“Well, I would say that it means there was an individual altogether unknown to us who was involved in this expedition at some distance, and may even have been involved in the murder of Mudge, if indeed a murder there was.”
“No, Jeremy, it means more than that. To me it means that if you are correct in what you speculate — and, as I say, I think it likely that you are — then I think it also probable that there is a third party involved in the matter of the Laningham claimant, one who has planned and financed this enterprise, just as he did that one in 1763. In other words, I believe them to be one and the same.”
“But, Sir John, are you sure of this?”
“Of course I’m not sure, but it is the sort of theory that one must test in the course of an investigation.”
“How do you plan to do that, sir?”
“How indeed! To be truthful, I’m not quite sure. It is a matter that I shall take up tomorrow with Lord Mansfield.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes, he has called another meeting of that damned commission that they might discuss the news which we brought back from Bath. We shall meet with him a full hour before the rest attend. “
“Let me be frank, Sir John,” said the Lord Chief Justice. “What I do not understand, have not understood, and I suspect will never be able to understand, is this: If we assume that the Laningham claimant is an impostor, as I believe we must, how could his own mother have been deceived by him? I suspect that she could only have been bribed to acknowledge him as her son.”
“Oh,” said Sir John, “I think not, and had you met her, as I did, you would know that she could not be bought. The woman may have been foolish, but she was at least honest.”
“So you say, but a bribe is not necessarily put forward in quid-pro-quo fashion. It is perhaps more often offered with a wink and a nudge. The briber may say to the potential bribe-taker, ‘With your cooperation, this great bounty will be mine, and when it is, I shall set you up in grand style! You will live as royalty!’ Now, there, Sir John, you see? No specific action is requested, nor is a price named. I doubt that one who couched his request and offer in terms so general could be convicted — at least not in my court-yet a bribe nevertheless.”
“I call that no bribe at all,” said Sir John, “and for the reasons you have just stated — and particularly not if such a speech were delivered from one who claimed to be a son to his putative mother. Indeed it would be his duty to improve her state when it was in his power to do so.” The magistrate paused, evidently to give greater weight to what he then added: “I do not, however, believe that is why she recognized the claimant as her son.”
“You do not?” said the Lord Chief Justice rather gruffly. “What, then, would you say? “
“I would ask you to look upon the situation of the Widow Paltrow. She had been left little on which to end her days, and so she took that little with her to end them in Bath. She knew it to be a place of beauty in which some vestige of the old grace still prevailed. Merely to stroll in Bath for a single morning provided more interest and amusement than she might find during a month in Laningham, which was precisely why she had left what had been her home for so many years. Yet in only a few years she might have become somewhat dissatisfied with her situation. Visitors to the town came and went. They offered opportunities only for conversation. Friends were difficult to find. In fact, during her years in Bath, she made only one — and that was her landlady. Margaret Paltrow was lonely, growing old, and was losing her sight. She had little to look forward to but her death.”
“Imagine such a woman in such a state,” urged Sir John. “Now try to imagine her feelings when into her life came, quite of a sudden, a young man telling her he was her younger son, the one whom she had not heard from in eight years, the one she had given up for dead. He courted her, gave her attention to a degree which she had never before known in her life. Visiting her every day, he exercised his considerable charm upon her, and all he asked in return was that she acknowledge him as her son. Well, why shouldn’t she? How could he not be her son? Though he was perhaps a little taller than she remembered him, he seemed to look like the boy who had set sail so many years ago for America — though it was true she could see him only dimly, due to her failing eyesight. His voice? Well, you know she never was very good at remembering voices, and eight years was a long time to keep one in mind, especially at her age.”
“In short, Lord Mansfield,” he concluded, “she gladly acknowledged him as her own. If he wished her to sign an affidavit to that effect, then she would do so. She may no longer be able to see as she once could, but she could see well enough to write her name, could she not? All this she did with no payment offered, not even for a wink and a nudge, or a vague promise to do right by her in the future. No, she did it because he was a pleasing young man who lavished attention upon her. She did it, in fine, because she was a lonely old woman who badly wanted diversion.”
“Only that?” said the Lord Chief Justice.
“It was what she needed most,” said Sir John.
“Then you came along, so you did, and destroyed all her illusions.”
“I did what you would have me do.”
“It was obviously sufficient. The doubts you planted bestirred her to voice those doubts to the claimant — and that was what led to her death.” The Lord Chief Justice paused a moment to ponder. “Yet, I must admit,” said he then, “that I do not comprehend why it was necessary to murder the old woman. Surely the claimant, who had charmed her once, could charm her again.”
“Certainly it would seem so, “ said Sir John. “Nevertheless, while it may not have been necessary to remove her permanently, it may have been an option offered them which proved altogether too attractive to decline.”
“What do you mean? I don’t quite follow.”
“Why, with the mother dead, there could be no question of her withdrawing her recognition of the claimant as her son. Yet with her dead, they still held her affidavit. If her death could be made to look accidental …”
“As it was.”
“Indeed. But perhaps we lay too much blame in this matter upon the claimant himself. He may not have been directly responsible.”
“If not he, then who? At times, John Fielding, you seem to — “
Then sounded the heavy, hand-shaped door knocker, which I knew well from my many previous visits to this house in Bloomsbury Square; thrice did it beat upon the oak right solemnly and loud, as if launched by the very hand of fate.
“Oh, damn!” said Lord Mansfield, having thus been interrupted. “It must be one of the commission. Is it an early arrival? Surely it is.”
But it was not. The Lord Chief Justice himself had been more than half an hour late. So that we, Sir John and myself, who had come promptly, could do nothing but sit in silence until our host made his appearance. I was annoyed on behalf of my chief. Why must he always wait at the service of the Lord Chief Justice? True enough, Lord Mansfield valued him highly — though not near highly enough, to my way of thinking. He had, at least, the good grace to beg for Sir Johns pardon when he came late into the study, and he even offered an excuse, something I had never known him to do before.
In any case, Sir Johns opportunity to acquaint the Lord Chief Justice with all we had learned while in Bath and afterward was, alas, much diminished by the latter’s late arrival. I could tell he was about to present him with some of the facts, as well as a few of our speculations regarding Mr. Eli Bolt. But then that knock came upon the front door announcing the arrival of Thomas Trezavant, prosperous tradesman, friend of the Prime Minister’s, coroner of the City of Westminster, and member of the nameless commission.