Person or Persons Unknown (33 page)

“Lookin’ for me, were you?” said he. “I s’pose His Majesty has summoned me for another talk. He said he’d not done with me.”

“I thought you might be open for customers,” said I, avoiding a more serious lie.

“Not today, but tomorrow. I shall have a job of washing up to do. Then I must buy my meat and fix delivery. It takes a day to start up again. But in truth, Jeremy, I’m glad I ran into you.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“I’m afraid I was a bit short with you last night. Short? I gave you no greeting at all! I was put out of sorts by the magistrate. Put plain, he seems not to believe me. Why, I don’t know — unless it be something personal.”

“Oh, I think not,” said I. “It is just that having captured one killer, he came to discover there was another.”

“He told me of that, said you were quite the hero in the matter — given a reward and all.”

“Half a reward, for there is still one to be caught, and Sir John feels great urgency that he be apprehended before he kill again.”

“Well, you can tell him for me that, beggin’ his pardon, but I ain’t his man.”

He growled that out so loudly in his deep voice that the rude woman in the next stall turned to look.

“I believe you, Mr. Tolliver,” said I stoutly. “I would not, could not, think ill of you. Nor could Lady Fielding. We have both spoken oft in your behalf.”

He grunted a rumbling bass grunt. “I must say she treated my wife well. You may tell Kate for me that I’ll not forget that, nor will Maude.”

“Maude?” I asked a bit dully. My mind, reader, was at that moment on a much weightier matter. I was laboring to make a decision.

“My wife,” said he, explaining the obvious. “Maude Whetsel she was, and Maude Tolliver she is now. I tell you, Jeremy, it’s a sad thing to bring a woman you’ve just married back to a terrible muddle like this.”

Then did he shake his great head as one would in a state of awful perplexity. What was to be done? What could be done? In that moment I felt that only I could help him.

“Mr. Tolliver,” I burst out, at last giving in to the impulse with which I had been grappling these last moments, “is there any way that you can prove that you were on that night coach to Bristol? That you did not wait till the morrow to travel there?”

He looked at me queerly, as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes and he saw now clearly what he had before only dimly perceived.

“So,” said he, “it all comes down to that, does it?”

“Tell me what you told Sir John, if you would, please. What did you do after you left us there on Henrietta Street?”

“Why, I went home.”

“Back to your rooms in Long Acre. Continue — all the details, please.”

“Well, coming in to my place, I found a lettered been slipped under my door. It was from — ”

“Stay a moment,” said I, interrupting. “Do you know how the letter came to be there?”

“Not for certain, no, but Fve an idea. Fve a neighbor, Mr. Salter, who manages the backstage at the Theatre Royal. A man in a position like that, he gets a fair share of post from all over, so he stops by the letter office two or three times a week to pick up his packet. It’s known that I live at the same address, and so the odd letter comes now and then for me they give to him for to pass on. He tucks them under my door.”

“Good,” said I. “Will you find out from Mr. Salter that he did in fact deliver that letter from Bristol so?”

“I can do that, yes, if he remembers. It was more than a month ago.”

“Well and good, you found the letter, you opened and read it. Why did you decide so immediate to go off to Bristol to meet the woman who was to become your wife?”

“Sir John asked me that, too, and I told him polite that it was a personal matter, and Fd keep my own counsel on that. And we argued a bit, but since it’s you askin’, Fll tell you. Fve had terrible luck tryin’ to marry again. I came close once” — he gave me a look I would term significant — “yet that went for naught. Mostly it is that women who are respectable want nothing to do with a butcher. I don’t know why, for they’ll eat a good cut of meat ready enough. Yet I courted a few, and it all come down to that — bein’ a butcher was somehow disgusting to them. So Fd put this advert in the Shipping News in Bristol where it was I grew up, and I made it plain in it butchering was my trade, and I swear to you, Jeremy, hers was the only letter I got back. And it was a grand letter, so it was. I saw her as an intelligent woman who’d had terrible misfortune visited upon her, lost her husband and two children, yet managed to support herself and keep her self-respect. And so she is and so she has — she’s a grand woman is my Maude. And… well. . ” He came to a full stop and looked away.

“And what? Tell me what you were about to say, Mr. Tolliver, please.”

“It was what I just came from, finding that girl dead in the passage, that decided me to leave immediate. As I believe I said at the time, Td seen the girl about — she’d bought from me on an occasion or two — and to see her so, a mere child she was, all crumpled up and murdered, people pawing over her to find her wound — well, it just made me heartsick. This is such a hard city, Jeremy, so little in it of hope and decency, especially for those of her kind. Well, I just wanted to get away from here as quick as ever I could. P’rhaps I should have given thought to Sir John’s request that I be here for the inquest, but I’d told all I knew two times over. I just wanted to get away.”

He had grown tense in the telling. His hands, both of them, were rolled into big fists; his head was bowed. I remembered his objections when Mr. Bailey had sought the death wound the Raker had inflicted just below her sternum. Indeed Lady Fielding was no bad judge of character, nor was I: Mr. Tolliver could not have murdered Libby Tribble and Poll Tarkin.

“You told Sir John none of this, I suppose?”

“No — just a bit about Maude, that I was eager to meet her.”

“When he questions you again, as no doubt he will, you must tell him all of this exactly as you’ve told me.” I saw resistance written in his face, and so I repeated: “Exactly so. But now, please continue. You packed your portmanteau in a great hurry and made ready to leave. Do you know the time you left your rooms to catch the night coach?”

“Well, as near as I can remember, I had a little less than an hour to get there. I’ve a clock I wind daily, so I can be right certain about that.”

Something here was wrong. “But if you had near an hour to get to the coach house,” I said, “why were you in such a great hurry? You could walk it easily in a quarter of an hour.”

“But I had to get back to my stall here in the Garden. I’d meat inside, and it was all locked up. With no idea when I’d return, I knew the meat would rot. Couldn’t have that.”

“How did you dispose of it?”

“Why, I just hung it up on the hooks in front. I knew it would be gone by morning. A good two guineas’ worth it was, over the counter. That’s how eager I was to be away from London. Oh but, Jeremy, you must know that a butcher would never let his meat rot in the stall. God, the stink of it! I’d never be able to sell a piece of meat here in Covent Garden again. But with coming back here, hanging out what was left and all, it was getting on towards ten, though I didn’t know the time exact, for I have no pocket timepiece. So I crossed the Garden, which is a risky thing to do at night, and caught a hackney at the Theatre Royal.”

“Again,” said I, “did you tell Sir John of this? All the details you’ve given me?”

“I may have told him I caught a hackney. But so far as the rest of it, no. We were mostly arguing about my responsibility to be at the inquest and so on. He rubbed me the wrong way, he did.”

“That’s as may be,” I said, “but when next he interrogates you, you must tell him about your trip back here and how you hung out the meat. Those are very important details.”

“They are?” He seemed doubtful.

“Yes, they are.”

I said it with all the severity and authority a fifteen-year-old might muster, yet I wondered if I had convinced him. A man who is by nature not very observant, as Mr. Tolliver was not, had little respect even for the details he did remember. And so, continuing, I made every effort to maintain that same attitude of near-hostile severity.

“And so,” said I, “you reached the coach house with little time to spare.”

“So little,” said he, “that I scarce had time to pay my fare and hop aboard.”

“I’ve never ridden any but a hackney coach,” said I. “Is a ticket sold to you? Something that might say ‘Night Coach to Bristol,’ or some such?”

“No, nothing of that kind. You pay your money; they give you a stub with a mark upon it; and you surrender it to the coachman — or as it happened to be, in this case, the driver.”

I sensed something here, and so I moved in swiftly upon it: “Why did the driver take your stub, rather than the coachman?”

“The coachman had gone ill, and the driver said he must make the trip alone. I asked him would he like some company up there on the box, and he said indeed he would, a big fellow like me. He asked could I handle a fowling piece, should we run into any trouble on the road. And I said to him I had better in my portmanteau, and I produced my brace of pistols. I had them from the French War, used them, too, though I was a Sergeant Provisioner. We all fought when we were needed, Indians and the like. That’s where I learned butchering — in the Army — slaughtering, butchering, I did — ”

Again I interrupted: “Stay, stay. Am I to understand that you rode all the way to Bristol next the driver?”

“Indeed I did, and a good enough fellow he was — Ben something. Ben Calverton was his name. We had some talks during the stretches when he walked the horses.”

I could scarce believe our good luck. “Why then, he will probably remember you.”

“Oh, he’ll remember me, right enough.”

“Why? Did you meet highwaymen on the way?”

“No, and glad I am for it.”

“Why then are you so sure?”

“Because I was unwise enough to tell him my Christian name.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it,” said I.

“It’s Oliver,” said he. “The driver thought it a great joke.”

“Oliver… Tolliver?” And at that, in spite of my intention to keep a solenm mien, I burst out laughing.

Leaving Mr. Tolliver for the coach house, I guiltily cautioned him to say nothing of our talk to Sir John, yet at the same time charged him to tell his story to the magistrate again exactly as he had told it to me. If my laughter had piqued him, as it seemed to have done, I was indeed sorry, and he had my apology for it. He told me that all seemed to react as I had; that the driver had gone so far as to make up a verse in jest upon his rhyming name — and that, of course, had pleased Oliver Tolliver not at all. “Nevertheless,” said he, “he seemed a good sort, and no doubt they can tell you at the coach house when next you might find him about. He drives only at night, to and from Bristol.”

And so I walked swiftly through streets now at flood tide with rushing waves of humanity. All that Mr. Tolliver said ill of London was true, of course, but to walk among the common people at such an hour did much to redeem my faith in the great city. It was and is still a place as no other. In fact, it was two cities: a London by day of honest clerks and toilers engaged in all manner of work; and another city at night, peopled by drunkards, thieves, whores, and pimps. Here and now in that sunny morning hour, I saw no sign of that dark London. I could but revel in my naive way that most of the faces I saw in the crowd seemed happy and guileless, and the rest at least resigned and docile.

So was it at the coach house when I went to him who sold the stubs and inquired after Ben Calverton. The fellow at the window did wear a smile and hummed a tune as I approached him.

“Ben Calverton?” said he in response to my query. “Ah yes indeed, young man, he is one of our best, he is — a hero of the road. He makes that long drive to Bristol every other night but one, man must have a backside of iron! None knows the road and its dangers as he does — thrice did highwaymen attempt to stop him, and he drove right through them, twice was gunfire exchanged. Ah yes, young sir, he is one of our best.”

“When might he next be available to talk?” I asked. “It is a court matter. I am come from Bow Street.”

At that there was the first hint of a frown from him. “You don’t mean to say he’s got himself into trouble, do you?”

“Oh no, nothing of the kind. It is a matter concerning one of his passengers some time ago.”

“Ah — well, in that case, you’re in luck. Ben Calverton should arrive from Bristol, God willing, in a quarter of an hour or so.” He studied the clock on the wall behind me. “Yes, if nothing untoward has happened along the way, then he should be pulling in just about then.”

A short line of passage-purchasers had formed behind me. The fellow at the window signaled to him behind me that he would be done with me in but a moment’s time.

“Where might I wait for him?” I asked.

“The best for you,” said he, “would be next door at the Coach House Inn. The drivers must give their report upon arrival. But it is Ben’s custom to have a glass of ale first thing afterwards. I shall tell him you are there and waiting to talk.”

“Tell him it concerns Oliver Tolliver.”

^‘Oliver Tolliver, is it?” He laughed merrily. “Such a name! Oh, I’ll not forget that! Good day to you, young man.”

And so into the yard — coaches and horses and passengers waiting. There was a hum of excitement and expectation about the place, such as made me wish I were part of this congregation, portmanteau in hand, about to set off on some long journey to some distant place such as Bristol or Edinburgh, or even over the water to Dublin. The world was such a large place, and I was determined to see my share of it before I was done.

The Coach House Inn was but a modest place for eating and drinking, where travelers or those come to meet them might while away the minutes in a friendly setting. Though it was not near filled, the smoke of tobacco hung heavy in the place, darkening its ill-lit inside so that one might swear it were night outside rather than day. I took a place at the bar near the fireplace, and the barman approached, asking my pleasure.