The Masters of Bow Street (44 page)

Thanks to John Fielding’s persistence and thoroughness one or two reliable constables were always in the Strand, where their very presence could avert trouble.

‘Who is there?’ she called, her heart thumping.

No one spoke but the door opened wider and David Winfrith came slowly forward. There was a wild expression in his eyes as he slammed the door so hard Mary was afraid the children might wake. But no cry was made and no alarm was raised.

‘David,’ she said. ‘What is it? Is everything all right at home?’

He said, breathing very hard, ‘I can’t go home.’

‘But David—’

‘I tell you I can’t go home,’ he went on fiercely. ‘I can’t go back to a wife who is a living death, to a house which is a den of accumulated filth and to a fire that is always cold and dead, no fit place for me or the child. Mary, I tell you I can’t go back!’

She did not speak, realising that no attempted persuasion would help him, but she went forward, holding her arms out. As he came to her, stumbling, she felt his thin body quivering, and felt him racked with sobs. For a while they stood without moving, she not knowing what best to do, until she began to stroke the back of his head and his short hair. She behaved as she might with a troubled child, soothing him in his distress and seeking a way to help. He felt so thin and light against her that she longed to lift and put him to bed, knowing how much he needed sleep. But if she did so, his dignity would be sorely hurt, and this was not a time when he should be hurt more.

Slowly, slowly, she became aware of him as a man.

He was pressed tight against her bosom and she had not realised that as he had wept or as she had moved to ease her position, the top button of her dress had come undone; and she had changed hurriedly tonight and had not put on a petticoat. Suddenly, he began to kiss her between the breasts, as if he were in overwhelming need of her. He found words which at first she did not hear but which gradually took on clarity and substance.

‘It is a year since Sarah and I have lain together, a year of torment! . . . Mary, Mary, you don’t know, you cannot know, how I have come to love you. . . Mary, darling Mary, don’t turn me away, I beg you. Don’t turn me away, I need you so much.’

There was not only desire but there was unsuspected strength in him.

And there was weakness in her, and more loneliness in the nights than she had dreamed there could be, sleeping by James.

There was the strength of passion in him.

‘Mary, Mary!’

His lips sought hers and crushed them, and suddenly they lay upon the couch, and she felt herself responding to him, unaware of shame or anything but a fierce surge of passion and, on an instant, utter stillness.

He lay upon her, and he was crying.

She did not remember what they had said or how long it had taken them to dress, or even how he had looked when he had reached the door and turned momentarily towards her.

But when she was in the great four-poster bed she was still aware of him, and she was saying over and over to herself in a shocked way: ‘Why should I want him? Why should I want him?’

And she, too, began to cry.

‘Jamey,’ Benedict Sly said as they reached the narrowing of the Strand, ‘you are very quiet tonight. In fact I would say that the only one of us who was truly himself was Mary.’

‘Mary is always herself,’ James replied.

They stood on a corner waiting for a lull in the succession of carriages and sedan chairs coming from the two great theatres. The Strand was alive with people, the alehouses were lit with more flares than one could count, and the clatter of iron wheels, iron-tipped boots and horseshoes was turned into a cacophony by a group of drunken sailors coming from Charlie Wylie’s new coffee house.

A Bow Street man, carrying a pistol, rode fast along one side, recognised by only a few. His manoeuvres caused a temporary halt in the flow and James and Benedict were carried over the road with a flood of people who had been waiting to cross.

‘If no way is found to control the traffic, it will become as great a problem as crime,’ Benedict observed. ‘This is five or six times greater in volume than it is in New York.’ They reached the comparative quiet of Fleet Street and he changed the subject smoothly. ‘What is on your mind, Jamey?’

‘David,’ James replied. ‘Also Sir John Fielding and Bow Street. And these accursed politicians. One day—’

‘If it isn’t Benedict Sly back from the colonies!’ a man called from the doorway of a coffee house, dimly lit both inside and out. James knew him as the editor of a new daily newspaper which had appeared in London during the past months.

‘Ben, you’re back at the right time,’ the man called out again. ‘You must have a nose for news; you’re a sly one!’

The pun on Benedict’s name brought forth a gust of laughter and now half-a-dozen journalists spilled out of the coffee houses at this end of Fleet Street. It was late enough for most of the morning newspapers to have been ‘put to bed’ and so the men might have been expected to be inside; many of them spent the night talking and dozing, and breakfasted here before going to their rooms. Clearly there was some cause for this exodus.

‘What is this news you’re talking about?’ demanded Benedict. ‘Have we won a war or has the new king died?’

‘You don’t know?’

The man who had accosted Benedict seemed astonished; so did the others who had gathered in a circle.

‘I hope I shall soon,’ Benedict replied. ‘Could the Cabinet have fallen?’

‘That’s nearer the subject,’ a man declared. ‘The Member for Minshall was killed in a collision between his carriage and a post-office coach today. Died of a broken neck as clean as if the Shadows had attacked him.’ The Shadows was a name given to a newly organised gang of criminals. ‘You know what that means, Ben. Old Jerry Topham was for Pitt right or wrong, and no one could manipulate the House so well as he. Now Bute will have an even greater edge over Pitt, no matter who’s returned for Minshall at the by-election.’

‘If the Tories can keep Pitt down, the Ring will have more influence, and he’s already seeking too much,’ another put in. ‘We shall have peace abroad but at heavy cost.’

Politically, this was news of rare importance, James knew.

James, little concerned with foreign policy, his sense of national pride battered by conditions in London and the obstinacy of both government and opposition to a national peacemaking force, was concerned only with the impact of these tidings on this particular situation. Minshall was one of the new boroughs close to London which had a large population of houseowners. It could not be bought and sold or dealt with as patronage, like many of the rotten boroughs. Voting had always been close between Whig and Tory, and there was no way of telling who would win a by-election. His one hope was that the new member might be a champion of Sir John Fielding.

Bidding Benedict good night, he slipped quietly away. He did not quite know why he delayed returning to Mary; it was as if he were drawn by some unknown compulsion. First he walked at good speed to Ludgate, for a view of St. Paul’s. Then he turned left, into the shadowy lanes, the old haunts, which, despite new laws demanding more lights for all hours of darkness, had little light save a crack here and there from a window or doorway. The darkness, the distant noises, the furtive movements of men, did not worry him. Here he was at home. Soon he passed the archway leading to Ebenezer Morgan’s warehouses; there was the spot where he, James, had been shot down by the only one of the Twelves to escape; the narrow lane along which he had walked on the night of his meeting with Mary; the corner where he had flung Tom Harris against the wall.

Tom had since been a victim of the swift upsurges of cholera. And not a single man who had served John Furnival at Bow Street in a peace-keeping capacity was still there. Most were dead.

Just as the Twelves had at one time struck fear into the hearts of many, so now a new robber gang, the Shadows, made London an unsafe place to walk. Gradually a picture of the gang had evolved from tidbits of information from John Fielding’s men and from turnpike keepers as well as from victims of their attacks. The highwaymen struck swiftly and savagely out of the darkness. They used silent weapons: knives to drive between the ribs or into the bowels; cord of hemp with which to strangle; staves weighted heavily enough to crack a skull at a single blow. Increasingly reports came of attacks by footpads who wore cloth over their boots to silence all sound, stepped swiftly behind their victim, flung an arm about his neck, choking him to silence, then yanked his head back with such force that the neck snapped.

Hepburn, the man whom Charley Green was supposed to have killed, had died in such a way. The prosecution had made much of this because Charley’s arms had developed such powerful muscles as he shifted boxes and sacks of vegetables and fruit at the market.

James wondered tensely about the government’s reception of Sir John Fielding’s plan, all-encompassing, yet at the same time within reach. The authorities must stop the dreadful folly of widening the crimes for which the penalty was death. It was now one hundred and sixty! And for such crimes! Stealing more than one loaf of bread, entering an enclosed garden, cutting down a bush or a tree!

Surely Bute must listen to the magistrate; all London must listen! He, James, must make the whole of the metropolis take heed; he must find a way to compel the government to act.

But how?

Out of the blue the answer came, glaringly obvious to James now that he could see it. As suddenly and as urgently he wanted to see Mary. His strides lengthened and quickened as he swung into the Strand from St. Martin’s Lane. The crowd had thinned and many of the coffee houses were now closed, but he had no thought for anyone or anything but his wife.

He unlocked the side door of the premises and ran up the heavy oak staircase, calling, ‘Mary, Mary!’

Mary, lying awake with her strange, tormenting thoughts, said to herself: ‘I cannot talk to him tonight. I must pretend to be asleep.’

James heard one of the children cough as he reached the landing and lowered his voice as he called again: ‘Mary, my love. Mary!’

There was no whispered response when he reached their bedroom, the light from flares flickering about the room, reflecting from the mirror and the high gloss of the pitcher and bowl on the marble surface of the washstand. He tiptoed in, more eager than he had been for a long, long time.

‘Mary!’ he whispered urgently.

She lay with her back towards him, facing the window. He could see enough of her face to feel sure that she was asleep. When he stopped by the side of the bed, he could see the regular movement of her bosom and her lips. He had rarely seen her more exhausted.

‘Mary,’ he said brokenly, ‘never have I needed you so.’

I cannot talk to him,
she thought desperately.
I cannot because of what could follow. I cannot lie with him tonight.

She heard the hopelessness in his voice when he said again, ‘Mary.’

Silence followed, and was broken only by rustling movements as he turned away and began slowly to undress. He had come burning with the desire to talk, to tell her what had happened, and yet, if she was so exhausted, how could he wake her?

He did not try again.

He moved to the bed and began to shift the bedclothes carefully, so as not to disturb her, when suddenly one of the children screamed, and on the instant, Mary opened her eyes and stared beyond her husband to the door. James turned and hurried out as the child screamed again, and in a moment he saw Charles sitting up in bed, eyes wide with terror.

By the time he reached the bed, Mary was at the other side, hands on the child, saying in a soothing voice, ‘It is all right, Charles beloved. You were having a bad dream. It is all right . . . it is all right.’

The child clutched his mother, but after a few minutes his eyes closed and Mary allowed him to sink gently back onto the pillows. She appeared to concentrate only on the child but she was thinking with unexpected calmness: It is the voice of God making me listen to Jamey.

Soon she smiled up at James, saying, ‘He will sleep now, I think. He dreams so much.’

They moved towards the foot of the little bed, and James put his arm about her and she rested her head on his shoulder.

In that position they moved to the other bed and the cot and Mary adjusted the bedclothes of both Jimmy and Dorothy before turning back to the door. As they got into bed, she felt her husband’s body against hers and the pressure of his arm, she gave a little shudder.

‘Are you so cold?’ James asked.

‘I think I was a little frightened.’

‘You were waked out of a dead sleep. No wonder you were frightened!’ He kissed her cheeks and held her more closely, going on in a voice of great contrition. ‘Mary, I know I have been difficult to live with during these past few weeks. I am sorry.’

‘Your trouble is your conscience,’ she said with forced lightness. ‘I suspect that you have tried yourself more than you have me.’

‘Bless you!’

He kissed her again, but as yet there was no passion and she sensed his deep preoccupation and what he was going to say. She even thought that his preoccupation might be so great that he would talk until he fell asleep.

‘Mary,’ he said, ‘I have decided what I must do.’

‘And what must that be?’ she asked. But before he could answer she went on: ‘If Sir John Fielding, with his position and his authority, his reputation and his friends, cannot succeed, dare you have even hope?’

‘More,’ he said. ‘I am sure I can do it.’

She looked into his face, and as she absorbed the warmth of his body, she felt the memory of what had happened with David receding. This night, if she could do it, she must be utterly his.

She made herself ask, without scoffing, ‘And how will you go about it, Jamey?’

‘I shall stand for Parliament as the Member for Minshall.’ James explained what he had heard from the newspapermen, and went on with great confidence. ‘I am known well enough by the electors of Minshall to win the seat there, and I shall be the voice in Parliament and the country for all those things which must be done. I believe that once a voice is raised in Parliament, then both Members and the people will listen. And I have sufficient money, Mary, you need not fear. The business will flourish more when it is owned by Mr. Londoner, Member for Minshall!’ There was fierce excitement in him. ‘Tell me! Is that not the answer? Don’t you agree?’