Jack, Knave and Fool (13 page)

The smile was returned. “My husband tells me that so long as your rent is paid up here, you have the right to remain, but you must think of the future.”

“My father and I are making plans for the future.”

Lady Fielding waited, but nothing more was said of them. “I see,” said she. “Yet there is also the present. It is winter, and it is cold. Jeremy told me that in his search of the premises yesterday he found no cape or coat of a sort that might be yours. Did he overlook it? Do you have one?”

“Oh, I did, but … but I foolishly left it behind in an eating place. We have not yet found one that is suitable.”

“Well, until you do, I shall find one for you. You see, I oversee the running of a charitable house for young women. We receive frequent donations of clothing, and” —looking her up and down —“I believe I may have just the thing for you. Until you find something better, of course.”

“That will be welcome, thank you.”

“My hope is that by then your father will have surrendered himself to Sir John.” Again she raised her voice: “He will not be sorry if he does. My husband is a just man.

“Jeremy will bring the cape tomorrow. I shall look in on you later as matters develop. Until then, goodbye and God keep you, Clarissa.”

Then, in turning, as if she had perceived my desire to look behind the curtain and into the closet, Lady Fielding grabbed me firmly by the arm and marched me to the door.

The girl trailed us. I saw, when I turned round in the hall, that she had a stout peg in hand that she might slip it into the lock and make it secure. Catching Lady Fielding’s eye, she said goodbye and added, “You’re a kind woman.” Then swiftly she made the door shut and we our way down the hall.

Nothing at all was said between us until we had left the court and were walking together down Half-Moon Passage. I ventured a look, then gave it as my suspicion that Thomas Roundtree might well have been in the closet, listening behind the curtain to all that was said.

“Of course he was,” said Lady Fielding. “That was why I shouted so loud my bid for his surrender. I daresay that trollop two doors down heard me plain and clear.”

“I had not known that Sir John had made that offer to bring Roundtree in,” said I.

“Neither yet does he,” said she with a sigh. “But Jack will honor it, I know he will. Something must be done for that girl.”

“You were far better with her than I. She was saucy and rude with me, and I repaid her with rudeness.”

“She’s a plucky girl, Jeremy —and, oh dear me, she does so love her father!”

Of a sudden did Lady Fielding stop and face me. It was only then that I noticed the tears upon her cheeks. “Jeremy,” she said, “I’ve a terrible need for a blow and a wipe, and we left in such a rush that I’ve nothing with me.”

Digging into my pocket, I supplied her need. It was a fair clean piece of linen, too; it had been used by me but once.

It was left to me to make a report to Sir John regarding our visit to Half-Moon Passage. Lady Fielding waved down a free hackney at the corner of Chandos Street and Bedford and departed for her daily visit to the Magdalene Home for Penitent Prostitutes. She waved from the coach door and called to me that she would have that cape for Clarissa upon her return. The matter did seem that important to her, just so. I returned her wave and set oil along the way we had come.

Though as I approached Number 4 Bow Street, I confess, I did not look forward with pleasure to telling Sir John of the generous offer of clemency that had been made in his name, in the event I found his response very mild indeed. In fact, when he heard of it, laughter was his response.

“She said that, did she?”

“Uh, yes sir.”

“What was the offer again? That if he were to surrender himself, then I would forgive him his little adventure as a truant and work out some means of paying his fine for the original charge —that was it, essential!”

“That was it, yes sir. She felt sure that you would honor the offer.”

“Oh, I will, indeed I will. A man should not willingly make a liar of his wife.” Again he laughed; it seemed positively a giggle. He was much amused. “And you suspected, Jeremy, that he was present throughout the interview, hiding in the closet behind the curtain?”

“That is correct, sir. Left to myself, I would have thrown back the curtain and confronted the fellow.”

“Well, then it is just as well you were not left to yourself, for all the good reasons I explained to you yesterday. No, I think you did well to hasten back, rather, and explain the matter to me. Otherwise, our friend Roundtree might have preceded you here.”

“You believe, then, that he will surrender himself? “

“Oh, I do. Were I in his position, that is what I would do. It is, after all, a most generous offer. And I also admit, a practical way to handle a matter gone quite out of hand. I should have thought of it myself. Perhaps I ought to consult with Kate more often on court matters.”

Then did he grow of a sudden more serious. He leaned forward, folding his hands before him, his jaw set and his lips pursed. Then did he speak: “Now, about the girl — Clarissa? is that her name?—that is quite another matter. I shall talk about her to — “

A rather intrusive and noisy commotion commenced at that moment not far beyond the open door to Sir John’s chambers. The voice of a woman: “I will not be impeded, young man!” The voice of Mr. Marsden: “But it is only proper that you be announced.” “I need no announcement. I am who I am!” — and that said with great authority.

“Jeremy,” said Sir John, raising his voice above theirs, “go and see what all that is about, will you?”

I rose and went to the door, and there was I near bowled over by a figure in black, hatted and veiled, all in widow’s weeds. She bumped past me as she propelled herself forward with all the force of a cannonball and into the room. Stopping only when she had reached his desk, she took an aggressive stance, leaning over so that no more than two or three feet separated their faces.

“Sir John Fielding!” said she with some urgency —and no more.

“That is my name. And who, pray tell, are you, madam?”

“Lady Laningham, widow of the late lord.”

Then did Sir John rise as the occasion demanded. He bowed pro forma and murmured that it was ill to meet under such sad circumstances, and I went quietly to a chair near the door and seated myself, not washing to miss a moment of an interview that had begun so spectacularly. Sir John invited her to sit down, and she dropped heavily into the chair I had vacated.

“In a sense,” she said, “we have already met —up there on the stage of the Crown and Anchor. I was most grateful to you for clearing that mob. All those people milling about and poor Chrissie in such terrible distress. I thought I would quite go mad until you sent them away.”

“Yet,” said Sir John, resuming his seat behind the desk, ‘you did not come here to thank me —or I am mistaken.”

“No, I did not.” She took a deep breath. “I have heard something about you that is quite distressing.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

She threw the veil up from her face and again leaned forward in a confrontational manner. “I have heard that you have been putting it about that my husband was poisoned.”

“Putting it about, you say? Who told you such a thing?”

“Mr. Oliver Goldsmith visited to pay his respects and offer words of consolation. Yet far from consoling me, his words quite inflamed me. I have come to you direct to demand from you some explanation for this … this opinion of yours.”

“First of all, Lady Laningham,” said he, “let me declare that I have in no wise been ‘putting it about,’ as you said. I have discussed the matter only once, and that was on the evening of your husband’s death with Mr. Gabriel Donnelly, the doctor who attended your husband, Mr. Alfred Humber, and Mr. Goldsmith. That conversation took place in this very room. Now, did Mr. Goldsmith actually say that I had been putting it about?”

At that she paused for thought. “No, in truth, he did not. What were his exact words? As near as I can remember, what he said was that you had questioned that Lord Laningham s death came by natural causes, that you thought there were reasons to consider the possibility of poison.”

“Now, that is quite another matter, would you not say so? To question is one thing, and to spread it about to others is quite another. I had hoped my conversation with those gentlemen would be kept private.’

“But why do you question?” she asked most earnestly. “What are your reasons for considering the possibility of poison?”

Then, offering first a deep sigh, he did launch into a summary of those matters that had disquieted him so on the evening ol that Sunday past. He laid them before her in most orderly fashion, as if summarizing a case of law, which in a sense was what he was doing. She, an educated and intelligent woman, listened carefully nodding her understanding as he talked on for a period of no more than a lew minutes. When he had concluded with his summary, he put to her a question: “Tell me, Lady Laningham, had your husband ever before experienced extreme digestive distress — anything, that is, that might have begun to approach the severity of his attack that night?”

“No … no, certainly not. Chrissie had the digestion of a bear. He could eat or drink anything at all, it seemed, without misfortune. I used to tease him about it.”

“Well,” said Sir John, “there you have another reason to question death by natural causes. There was no forewarning, no earlier hint of any such difficulty. “

“But for the most part,” said she, “it is this matter of the wine, as I understand you.”

“That is correct. He showed no signs of illness, even of discomfort, until he drank from the bottle brought to him there on the stage, and it was not long after he drank from it that he collapsed. Add to that the fact that the said bottle was nowhere to be found once the crowd had been cleared from the stage, and, as I said, we have further reason to question. But now do I have another question for you. And it is this: Whence came the bottle of wine in question? The innkeeper of the Crown and Anchor gave it as his opinion that it had been brought up from your table, though he could not be certain, since he had not located the server who brought it. Do you recall that detail? Did the wine come from Lord Laningham’s private stock, as the innkeeper believed?”

“Let me think,” said she, and think she did, taking near a minute to respond to Sir John’s interrogative. “Yes, I recall it perfectly. Lord Laningham has always kept a good cellar and always made it a point to bring with him bottles of his private stock to these affairs at the Crown and Anchor. The server came to our table, a young man, as most of them there are, and said that Chrissie had requested a bottle, and it was sent up with him.”

“Jeremy Proctor, my young assistant, who I believe is sitting behind you now near the door” —how could he have been so exact? —“saw the bottle brought to Lord Laningham and noted that it was uncorked, but he thought it to have been full. Was it so?”

Before answering, she turned about in her chair and regarded me briefly with a frown. Was it disapproval, or merely a shortsighted squint? The latter, I hoped. She was rather a formidable woman.

Yet in a moment her attention had returned to Sir John. “As I recall,” she said, “it was nearly so.”

“Nearly so? Would you explain, please?”

“Gladly. It was the last unopened bottle on the table. I signaled to the server that he was to open it, and he did so. Yet then, just as he was about to leave with the bottle and Lord Laningham’s glass, he was stopped by Mr. Paltrow, who asked for a bit more before the bottle left. The server looked at me, and I nodded my assent. He took no more than half a glass, but I remember the incident well, for I thought it most presumptuous and unmannerly of him, and in that way quite characteristic.”

“I see,” said Sir John. “And who, may I ask, is Mr. Paltrow? A relative of your late husband, I take it.”

“What? Oh yes. Arthur Paltrow was the late lord’s nephew and heir. As you may or may not know, Chrissie and I had no children, to our great sorrow —mine, I believe, most of all. He was near twenty years my senior, and I believed that marrying a younger woman would provide him with a considerable family of children. Yet that I could not give him.”

“And so Arthur Paltrow was a guest at your table on that fateful evening?”

“Yes, he, his wife, and their two adolescent daughters.”

“He was on a visit to London with his family?”

“No, they moved here some months ago. Until then they had dwelt upon his late father’s small estate near Laningham.”

“I take it from your earlier remark,” said Sir John, “that you are not overly fond of Mr. Paltrow.”

“No, I am not. I said that he lacked courtesy. I should say rather that he lacks ordinary human consideration. I give you an example. Mr. Paltrow is the Laningham heir. There is no question of that. Yet he has put me on notice that I am to move out of our town residence in St. James Square at my earliest opportunity after the reading of the will. It’s true, I have been well provided for, and the house does go to Mr. Paltrow as part of the estate. But to force me out to look for suitable quarters so soon after all this has happened — that I call damned inconsiderate.”

“Oh, quite. I’m in accord with you on that. I, uh, take it that the reading of the will which names him as heir makes him officially Lord Laningham. You must forgive me, I know nothing of such matters.”

“And I next to nothing. There is, I believe, a further matter, an invitation of some sort from the House of Lords —an ‘investiture,’ or some such thing.”

“Ah, so.” He remained silent for a long moment, rubbing his chin, deep in thought. “I have a question or two for you, Lady Laningham, if you would not mind.”

“Ask what you will.”

“First of all, did you see Mr. Paltrow drink that half glass of wine he begged? That is to say, did he finish it? Did he gulp it down?”

“No, certainly he did not gulp it, nor do I know that he finished it. I did, however, see him sip it once or twice. I remember he made some fatuous remark about its great quality. In truth, it was not all that grand. We saved our best for our dinner parties.”