“You will recall, sir, that when you gave testimony in behalf of Mr. Mobley during his trial, all went well until the very end. “
“You’re right, indeed you are.”
“Then he put a question to you — something on the order of ‘Do you believe what I said in my statement?’ “
“Yes, I recall.”
“Then you told him that by and large you accepted it — for instance, you accepted all that had to do with the death of Eli Bolt. But then, because he asked, you said that you were less willing to accept him as an unwilling participant in the Laningham conspiracy. Now, during all that, something went wrong between you. He seemed quite shocked at what you had said. Could you explain that to me?”
“That I shall do gladly, for therein lies a good lawyerly lesson for you. You were sent away the day before the trial, when Lord Mansfield and I began to work with Mr. Mobley to help him prepare his defense.”
“Oh, I remember. I felt quite like a child who had been sent out of the room so the adults might speak of adult matters.”
“Well, I offered to testify,” said Sir John. “My testimony and the statement he read out in court were the essence of his defense. He and I drilled his interrogation of me for two hours or more. You might say we prepared a script. I knew what he would ask and when he would ask it. Mobley was something of an actor. He played the role of a lawyer during the trial, reading the statement from the dock, and then questioning me according to the script we had worked out between us. An actor needs a script. But more often than not — or so I hear from Mr. Garrick — they like to stray from it, to improvise a little. Those questions that you noticed at the end of his interrogation were his improvisations, his deviations from the script we had prepared. When he did not get from me the answers that he expected or hoped he would get, then he was quite disappointed. But I could not lie for the fellow. “
“Even crestfallen as he was.”
“Yes, well, the lesson for you as a lawyer in all this is that you must drill your witnesses very well, so well that you know the answer to every question you ask. Or to put it as a principle of interrogation: Never ask a question to which you do not know in advance the answer you will receive.”
“I shall remember that, sir.”
“See that you do.”
There was silence between us for a short time, Sir John liked the silence better than I did. I wished to coax more from him. Perhaps, I thought, this question might capture his interest: “Sir John, I understand well enough what happened involving Sir Patrick Spenser in the false claim for the Laningham title and estate, but it is not clear to me what happened eight years ago. I accept it that Bolt did then murder the man in the Globe and Anchor — but why? I accept it also that Sir Patrick financed the expedition described by Paltrow in his Journal, but what was the purpose of the expedition? The discovery of gold? If so, was gold discovered? I have heard of no such finding in our North American colonies.”
“Nor are you likely to until Sir Patrick gains title to the land where the gold may be dug from the ground. I’ve made inquiries. He has made a discreet offer, yet perhaps not sufficiently discreet, for the proprietors have been set wondering what is in or on that mountainous land to interest one such as Sir Patrick.”
“Gold was the cause of all this?”
“Oh, not all of it, I suppose. Greed for land and higher position also played a part in this later conspiracy. It is remarkable to me, Jeremy, how little content some men are with what they have been given — and by that I mean men who have been given a great deal. In truth, it seems that with some, the more they have, the less satisfied they are — indeed, the more they want.”
I pondered upon that, thinking also of Lawrence Paltrow and the eagerness for more that he expressed to his mother in one of his letters: “We deserve better,” said he to her.
“This may also have been the case with Lawrence Paltrow.”
“Certainly it was.”
“What do you suppose happened to him?’’ I wondered it aloud.
“I should think you would have guessed,” said Sir John.
“Well, I don’t think he drowned in a river crossing as Mr. Mobley was told. I believe it likely that he died somewhere out in the wilderness and probably at the hand of Eli Bolt.”
“You have it partly right, in any case.’’ He paused a moment to think how best he might present this. “Do you recall our discussion concerning aliases? I said that more often than not they are created from the name given at birth. Eli Bolt became Elijah Bolton, and, earlier, Elijah Elison. Well, there are some who do it differently. They dig back in their family history, not necessarily very far, to choose a name. Tell me, Jeremy, does the name Mudge mean anything to you?”
“Well, I recall from the ‘Unresolved’ file that it was the name of the man hanged in his room in the Globe and Anchor, almost certainly murdered by Bolt. Do you mean that he…?”
“Mudge was also the family name of his mother. That information was on her death certificate from Bath and was given us by Lord Mansfield.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t notice.”
“You must listen more carefully. Let nothing be lost on you.”
“But why was Lawrence Paltrow murdered? Was it to keep secret the location of the site where gold might be dug?”
“No, as I have worked it out, young Mr. Paltrow hoped by deception to claim the gold for himself. This speculation of mine is based on information I acquired in Oxford when you were not present. But as I see it, he kept a written record of the journey in his Journal — a written record, by the bye, because Bolt was almost certainly illiterate but as a man of the frontier could read drawn maps with the best of them. That Journal he left with his mother.
“There was, and no doubt still is, gold to be mined at that site he described in his Journal. He was sent over to confirm this, gather samples, give an estimate of the yield, and so on — the sort of thing that one with a background in natural science such as he had could do very well. He had, as a matter of fact, been recommended for this work to Sir Patrick Spenser by Professor Fowler of Merton College, Oxford, Sir Patrick financed Paltrow’s trip to America, as well as the expedition to the site discovered by Bolt the year previous. Paltrow was offered no partnership in the enterprise, I’ll wager — simply hired to do the task. He began very early to devise a plan whereby he might eventually come away with all that Sir Patrick sought. In pursuit of this, he acquired samples of iron pyrites, popularly known as fools gold. These he substituted for the gold ore samples they had mined in — where was it? — the colony of Georgia. With Sir Patrick he took them to Professor Fowler for confirmation of the discovery. Professor Fowler saw that what Paltrow offered him was nothing more or less than iron pyrites, of no value whatever, and he was quick to tell them so. Paltrow did not mind being disgraced in the eyes of his teacher if he might in some way gain control of this great prize.
“Sir Patrick must indeed have been furious, yet there was little he could do. It was simple ignorance that had led him to this end. Yet he must have become suspicious — perhaps when he heard from Bolt some word of the Journal. Perhaps he demanded to see it, and Paltrow could not produce it, for he had by that time deposited the Journal with his mother and told her something of his plan. Or perhaps Bolt had searched Paltrow’s room at the Globe and Anchor and found the samples of true gold brought back from America.
Whatever the circumstances leading up to it, Sir Patrick’s suspicion was sufficient for him to order the murder of young Paltrow by Eli Bolt. I, knowing none of this, was called in to investigate the supposed suicide of Herbert Mudge. Where he found the name Herbert, I’ve no idea. Perhaps it was his maternal grandfather’s name. In any case, I could prove nothing other than suicide. And because he had been traveling under an alias — part of the secrecy Sir Patrick demanded, no doubt — the Widow Paltrow never knew that her son was dead. That was why she proved such an easy prey to the claimant and asked him — her last words to him — where the gold was.”