The Thief-Taker : Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner Read online

  “I don't know for certain that he was murdered, but there is something very odd there.”

  “What does Lord Arthur Darley think?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “He is an astute man.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “I know of him, sir. He is a man of parts, they say. He is well respected.”

  Morton sipped his port. “What else can you tell me?”

  “He is the younger son of the Earl of Cardiff. Served in the Home Office for a time, if memory does not fail me. A brother made the ultimate sacrifice at the Battle of the Nile. The present earl, Lord Arthur's older brother, is a buffoon whom Lord Arthur keeps afloat. Lord Arthur is a man known for his loyalty. His acquaintance is broad, though his sympathies lie with the artistic set. Frequents the theatre. The opera. Can shoot, ride to the hounds, and play the violin.”

  “A man of parts,” Morton agreed. Darley sounded a little too much to be true. “You don't know the Glendinning family, by chance?”

  Wilkes shook his head. “I'm sorry, sir.”

  Morton gazed out the window again, over the glistening peaks of the houses opposite. Somewhere beyond, across the Channel, Wellington was seeking Bonaparte on the fields of France. It made everything else seem inconsequential. If Bonaparte could defeat the armies of Britain and Prussia…Well, there might be a need for another battle of Trafalgar, and there was no longer a Nelson to fight it. How much would the death of Halbert Glendinning mean then?

  There was a light tapping from beyond the door, and Wilkes rose immediately to see who it might be.

  Every Bow Street Runner had his own corps of informants, and it had taken the old man a while to get used to the people who appeared at Morton's door of an evening. Every kind of riffraff they must have seemed to his eye, always with some unsavoury secret to disclose or comrade to betray. Such folk must have called rather infrequently on his previous master. Wilkes watched over Morton's silver with a certain fixity whenever they appeared.

  But Henry Morton had chosen his lodgings in Rupert Street exactly with his informants in mind. Comprising the upper floor of a rambling wooden structure, a former inn from Jacobean times, the rooms were eccentric and unfashionable, but private. While his front doorway was guarded by his suspicious landlady, he also had a more secluded entrance, up two flights of outside stairs from a back lane. Mind you, it was not just peachers who ascended these stairs. Arabella or, be it admitted, her predecessors often came up the same way.

  Neither the landlady nor her porter and other servants in the lower regions of the house had ever discovered Morton's occupation. As someone who bore at least the appearance of a gentleman, and could pay a gentleman's rent, it was not necessary that he have an occupation at all. Only Wilkes was familiar with the visitors his master entertained.

  Now the manservant reappeared at the sitting-room door.

  “One of my saunterers, Wilkes?” asked Morton.

  “Not at all, sir. It is a lady.” The old man's voice had taken on a suitably grave tone. Clearly, this was a respectable female, too. “A Miss Louisa Hamilton, sir.”

  The name seemed familiar, and then Morton remembered why. “Poor Louisa,” Darley had said, and now here she was.

  “Please, show her in.”

  Morton rose from his chair in time to greet a tall woman, veiled and richly dressed in deep mourning. Beyond the door another female silhouette hovered, but did not enter.

  He introduced himself. “May I… express my condolences at your loss,” he murmured politely. It was not necessary to assume he knew who had died, given her garb.

  The veiled head dipped in acknowledgement, but she said nothing.

  “Do come in, Miss Hamilton,” he said even more gently, and smiled and gestured with one hand. “Make yourself at ease.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and then, to his surprise, gently pulled the sitting-room door closed on the two servants before taking the upholstered reading chair he indicated. A suggestion of unfamiliar perfume reached him.

  Port-wine would not do for a woman, but Morton had some decent Portuguese sherry, and went to his sideboard and poured a glass. This he set down on the marble-topped pedestal beside her before resuming his own place. There was a moment of awkward silence, during which Morton had time to feel his curiosity begin to stir. It was really most odd.

  Suddenly Miss Hamilton reached out and laid a hand on the book Arabella had given him earlier. “Ah, you are reading Byron,” she said, almost with relief, he thought.

  “I've just begun,” Morton said.

  “It seems to me that, in this collection, there are lyrics that belong among the best in the language.” She caressed the reddish-brown morocco and took her hand slowly away. Morton mentally took his hat off to his titled sparring partner. Byron must have every educated female in London reading his books—and dreaming of him, too. Even Arabella, apparently: though who was the admired there seemed uncertain.

  But Louisa Hamilton had not come to discuss Byron.

  “I have spoken with Lord Arthur Darley,” she finally began.

  When she turned her head a little Morton could make out a silhouette beneath the veil. Dark-haired and blue-eyed, with a generous mouth. There was something else, but he could not say what it was. Something in the way she looked at him, her head turned slightly away.

  “He told me you believe Halbert Glendinning's death to have been … unnatural.”

  Morton made a noncommittal gesture with one hand. “I do not know how Mr. Glendinning died, only that he did not choke, as the surgeon at Portman House suggested.”

  “But there is more, is there not? Lord Arthur intimated that there was, though he would not say what.”

  “Well, Mr. Glendinning did go out in an affair of honour that same morning. It is a coincidence with obvious implications.” Morton hesitated. Was Darley right? This woman and Glendinning were set to announce their engagement?

  “I fear you are protecting me from something harsher, Mr. Morton. As was Lord Arthur.”

  Morton breathed deeply. He should say nothing more. After all, who was he to impugn the dead man's name?—exactly as his family had feared. But then there was the little matter of the truth. Henry Morton had a certain stubborn streak about it. “I spoke with the jarvey who carried Glendinning up to Portman Square. He had collected him from a particularly notorious flash house in Spitalfields, I am sorry to say.”

  “Pray, pardon my female ignorance. What is a flash house, Mr. Morton?”

  “A den for criminals—we call them ‘flash customers’ or ‘flash coves.’ Actually, that's what they call themselves. It's a public house, usually, employed by a criminal gang as a base of operation, and for… their entertainment. There are dozens in London, sometimes in ill neighbourhoods, but sometimes not. At times they face streets of perfect respectability, and could never be guessed at by their outward show. In fact,” Morton smiled wryly, “there is one directly across from the Bow Street Public Office, called the Brown Bear. We use it from time to time to lock up suspected persons.”

  “And you are sure that Halbert Glendinning was in such a place?”

  “I am quite certain.”

  She shook her head, looking down at her gloved hands clasped on the black-and-grey lap of her dress.

  “People have been whispering,” she said. “What is it about this place you are not telling me, Mr. Morton?”

  It was a question Morton was not eager to answer. He said nothing.

  After a moment she looked up at him directly and the light from the lamp seemed to penetrate her veil. Two things struck him. She was a very comely woman. But, yes, there was something else….

  “Mr. Morton. Please do not spare my feelings. The whisperings are worse than the truth, I fear.”

  Morton hoped she was right. But he doubted it. “The Otter, for that is the name of the place, is a house where men come to fulfill some very base appetites.”

  She closed her eyes. “Go on, M
r. Morton,” she whispered. “You may say it.”

  One of Henry Morton's ideas about truth was that if people said loudly and clearly enough that they wanted to hear it, they should.

  “They go there to consort with children, Miss Hamilton. Little girls.”

  For a moment she was very still, and then her eyes sprang open. Even behind the veil their gaze was startling.

  “Never,” she breathed. “Never could Halbert have done such a thing.”

  “Doubtless you're right,” Morton said softly. He half expected her to denounce him next, denounce him and his precious truth. But she did not.

  Instead, Louisa Hamilton drew herself up. “Halbert Glendinning was of the simplest, finest character,” she began.

  “So Lord Arthur assured me.”

  “Hear me out, Mr. Morton. Halbert was the gentlest soul I have ever known. He could bring himself to hurt nothing. He was entirely free of the sort of odious inclination you have just named—I can say it with certainty. It is utterly inconceivable in him.” And something in her manner did in fact go a distance toward persuading Morton. She was certainly intelligent, and perhaps not quite so unworldly as many females of her class. But she was puzzling, too, with this combination of shyness and strength, stiffness and sudden protective passion.

  “Understand, Miss Hamilton, that I never suggested—”

  “Of course, Mr. Morton. I realise you didn't, but still… you did not know him. He wrote poetry and worshiped art….” She shook her head, for a moment unable to say more. Then, very quietly and firmly, she went on. “What you have told me, Mr. Morton, makes me even more certain that my fiancé died unnaturally. I am here to engage you to discover his killer, and to aid in that person's prosecution.”

  Morton's surprise left him speechless.

  “You do take on such work, don't you?” she asked. “When I spoke with Mrs. Malibrant at Lord Arthur's, she assured me that you did.”

  “You saw Mrs. Malibrant at Lord Arthur's … this evening?”

  She nodded.

  Morton felt his mood lower a little. “Well, yes, I do,” he answered her question. “I am paid only a small retainer by the Magistrate at Bow Street.” Morton was embarrassed to say it was but five shillings a day. “Like my brother officers, I earn my living largely through rewards for convictions, and private work. I used to attend the Drury Lane Theatre, for instance, so that ladies might feel comfortable wearing their jewelry. I made Mrs. Malibrant's acquaintance that way.”

  “And how much would you earn for gaining the conviction of a murderer?”

  “For a murderer, nothing. That is a duty.”

  “For other crimes?”

  “Theft over fifteen shillings—forty pounds.”

  “I am prepared to pay you ten times that much. Half immediately.”

  Morton reached for his port-wine. Four hundred pounds was a good year's income for many men. Poor Louisa indeed!

  “Will you take up this task?” she asked.

  “I can do nothing else,” he replied. “You offer far more money than I can imagine turning down. You should pay me less.”

  “I would pay you more, if it made success any more likely.”

  “It wouldn't.”

  She smiled.

  “I believe I have made a good choice in you, Mr. Morton,” she said quietly. Then she looked again at the book on the table.

  “You seem to be an educated man, if I may say so,” she remarked. “How many officers of police read the latest poets?”

  “Too few.”

  She laughed, and her indirect glance met his for an instant through the veil. Then Morton had it, what was strange about her: She had a wandering eye. Only very slightly so, but detectable all the same. A woman who never looked quite directly at the world.

  Even so, he thought a little flicker of understanding passed between them. Then they both looked down, and when she raised her handsome face again her expression was businesslike once more.

  “How will you begin?” she asked.

  “I will likely speak to the jarvey again. Visit this flash house in Bell Lane. Talk to anyone who might have seen Mr. Glendinning the day of his death. Try to discover all of his movements and activities that day, and indeed for several days before. I will want to know more of this duel….” A lamp guttered, and Morton reached out to adjust the wick.

  “Mr. Morton?” she asked quietly. “Members of my family, and of Halbert's, are concerned for my… well-being. They feel the whole matter should be forgotten as quickly as possible. Were I known to be doing this, there would be a very strong effort to dissuade me. If you could keep the identity of your commissioner hidden during your enquiries, I would be greatly obliged.”

  “Yes, certainly. But I'll need to speak to you and pose some questions.”

  “Indeed, I will want to answer them, when an opportunity presents itself. But let me send my maidservant Nan to you tomorrow; she can provide you with almost anything I could myself. She is closer than a sister to me.”

  Morton nodded his agreement. But there was one more question that he wanted answered before he began, and he wanted the answer from no one else.

  “Are you acquainted with Colonel Rokeby, Miss Hamilton?”

  He thought she blushed, though through the veil he could not be sure.

  “I understand,” she said, “how the Colonel must be your first concern. The duel makes that necessary.”

  “Runners from Bow Street interrupted that contest,” noted Morton, “after a warning delivered by a lady's maidservant.”

  She nodded. “Yes, I sent Nan.”

  “And how did you learn of the duel? From Mr. Glendinning?”

  “No, in fact, I found out quite by chance. A servant said something. I could not quite believe it. Halbert despised such things. But it was true. Nan confirmed it through the manservant of my half-brother.”

  Morton nodded. She had nimbly dodged his original question. “Colonel Rokeby and yourself, Miss Hamilton?”

  She sat for a long moment, looking past him. Then she turned her head again.

  “To come here at all, I suppose I must trust you, Mr. Morton.” She met his eye in her oblique way, then dropped her gaze and began speaking in a low, expressionless voice. “In an earlier period of my life, under the pressure of…events, I did some very foolish things, Mr. Morton. I was… acquainted with the Colonel, briefly. But I soon broke off any connection between us.”

  Morton thought Arabella would likely be proved right again—which she would no doubt be delighted to hear.

  “How did he accept this rejection?”

  She shook her head. “I really have no notion. Until this duel, I had not thought of or spoken to the Colonel in many months.”

  “And your acquaintance with Mr. Glendinning began when?”

  She stared blankly.

  “Miss Hamilton, you can see the relevance, surely. Was Colonel Rokeby angry enough, or jealous enough, to have wanted to revenge himself upon your fiancé? How long ago did your relations with the Colonel come to an end?”

  “A year—eighteen months ago. Halbert began to call not long after.” She looked up at him. “Is there more, Mr. Morton? I must return to my home.”

  Morton hesitated.

  “Can you not simply proceed?” she almost pleaded. “Need I say more about events I am loath to admit even to myself?”

  Morton felt the propriety of pressing her no further, at least for now. If he had no solicitude for her feelings, he ought to have for his four hundred pounds. He bowed silently.

  “I will send Nan to you tomorrow, with a draught on my bankers.” She rose and stepped toward the door, but then turned. “Mr. Morton? Did I bring this upon poor Halbert? Did my treatment of Colonel Rokeby cause…?” She could not bring herself to say it.

  “Even if it were Rokeby, Miss Hamilton, the blame is not yours. Rokeby's actions are his own to account for. No one else's.”

  She nodded once, seemed to waver where she stood, then
held out her gloved hand, which Morton touched to his lips. Wilkes saw her out.

  Morton picked up his glass again, noticing that his guest had not touched her own. Had Rokeby actually taken the step of murder? Certainly the man was a killer, but so far his killings had always been “honourable,” if not strictly legal. Had he killed Glendinning to have revenge on Louisa Hamilton? And had this same woman just engaged Morton to take her revenge upon Rokeby? Was he to be her champion? Sir Galahad indeed?

  Morton stared down at her untouched glass and suddenly had the feeling, unbidden, that, for all her grace and refinement, Miss Louisa Hamilton was capable of such a thing.

  Chapter 9

  Morton descended from his hackney-coach in Petticoat Lane, just south of Highgate Street. The rain had finished and it was clear now, with a bright half-moon shining, so that he could see a long way up and down London's most notorious market for prostitutes. Even well after midnight it was as crowded with figures as a normal street in daylight, women and men moving busily up and down, and the shrill voices of drag-tailed Sally and her sisters began at once to urge him from several sides.

  News that there was a “horney” in the neighborhood would spread quickly, so Morton pulled the brim of his topper down over his brow, bent his head, and strode resolutely away. Opposite the East India warehouses he entered Parker's Alley and passed through into the dingy silence of tiny Cox Square. In a few moments he came out into narrower, less frequented Bell Lane.

  Here it was much darker, and completely still. The lightless bulk of Constitution Brewery loomed above, blocking out the moonshine. All the old, nondescript buildings on this cheerless street were unlit, except for a dim yellowish glow deep behind the dirty glass of number 12, midway along. Toward this pale beacon Morton made his way, wondering what had brought young Glendinning to such a place. Was Louisa Hamilton utterly wrong in her belief in her fiancé's honour? Many women were.

  No signboard marked the Otter, but it was a public house for all that, and its door was not latched or guarded. Two stone steps down into total obscurity, around a narrow corner, and then, removing his hat and bending, he passed through a low archway. Just as he did he encountered a fat man dressed like a shopkeeper, who was coming out. Something about Morton seemed to alarm him and he ducked his jowled head shamefacedly, brushing past and out into the street. Morton went into the taproom. Small lamps glowed in the corners, but it took his eyes several moments to adjust to the dimness. He was immediately aware that there were people in the place but, uncannily for a tavern on a normally busy night, there was no movement and no sound. Gradually the forms of low benches along the walls emerged, and two small, freestanding tables. A plank bar ran along one side, behind which, on his stool, sat the hunched, motionless figure of the barman. Behind him, rising over his barrels, a set of steep wooden stairs led upward into even deeper obscurity. At one of the tables two other men sat, looking steadily at the newcomer.