“What of her? I should think a name such as Esther or Ruth would have been more consonant with your father’s past practice.”
“Perhaps, but it was never discussed within my hearing, nor was I bold enough to ask either of them about it. What I have ever assumed, though, is that my mother, who was also a strong-willed person, said that my father had had the pleasure of naming boys, for he was the father of them all. Yet, she said that since it was that the baby just born was a girl and she the mother, ’twas only proper she should do the naming of her.”
“And the name she chose was Alice?”
“Just so.”
“Why that name? Why Alice?”
“Oh, probably because it was her mother’s name.”
“Only that?” He had disappointed me. I felt almost cheated.
That was quite enough for Deuteronomy Plummer. He halted there, in the middle of the Garden, and where he halted, he fair exploded, stamping one foot and then the other as he shouted out his anger. All of those round us turned to look and wonder.
“How should I know how that silly cow of a sister got her name?” he cried. “What should I care?” Then, having seen the audience he had created for himself, he lowered his voice to little more than a whisper: “The only thing good Alice ever done was to have that daughter of hers. Have you seen her? Have you seen Maggie?”
“I have, yes.” I could say neither more nor less than that.
“Well, then you know.”
I feared he would begin to question me with regard to my “meeting,” as it were, with Maggie. And so I urged him onward to Bow Street and Sir John. I was not the one to inform him of the death of his favorite niece. I knew not how much of the story Sir John would tell him, yet ’twas best for him to do the telling. In any case, I got him moving again. And while he would not say a word more about his sister, he spent the whole distance to the magistrate’s court rhapsodizing about Maggie, praising her beauty, her sweetness, her every accomplishment.
Thus it was that we arrived. I showed him the way in and called out a greeting to Mr. Fuller, the day jailer, just to make sure that he was about. He answered in kind and stuck his head out to see what I might require, but then, when he caught sight of him who was beside me, his mouth twisted into a smirk, and his cheeks puffed in his effort to hold back laughter. (What a churl he was!)
“Is Sir John in his chambers?” I asked him.
He gave a hasty nod and retreated deep into his domain. Not a word was said in response-naught but an odd sound that may have been muffled sniggers.
“Down at the end of the hall,” said I to my companion.
I did a fast pace down the hall, intending to distance us from Mr. Fuller as quickly as might be possible.
I paused at the door, allowing Deuteronomy Plummer to catch up, then introduced the two men without much ado. Sir John came forward, his hand outstretched in welcome.
“Deuteronomy Plummer?” he repeated. “Do I not know that name from the world of racing?”
Obviously flattered, Mr. Plummer hemmed and hawed a bit, unable to find words of sufficient graciousness, and, at last, mumbled that he rode “a little.”
“Ah well, a good deal more than ‘a little,’ or so I’ve heard. What a pleasure to meet you.”
“An honor to meet you, sir.”
“Am I to assume from the coincidence of the two surnames that you are related by blood to the Alice Plummer whom we seek?” asked Sir John.
“I’m her brother, sir, and I seek her, too, as you might say. That’s how me and the young man here met. I was searchin’ her place in Seven Dials, just lookin’ for some hint where she went to and along he comes.”
“Young man?” Sir John repeated the phrase as if he could not suppose who might be meant. “Ah, you mean Jeremy, of course.” Then, turning more or less in my direction, he said, “Jeremy, are you still here? Have you not other duties to occupy yourself?”
“None that I can think of, sir,” said I.
“Come now. Are you forgetting Clarissa? She may need your protection. You cannot simply maroon her where you left her, now can you?”
“I suppose not,” said I.
“Then on your way, lad.”
On your way, said he. On my way, indeed! I was quite beside myself with indignation at Sir John’s treatment of me, in particular before a witness I had brought to him. How could he have behaved in such a way toward me? Was having Clarissa home to cook his dinner so important to him?
I stormed down Chandos Street in the general direction of Dawson’s Alley and the imposing building where I had left Clarissa some time before. She was with her friend, was she not? She would probably welcome an extra hour with her. But no, Sir John had instructed me to bring her back, and that is what I would do, no matter what her wishes in the matter. Thus was I prepared-oh, more than prepared-to grasp her by the wrist and pull her bodily from the house. I should then run with her at full speed for Bow Street that I might return in time to hear at least a bit of Sir John’s interrogation of Mr. Plummer.
I came quickly to Number 5 Dawson’s Alley and pounded upon the door with my fist. None could complain that I knocked too weakly to be heard, as Sir John sometimes had done. Even if Clarissa Roundtree and Elizabeth Hooker were chattering up on the third floor, they would certainly hear my knock as a summons, a demand for attention.
As it happened, however, they were not on the third floor, but just round the corner in a little sitting room near the door. And so it was that Elizabeth came to the door quite immediately. She curtsied grandly, more or less duplicating that curtsy that she had offered me to the delight of the crowd at Covent Garden. Ordinarily, I would have greeted her similarly with a bow; but, wrapped up in my own concerns, I offered nothing of the kind in return. As she started to greet me, I spoke over her rather rudely.
“I’ve come for Clarissa,” said I roughly, as if giving an order.
“I supposed you had.”
Her face quite crumpled in response to my boorish manner. I feared for a moment she might burst into tears, such a delicate child was she. Immediately was I overcome by a sense of guilt.
“You must forgive me,” said I to her. “What I said was in no wise ill-intentioned. I am simply in a great hurry, and I-”
“Oh, Jeremy, you’re always in a hurry.” It was Clarissa’s voice rising above my own. Only then did she appear. “Indeed you are late,” said she, “though not so late as I expected. Nevertheless, as you see, I am ready.”
And true enough, she was. Wrapped in her cloak, she bussed Elizabeth upon the cheek and announced that she had had quite a wonderful time and that soon she would return that they might gab once again.
“I loved your story about the vicar,” said she. “Caught out again, was he? That, I hope, has taught him a lesson.”
And, so saying, they embraced hurriedly, and Clarissa slid by her friend and out the door. There were then further goodbyes called out, waves from both, and only then did the door close after her.
“Goodness,” said she, “I’m so glad that’s over.”
I must have looked at her oddly then, for I was quite unsure that I had heard her correctly.
“Glad, oh yes, glad, Jeremy. I have never, I think, spent a more trying pair of hours in my life-not even in the Lichfield poorhouse.”
“What passed between you two that you should be moved to such a complaint?”
“Nothing! That’s just it, you see-nothing at all. After the first twenty or thirty minutes we had naught to say, one to the other. What an inert being she has become-utterly vapid, without purpose, quite useless, a kitchen slavey she is and she will always be.”
“And yet you-”
“No, I take that back. Her great ambition, it seems, is to be a housekeeper, and she may indeed advance that far! She has not read a book in years-and seems proud of it. She. . she. .”
Whether from want of words or breath, her denunciation ceased at about this point, and Clarissa walked beside me quite panting, unable to go further.