Elyse Mady Read Online Free PDF Page B

the crime you wish to prosecute?”
    “No crime,” Hester assured him. “We are seeking information about my brother. He was reported arrested.”
    “Arrested?” the officer seemed surprised. “What’s his name?”
    “Aspinall. Robert Aspinall.”
    Upon giving her brother’s name, the change in the officer’s demeanour could not have been more evident. Gone was the respectful tone and in its place a scornful iciness. He peered at them both, as though trying to discern their own criminal tendencies.
    “Have we been rightly informed?” Thomas demanded when the other man failed to answer. “Was he detained last night and brought here before the magistrates?”
    “Yes.”
    “And?”
    “And what?”
    “And what was his fate?”
    “The short end of a rope, if there’s any justice. It’s detestable what those men were about. The sooner they’re hung and forgot the better. Repugnant, the lot of them. If you’d seen with your eyes what I saw with mine, you’d think they deserved more than just the mud and cobbles that were flung at ’em by them that were waiting when we brought ’em here from the gatehouse. I’d fling flames at ’em, for that’s where they’ll all be going soon enough.”
    Hester’s lips trembled as the officer’s words echoed through her brain. It was only with effort that she was able to say, “Please, sir, will you not tell us where we might find him?”
    “He’s not here. Them that couldn’t afford to make the bail or hadn’t a friend to acknowledge them, were taken in irons to Newgate.”
    Newgate. The very name struck Hester chill, calling up in her mind an image of the dour, thick-walled institution that seemed to squat with such menacing intent not far west of St. Paul’s, infecting the very air around it.
    “I must see him.”
    The officer looked askance. “There’s not a man in there—nor woman, nor child—that wouldn’t do you violence soon as look at you. Your husband had best leave you at home, where you’ll be safe, and see to your brother himself.”
    “My husband?”
    Beside her, she could feel Thomas stiffen at the man’s assumption. Her face burned with vexation at the mistake. And what must his own feeling on the matter be, to be linked so erroneously to a young woman so far beneath his notice? The thought of his mortification only intensified her own.
    “We are not married,” he said in a clipped tone, and the clerk’s face darkened, clearly drawing an unflattering conclusion. That Thomas understood the direction of the man’s thoughts was only too evident by the fearsome scowl on his face and the way he gripped his gloves between tense hands.
    “Mr. Aspinall is my tenant.”
    The clerk frowned, his dubious glance travelling between them, no doubt taking in the fine cut of Thomas’s clothes and his unmistakable presence of command. “I beg your pardon,” he said sullenly. “We get all types through those doors and you can never assume they’re naught but a rum bunch, by and large.”
    “Well, I can assure you, neither Miss Aspinall nor I are a ‘rum bunch,’” Thomas retorted. “Now, who has charge of this enterprise? I would like to speak with him immediately.”
    There was no denying the authority with which he spoke, but the officer shook his head. “Mr. Read isn’t available at present. He’s conferring with the magistrates this afternoon and hasn’t the time to be speaking to all and sundry.” His tone suggested that all and sundry should be grateful for any crumb of information they might receive.
    “Then to whom would you recommend we speak?” Hester interjected. “Is not there anyone here who might give us the news we seek?”
    “You’ll want to be speaking to Mr. Taunton. He’s the one who had charge of the warrant. I can fetch him, if you like. But I doubt what he’ll have to tell you will be any different.”
    “Fetch him. Now,” Thomas ordered.
    His lips tightening at the unvarnished order, the police clerk moved