward, he conceded to me that his threat to her was but so much bluffing, and that the mother’s presence was probably a good thing, for she served as a balance to the stern manner he had adopted.
“My question to you, Mistress Hooker-and I charge you to speak only the truth in answering-is this: What happened to you after you left your friend, Mistress Quigley?”
“The two young men, as I should have known, were black-guards, plain and simple,” said she. “No sooner was I separated from Kathleen than the two of them fell to arguing between themselves about me.”
“About you? In what way?”
“Well, the whole question seemed to be whether or not I would do.”
“Do? Again, in what way?”
“Whether I would-how shall I put it? — make the grade. Whether I should, well, qualify.”
“Qualify for what?”
“That is what I earnestly sought to discover. They talked of me as if I were not present, as if I were an animal of some sort.”
“I don’t quite understand,” said Sir John.
“Well, Dick-he was the one on my left-kept repeating that my bosom was not of sufficient size to be interesting. Bobby-it was him on my right-he insisted it was. Or, what he said in all truth was that it didn’t make much difference. Dick said I wasn’t pretty enough. Pretty enough for what, I wanted to know.”
“And you did ask them?”
“Well no, not directly. I wanted to know where they were taking me, for I have a fair sense of direction, and I could tell they weren’t taking me the right way.”
“Which direction were they taking you?”
“Well, north, it seemed to me-which was just opposite of the way I wanted to go.”
“And did you inform them of this?”
“Oh, I did! I told them they were making a great mistake if they thought they could take me some other place but home. They laughed at me. I dug in my heels and told them I would go no further. They did not then laugh, but they dragged me along for thirty or forty feet until I started to scream.”
“And then what?”
“They became quite cross with me. Dick went so far as to shake his walking stick at me and threaten me, telling me what he would do to me if I did not cooperate. But I laughed at him and screamed again. That was when he belabored me about the head, and I fell unconscious.”
“You actually fell upon the ground?”
“Well, not quite, I suppose. They held me up, one each side, and I s’pose I was making my feet go. But I was dazed, unable to know where we were headed. Oh, I was in a terrible state!”
“No doubt you were, but-”
At that moment, a knock sounded upon the door to the hall. Had I not made it sufficiently plain with my threats that we were not to be disturbed?
“Jeremy, see what that’s about, will you?”
“Certainly, Sir John. Shall I send them away?”
“Let’s see who it is first, and then decide, shall we?”
(It was on such occasions as this that he often made me feel like an utter fool.)
I went to the door, opened it, and found a small woman of a size not much larger than Mr. Deuteronomy. She was old, about sixty, and swarthy of complexion.
“Tell her that Goody Moss is here,” said she to me.
“Tell who?”
“The Widow Hooker. ’Twas she who sent for me.”
“Remain here, please,” said I and closed the door.
I went back and announced the woman. Elizabeth’s mother caught her breath. “Oh, the midwife, of course! I completely forgot that I had sent for her-to examine Elizabeth. I thought you would want that, Sir John. It should not take long for her to be pronounced intact. You do want that, I assume?”
He sighed a great sigh and rose from his chair. “Yes, all right,” said he. “Jeremy, come along. We’ll wait out in the hall. Clarissa, I’d like you to remain to serve as witness to these proceedings.”
And so I opened the door once again and beckoned Goody Moss into the room. Then did I see Sir John out and into a corner some distance from the door. About half of those who listened with such sympathy to Elizabeth’s account of her escape had stayed on to hear the tale told complete; they stared at us timidly. I commented upon this to Sir John.
