The Price of Murder Read online

“Well, bring her here, child, bring her here.”

  Needing no further encouragement, she set off down the hall at a dizzying clip. When she returned, she had with her a woman of no great age, yet one who bore a face that was lined and careworn; it was plain that the woman had been crying.

  Sir John rose, bidding her to sit down. Once he had resettled himself behind his desk, he leaned forward and asked her name.

  “Jenny Hooker,” said she.

  “And you are the mother of Elizabeth?”

  “I am, sir, and she don’t have nobody but me. Her father died a few years past. I’m a widow now.”

  “I see. Well, could you tell me how long she’s been gone? All the circumstances of her disappearance as you’ve been able to discover them?”

  The tale that she told must have been common enough in London at that time, when such disappearances were reported almost monthly. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was not some faceless name, but rather someone I had met, someone you might say that I knew. As Mrs. Hooker told the details, she began to snivel till Clarissa hastened to her and supplied a kerchief that she might blow her nose.

  It seemed that both mother and daughter had been invited to Mrs. Hooker’s sister’s home in Wapping for Easter dinner. Mrs. Hooker’s duties at the lodging house made it impossible for her to attend, but she encouraged Elizabeth to take the walk there and spend the day with her uncle and aunt. This was what she did, enjoying herself greatly, eating her fill—and then some. She did, in fact, stay so late that her aunt feared that it would be dark before she reached home. Why not stay the night? Yet Elizabeth insisted that she go, for she was certain that the long walk would greatly help her digestion, and so she started out. That was the last anyone had seen of Elizabeth Hooker.

  Sir John listened patiently to Mrs. Hooker and allowed her to tell everything at her own pace. He waited until he was sure that she had done with all. Only then did he lean forward and ask a few questions which he deemed necessary.

  “Now, Mrs. Hooker,” said he, “how do you account for your delay in notifying me of your daughter’s disappearance?”

  “Well,” said she, “I waited all through Easter Monday, expecting her to come along just anytime, for I’d assumed, you see, that she’d stayed the night with her aunt and uncle. But the day passed, dark came, and at last I made up my mind that I must go out to Wapping early next day and find out what had happened to her.”

  “And did you do that?”

  “I did, sir, and what I found was that they were as puzzled as I was and had no better idea than me just where she might be. Because they had not heard from me, they thought she had got home without a problem.”

  “And then you came here to me, did you?”

  “Not direct, sir, no, I didn’t. I went first to Elizabeth’s employer, Richard Turbott, a silversmith, who had just returned from an Easter holiday with his family.”

  “And explained the situation to him?”

  “Just so, sir.”

  At that, Sir John fell silent, as if he had, for a brief moment, fallen asleep. I had often seen him in such a state, and Clarissa, too, had witnessed this strange behavior of his. So neither she nor I was concerned overmuch when, of a sudden, he seemed to have vacated consciousness. Mrs. Hooker, however, fell back with her hand to her heart, obviously unsure of what might happen next. Clarissa leaned forward and gave a reassuring pat to the woman’s hand.

  What happened next was simply that Sir John then roused himself and put a question to the woman; one of a more indirect sort.

  “What sort of complaints has your daughter?”

  “Complaints?” Mrs. Hooker echoed, puzzled. “Do you mean illness, sir? What do you mean?”

  “Not physical complaints, no. But as you say, she has no one but you. Does she confide in you? Is she satisfied? If not, why not? What are her dissatisfactions with life?”

  “Oh, she has none.” She seemed quite taken aback with the suggestion that Elizabeth might indeed be in some way unhappy with her lot in life.

  “Let me put it another way. How old is your daughter?”

  “Fifteen, sir. She’ll be sixteen in October.”

  “Fifteen and she has no dissatisfactions? no complaints? What sort of girl is she?”

  “A very good girl, sir.”

  “I’ve no doubt of it, but has she no dreams? no . . .” He ended in a shrug, hands uplifted.

  “Oh, no sir. Her father and I, we knocked all that sort of foolishness out of her long ago. We used Clarissa here as an example of what happens to a girl when she . . . well . . . You understand, I’m sure. You did rescue her from the poorhouse, as I’ve heard.”

  I glanced over at Clarissa and rolled my eyes in despair. The woman was quite impossible, was she not? Clarissa’s description of Elizabeth—utterly vapid and without purpose—rang once again in my mind. What I had supposed to have been said in a mere fit of pique might well have been accurate, if Mrs. Hooker was to be credited.

  For his part, Sir John could do little more than sigh unhappily.

  Mrs. Hooker gave him a moment, then did she ask: “Will that be all, sir?”

  “I shall require some addresses from you,” said Sir John, “and that, then, my good woman, will be all.”

  One of those addresses was that in Wapping, of Elizabeth’s uncle and aunt, the last to see her on that fateful Sunday. It fell to me to take the hike along Wapping Dock to find their place in Green Dragon Alley, tucked in between a brewery and one of the many timber yards of that district.

  Sir John had counseled me to seek from them any hints that their niece might have had some sort of escape planned for her late departure. Precious little was said by Jenny Hooker about certain aspects of Elizabeth’s visit. Sir John wished me to find all I could from the two of them. Thus it was that as I tramped along the Thames, I planned, insofar as I was able, just what I should ask and of whom I should ask it.

  Yet when I knocked upon the door of the little cottage in Green Dragon Alley, I found, unexpectedly, that both were out—or so I was to hear. First did I knock, then did I beat upon the door. Then, at last, did I attempt to rouse those within the little house by shouting. It brought no response from inside, but a neighbor opened her window, stuck out her head, and inquired just what my business with them next door might be. I told her direct as I could, adding that I was Sir John Fielding’s assistant. That usually brought me an extra dash of respect, but from this gray-haired old harridan at the window it brought me naught but a sneer of derision.

  “What sort of help might you be able to give at your age?”

  I went over to her. “Why, I ask questions—and I usually get answers.”

  “Do you now? What’s your secret?”

  “I have a wonderful smile.”

  “Have you? Well, let’s see it, shall we?”

  She leaned far out the window and waited. At last, I understood: She was flirting.

  “Oh no,” said I. “That’s not how it’s done, not at all.”

  “How then?”

  “First I ask a question, and then you answer it. If I like your answer, then you receive a smile.”

  “Oh, it’s that way, is it? All right, let’s get on with it.”

  “Where are your neighbors, the Chesleys?”

  “Well, the mister is where he always is during the day—and that’s at the brewery across the way. He works there, you see. And the missus, I trust, is doing the buying for dinner about now. Could be she’s buying a few of them spring potatoes she might’ve forgot first time she was out. Oh, she’s always gadding about, that one.”

  At that, I gave her a smile.

  “Is that the best you can do?” she demanded, showing me a bit of a pout.

  “Oh no,” said I. “I can do much better. I should have mentioned, I suppose, that the more important the question and the better the answer, the bigger the smile. Ready for another?”

  She seemed a little less eager to play than before. Nevertheless, she nodded, and I b
egan to frame the next question.

  “If I may take you back to Easter Sunday,” said I after a moment’s delay, “what do you remember of the visit of the Chesleys’ niece, Elizabeth Hooker? You know who she is, I’m sure?”

  “Cert’ny I do. What do I remember? Well, I remember that her and her friend come to the house next door early in the afternoon. I would say it was about—”

  Only then did I realize what had just been said. I interrupted her forthwith: “Stop where you are there. You said her and her friend?”

  “Didn’t I? ’Course I did. Didn’t I see the two of them coming up Green Dragon Alley whilst I was coming in from the outhouse? Course I did. What’s a poor widow to do ’cept spy on her neighbors?”

  “So you saw Elizabeth with someone else, did you?”

  “Didn’t I just say so?”

  “Well, was that someone else male or female?”

  “Oh, female—meaning girl, I suppose—one just like her, anyways. I swear, they looked enough alike to be sisters—or cousins, at least. They come prancing up the alley, giggling and carrying on like they were having the time of their young lives.”

  “This other girl, the one with Elizabeth, she couldn’t have been a daughter of the Chesleys’, could she?”

  She dismissed the notion out of hand. “Oh no,” said she. “They ain’t got but two children, both of them grown-up men. Live up around Lichfield, somewheres like that.”

  “Just one more question,” said I, quite excited to have learned what I had. “Their departure—the two girls—when was it?”

  She shrugged. “I ain’t got a proper clock here, but I would say that it was gettin’ on toward dark. Not dark yet, understand, but it would have been in another hour.”

  “And the two girls left together?”

  “Indeed they did, for I had this very window open, and I watched it all, right from where I’m standin’ now.”

  I was by that time quite eager to get back to Bow Street and tell Sir John what I had learned, yet I knew that since I had been sent to Wapping to interview the uncle and aunt, I had better make a greater effort to do so than I had thus far done. Thus, I made ready to depart from my informant.

  “Could you tell me your name, madam?”

  “Hetty Duncan,” said she. “But I must say I’m proper let down by that smile of yours. Not much to it, if you ask me. As you said yourself, you could do better. And you seemed properly carried away by what I told you about Elizabeth’s little friend.”

  “Not another word,” said I, and, so saying, I grasped her grizzled head and planted a buss square upon her lips.

  She giggled at that, and I grinned the widest grin ever. “There it is,” said she. “That’s the smile I was hoping to win from you.”

  I waved and ran for the brewery. I knocked loud upon the door, as was necessary, for there was a great deal of competing noise from beyond it. ’Twas not long before I heard the lock turn and the door swung open; a man, sweating and disheveled, stood and asked my business.

  “I wish to speak to Mr. George Chesley,” said I.

  “Better be important. He’s the brewmaster here.”

  “Tell him then ’tis to do with his niece, and I am come from the Bow Street Court to ask him a few questions.”

  “I’ll tell him that,” said he and slammed the door and turned the lock.

  I waited a proper length of time—and then some. At last, I heard heavy footsteps on the other side—again the lock—and the door came open. The man revealed seemed quite as wide as he was tall, though not as fat as that might suggest. He was well into his sixth decade, and what I saw of the hair beneath his hat told me that there was near as much gray as dark in it. His face was lined, yet in such a way that said he wore a smile a fair part of the day.

  “You the lad from the Bow Street Court?” he asked.

  I acknowledged that this was so.

  “I’ve no doubt this is about the disappearance of our niece,” said he, closing the door behind him. “What have you to ask?”

  I then put to him a series of routine questions that had to do with time of arrival and departure, and that sort of thing. They were intended to put him at his ease. He answered them readily enough but hesitated a bit when I put to him the question which I had been leading up to.

  “Mr. Chesley,” said I, “having spoken with your neighbor Hetty Duncan, I learned that there were two guests at your home, yet as it was reported to us by Elizabeth’s mother, Jenny Hooker, her daughter was alone in her visit to you. Now, which am I to believe? Your neighbor, or Mrs. Hooker?”

  “Well,” said he—and there he stopped for a considerable time, less than a minute, no doubt, but such an interruption can seem considerable whilst one is waiting for an answer.

  “Well,” he repeated. “It’s Hetty has it right,” said he at last. “It was my wife was the cause of it all. You see, Jenny’s her sister, though you’d never know it to look at them. For one thing, Mary, my wife, was the oldest in the family and Jenny the youngest. There was three brothers came betwixt oldest and youngest. Even so, the two of them were pretty close. And when Mary and me got married, there wasn’t anything going to stand in Jenny’s way on her way to the altar. She wasn’t but sixteen or so, and Mary was near ten years older, but once Jenny got asked that was it—all she needed. She was just at that age, you know. The babies just kept comin’. Jenny had three sons—but only two of them lived. Then, when she had Elizabeth, her husband got the idea of going up to London. We’d been here a good five years or more by then. People in London liked the taste of that bitter ale we had up in Lichfield, so they just up and hired me and brought me down to London. My two boys stayed up in Lichfield, though.

  “Now, this fellow Jenny married—Thomas Hooker was his name—he was a strange sort. Back in Lichfield he ran a stable for a man who owned two of them. But Tom was one of the pious sort, who thought he was better than everybody else just because he prayed harder than they did. He was sure he was better than me because I was involved in the making of ‘the devil’s own concoction’—which of course was ale—according to him. To tell the truth, I’ve no way of proving this, but still I’ve always suspected that he got it in his head to come to London just because I come down here—wanted to prove that because he was one of the Lord’s own he could make a greater success than an old sinner like me. So he just up and moved the whole family down here without having even the prospect of a job—said he put his trust in the Lord. Well, the Lord kind of let him down, because after he found out there weren’t any jobs in the line he had worked all his life. So what did he do? He came to me and asked for work. And what did I do? I hired him. My wife wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  There he paused, and I, who had waited for just such an opening, intruded myself into the small space he had given me.

  “But Mr. Chesley, please,” said I, “you were going to tell me about that other girl, the one who came with Elizabeth Hooker.”

  “Oh, I’m comin’ to that, but I just wanted you to know how all this fits together.”

  “Well . . . go on.”

  “I’ll make it quick, so I will.” He took a deep breath and then continued: “He died right here, he did, he did. He was always taking chances here in the brewery—though I warned him oft to be more careful—he said he was safe in the Lord. But whilst the Lord was looking the other way, Tom Hooker drowned in a vat of ale.”

  “And now to the girl Elizabeth brought along to dinner.”

  “What? Oh . . . oh yes.” He resumed: “Well, you can imagine what sort of girl Elizabeth was with parents like these—because Jenny was just like Tom in the way she handled her daughter. One of Elizabeth’s brothers had run away, and they lost touch. Anyway, my Mary kept contact with Jenny, even helped get her the job she’s got. But Jenny keeps such a tight hand on Elizabeth, it’s a wonder she lets her out of her sight long enough to do her work at the silversmith’s. She lives quite close to him, you know.”

  “No,
I didn’t know,” said I. “But I’d like to hear something about that girl who came with her.”

  “Oh yes, that. Well, as you may have heard we invited both Jenny and Elizabeth. Jenny decided she had too much cooking to do, but since it was family and Easter, it would be all right if Elizabeth came alone in her stead. Well, Elizabeth figured that if her mother wasn’t coming, there’d be plenty to eat and room for one more at the table. She was certainly right about that.”

  “But who was the girl she brought with her?” I asked.

  “Oh, let’s see, it was Katherine, or Kathy, or some such name. I can’t quite recall exact, but it’s the girl she works with at the silversmith’s. A nice youngster she is. You’d like her, I’m sure. Anybody would.”

  “But why did your wife not tell her sister that Katherine, or whatever her name, came here in her stead?”

  “Well, I should think that would be obvious.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Well, because if she had done, then it would be none but Elizabeth would take the blame for it. Indeed, Elizabeth made my Mary promise she would not tell. She meant that, of course, specially to her mother, so Mary was just keeping her word, was all.”

  “She shouldn’t have,” I declared, all sure and certain.

  “That, indeed, is what I told her. But you will now set things straight, will you not?”

  “Certainly! But I have one last question. Did the two girls leave together?”

  “Did I not say so?” said he, a bit indignant.

  “No, earlier you said that Elizabeth had left in good time to make it back before dark.”

  “Did I? Well, Kathleen—that was her name—she left with her, just like she came.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said I to him. “That is all I needed to know.” With that, I tipped my hat and set off at a run for Bow Street.

  Not that I ran all the way. Nevertheless, so elated was I to have discovered a new witness, one who could potentially tell us much more about Elizabeth Hooker’s disappearance, that I must have run near a mile before slowing to a walk. I am of an age and profession today when such youthful exhibitions of energy would be considered undignified. Yet how I do miss the feeling of the cobblestones beneath my quick feet. Perhaps what I miss most of all is youth itself. I look back on those days with Sir John and Lady Fielding, and all the Bow Street Runners, as the happiest in my life. Having often discussed this with Clarissa in the preparation of these books, I know that she feels as I do in this.