The Masters of Bow Street (3 page)

Eve Milharvey uttered a gasp and buried her face in her hands. James Marshall stared at the swinging man as if mesmerised by the sight. Ruth Marshall, for whose husband’s death this man had died, watched with swollen eyes in a face drained of colour, then slowly lowered her head and locked her fingers in silent prayer.

The soldiers looked on impassively. The Reverend Sebastian Smith, a small, plump and mild-looking man, invoked his God in tones which only those close by could hear for all whose souls had departed this earth.

‘Oh, Lord, have mercy on this man, Thy creature, spare him the fires of hell, take him to Thy bosom. . .’

His voice and all other sounds were drowned in the fresh chanting, in the noise of movement, as Frederick Jackson’s men fought to get at Furnival.

‘Hang, hang, hang Furnival.’

Furnival had not moved.

He raised his left hand again and sniffed the biting snuff into his left nostril, and almost on the instant there was a bark of command.

‘Quick - march.’

And from the direction of Hyde Park, from main roads and narrow side streets, came large numbers of dragoons, marching with their muskets at the ready. Furnival, as Chief Magistrate of Bow Street, had arranged their presence, rare at Tyburn, because he had been alive to the possibility of riot after Jackson’s death, or even before. The tramp, tramp, tramp of feet now echoed to the chanting, while from the crowd more of Furnival’s hired men moved with military precision and formed a ring around the magistrate.

Furnival looked towards the groups of men who had come to kill him. A stone struck his left shoulder but he did not appear to notice.

‘Go home, all of you,’ he called. ‘Go home and hold your wake and you’ll have nothing to fear this day. Stay and make more trouble and I’ll have every one of you in Newgate within the hour.’

Another stone glanced off his arm.

A man growled: ‘We’ll kill you one day.’

‘But not today,’ said Furnival, and he turned his back. ‘Go home.’

Not a single man approached him further; and as the men who had come to kill dispersed among the crowd so did Furnival’s men, watching for the more blatant pickpockets; and as the minutes passed, the festive air, which had been everywhere before the hanging, began to return; laughter came in spontaneous gusts; the sellers of food, of gin and of ale, those who offered all the fun of the fair, began to do a roaring trade; men and women and some children sprang up as if from the ground carrying sheaves of single printed sheets. These were the forged or fictional stories, some based on things Jackson had said in prison, but few cared to wait for the official one the Ordinary would produce tomorrow morning.

‘Last speech and dying testament of Frederick Jackson, his very words, from first to last, only twopence. Read all the things you couldn’t hear because of the din. Jacker’s own words, words you’ll never forget.’

And others hawked more newssheets and bills, whilst a few, with furtive air, began to offer pieces of the rope taken from Jackson’s neck; if genuine, each piece would fetch several pounds.

‘Death speech of Jonathan Wild, not a word missing, printed on special paper, only one penny.’

‘Who’ll buy
The Daily Courant?
Read all about the ‘orrible things that ‘appen in the Fleet. . .’

And so they went on, raucous and never-ending.

At one spot, eating hot pies and drinking lemonade, one family group was busy reading aloud pieces from the confessions while another was arguing amiably.

‘Tyburn’s the best place, I tell you,’ one man declared.

‘I like Newgate better; you don’t have so far to walk,’ the woman argued.

‘What’s the matter with Putney, then, or Kennington? You can take a coach to the gallows and watch everything without moving out of your seat.’

Others of the party began to join in, some preferring the hangings in the Old Kent Road and Wapping, some showing a liking for those outside a shop where a thief had been caught and summarily tried.

‘There’s a book I read,’ the first man said, ‘calls London the City of the Gallows. The author says you can’t come into London by road or by the river without passing some.’

A child, running, fell and began to cry and all thought switched from hanging to the scratches on his knee.

John Furnival, with his three close attendants, walked through the thinning crowd towards Tyburn Pike, where his carriage was waiting. As he neared a little mound which commanded a good view of the hanging, a lad dressed neatly in tweed breeches, a jacket which reached halfway down his thighs and a shirt with ruffles at cuffs and neck ran forward. His slouch cap, of hogskin, was pulled over his left eye. He wore heavy boots, patched at the toes, with thick nails already wearing thin. Before Furnival realised what was happening, the lad took his hand and pressed it to his lips. For a moment the magistrate stood still, aware of the cool lips and the upturned face and the dark curls and touched to emotion because of the lad’s fervour; something stirred in his memory, too, but before the vision grew clear, the boy turned and ran, choking back tears. Furnival strode on, pointed out by hundreds, until suddenly he saw a woman in a dark-grey cloak and black bonnet standing in his path and staring at him.

Again he stopped abruptly. The three men also stopped and put their hands to their pistols and looked about but no one who threatened danger stood nearby, unless the woman hid some weapon beneath the cloak she wore as a disguise.

Furnival said, ‘If you need help, Eve Milharvey, come to me.’

‘I’d sooner ask help of the devil,’ she said. ‘I hope you die in agony, John Furnival.’

She turned and walked away at a good pace, head held high, eyes still blazing with the hatred she had for the man who had hounded down her lover.

No one followed her or recognised her. She was near the creaking cart on which they were now taking Jackson’s body away, drawn by two heavily built farm horses, when she saw a boy. Had she seen him only full face she might not have been so startled or so sure who he was. His profile allowed no doubt at all; the high forehead and the dark curly hair; the hooked nose; the deep-set eyes which might have been carved from marble; the full lips, seen even from where she stood as bow-shaped and beautiful, lips more rightfully a woman’s than a man’s. And the square, thrusting chin, too large in comparison with his other features, making him jaw-heavy, as his father had been. She had seen him once before and recognised him as James Marshall.

His father had worked as a court officer for John Furnival, and had been one of three who had gone to arrest Frederick Jackson for a robbery he had planned and helped to carry out. Jackson might have escaped from that charge of robbery, although some of the stolen silver and coin was still in his home, the home in Loxley Yard to which he had taken her nearly twenty years ago.

But he could not escape the charge of murder. And he had shot Richard Marshall through the heart, not knowing two other of Furnival’s men had been outside the door, waiting to pounce on him when he came hurrying out.

And now here was James Marshall, watching the body of the man who had killed his father as it shook and shifted in the death cart.

And she, Eve Milharvey, felt no deep stirrings of compassion for him, even though she saw no hatred in his eyes but only tears.

He turned blindly, passed her, and ran towards Hyde Park and the turnpike there. Soon he was swallowed up in the crowd and she hurried and caught up with the people following the body, some walking alongside the cart as if they would be pallbearers. Some she knew; among them were the most vicious and cruel of the scoundrels who had looked up to Frederick as their leader.

A question which had often been in her head seemed now to burst inside her. Why had he led them? Why had a man of such calibre placed himself at the head of an army of brutes? What had driven him to the cruelties she knew he had committed when with her he had always been gentle and kind?

The horses’ hooves and the iron wheels clattered over the gravel, the ungreased hubs groaned in a journey to the burial place she had bought for him, just as she had bought the body and the clothes from the hangman, whose property they became. Most bodies were purchased by friends or relatives who could afford them; a few by the Surgeons’ Hall. Once there the surgeons would seize upon them in their greedy thirst for the knowledge which only fresh dead bodies could give. At least she could save Jacker that indignity. No one recognised Eve as she walked with her head bowed, the frills of her black bonnet drawn low over her forehead. Gradually, thoughts blurred and almost died away, but one remained: that more and more of the men who owed Jacker their lives and their livelihoods dropped out of the procession, a cortege fit for a caricature by Hogarth. Some stopped at a grogshop for a penn’orth of gin; some saw a face or a pair of eyes or a low-cut revealing dress and followed it.

Outside the tavern in St. Giles the hangman himself was auctioning pieces of rope, and even young girls were buying pieces and fondling them, putting them to their cheeks or down their bosoms. From inside, the sound of drunken revelry was at its height and the words of the song which Jacker himself had sung came clearly into the street, making Eve catch her breath.

‘He stopped at The George for a bottle of sack,

And promised to pay for it on his way back!’

Once, near the open space of Lincoln’s Inn, where lawyers lived and worked, she saw a boy and thought mistakenly for a moment that it was young Marshall. And once she saw a man with hair the colour of John Furnival’s, but a smaller man, large enough to remind her of her hatred of the magistrate but not, in her grief, to make it blaze to life.

John Furnival sat well back in his carriage and took the jolting with inward protest but outward calm as the two well-groomed horses and the four iron-banded wheels ran over the cobbles towards the Strand and the narrow streets beyond. He preferred this route when not in a hurry or anxious to travel secretly, for fear of giving notice to his forthcoming victims that he was on his way. The coachman, knowing his whims, took him into the great piazza of Covent Garden, where stood the big houses built by the Duke of Bedford, who had spared no expense to make this the heart of fashionable London.

But this whole area had lost much of its quality. Between here and Bow Street sleazy brothels and thieves’ dens, gaming houses and wooden lean-tos and sheds had been built in once-spacious roads, making hiding place for thieves, assassins and criminals of every kind. Even the Ordinary of Newgate had complained of the danger of the area.

There were good spots, nevertheless, still guarded by private retainers, a kind of militia which could in emergency work together. John Furnival was able to have a stronger force than most, needed if he were to carry out his work as magistrate efficiently, because he was wealthy in his own right and chose this way of spending much of his money, helping to clear London of crime.

At last the carriage turned into Long Acre, where now buildings were making inroads into the fields. Mostly these big barnlike sheds housed wheelwrights and carriage makers of all kinds, but there were long stretches of small houses, near-hovels, some open land, a cemetery in front of the Church of St. Anselm, and many small shops. At the far end this wide thoroughfare narrowed and the carriage crossed Bow Yard into Bow Street. The horses began to slow down from habit. For here was Furnival’s new home, above the offices adjacent to the building which he used as a courtroom, temporary prison, and sleeping quarters for his staff. As the carriage stopped, the footman leapt lightly down onto the raised pavement outside the buildings and opened the door wide. With slow deliberation, Furnival climbed out, so big a man that it was a marvel how he had squeezed himself into the carriage, a greater marvel that he should not get stuck in the door.

Bow Street itself was wide and a number of substantial houses stood back from either side of the road. Almost directly opposite Number Three, which Furnival now leased, was an inn. The government leased the house adjoining Furnival’s, where the official quarters stood. This was considered the centre of London’s criminal courts, and suspects were brought here from as far as Hounslow Heath and Hammersmith as well as many villages in between.

Near these two houses was a row of shops as well as an alehouse, the Bunch of Grapes, frequented by many villainous-looking porters from Covent Garden Market as well as by Furnival’s men. Farther along the street on the same side as Furnival’s house was another, bigger carriage, with gilt borders and a coat of arms on the door panels. Furnival gave it only one glance, then spoke to an elderly man who came out of the offices, down the stone steps and past the stout oaken doors and polished brass torch holders.

‘How long has my brother been here, Moffat?’ Furnival demanded.

‘Not ten minutes since,’ the man answered. ‘I came to give you an advance intimation, sir.’

‘Is he in a bad humour?’

‘I think perhaps he has come to remonstrate with you, Mr. John.

‘As you would like to,’ Furnival said dryly, and the older man did not trouble to deny the charge. ‘Will he burst if I keep him waiting for ten minutes d’you think?’

‘I believe he would be most put out, sir.’

‘And so do I,’ said John Furnival. ‘And so do I. He may be so put out that he will leave me in peace. Take him word that I shall be with him as soon as I can,’ he added, and strode into the offices, with Moffat following, anxious and troubled. His skin had the look of delicate porcelain: a porcelain saint.

‘Mr. John—’

‘He won’t bite you, man!’

‘Mr. John, he knows you have another guest.’

‘Damme, he does. And who is the guest, pray?’

They were in the panelled hall of the old building now, where a log fire burned high in a deep fireplace, its cheerful flames reflected on pewter and silver, on glass and on books behind the glass. The ceiling was beamed and so low that the top of John Furnival’s head missed the lowest part of the middle beam by a bare inch, perhaps less, and sometimes it actually brushed his silky hair. A broad staircase of dark oak, with a banister on one side and panels on the other, led straight from the front door. A passage ran alongside the stairs on one side; beyond this was the court and behind it the cells; one room to the right of the stairs at the back was his own private ‘resting room’. This room could be most easily approached from Bell Lane, a narrow street behind Bow Street. And there his personal guests always waited for him.