“I guess you know what happened to this one, the one that didn’t need no work done on it. I loaned it to Katy Tiddle, and there it sat with her. Might never have got it back, if she hadn’t got herself murdered.
“But anyway, that wasn’t the worst of it with Lord Lamford. The worst was his personal habits, his ‘amusements,’ as he called them. There never was a Lady Lamford, but I don’t know that he would have been any different if there had been a wife, because in my opinion the man wasn’t right in his head. Maybe one of those mad doctors they got at Bedlam could have done something with him-but prob’ly not.”
“Tell me about his ‘amusements,’” said I to him.
At that, he sighed. “Well, I might as well get to it, for that’s what this is all about. I’d been there near a year when I started to hear rumors and little hints from the big-house staff about him-how he liked them young and didn’t care how much he had to pay, and so on. But I didn’t really understand what they meant by young until one day this little girl-couldn’t have been more than five or six-must’ve escaped from where they kept her locked up and come down to see the ‘horsies.’ I could tell by the way she talked that she was from London. Then this old bat, the housekeeper, she comes down and slaps her good and proper and tells her that Lord Lamford is going to be very unhappy with her. And so on. She told her that if she ever did this again, she couldn’t be his queen anymore. I could never quite figure out what he did when he was through with them. There must have been-oh, I don’t know how many in the time I was there. The truth is, I didn’t want to know. I looked the other way.
“But Lord Lamford must have had some idea how I felt about him. Maybe I was a little careless and spoke out in front of one of them in the big house, and the word was passed on. Or maybe I wore the wrong sort of expression too often when I looked upon him, for truth to tell, the man disgusted me something horrible.
“Anyway, he seemed determined to bring me into it, and he did it the worst way he could-by making me part of his crime from first to last. About a month ago he come out from the house at the end of the day just to tell me he had a request of me-a ‘request’ was even stronger than a ‘suggestion. ’ It meant, if you didn’t do it, and do it right, you might as well just leave and not come back. He told me to ride to Bermondsey and go halfway cross London Bridge. There I’d meet a fella named Hogg who had something for me to bring back to the big house. That’s how he put it.
“Well, I did just like he said, and there at the midpoint in London Bridge, I come across the man named Hogg sheltering against the cold and holding on to the hand of a little girl. I thought she was about five or six, but later on I found out she was all of eight years.”
“She always was small for her age,” put in Mr. Deuteronomy, thus confirming what I had suspected.
Bennett nodded. “That’s right, Deuteronomy,” said he. “Just like I told you, it was Maggie, your niece.” Then did he return to his tale: “This fella didn’t say more than four or five words, just ‘Here’s what you came for.’ Then he lifted her up to me, and I held her close against the cold, ’cause by now ’twas after dark, and I feared she might catch a chill. She was quite the charmer, she was. She said she’d never been up top a horse before. And I told her I took care of the horses, and she wanted to know all about that, and so that was just about all we talked about all the way back to the big house.”
At this point, Mr. Bennett stopped. He breathed deeply a time or two, as if to gain control of himself, then did he set his jaw before continuing. “The next part,” said he, “is hard to tell.” Yet he managed, by stopping from time to time, wiping his tears before they became a problem, and clearing his throat as necessary.
“So we got there to the big house,” he resumed. “I carried her to the door, and the housekeeper came and took her from me. I heard no more of her or from her for quite some time, two weeks at least. But then at night I began to hear weeping; just the sort of tears to break you heart. Then there was nothing more until, toward the end, there was some screaming. Deuteronomy here didn’t hear none of it because it was always at night that the tears and the screams came, and by that time he was back here in the Haymarket. There was this one night it got terrible bad, just before Easter. But then it stopped, and somehow or other that seemed even worse.
“They sent somebody down for me, and right at the door I was met by the housekeeper, and she takes me upstairs. She unlocks the door, and she takes me inside what seemed like a child’s room, a-what is it they call it? — a nursery. There was toys, dolls and such, all over it. The bed didn’t seem to have nobody in it, just blankets and a pillow. Only then, the housekeeper lifted up the pillow, and there was Maggie, the little girl I picked up on London Bridge. Dead. ‘Who done this?’ I asked the housekeeper. And she gave me a kind of smirk, and she says, ‘Who do you think?’ She took a blanket and wrapped the body in it, even covered her face up. Then she presents it to me. ‘Here,’ says she. ‘Lord Lamford wants you to dispose of this.’ I’d no choice but to take it from her. I went back to the stable, saddled up a horse, and took the trail to the river. There’s a place upriver with a shallow bank. I threw Maggie’s body into the Thames right there, and kept the blanket, as I was told to do.”
Having said his piece, Mr. Bennett halted. He pulled from his pocket a kerchief and blew his nose loudly upon it.
“When we came up with that ticket for the pistol at Griffin’s,” said Deuteronomy to me, “I was naturally pretty curious, because I could remember the very day that Bennett was sent off with it. As he said, we were just starting to train Pegasus for racing.”
“Did you confront him with it immediately?”
“No, I started to work on him, though. It wasn’t till the journey back from Newmarket that he started to see things my way. I told him to talk to you-tell you the story-then you could sort of prepare the way for him with Sir John.”
“I ask him, could I trust you, and he said he’d trusted you with all his winnings,” said Mr. Bennett to me. “I don’t know what laws I’ve broken, but I know I must have broken some, but what I did in getting rid of the body ain’t nothing compared to what Lord Lamford did in killing that child. But what I done has been on my conscience something terrible.”
“When did you begin to suppose that the little girl you picked up on London Bridge was Mr. Deuteronomy’s niece?” I asked.
“Well, he told the tale of Maggie disappearing and then his sister going off somewheres, and I began to wonder because the times matched up pretty fair. And then Deuteronomy showed me the dueling pistol I’d left off for repair and said the woman who had the mate to it-Katy Tiddle-lived in a room next to his sister and Maggie. But now Sir John Fielding had it and considered it property to do with the investigation of Katy’s murder.” Then he wailed: “Oh, how did I ever manage to get in with that drunken whore?”
Bennett was so disturbed by the rhetorical challenge he had offered himself that I thought it likely that he might break into tears once again. Though he did not, I thought it wise to get him to Sir John immediately.
“I fear your confession will be useless unless you make it direct to Sir John. Why not come with me now? He would, I’m sure, listen to you, no matter what the hour.”
“Alas, I cannot. I think it likely that I might not return from such a trip. If I’m to go to Newgate, I shall need all my money to bribe the guards. I’ll go back and gather together what I can and return on the morrow soon as ever I can.”
“Must we do it so?” I asked. “I can virtually guarantee that you would not be sent to Newgate, but rather to the Fleet.” I saw that made little impression upon him. I could not persuade him to go with me to Bow Street, and so I did urge him to come in the morning, if at all possible, all to no avail. He repeated that he would come soon as he could. He stood, bade me goodbye, and, pocketing the pistol, made for the door. Deuteronomy bounced out of his chair and accompanied Bennett to the door. There they exchanged a few words and Bennett left.
“Well, what did you think of that?” Mr. Deuteronomy asked me.
“Why, I believed him. Did you not?”
“I’ve known him for two years, and I’ve yet to hear a lie pass his lips.”
“When did you hear this from him?”
“’Course I suspected ever since I saw that pistol, but it was just last night on the drive back from Newmarket that he told me all. He’s been carrying a terrible burden for over a month.”
“I can see that,” said I. “He seems a man haunted by guilt.”
And so did I return to Bow Street, quite bursting to tell Sir John of what I had just heard from Bennett. Yet upon my arrival, I discovered that it was far later than I had supposed. Past midnight it was, and not a soul awake in our upper floors of the court. I had not heart to wake anyone to tell them, though, I confess, the thought did cross my mind.
Next morning, I was up at my usual early hour. I set the fire and lit it and waited a bit impatiently for Sir John to appear. He arrived last of all. As he sat down, I told him eagerly that last night I had heard news that
