“Sir John does not think so,” said I. But there I was, acting officiously again, speaking for the magistrate. “What would you say?” I added.
“Well,” said he, “if a man fires a pistol, it’s sure his hand will show it.”
I simply nodded in agreement as I cut into the chop.
“Who’re you to him?” asked the giggler, who introduced herself as Annie. “Y’seem a bit young to be a constable.”
I sought the proper title and then remembered the one Sir John had given me. “I am his helper,” said I. “You may have noted he has a bit of trouble with his sight.”
“Indeed,” she said, “wi’ that black band over his eyes, I sh’d think he would.”
There was a general murmur of disapprobation at her saucy comment. I moved in swiftly to show that no offense had been taken.
“I help him in observing details,” said I, “reporting them to him. He then puts his wit to work on them. He’s a powerful thinker.”
“Aye,” put in the cook, “he’s known for that.”
“Was it you noticed Lord Dickie’s clean hands?” asked Henry.
“It was,” said I immodestly, failing to add that I had no sense of the significance of what I had seen.
“That was quick of you,” said he.
And so it went around the table, I chewing away on what the cook had rightly called good English mutton, answering questions as they were put to me by the company. The only one at the table who remained silent was Annie’s much comelier companion, she whom I had noted the night before. That one kept her silence, speaking only with her eyes. There was something of fright in them. Could it be awe? I quite swelled with her admiration.
The only questions I failed to answer were those Sir John had foreseen: Why had Lord Goodhope’s body been removed by the surgeon? What had the surgeon discovered? The first was put to me by Henry; the second by the cook. I wondered at her. Had she some notion of poison? In the ordinary course of things, suspicion might fall upon her in the case of poisoning. Yet Mr. Donnelly had made it clear that the murderous agent had not been introduced by means of food. She seemed uneasy. I wished to allay her unease but was unable to do so without divulging information I had been strictly charged to keep secret. And so I shrugged away the cook’s question much as I had the footman’s, declaring that the ways of doctors and surgeons were beyond me, that I put little store by them, as indeed Sir John did not. That last, perhaps not entirely a lie, seemed to relieve her.
Whereupon, the talkative Annie then tripped me up with a question for which I was quite unprepared. She wanted to know why, if I was so little taken with medicos, I had arrived with Mr. Donnelly.
I hemmed and hawed a bit, then said quite truthfully, “Sir John sent me.”
“To what purpose?”
I hesitated.
“Come on,” said she, “give out!” She giggled again.
“To go through the library once again,” said 1, blessed at last with inspiration.
“You ain’t in the library.”
Then I looked around me, as if observing my surroundings for the first time. “Oh,” said I, all innocent, “so I am not!”
This won laughter from my audience, as I hoped it would, and to my relief the subject was dropped. But here I had nearly consumed my mutton chop and had gained no information from them whatever. All the questioning had been of me.
Yet the course of my visit took a new turn when four more of the staff arrived, smelling of the stable. Ebenezer was among them; I later sorted the other three out as coachman, postilion, and ostler. Ebenezer nodded and gave me what I took to be a greeting, not in the least surprised to see me dining there. The cook called for the two kitchen maids to give up their chairs, adding that it would probably be an hour before she’d need them for washing up. The silent, comely one disappeared immediately through an open door with just a solemn glance back in my direction. I was quite taken by her. Then saucy Annie hung back before the door and beckoned me to follow.
I looked about. None seemed to mind or even take notice. And so, wiping my plate clean with the last bit of bread I had, I put it with others in a pile and trailed out of the kitchen behind Annie. The next was a common room nearly as large as the kitchen; off it and down a hall were small individual chambers wherein the members of the household staff were separately situated.
Annie, buxom and bold, grabbed hold my hand and pulled me to a sofa which was slightly the worse for wear, whereon her kitchen colleague had already taken a place. The hall was furnished with just such pieces of grand odds and ends cast down from the rooms of the great house above. It was ill lit: A few candles tucked away in the corners served the entire room. Alas, in spite of touches made here and there to brighten it (there were pictures on the pale yellow walls), the place had a rather dreary aspect. Big though it may have been, it was nevertheless a cellar room.
I was placed at one end of the sofa with Annie between me and her companion. I asked to be introduced. When Annie did not immediately respond, I leaned forward, stretching my hand across, and said my name to the girl with a friendly smile. She touched my hand timidly and nodded.
“But what is your name?” I asked.
There was no direct response. The girl looked away.
“Her name is Meg,” said Annie.
“Can’t she speak?” I whispered.
“Sometimes.” Then, clearly wishing to change the subject, she said, “You get it from Lady Goodhope she means to close up the house in London?”
“She hasn’t told me, certainly,” said L
“No, but you bein’ Sir John Fielding’s helper and all, I thought you heard her, like, discussin’ her plans.”
I thought a moment. “Well,” said I, “she did declare that her home is in that place in Lancashire. And she said it in such a way that meant she wished to return.”
“That’s what we’re afraid of, all of us. This was Lord Dickie’s house. She wasn’t here but a few weeks a year. And God be my witness, what a difference it were the rest of the time.”
go “What do you mean?” I asked, glad at last to be learning a little.
“Well, the upstairs staff liked it then because there was parties sometimes three, four times a week with Lord Dickie, dinner parties and other parties. The footmen and Potter would line up in the hall to collect their vails. They’d make as much in a week at such affairs as us downstairs would get in a year.” She gave the girl next to her a powerful nudge. “But we had our ways, eh, Meggie?”
With that sally directed at her, the girl known as Meg jumped up from the sofa and ran from the room. Whether she was weeping or not I could not say, for she was away and gone down the hall too swiftly. I was quite dumbfounded. All I could do was stare at the point where I had last seen her.
“That was wicked of me,” said Annie. “In all truth I wanted to be rid of her, but my means was bad.”
“Is she mute? Can she speak, truly?” I reflected that she seemed bright enough, but terribly timid, frightened.
“Meg’s half-daft, maybe more.”
“Has she always been this way?”
“No,” said Annie with a sigh. “These other parties of Lord Dickie’s, they wasn’t no proper dinners where he’d have all the lords and ladies. There’s even been a few of those with Lady Goodhope about. Then didn’t we slave down in the kitchen! No, most of Dickie’s evenings was what he called his ‘impromptus,’ like. Fancy word that, ain’t it? Must mean something bawdy, for that’s what went on those nights. Dickie might go out to a theatre, or some such place, and come back with a great crowd of bucks and their bawds. He’d rout Cookie out and demand supper for the lot. Late work for us.
“On’y sometimes they might be a bawd or two short for the night. Sometimes he’d send Potter out to pimp one off the street. But they come to the habit of pulling Meg and me up from the kitchen. It was our young years they preferred, y’see. Usually we got off laughin’ and dancin’ and carryin’ on, actin’ in their theatricals, but sometimes not. We was well paid, in any case. Wasn’t the footmen and the servers jealous of our vails!
“Now, all this hugger-mugger between bucks and bawds, I can take it or I can leave it alone, y’see. But it begun to prey on Meg something fierce, the sin of it and all. So one night there comes a special rowdy crowd. Lord Dickie had his new one, that actress Lucy Kilbourne, with him, and after supper, sure enough, he sends down for me and Meg. On’y this time she refuses to go. I have to go up and tell the master. Now I should’ve said she was ill, but I didn’t; I said she wouldn’t. This put him in a right fury. He went down after her himself, dragged her up he did. And then a group of them took her to the bedchambers above and used her most shameful. I wasn’t witness to it myself, thank God, but I could hear her screamin’ and yellin’, and then all of a sudden she quit, and I thought for fair they’d taken her life. I don’t mind tellin’ you it put a damper on the party in the dining room.”
Annie stopped talking then as if she’d ended her tale. I drew the likely conclusion: “And this has affected her speech?”
“Oh, ain’t it, though! This happened near a month ago, and she ain’t talked yet. Except I caught her babblin’ on to herself once or twice. So it ain’t like she can’t talk; she just won’t.”
I was thrown into profound confusion by the story. Remember, reader, I had but just turned thirteen. My upbringing by my father had sheltered me a good deal from such mysteries as were involved here. I had no specific notion of what went on between men and women, though I strongly suspected that this area of my ignorance was a large and important one. I had begun to look upon women as women and girls as girls. I sometimes stared. I sometimes spied. And in a general way, I had become most curious. But Annie’s account of Meg’s ordeal had put a dark shadow over matters that I had previously regarded as sly fun. I had no idea what could have been so hurtful to her. And though I was profoundly confused, I did not wish Annie to explain things to me in great detail. That would have been far too painfully embarrassing to me.
“I think she fancies you,” said Annie. “That’s why she’s in such a dither.”
How could I respond to that? Particularly in light of what I had just heard?
“But then,” said she, “I fancy you, too—and that’s why I drove her away!”
That said, she fell to tickling me most fiercely.
I begged away from such sport as quickly as possible, giving as my excuse that I must do what I was sent to do and continue my inspection of the library. Annie feigned hurt but grabbed me and kissed me on the cheek as I bade her goodbye: my first since the death of my mother. I colored red and near ran from the room.
Moving through the kitchen, remembering at last to say a tardy thank-you to the cook, I noted new faces there and wondered how many could be employed at that single residence. (A dozen, it turned out, was the total number.) Then up to the library where at last my breathing slowed to a comfortable rate.
I surveyed the place. It seemed little changed since my last visit. The door still stood open and askew. The log with which it had been beaten open, however, had at last been removed. I walked idly about, first noting that the desk was, as I had remembered, quite bare: specifically, there were no bottles, decanters, or flasks atop it, and I was sure that was as it had been. Then I went roaming, looking for places where strong drink might be stored. There were cabinets, two of them, to the left of the desk. One contained writing materials and a disordered pile of papers. The second cabinet contained liquor. There were three bottles and a decanter, and an assortment of glasses.
“Ah, there you are, young Jeremvl”
I turned and found Mr. Donnelly at the door to the librarv. He seemed in remarkably good fettle for one who had just delivered a corpus to a widow.
‘Tve found where the spirits are stored.” said I, making more of the discovery than need be.
“Ah, well.” said he, ambling indifferently toward my end of the room, “let’s have a look.”
He knelt down beside me. laving down his stick upon the floor, and reached into the cabinet: he pulled the bottles out one bv one.
“What have we here? A bottle of port, a bottle of usquebaugh, and one of Spanish brandy. A good haul, eh?”
Then he uncorked them and smelled each, with a careful shake of his head.
“No,” said he. “none of these did him in, I fear.”
“But,” said I. “how can you tell: unless they be submitted to a chemist, or actually tasted?”
“You wish me to taste them? I shall be happv to oblige.”
He then, as if on a dare, took a swig from each bottle, corking them, each one again, as he went.
“There,” said he, “are you satisfied?” This came with a bit of a laugh. He was indeed in an exuberant, reckless mood.
“Indeed I am,” said I. “but had you been wrong, you might be dead or dving this very moment.”
“But, you see, Jeremy, I couldn’t be wrong. Two things militated against the possibility of poison in these bottles. First of all, the strength and nature of the gift would be such that it would give a strong and distinctive odor, even mixed with spirits: It makes me wonder how he managed to get it down without first becoming suspicious. But then there is the second matter, related to the first. The dosage was so powerful, so caustic, and would have worked so swiftly, that the victim would hardly have had time to replace the bottle in the cabinet. You see?”
“I do, yes, but all the same it seems a risky trial.”
“Ah, well,” said he again, “we must take such chances in life from time to time, don’t you think?”
I could not suppose what had altered his mood so. He rose swiftly and indicated with his stick that I should return the bottles to their proper place, which I did and closed the door to the cabinet.
“Well,” said he to me, “perhaps we’ve presumed too long on the hospitality of Lady Goodhope. Let’s be off, shall we?”
And so he led the way out of the room and down the hall to the street door, twirling his stick as he went, the very picture of the happiest man in all of London. Potter was at the door to hand him his tricorn, give him a bow, and see us on our way.
Once outside on St. James Street, Mr. Donnelly paused and turned to me. A broad smile animated his face.