John’s was the first face that the chief magistrate saw when he threw open the heavy wooden door of his office in an explosion of energy which made even Mr. Laing, the head clerk, jump.
“You!” He barked at John. “Fetch the maul!”
“Sir? Fetch them all? Fetch who, sir?”
“The maul! Bring me the murder weapon, confound you! Are you a complete simpleton?” And Mr. Harriott flung a ring of keys at John, who awkwardly caught it. “The maul in the store-room. Bring it here!”
John knew better than to protest that he was not a judicial clerk—he ran to the back door and down the outside back stairs to the storage room and he fumbled with half-a-dozen keys before he found the correct one. As he prowled through the gloomy, low-ceilinged room, crammed with barrels and boxes, he heard Mr. Harriott’s angry rumbling through the floorboards above his head and the exasperated replies of one of the Shadwell magistrates.
“Not our jurisdiction! Not our jurisdiction! Perhaps the Home Secretary would be so good as to inform me, what he thinks I ought to have done, when the murders occurred, sir, on our very doorstep! Mr. Horton was summoned to the scene before the bodies were warm! Should Mr. Horton have refused to respond? Should I have slept soundly through the night, while a deranged murderer stalked the streets?”
“The Home Secretary has only questioned the propriety of your issuing a proclamation and a reward, from your office, sir. The Shadwell office, Mr. Harriott, would not presume to offer a reward for a crime which occurred on the river, and in the same spirit—”
“And how do you know, sir, that this outrage was not perpetrated by a foreign sailor? What could be more probable? The very persons whom our office watches over, night and day, and keep in order. Shall I instruct my men to be deaf, dumb and blind, as they go about their duties, rather than offend the tender pride of your officers?”
“Every public office is apprehending and questioning suspicious persons all over London, and you are encouraged to continue to do so, Mr. Harriott. Your interest and cooperation has been highly valuable, sir, highly valuable, but the Home Secretary has directed that the Shadwell office—”
“With all due respect, the public is clamouring for every public official in England to involve himself in this affair! But it appears the Home Secretary is more taken up with humiliating and humbling me, than with finding a fiend lurking in our midst.”
At last John, fumbling in the gloom, found and seized the maul, which had been placed on a high shelf. It was long, and heavy, and he had to set it down on the landing to re-lock the door of the storeroom. Taking it up again, he paused, out of overpowering curiousity, at finding himself holding something which had brutally ended the lives of three persons, and examined the weapon with fascination.
John noticed a small depression under the thick layer of dried blood on the head of the maul. He moistened his thumb in a puddle on the wet railing, and rubbed vigorously at the spot, revealing two initials punched into the metal: “JP.”
“Mr. Harriott! Mr. Harriott!” he cried, running up the stairs. “Mr. Harriott, have you seen this, sir?”
Mr. Harriott and his visitors all crowded around and looked, and exclaimed, and someone said, “it is a very great pity, don’t you think, that no-one thought to examine the weapon for such marks before now—it is a full week gone by—and you have only now discovered this?”
“I shall cause a new handbill to be issued, with a better description,” said Mr. Harriott, but his earlier truculence was gone, replaced now with a conciliating and subdued manner.
“Do not trouble yourself, Mr. Harriott. We shall take the weapon with us and commission an accurate sketch of it, and issue a new hand-bill. This is a Shadwell matter. Thank you for your cooperation, sir. Good day to you.”
And John dared not meet Mr. Harriott’s eye after the other gentlemen took their leave, with the maul.
* * * * * * *
Mrs. Peckover heard a carriage stop before the parsonage-house. She reached the front door just as Lady Delingpole’s footman was about to raise the knocker, and soon thereafter, Julia Bertram received her august visitor in the parlour, while his lordship waited in the carriage.
Julia enquired politely after Viscount Lynnon and learned he was gone ahead to town.
Lady Delingpole, with a smile, but with a manner not to be refused, motioned Julia to take a seat on a small settee, which was barely large enough for two persons. Lady Delingpole seated herself beside Julia and fixed her with a most significant look.
“And speaking of my son, Miss Bertram,” said Lady Delingpole, fixing her with a most significant look. “Is there anything you would care to confide in me?”
“Oh! Madam, I think you must have heard—please do not alarm yourself, I had not imagined him to be at all—that is—there is nothing—”
Lady Delingpole patted Julia’s hand. “You are a good girl, Miss Bertram, and too sensible to be affronted at what I am about to say. Of course you would be an excellent wife for James, or for any young man, I daresay.”
“I have no expectations whatsoever, indeed, your ladyship.”
“Have you not?”
“I venture to hope that your ladyship will not be offended in turn, if I say, though I am very fond of you, I do not wish to marry your son? And I am well aware he is too young to contemplate such a step, and even if he were not, I do not imagine...” she
