The Thief-Taker : Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner (12 page)

Henry Morton rose.

“Thank you for your patience, Mr. Hamilton.” Morton bowed and started for the door.

“Mr. Morton?” Hamilton looked at him, his eyes glistening slightly. “What do you think befell my friend?”

“I do not know for certain, Mr. Hamilton, but I think it likely he was poisoned,” Morton said flatly.

“If you were to catch the miscreant who did this, would you have any hope of conviction?”

“It depends, Mr. Hamilton. There would have to be very hard evidence, as our only authority on poisons is not much credited by their lordships of the Old Bailey.”

Peter Hamilton took this in for a moment.

“I do hope you find the man, Mr. Morton.” He paused, and then the hint of passion returned to his voice. “And if it is Rokeby, I hope you hang him.”

The hired horse shambled along, its tired head hanging low, occasionally taking swipes at tufts of orchard grass along the margin of the path. Dragonflies hovered in the warm still air, the blur and glitter of their wings awhir in the soft morning sunlight. Morton let the horse have its head as the path plunged down a small embankment, the beast's shoulders bunching up and rocking him from side to side as each hoof landed hard.

The path ran on smoothly then, and arrived at a crude gate. Morton let himself through, and emerged from the trees onto a narrow lane. A half hour along this and the weathered roofs of a small village appeared among oaks and massive beech.

His mother's cottage was the last dwelling but one as you rode south of the town. It lurked behind an unkempt, ancient hedge of laurel, thick spirea, and hawthorn. Morton gave a boy a coin to water his horse, and mind it while it browsed by the stream. Pushing open the creaking gate, he entered the garden.

For a moment he stood, staring around at the tangle of flowers and weeds, colours tumbling one over the other, out of the borders of the beds and onto the gravel path. He could hear the rasp of something scraping in earth, and then a softly rendered old country air. Morton cleared his throat.

Rebecca's face appeared among the hydrangea, a straw sun hat pushed onto the back of her head. Her startled expression gave way to a smile, and she brushed back a strand of hair with a soil-stained hand.

“Well, if it isn't Gentleman Jim! 'Enry!” she cried. “Oh, I've forgotten your h'aitch,” she added, laughing. It was an old jest, a reminder of a woman they'd once known.

She came out of the garden bed, wearing a farm labourer's boots, the skirts of her dress hitched up a little into a sash. There was a smudge of brown beside her freckled nose, which wrinkled up as she smiled. She kissed him lightly on both cheeks, rising up to her toes to do so.

“Don't take my hands,” she said, “they're all over dirt from the garden. But you've come just in time. Something is thieving my carrots.”

“Is it a person?”

She gazed thoughtfully at the rows of vegetables. “No, I suspect it isn't.”

“I fear my skills are limited to the apprehension and prosecution of men.”

“What is the point of having a thief-taker for a son if he can't protect even your garden? Oh, well. I shall have what the thieves leave, I suppose.”

His mother led him to a small table set beneath the trees, and Morton lowered himself, with some misgivings, into a decrepit wicker chair. His mother disappeared inside
to make tea, and Morton sat watching her pass back and forth before the window. She had once been a very comely young woman, and some echo of that remained as she aged. Not that she was old—only seventeen years older than Morton himself. But her life had been a hard one.

Still, her hair, now silvery white, retained its lustre, and her face was not deeply wrinkled, but etched instead by myriad wire-thin lines. Through the window, she still appeared youthful, for she had so far avoided the stooping and slowing that overtook people as they aged.

A moment later she emerged. “Kettle's on,” she announced, and lit in the chair opposite. The sun dappled down through the leaves onto her face and dress.

“How's your new thatch?” Morton asked.

“It's as good as magic. Not a drop can find its way through.” She bobbed her head to him. “And I thank you again.”

“You shouldn't thank me, Mother.”

“Then you shouldn't bring it up,” she said, and Morton laughed.

From some distant corner of that summer afternoon a cuckoo called, and both Morton and his mother fell silent, listening. He looked up and found she was gazing at him, her face shadowed now by her hat brim.

“You've grown to look remarkably like your father,” she told him. Morton's reaction to this did not go unnoticed, and she reached out to press her now scrubbed fingers to his wrist. “But let's not speak of the devil,” she added.

Tea was soon made, and they sat drinking Old Gunpowder as around them bees hummed and pushed their determined way into trembling blossoms.

“I've been engaged in the most lucrative commission of my career,” Morton said, realizing how awkward that sounded. The problem was he wanted to leave his mother some money, but her pride wouldn't abide it. Not unless he could convince her it wasn't money he needed himself.

“The tailors of London will rejoice,” she said.

“I'm not really such a dandy. You've just not seen the way gentlemen are dressing in London these days. But I've no need of another frock-coat or pair of breeches.”

His mother played with the tassel of her shawl. “No doubt you'll find some use for it,” she said quietly. “Do you still see your actress?”

“When time allows,” Morton admitted.

His mother raised her cup and saucer, but said, “She does not treat you as you deserve.”

“No mother's son has ever been treated as he deserves,” Morton replied, and saw her quick smile before she sipped her tea.

“And what of Mr. Townsend?”

“He is well.”

“You'll take him my regards?”

“Indeed, just as I'm sure he would have sent his, had he known I would visit.”

Setting her cup on the table, his mother leaned her head against the high back of the chair, closed her eyes, and inhaled the fragrance of her garden. “I worry about you, Henry,” she said. “You don't know what it's like to be a parent and have your only child chasing about London after footpads and murderers.”

“It's the footpads you should be concerned for,” Morton said.

She smiled. “But even so, I wish you'd gone into the church as we'd planned.”

“The church was never a plan I was party to. Anyway, you forget that I had to leave the university when Lady Beaufort died.”

“I forget nothing, Henry,” his mother said—and it was true. It was from her that he'd inherited his remarkable memory and whatever wit he might claim. From his father he got only his appearance, apparently.

“It was unfortunate that she didn't live a few years more.”

“I'm only sorry that she didn't die sooner,” Morton said.

His mother opened her eyes. “Now, Henry, where would we have been without her?”

“I don't know. Someplace where you wouldn't have had to atone for your ‘sin’ twice daily. Someplace where we wouldn't have had to shoulder the blame for her brother's transgression.” Morton took up his cup, calming himself. “But it's all past,” he said.

His mother grinned suddenly. “You don't miss your evening Bible readings? What of the inestimable—and inexhaustible—works of Hannah More? I can hear you reading them still. Did a word ever register in your mind?”

“I do remember being particularly struck by the word ‘salubrious,’ one day,” Morton said. “Evangelical literature, however, did give me a great desire for other books.
Any
other books. And it taught me to pray. ‘Please Lord,’” Morton intoned, “ ‘deliver me from the writings of Hannah More.’”

His mother cuffed him gently on the arm, but laughed. “Amen,” she said. And then more seriously: “But you received an education you should not have otherwise.”

“Yes, I suppose I should thank her for that—incomplete as it was.”

This promise of education had been the reason his mother had swallowed her pride a dozen times a day. It was the chain that had bound them both to that cold, proud woman. Pride, Morton noted, was a sin, yet the supposedly pious Lady Beaufort had exhibited it in a manner and degree that Morton had never before encountered.

In Lady Beaufort's house, however, no one else was allowed pride. Certainly not his mother—or Morton. Lady Beaufort had found them, when his mother had been forced to leave her employment after being got with child by her much older and more worldly employer. She had been sixteen.

She had had no family to go to. Only this remote and haughty widow—sister to Morton's blood-father—who took her on out of charity and to see her atone for her wickedness. Which Rebecca did twice daily, kneeling and asking God for forgiveness, while Lady Beaufort looked on. And then any number of times more in the way she was treated. She had stayed because of the promise that her son—Lady Beaufort's bastard nephew—would receive an education. That a position would be secured for him in some small parish. That he would have some kind of legitimacy in the end.

But Lady Beaufort had died and no provision had been made for either Henry or Rebecca Morton in her will.

“It is odd, isn't it?” Morton said. “The twists and turns of a person's life?”

His mother turned her head a little toward him, widening her eyes. “If we'd not met John Townsend, you mean?”

“I suppose. Or to go back one step; if Lady Beaufort hadn't been robbed.”

“Yes, and if the old crone hadn't suspected us,” his mother said bitterly, “as though we'd ever given her cause to think us thieves.”

The scarlet face of a panting girl appeared over the gate at that moment, and then the gate sagged, and a small, serious boy lifted his head into view.

“It's time, ma'am!” the girl gasped. “Mamma's screaming something terrible and said to beg you hurry.”

Morton's mother swept up out of her chair. “I am sorry, Henry. But I must bring another howling human into this world of misery. I pray that you won't be chasing after this one in a few years' time.”

She hurried into the house, and emerged a moment later carrying a cloth bag. She drew up before Morton, looking suddenly as though a tear might fall. Reaching out a hand, she straightened the lapel of his frock-coat.

“Look at you,” she said, her voice rich and deep. “Turning yourself out so. But even with your perfect manners and your educated talk you'll not fool them for long. Remember that, Henry. They'll always find you out.” She put her cheek against his, then kissed him quickly and went out through the gate, taking the frightened children in tow.

Morton stood for a moment looking at the opening in the hedge. Then he gathered up the remains of their tea and carried it inside, leaving some small sum of money on the tray.

A
s the midmorning sitting at Police Court
would be under way by now, Morton decided he could hazard a brief visit to Bow Street without much risk of encountering Sir Nathaniel. He found George Vaughan lounging in the front chamber, a small ruffian with a bleeding nose slumped disconsolately beside him—doubtless awaiting their interview with the Magistrates. Morton threw himself down on the bench across from Vaughan, stretching out his legs and crossing them.

“This cull looks ready for a hearty choke-and-caper sauce,” he remarked, and smiled cheerfully at Vaughan's prisoner. It was an underworld witticism for hanging, and Vaughan chuckled, his lean, hard features relaxing a little.

“Jack Ketch'll have him for breakfast, sure,” he agreed. “He's hardly a mouthful, though. Likely get stuck between his teeth.” And they laughed together at the other man's obvious discomfiture. Even so, Morton sensed a particular wariness in his colleague. Did
Vaughan know that Morton's knowledge of his doings had recently been augmented by Jimmy Presley?

Even at the best he and Vaughan had never been in sympathy, and this little exchange of rough police humour almost suggested that both were trying, for some reason, to pretend otherwise.

Vaughan continued the bantering mood.