A Murder at Rosamund's Gate

12

“I’m here to talk to Master Adam about the murder of Bessie Campbell.”

Lucy gasped. Constable Duncan was speaking to John just outside the kitchen. Had it only been eleven days since she had informed them of Bessie’s death? Casting aside the fine frock she had been mending, Lucy rushed into the hallway, Cook at her heels. Seeing the constable there, standing smartly by the door, reminded Lucy of the first time they had met—when he had come bearing news of the hapless Jane Hardewick. With a shiver, Lucy remembered how Bessie had flirted with the young constable. Now Bessie was gone.

“You have news?” she asked before she could help herself.

The constable glanced at her, his face stern. “Perhaps,” he replied. “Something new has come to light.”

John returned. “This way, sir, the magistrate is within.”

A moment later, Adam appeared, his face drawn and pale. As he passed, he raised his eyebrows at her, looking cool and arrogant. When the door closed behind him, Cook and Lucy unashamedly put their ears to a long crack in the wood. John settled onto a nearby bench, playing with his unlit pipe.

Then they heard Duncan speak. “I’m going to cut through the chaff. Can you explain, sir, why you arrived home, after having been out all evening, with torn clothes and bloody limbs, on the same morning that your servant went missing? This same servant who was later found murdered, having been run through and through with a knife. Can you explain this?”

They gasped. Lucy held up her hand for quiet so she could hear. How had the constable known? She looked at John, and he gave a slight shake of his head. No, the constable’s knowledge did not come from either of them. Dr. Larimer’s assistant, the surgeon who had tended Adam, she realized, might have come forward. Or perhaps one of her nosy neighbors had seen more than she knew.

Lucy’s mind was clear, but her stomach was churning. Somehow, now that Constable Duncan was there, questioning Adam, she could hardly bear it. He couldn’t have anything to do with Lucy’s death, he just couldn’t. Yet she had to have the answer that had been plaguing her for weeks.

“Pub fight.” Adam’s tone was terse, angry. “At the Muddy Duck. Plenty of oglers, I might add. A few might be coaxed to speak, if a few bits more found their way into some pockets.”

“Indeed,” Duncan said. “We did hear about that. Not too common for the magistrate’s son to be involved in an everyday brawl.” Though his tone was even, a note of disdain had crept into the constable’s voice. “Here’s the thing,” he continued. “We’ve heard tell that you, Adam Hargrave, threatened to kill the girl in question—”

“What!” Adam exclaimed. “That, my dear sir, is a blatant lie.”

“Do you deny, sir, that your brawl was over your serving wench, Bessie Campbell?”

Adam said something, but his voice was muffled. Cook and Lucy signaled the same confused question. What in the world—?

They scarcely had a chance to ponder, hearing Duncan speak again. “Can you explain, sir, your absence later that evening? Do not suppose, sir, that we do not have witnesses. I should like to hear your own accounting.”

Again the heavy oak door kept Lucy and Cook from hearing Adam’s response. Frustrated, Lucy could only press her ear more closely to the crack between the door and the frame. Here the constable evidently was reading something. “He did arrive home, at a most unseemly hour, blood all over his clothes, a crazed look on his face, like a man having spent the night satisfying unnatural cravings—”

“Unnatural cravings?” the magistrate shouted. “What nonsense is this?”

“—thereby being helped in by his servant,” the constable continued, “another hoyden by the name of Lucy Campion and—”

“Enough!” roared the magistrate, causing his listeners to jump. Lucy felt, rather than saw, Cook give her a sidelong glance.

Into his next statement, Master Hargrave put the full weight of his magisterial authority. “I’ll not let some prying neighbor with too much time on her hands impugn my son in such a way. Wild look in his eyes, indeed! Blood on his shirt! By God, I shall go to your superior this instant! His name, man!”

Adam said something then. They heard the magistrate sink heavily into a chair.

“Why in heaven’s name…?” they heard him say, his voice strangled. “Whose blood was it?”

Lucy pressed her ear so hard against the door that she began to hear ringing. Her fist was pressed just as tightly to her mouth. She was dimly afraid that she would burst the door open by accident, but she little cared about making a disturbance.

“My own blood, I swear,” Adam shouted, “and that of a dumb beast!”

Oh, he’s going to try telling them he ran into the butcher’s stall again, Lucy thought faintly. They won’t believe it. She could scarcely believe that she had accepted that nonsense as truth.

There was silence again. For a moment, all Lucy could hear was John’s slight raspiness as he breathed in and out. Then the constable said something. His words were inaudible, but the meaning was clear.

Adam seemed to be speaking to his father, not the constable. His voice sounded more pleading than confident. Certainly, he had dropped the self-mocking tone. Luckily, his voice was elevated, so they could discern almost everything. “Just hear me out, sir,” Adam said. “This will sound absurd, I know.” He paused. Lucy could imagine him running his hand through his hair. He seemed to be searching for words. Then he spoke again. “I was at a ring in Southwark the night Bessie, God rest her poor soul, disappeared.”

“A ring!” Master Hargrave exclaimed. “What were you doing, at such a low sport as that?”

Lucy strained to hear Adam’s next words. Whatever she had expected, it was not that Adam had spent time at a cock and dog fight. She wrinkled her nose in disgust and disappointment. Still, she wanted to hear his explanation.

“’Tis no sport!” Adam answered. “Putting a pea in a poor dog’s ears to make him mad! I believe such sport is wrong, and against God’s own law!”

Casting her mind back to that awful night, Lucy considered Adam’s words. Grudgingly, she realized that some of the cuts and blood could have been the result of a man’s being mad enough to step into the midst of such bloodlust. The fever that had followed would fit, for it was well known that those animals could sicken a man, and even kill him, even if he had not lost blood. But what about the odd slashes across Adam’s chest and arms? No animal had made those!

As if hearing her thoughts through the door, Duncan spoke again. “We have it on good conviction that those marks on your body were not from a beast.”

Adam murmured something that Lucy did not catch.

They all jumped as Master Hargrave roared, “Who dares whip my son?”

Lucy’s hand flew to her mouth.

“I think,” Adam said wryly, “there are many who would whip a man who busts up their sport. One in particular would be glad to have everyone know he had whipped me, if he had not perhaps preferred that I swing from the hangman’s noose.”

The constable said something. Adam raised his voice. “I should give you his name and address if I had it, but alas I do not. Perhaps if you asked around, down in Southwark, you might get proof of my innocence, but I think it will be unlikely, angry as they all were that I had ruined their sport. Now, sir, either arrest me or leave, I pray you. I’ve things to attend to here. Good day.”

Lucy and Cook tried to jump away as Adam threw open the door pretending they had not just been huddled with their ears pressed to the wood. Seeing them, he stopped short and glared. Lucy opened her mouth to speak but could make no words come out. Adam looked at her, his glance so contemptuous that a deep hurt arose within her chest.

She realized then that Adam thought she had informed the constable about his injuries. Then a deeper realization surfaced. Who will believe Adam’s story? Even she had thought Adam had been lying. He will likely be arrested, she thought, feeling her stomach twist. If that be the case, he is as good as tried and hanged.

* * *

Just before dinner, the magistrate called Lucy to his private study. The constable had left three hours before without arresting Adam, but she knew that a bellman had just delivered a note to the magistrate. He was holding it in his hand when she tapped on the open door.

“Sit down, my dear,” the magistrate said, gesturing to his own large comfortable chair. Lucy sat, perching uneasily. She did not come into this room very often, since the master did not like his stacks of paper to be disturbed, and she certainly never sat in the magistrate’s own chair.

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” he said. “I just need to finish this letter.”

As Lucy waited, her gaze drifted to the portrait of the family above the fireplace. The magistrate was seated at the center, in his robes, taking the viewer’s gaze head-on. The mistress, looking lovely in a midnight blue gown, sat beside him, smiling warmly down at baby Sarah in her lap. Adam, dressed to imitate the magistrate, stood solemnly at his knee. Although he was looking up at his father, there was a slight smile on his lips.

For the first time, Lucy noticed that in the portrait, Adam’s right hand was positioned as if he were pointing. Following the direction of his index finger, she looked to the bottom right-hand corner of the painting, where, in the dark shadows, the family dog was tussling with what might have been the household cat. She smiled herself when she saw it.

The magistrate, about to speak, followed her gaze. “Oh, yes, indeed, I always assumed that Adam was smiling at me, his honored father! What a laugh I had one day, working on a court brief, when I looked up and saw this little joke painted in the portrait! It makes you see it all in a different light, doesn’t it! The honorable Master Hargrave has been supplanted in honor by a scuffling cat and dog!”

Lucy nodded but looked questioningly at the magistrate. His smile faded, and he seemed to have difficulty finding the words. “Constable Duncan, the king’s man who was here earlier—a good man, actually, I inquired around. Well, he believes he has identified Bessie’s murderer.”

“Oh, no! I don’t believe Adam did it, sir!” Lucy cried. “Not for one moment! They’ve made a dreadful mistake—”

Master Hargrave held up his hand. “Thank you for that. Your loyalty is commendable. No, I’m afraid it is not Adam.”

Lucy exhaled, still feeling uneasy. The magistrate stared at the letter in his hands again. “I’m quite pained to tell you this. They intend to arrest your brother, William, for Bessie’s murder.” He crumpled the letter in his hand. “The constable was good enough to send this note. He wanted you to learn this news from me, not out on the street. Will is to be kept in Newgate until the spring assizes in a few weeks.”

A great buzzing filled Lucy’s ears; she could not stop seeing the sickening image of Will swinging from Tyburn tree. The bile rose in her throat. She had to swallow several times before she could focus. “Will?” she repeated. “How can that be? He had nothing to do with this!”

“He was courting Bessie, and depending on which story they plan to tell, either she threatened to break off their engagement, or he did not wish to be trapped in wedlock to her. Either way, witnesses state that he threatened to kill her.”

“No!”

“Adam told me so himself. Indeed, it was that same misbegotten pub brawl that got your brother into trouble.”

Will and Adam—together at a pub? Lucy shook her head.

“Such words will not stand up in every court,” the magistrate continued, “but they could well damn him in some of my fellow judges’ opinion.”

“I don’t believe it!” she said. “It can’t be true.”

The magistrate unexpectedly looked sad. “There is the truth, my dear, and there is the law. But your brother’s guilt shall not be assumed, by me or any of my peers of the Bench, until he stands to defend himself in a few weeks’ time.”