Death in the Dark Walk Read Online Free PDF Page A

the left of the entrance hall. Samuel followed and sat down on the padded sofa with relief, glad that despite the unusual hour Sir Gabriel had poured two glasses of port and placed one in his visitor’s hand.
    â€˜Tell me everything,’ he said, fixing his guest with a compelling gaze.
    Almost as if he were speaking to his own father, Samuel let the story come out, only omitting the fact that he and John had been making sheep’s eyes at the murdered girl.
    â€˜And you say she was a whore in Leicester Fields?’
    â€˜Yes, Sir.’
    â€˜Then she may well have had many enemies. Men grow indiscreet in the arms of a beautiful woman. A murmured secret that might jeopardise a marriage, a business matter, even the state, could prove fatal. The one in whom too much information has been entrusted is always in danger of being silenced for ever.’
    â€˜I wonder what happened to the man she was with,’ Samuel answered thoughtfully. ‘A fine young dandy if ever I saw one. Monied, too. Halfway through the evening he seemed to vanish off the face of the earth.’
    â€˜Perhaps they quarrelled and he abandoned her? Who knows? But enough of him. You say that John is at the Public Office now? That he is under suspicion of the crime?’
    â€˜Ostensibly he was taken there to tell what he saw. Those who came to investigate said that Mr Fielding likes to question witnesses himself. But John fears that they do not believe his account of what took place.’
    â€˜I do not consider he will come to any harm,’ Sir Gabriel answered after a moment’s thought. ‘John Fielding is known to deal fairly with those who play straight with him.’
    Samuel yawned. ‘May I beg a bed for a few hours, Sir?’
    Sir Gabriel rose to his feet, and despite his sudden and immense fatigue, Samuel could not help but remark how lithely he moved for a man of his age.
    â€˜My dear young friend, pray forgive my thoughtlessness. Watkin shall show you upstairs at once.’
    â€˜And what of you, Sir?’
    â€˜I shall await John’s return. I have slept quite long enough.’
    But in this John Rawlings’s adopted father was dissembling, for it was far from his intention to sit idle. As soon as Samuel had safely disappeared, the older man’s valet helped him into black breeches, a fine white shirt, and a stark coat relieved only by its white velvet buttons. Then, as the first pink smudges of dawn appeared in the London sky, a dark coach with milk white horses set forth from Nassau Street and down towards Leicester Fields. There, it turned left into Bear Street, picked its way through a narrow alleyway, only just wide enough to allow the conveyance to pass through, then crossed St Martin’s Lane on its journey towards Covent Garden and the Public Office at Bow Street, situated in the home of Mr John Fielding, Principal Justice of the Peace, in whose hands alone lay the responsibility for policing the lawless metropolis of London.
    Hastening from Vaux Hall, the carriage bearing John Rawlings and his two companions, whose names had been revealed during the ride as Lucy Pink and Giles Collings, turned into the Great Piazza of Covent Garden, on its way to the Public Office at Bow Street, cutting a slow path through the crowd as it went. Even at this dawning hour the vast square was already thronged with traders selling their wares from baskets set on the cobbles before them, the air filled with their cries. ‘Cabbages O! Turnips’, ‘Fine strawberries’, competed with ‘Buy my sweet roses’, and ‘Cherries O! Ripe Cherries O!’ in boisterous cacophony, the whole uproar punctuated with the noisy barking of alleyway curs and dismal wails of neglected street children.
    John, surveying the tatterdemalion pageant with a jaded eye, thought about death and wondered if any member of this motley mob might face his end before nightfall. Shivering at this sudden stark