In one sense only did the tale told by the young merchant officer baffle me. “Why did you not tell the whole story to the judge?” I asked him. “Indeed, had you told it to the magistrate in the beginning you would never have been brought to trial.”
“Early on, I sought to protect her,” said he. “Then, realizing her leading role in the charade, I was ashamed that I had been gulled. I was simply too chagrined to use the whole truth in my own defense.”
“Young man,” said I, for I was, at forty-two, near twenty years his senior, “you must never feel embarrassment because of your own good and generous nature. Nor should you harden your heart, for next time the tale told you may be true, and the innocence you perceive may be as real as can be. So I was once advised by one wiser than me, and so I advise you now.”
We parted but a short time later. I know not whether he has thought upon what I said to him since, nor whether he will much in the future. But I have thought upon it powerfully and oft, for it brought back to my memory in clearest detail one of the bloodiest and most troubling matters ever to come to the diligent attention of Sir John Fielding.
Sir John, Magistrate of the Bow Street Court and chief of the Bow Street Runners, was to me in my youth part master, part father, and something between a hero and a god. We had met when I, an orphan, had been brought before him in his court, falsely accused of thievery. Seeing through the perjured testimony of my accusers, he sent them away with a stem warning, made me a ward of the court, and eventually took me into his household. Starting at age thirteen, I lived under his protection, did whatever work Lady Fielding asked of me about our living quarters, and aided him whenever and however I could. Though blind, he required little direct assistance in his daily routine. However, in certain criminal inquiries he undertook as magistrate I was able to be of more direct help to him, or so he often assured me.
Of all such inquiries, none frustrated him more, nor caused greater panic in the Covent Garden section, which was home to us, than the one I am about to describe. That this matter also caused me some personal pain you may already have inferred.
It was then 1770, a full twenty-seven years past as I write this. Yet I recall the day it began, even now, as one on which I was kept hopping at errands and tasks of every description. Annie Oakum, who had taken Mrs. Gredge’s place as cook in our household (and performed the job far better), asked me that morning to accompany her on her buying trip to Covent Garden. I was then fifteen and grown to a husky lad, but my strength was taxed on our return, for she had bought potatoes, apples, and carrots to last the month — and I was her beast of burden. No sooner back than Lady Fielding fell upon me, all excited, and bade me off to the post to pick up a letter just arrived from her son. Tom, a midshipman on duty in the Mediterranean (all fleet mail was coached up from Portsmouth). No doubt inspired by his description of the shining palaces of Constantinople, which he had but recently seen firsthand, she set me to work immediately making our own little palace shine a bit brighter. Instructing me to scrub the stairs from ground floor up to my attic eyrie, she left for the Magdalene Home for Penitent Prostitutes, whose operation she oversaw, with my assurances that the task would be completed upon her return.
It was not. A request was sent me from below that I present myself to Sir John, who had for me an urgent errand to perform. My duties to Sir John superseded all others. Yet had I been given a choice in the matter, I should just as eagerly have set bucket and brush aside and hastened to his chambers. I delighted in his eccentric nature, by turns grave and witty; I liked well his errands, for they invariably sent me out into the great world, which I was so keen to know; and finally, though I tried to keep it hid, I had come to look upon domestic work as somewhat beneath me.
In any case, I wasted no time but made straight for his door and rapped stoutly upon it. Invited inside, I found Mr. Marsden, the court clerk, at his side. A letter had just been dictated. Having folded it right sharp, Mr. Marsden was in the act of applying wax and marking it with the magistrate’s seal.
“Ah, Jeremy, you, is it?” said Sir John. “Come take a seat. This will be ready for you in a moment.”
“Less than a moment,” said Mr. Marsden, “for it is now ready for delivery.” He slipped a comer of the letter under the fingers of Sir John’s right hand. Receiving Sir John’s thanks, he gave me a nod as he departed.
“Sit down in any case, Jeremy,” said Sir John. “I want you to know the contents of the letter so that you will better understand the special instructions I shall give you.”
“Yes, Sir John.” I took one of two chairs opposite his desk.
“Sir Thomas Cox has just died.”
I knew the name in a vague way. It seemed to me proper to make some remark in comment, and so I did my ignorant best: “I had not known he was ill.”
At that he rumbled forth a deep laugh. “He was not ill. not unless old age itself be a disease. No, he was eighty-seven years old — fourscore years and seven — long past the time most may hope for. I should applaud him for his long life had he the good grace to retire five years ago or more.
He was, though neither you nor others may have known. Coroner for the City of Westminster. Indeed, there was no reason why you should have known. He had not convened a jury and held an inquest during the last five years, yet he was loath to resign his commission and what it paid him. And so he went from year to year promising to resume his official duties as soon as he was able.”
“And he was never again able,” said I. “Who then performed those duties?”
“Officially, no one. In effect, I did.” His fingers drummed lightly upon the letter beneath his hand. “Coroner, you see, is a very old office which was created to ease man’s ignorance of death. The coroner was empowered to convene a jury; he then served as a sort of judge. Together they were to return a finding on the cause of any suspicious death — accident or murder, natural causes or poisoning, and so on. Well, in any practical manner, an experienced magistrate, or even a constable, can determine that. If we find an entire household chopped to pieces — as we did not all that long ago in Grub Street — then we know, by God, that murder has been committed. The only inquiry in recent memory where some effort was made to disguise the nature of the crime was the Goodhope affair. And the exact cause of death became a matter for which medical advice was needful.”
“And which Mr. Gabriel Donnelly provided.”
“Precisely. And that brings me to this letter here before me. I received notification this morning of Sir Thomas’s death from the Lord Chief Justice. He acknowledged that in any true sense the position of Coroner of the City of Westminster had been vacant for five years but requested me to reinstitute formal coroner’s proceedings, with jury and all, until such time as a new and permanent coroner might be appointed. He means me, in other words, to perform both as coroner and as magistrate for an unspecified length of time.”
“Can you do so much. Sir John?” I asked.
“Oh, I expect I can,” said he. “I’ve had Mr. Marsden look up the procedures and read them to me, and they are simple enough. Nevertheless, I know how the Lord Chief Justice and his kith handle such appointments, and so long as a matter has been given temporary attention, they are pleased to let it run on indefinitely just so. I have no intention of allowing them to do that in this case. And so, I have set forth conditions. No need to go into them now. What you must know, however, is that these conditions are set out in this letter. Therefore I ask you, Jeremy, to put it directly into the hand of the Lord Chief Justice; if he is not there, then you must wait for him. My letter requires an immediate response — to wit, that he agrees or does not agree to my conditions. Let him write so on my letter — Mr. Marsden informs me that he left room aplenty for just such a brief reply. The point is, you must wait for that, as well. Be insistent. Be a pest, if you must. But bring back a reply.”