“Supposing I find Alice Plummer,” said I to him, “on what charge is she to be arrested?”
“Ah, now Jeremy, you really are starting to think as a lawyer.” He speculated: “What charge indeed? Certainly not murder. We cannot even say with certainty that the child was murdered-and, in any case, she was not when under her mother’s supervision. My feeling is that she can only be arrested and held on a charge of slavery-specifically child-selling. The important thing is to get her back here so she may be questioned. But of course all this supposes that you and your constable can get round the matter of jurisdiction. You’ll do that as best you can, working in concert with the constable. Whom will you take with you?”
“Constable Patley,” said I, “for he is the only one of the Runners who knows Alice Plummer by sight. As for the rest of it, Patley may not know much law, but he is resourceful.”
“Then he is your man. You two will leave soon as Mr. Marsden returns.”
Thinking the matter settled, I rose from my chair, only to be told most emphatically to sit down once again. I obeyed.
He waited a moment, then leaned forward and lowered his voice. “What do you think of this Hooker girl?”
“How do you mean, sir?”
“Well, you must concede, surely, that two distinctly different versions of the girl have emerged.”
I responded hesitantly: “I would say. . that much. . is evident. Clarissa’s Elizabeth is much different from Kathleen Quigley’s.”
“Yes, quite. And Mistress Quigley has already passed the first test with Constable Brede.”
“As I did say earlier in the coach, I am inclined to accept Mistress Quigley’s version of events and of Elizabeth’s character. She would have little to gain by lying.”
“True,” said Sir John, “but Clarissa knew the girl longer and, presumably, better. And she said that the girl is naught but a bore-no ambitions, no dreams.” He held back a moment, but then came forth with it: “Tell me, Jeremy, what do you think of Clarissa as a judge of character?”
I took a moment to glance behind me and make sure that the door to the hall was shut tight: it was. Nevertheless, I lowered my voice to address Sir John.
“I think highly of her ability to judge people,” said I. “There have been a few times, I suppose, when she was off the mark, but in general I would say that she is far better than most at that sort of thing.”
“I would have said the same,” said he. “But there is such a disparity between her view of Elizabeth and the girl who emerges from Mistress Quigley’s testimony that it is necessary to accept one or the other.”
“Bear in mind though, sir, that the girls had not seen each other for near five years, or perhaps more. It could be that Clarissa was, without intending it, passing judgment upon the ten-year-old girl she had known then. Most of us, I think, are bored by ten-year-olds.”
“Hmmm,” said he, “an interesting theory. Let me put it to her. Ask her to come in here, will you?”
“That is all then, sir?”
“I should think that quite a lot. ’Tis not every lad who gets himself sent off to Newmarket for a race meet.”
“For which you may be certain that I am indeed grateful,” said I with a properly impudent grin upon my face.
I was then up and out of the room before he could change his mind.
Clarissa was in the kitchen, sitting at the table where I had left her. She looked up as I descended the stairs and entered the kitchen, relieved at my careless manner. It was only as she pointed to the chair beside hers with the pen in her hand that I noted that she had been writing in what she called her “journal-book.” After I had presented it to her the Christmas before, I had only glimpsed it two or three times as she carried it about. Not that she was secretive about it: nevertheless, there was a certain sense of privacy about it to which, in my mind, she was well entitled. I took the chair she had indicated and sat down. She was, I think about to speak.
“He wants to see you,” said I.
“Oh dear,” said she. “Is it. .” She left the sentence unfinished, just as she did the next: “You didn’t. .”
“No, no, no,” said I. “Nothing like that. I think what he really wishes is to talk to you about Elizabeth Hooker.”
“Oh, really?” She seemed let down somewhat, almost disappointed. “Well, all right”-laying her pen aside, closing the journal-book, and marking her place with a blotter-“That’s not so frightening.”
She stood and, with a forced smile, she marched away and up the stairs. I watched her go.
After the first few minutes of sitting and waiting for her to return, my eyes fastened upon Clarissa’s journal-book. Now, ordinarily, I would not think of invading her privacy by reading such a document. Nevertheless, there were other factors involved. First of all, when I face a period of waiting, I become quite desperate for something-anything! — to read. I recall having said something about this some months before. In any case, she knew of this; she had been forewarned. Secondly, she had left the journal-book out upon the kitchen table within my easy grasp. It was there before me as a temptation-nay, more, as a provocation. It was almost as though she wanted me to open it up and read. What was I to do? My eyes played over the book for some minutes (well, two or three, anyway), and, at last, I found that there was naught to do to solve the problem, but to reach out for it and open it up.
What greeted me, at first, surprised me, for I found pictures-an abundance of them in nearly every corner and margin of every page. Pictures of what? Oh, flowers of one kind or another, buildings and trees. And faces-faces of all sorts, men, women, and children, some of them quite skillfully done. She was not without talent, certainly-yet she had quite successfully hidden it from all of us-or so I supposed.
As for what she had written therein, the text wound about her drawings, in some instances taking on the shape of the object with which it shared the page. A number of them seemed to be books in synopsis, mere ideas for books, or the beginnings of books. And some of the faces that surrounded these entries might well have been the faces of the characters as she visualized them. Could the faces have come first? An interesting supposition, that.
Thus entranced, I paged through more than half the journal-book, which is to say, near all that she had written in it. Yet ’twas not her text that stopped me and held me there: again, it was the drawings, the sketches, the pictures. One of them, that one of a bearded man, that could be none other than Black Jack Bilbo-and the face beside his, a woman, there was something about it-Marie-Helene? Of course! Then did I find on the overleaf a rather good sketch of Tom Durham, and below it, another male face, which I could not quite recognize. There was something familiar about it, yet. .
I turned back to the beginning of this section and began to read:
“Why not [she wrote] a book about Jeremy and me? It would be great fun and a considerable relief to write of events just as they happened. I would be relieved of the need to plot, which I find so difficult. And after all, the events of our lives, arranged in order, and perhaps tightened up a bit are just as exciting as any can be read in a romance, and the sentiments presented in it would be real as can be. I could include, perhaps even begin with, the capture of Marie-Helene by Black Jack Bilbo and their eventual escape. In a sense, that happened to Jeremy and to me as well as to them. But no, to begin there would be to lose too much of our story, Jeremy’s and mine-individually and in concert. Ah, how romantic it will be to trace our early history-the squabbles and the wrangles that persisted intolerably long until they end-as they will-in wedded bliss. Should I use real names? I’m not sure. In a way, it matters little what names I give them if they are well-described. To speak of a certain blind magistrate would surely bring only one man to mind. And if I were to describe another as a lexicographer from Lichfield, he would-