The Price of Murder Read online

  “Take a look at it. See? It goes from the start, to there, to up here where we are, and then back to the start again. In other words, it’s a triangular course.”

  “They laid it out that way to make it long as they could,” said Mr. Baker, “but it makes for an awful big scramble and pileup here.”

  “Where?” I asked, not quite understanding.

  “Right here, where we are in this horse cart. See, Jeremy, this cart where we’ve taken our places to watch all, this serves as the ‘Distance Post.’ They’ve all got to go round it and sometimes it gets kind of crowded. If they fail to circle it, or haven’t circled it by the time the leader has made one full tour of the course, then they must drop out of all the following heats. You understand now, don’t you?”

  “Oh, well, yes—yes, of course.” Or so I said. In truth, I had understood only a portion of it. Yet, it seemed to me that I should understand quite all after I had watched a heat of the race run.

  “Good lad,” said both together in what seemed a single voice.

  I hung over the side of the cart and studied the final preparations for the race at some distance. Two drummer boys beat a rat-tat-tat upon their drums, signaling that the horses were to come forward to the starting line.

  As they came up, I asked, “Which of the riders is Deuteronomy Plummer?”

  “Aw, I heard you met him and came to watch him particular,” said Mr. Patley. “Well, that’s the man, third along the line. See?”

  Yes, I did see. There was little to distinguish him from the rest of the jockeys—only the colors that he wore, which were green and white. They were indeed a colorful lot. Every color of the rainbow and all mixtures thereof were there at the starting line. As I studied them, a thought occurred to me, and I thought it might be wise to frame it in a question to my tutors.

  “Both of you seem to agree that this corner of the course can get quite crowded as the horses round the cart. Is that right?”

  “Oh, it is indeed.”

  “Right as ever can be.”

  “Then this must be a dangerous spot from which to watch.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Baker, “you might say so, but it’s a great place to see the action, ain’t it, Patley?”

  “Oh, none better, not in all Shepherd’s Bush Common.”

  “But dangerous,” said I.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what. If the cart starts to go over—and it’s been known to happen—just get over to the other side and jump clear, far as you can,” said Mr. Baker.

  “Good advice,” said Mr. Patley.

  Not in the least comforted by what I had heard, I returned to my study of the horses and riders at the starting line. I concentrated my gaze upon Mr. Deuteronomy and the beautiful red mount beneath him. Did beauty, in this case, mean quality, I asked them.

  “Aw, he’s a beauty, in truth, ain’t he?” said Patley. “Name is Pegasus, and from what I hear he deserves it. Ain’t he the horse with wings in the storybooks?”

  “Onliest thing to be afraid of,” said Mr. Baker, “is that he looks headstrong, and might not run the race Deuteronomy tells him to. This is his first race, y’see.”

  A bugler on horseback appeared, put his horn to his lips, and blew a call. The horses at the starting line didn’t care for that at all—and Pegasus least of all. He broke ranks with the rest, and it was all that his bearded rider could do to bring him back into place.

  “Oh, he’s a good horse, all right. He’s ready to go,” said Patley.

  “That call was just to the stragglers, but there ain’t no stragglers, so in just a minute, or maybe less . . .”

  Quite without warning, a shot was fired. I looked about me, half-expecting one of the crowd to fall wounded. But no, ’twas rather the signal for the heat to begin. Yet not all the horses, or their riders, seemed to know that. Horses reared. Riders fell. Nearly half were left at the starting line. The rest, who had got off to a good start, thundered toward us. There must have been a dozen or more on the long straightaway, and to see a small army of large animals coming direct at our horse cart at full gallop made me most uneasy. Without quite willing it so, I found myself pulling to the far side of the cart, from which Mr. Baker had advised me to jump if—

  “Easy there, Jeremy,” Mr. Patley shouted to me above the noise of the crowd and the horses. “No need to jump yet.”

  At that I nodded my understanding, though I reserved my agreement for a bit later.

  The pack was upon us. I was surprised to see that Pegasus—and Mr. Deuteronomy—were not in the lead. No, nothing of the kind. Horse and rider were comfortably in the middle. They circled wide round us as the rest jammed in tight at the apex of the triangle. Whips flashed. Jockeys pushed back and forth, one at the other. Horses were thrown against our cart. They bit. Riders howled and threatened. Then, fast as they had come, they were gone, down the far leg of the triangle to its base, where all but Pegasus were involved in the same sort of close combat as we had witnessed here, near at hand; again, Pegasus gave it a wide berth and fought to keep his place, which was comfortably in the middle of the pack. Then did they come up at us again, and they fought ever harder to make it round us at the apex.

  So was it with each successive tour of the course—until, at the end of the fourth, a gray won the heat. Pegasus, ridden by Mr. Deuteronomy, came in a modest third. I was quite disappointed by the performance, and I said as much to my companions.

  “Aw, not so, not a bit of it,” said Mr. Baker to me. “Remember, Jeremy, what we just seen was no more than the first of four heats. Ain’t that so?”

  I allowed that it was. “Nevertheless,” said I, “would it not be a matter of honor to at least try to win every heat?”

  “No, listen, Jeremy. This is the way Deuteronomy does it with every horse he rides. The only honor involved here is winning the race.”

  “Just look at Pegasus,” said Patley. “He ain’t even properly worked up a sweat.” And it was true. As his rider started him round the course to cool him off, the big red seemed not to glisten, as did the rest.

  It appeared that the winning gray—named Storm Cloud, as I recall—looked as if he had fought a great battle to win the heat—and indeed, he had. He was applauded by those who had bet the heat and won. (Nevertheless, he was one of three eliminated in the next heat.)

  When Mr. Deuteronomy passed us by, leading Pegasus, we applauded him warmly. And for his part, he accepted it in good spirit, removing his jaunty little cap and waving it in response. Yet I noted something odd: though he waved, he did not smile. The features of his face, seen close, were cold and unmoving as any statue’s.

  “Now, you just wait, Jeremy,” said Mr. Baker. “Next two heats will go just like this one. Pegasus won’t win, but he’ll finish close enough that he’ll have a spot for himself in the final heat.”

  “And what will happen in that one?” I asked, though I’d guessed the answer, of course.

  “Why, he’ll win, bless you lad, he’ll win.”

  “And he’ll collect the prize of fifty pounds for his owner,” said Mr. Patley. “But I wonder if it ain’t your friend, Deuteronomy, deserves it more than the horse.”

  “Remember what I said just before the heat started?” said Baker. “About the horse? I said, he’s got the stuff to win, but he’s headstrong. If he just runs the kind of race his jockey tells him to run, he’ll do just fine. Well, he proved he can follow orders, so it’s a good bet he’ll win the final heat.”

  And that, reader, is just how it went. The only real test offered Pegasus and Mr. Deuteronomy that afternoon was in the last heat at the “Distance Post”—in other words, just beyond the cover afforded us by the cart. Horse and rider had then to establish their primacy, nor did they shrink from the task. They rode into the tight turn at near top speed. Deuteronomy fought his way forward by flailing left and right with his whip. And Pegasus did his part well by biting the leader that crowded him on the inside, causing the horse to shy into our cart and sending us into a fr
ightening tip. Yet, thank God, we righted and saw Pegasus speed away from the tight turn. After that, they gave him space aplenty.

  Indeed, as predicted, Pegasus did win and this, I found out, was the first time ever he had raced. He received a drum-and-fife salute. His owner stepped forward to accept his fifty pounds, all of it in a jingling bag. When I spied the face of him who claimed the prize, my eyes widened and my face gave expression to my dismayed surprise.

  “What’s got into you, Jeremy?” Mr. Baker asked. “You look like you just bit into a sour apple.”

  “I feel like it, too. That man up there, the one who just collected the fifty pounds, he was damned rude to me when I asked him the time of day.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Patley, “there’s rude and there’s damned rude. Now, what was it qualified Lord Lamford for felony rudeness?”

  “Lord Lamford, is it? Wouldn’t it be so?” said I. Then did I proceed to tell them of the incident. And in truth, told so, it amounted to little. I could tell that neither man was greatly impressed by my anecdote. Yet had they been there and received his verbal slap in the face, I was certain that each would have reacted as I did.

  “Yes, well, Jeremy, these lords and ladies, they get pretty tetchy when you approach them just as you might anyone,” said Mr. Baker.

  “Oh, I know that, and I was polite as could be. It’s just . . . Oh, let’s end it right there, shall we?”

  “Perhaps we’d best,” said Patley. “We got to collect our winnings before the oddsman does a scarper on us. We’ll meet you right here, and we’ll all ride back to town together. Suit you, Jeremy?” Then, as an afterthought: “Deuteronomy, by the bye, rides mostly for Lamford.”

  With that, they left me where I stood, and I moved a few steps closer to Lord Lamford—close enough, in any case, that I might hear him boast to his fellows in his self-assured drawl of how he had won the race:“. . . told my man to hold him back till the last heat, and then—then did you see him go?” And did they not all crowd round him to listen to his braggadocio! One would think that Deuteronomy Plummer had just sat astride Pegasus all afternoon because the rules required it: all two-year-olds must be accompanied by an adult—something of that sort.

  As my mind went to Deuteronomy, so also did my eyes. He stood, saying naught, holding loosely onto the reins of the horse. I studied him at a distance of forty or fifty feet. He talked to no one and looked neither right nor left until; all of a sudden, he turned in my direction and looked straight at me. It was as though he had known all along that I was there. Then, staring at me in the expressionless manner he had looked at us when we applauded him, he handed the reins to a nearby groom and came straight over to me. When he arrived, he looked me up and down and said naught for a good long bit. When at last he did speak, he expressed doubt.

  “Are you really the Beak’s assistant?”

  “Yes,” said I, “yes I am. If you want to hear that confirmed, you can wait for those two men I was with to come back. They’re both constables at the Bow Street Court.”

  “No, if you say so, then I’ll believe you. Just keep that in mind, though, ’cause if you lie to me, I’ll find out, and then I’ll never believe you again. Even if you told me today was Easter Sunday, I’d say it wasn’t.”

  “All right, what do you want to know?”

  “I want to know if he’s going to do something about all this that has to do with Alice and—you know—my niece. Is he going to do something, or just shake his head and go on to the next thing?”

  “That’s not his way. If you’d seen him when I brought him word, then you’d know that.”

  “Did he shed a tear? I wept for that child all night long.”

  “No, that’s not his way, either. He can’t cry. It’s to do with his blindness.”

  “All right, put it like this: Has he got anybody working on it?”

  I hesitated but a moment. “I’m working on it right now.”

  He sniggered in spite of himself. “You? What’re you doing here? Investigating the horses?”

  “No, Sir John sent me here because he believed you were capable of killing your sister when you left him yester evening. He thought it would be good if I showed up here, so you’d see me and know that we were keeping an eye on you.”

  “I b’lieve I could have done her in if I’d come across her then.”

  “But not now?”

  “No, not now. Whilst I was busy shedding tears, I did some thinking. And it seemed to me that he—and prob’ly you, too—are better at investigating than I’ll ever be. So the best thing would be if we was to investigate together. You help me, and I’ll help you.”

  “After all,” said I, “whatever you think of your sister, it wasn’t she who killed her daughter. We’ll need her to find the one who did.”

  “That’s where I come in,” said he. “I’ve got some ideas where she might be. And I thought we might go together, that is, if you . . .”

  “I’ll need all the help you can give me, Mr. Deuteronomy.”

  “All right then, what say we get us together and meet at the coffee house that faces onto Haymarket Square—say about eleven o’clock.”

  “I know the place. I’ll be there at eleven.”

  With that, he nodded, turned, and walked away. Well, I thought, there’ll be a lot to talk about with Sir John when I get back to Bow Street.

  On the contrary, my report to Sir John was given to him quickly in his study. He listened carefully to all that I had to say, nodding thoughtfully but making no comment. Even when I came at last to the offer made by Deuteronomy Plummer to join in the search for his sister, Sir John’s immediate response was simply a grunt. ’Twas only as I completed my recital and rose to return to the kitchen that the magistrate commented upon the information I had given him.

  “I take it you accepted Deuteronomy’s offer of help?”

  “Why, yes I did,” said I. “Is that not as you would have it?”

  “Oh yes, certainly it is. But let me give you a bit of advice.”

  “Please, sir.”

  “Simply put, it is this: Though he may have said that you know more than he about how to conduct an investigation, he will nevertheless try to wrest control of the investigation from you. Don’t allow him to do that. Remember that you have something specific that you had intended to attend to. One way or another, with him or without him, you must attend to it. You will, won’t you?”

  “I will, sir,” said I, yet still I hung on, unwilling to leave.

  “You may go, Jeremy. Your dinner may be cold, yet I think you will deem it one of the best you’ve eaten.”

  “I’m indeed looking forward to it, sir, but . . . well, may I ask, is there perhaps something wrong?”

  “Wrong? How do you mean that, Jeremy?”

  “You seemed so silent, so removed.”

  “Oh, I heard you well enough, but my mind was, I admit, upon other matters. It being Easter, I found myself thinking upon this Plummer case—the little girl pulled dead from the Thames, perhaps sold by her mother to a fate so hideous it cannot, should not, even be mentioned. I wondered what, if anything, God thinks of all this—if He may wonder from time to time if it was all worth the trouble.” He sighed a deep—oh, a profound sigh. And only then did he add, “I received Mr. Donnelly’s final autopsy report today. Mr. Marsden read it to me. It seems then that in spite of all that was done to her, Margaret Plummer died of asphyxiation. She was smothered.”

  With that, I bade him goodnight and went down to claim my dinner. A considerable slice of that glorious ham, of which Clarissa was so proud, had been warmed for me upon the fire in a pan. The potatoes and carrots, more difficult to warm, were served to me cold by her.

  Ah, but Clarissa was afterward anything but cold. We did hug and kiss, squeeze and fondle, for now that we were engaged to be engaged, she allowed me liberties (indeed, took a few herself) which were never before offered, nor even requested. Such was our situation: we carried on a courtship under the very nos
es of Sir John and Lady Fielding, altogether certain that they guessed naught of the change in our relations. But perhaps they knew more, and knew it earlier, than we had supposed.

  Next day, when I met with Deuteronomy Plummer at the Haymarket Coffee House, I spread out before him on the table all the numbered stubs and tickets that I had found in Katy Tiddle’s room.

  He glanced at them indifferently, shrugged, and said, “What about them?”

  “Well, what are they? I’ve studied them, and all I can tell you is that the numbers were written by diverse hands, and that, no matter how they are arranged and rearranged, they make no sense. That is to say, there was no code discernible. But how could there be, with so many numbers in so many different hands? After all—?”

  “Leave off, leave off,” said Mr. Deuteronomy in a way somewhat gruff. “You mean to tell me that you’ve no proper notion of what these here bits of paper might be?”

  “None at all.” I hesitated. “It’s been suggested to me that these may be pawn tickets, though somehow I doubt it.”

  “Well, that tells me more about you than it does about this Katy Tiddle woman. Of course they’re pawn tickets. Did you never pawn?”

  I was annoyed at the lordly manner he had, of a sudden, taken on. “What does that tell you about me?” I demanded.

  “It tells me you was brought up as a child of privilege, for one thing,” said he.

  “If it tells you that, it tells you false, for I am an orphan and nothing more. I work as I do for Sir John to pay my keep. I am the servant, and he my master.”

  That, reader, was by no means a fair summary of where I stood with regard to Sir John, nor he with me. If you have read thus far, then you know that he was to me far more in the nature of a teacher. And the things he taught did often exceed lessons in the law. It would not have been too much to claim him as my stepfather, yet I would not do so to Deuteronomy Plummer, for his remark had irritated me beyond telling. Child of privilege, indeed! I had all manner of household duties to perform. I served as Sir John’s amanuensis, writing the letters he dictated to me and often delivering them, as well. I served as the magistrate’s eyes during investigations of every sort, and, upon occasion, also as his bodyguard. And, finally, I had lately played substitute for Mr. Marsden, Sir John’s court clerk, during his recent bouts with influenza. And so on.