Chapter 29 - Of Murder, Lies And Kidnappings

Maggie once more took on the role of narrator, and with varying degrees of help from Tom and Jack, completed her story over the course of two cups of tea and plenty of buttered muffins. She took Blake on a journey from their shabby hideout, to the grandeur and riches of Little Serrant. She told him of the strange old lady, The Countess Jouvente, and filled the canvass of his mind with the incredible colours and the luxury of her grand home. She told him of the Countess' initial charity and their wonderful and luxurious existence. Then things changed. And all their lives darkened.

She told him of the events they had experience within the dark and mysterious folly, of Tom and Jack's abduction, and their imprisonment in the depths of the folly.

Finally she told him of the Countess' obsession with a woman known as the 'Blood Countess'.

She took out the billposter, advertising the poor, missing girl - Christabel. She handed it to Blake,

"This name, Christabel, is carved into the very walls of that dungeon!" she explained as Blake looked at the poster. "I'm sure this poor, missing girl was murdered there, beneath the tower."

After a pause, Blake spoke. "Maggie, your story is all very dramatic but you have no proof your mysterious Countess has murdered this girl or indeed any of the other children you speak of. This is all speculation."

She stuttered and turned and pointed to Tom and Jack, who by now had drifted away from the story, and who Maggie no longer needed to help make her case. Jack, in particular, had moved away from the circle of chairs and stood sheepishly by the mantelpiece, his evident mistrust of the police appeared in every suspicious glance towards Blake.

"How do you explain Tom and Jack's imprisonment? Surely that's a crime? If I hadn't rescued them, they might too be dead."

She stopped, collected her thoughts and began again, "I know this all sounds wild and far-fetched but I've looked into the Countess' cold, lying eyes. I know she is a murderer. And she was helped, I believe, by her manservant, Sexton. And also by her adoptive son, Whitmore?"

"Whitmore?" Enquired Blake now more animated. "You know a man called Whitmore? Not Thomas Henry Whitmore, surely?"

"Yes, the very man. I'd almost forgotten to tell you all about him. And it was to be the first thing I intended to tell you," she sighed. "Whitmore is not only the adoptive child and heir to the Countess' fortune, he is also responsible for the death of Mr Turner."

"What?" exclaimed Blake. "Maggie, don't be so ridiculous. Whitmore is a highly respected gentleman working for the government."

"He did murder Mr Turner!" Thomas shouted. "We saw him throw his body into the river, like we told you."

Blake remained quite for a moment, pondering the extraordinary news offered by the children.

Then Maggie spoke, "Have you found Mr Tuner's body yet?"

"Yes, I'm afraid we did," replied Blake.

"Was he found in the river?" asked Tom.

"Yes he was found in the river. However, it was difficult to say whether or not he had died of his own hand or if he was the victim of an accident. The jury thought it an accident. And he was not wrapped in a tarpaulin sheet, when he was found - as you described it."

"Of course there wasn't," Maggie said annoyed. "Whoever found him, took it and sold it. But we told you we witnessed the murder. And we now know the name of his murderers: Whitmore and a man called Beagle. Whitmore is also involved with the Countess and he is responsible for fooling Jack into trapping us in to going to the Countess' home."

"Is this right?" Blake turned to Jack.

Jack responded, shaken form his dreamy silence, "Yeah, yeah - everything Maggie says is true."

Again Blake thought over what they had all told him. Tom and Maggie looked hard at him, trying to figure out where his thoughts were leading. Meanwhile Jack was busy scrutinising a patterned vase, which sat upon Blake's mantelpiece. He looked at it intently, as if trying to determine its monetary value.

Blake turned and eyed him. "Tell young chap, how did you come to meet two such infamous souls as Maggie and Tom?" he asked.

"It's a long story, Sir," Maggie replied before Jack could to speak.

"Well, he looks like a trustworthy young fellow," said Blake to Maggie.

"Oh I'd trust him with my life, Detective," said Maggie.

"Very well," Blake began. "I believe your story. I believe that Whitmore is indeed involved in Mr Turner's death. It makes sense, as Turner was a friend of your father's."

He paused for a second and looked around at all the children in turn. "However, it is your word against many other people's word. The inquest into Turner's death has been done and dusted. And it is highly unlikely to be reopened again. In a court of law - even if it got that far - I repeat again, it would be your words, children's words at that, against those of a respected and very powerful man. Therefore, I think we can forget about ever bringing to justice Whitmore and his hired thug, Beagle, for the murder of Mr Turner."

"So what of the Countess?" asked Tom. "You have to believe Maggie," he begged.

"Whitmore lured us to the Countess lair, to make sure we never ever spoke of what we saw him do to Mr Turner," added Maggie.

"That, and the fact you claim this mysterious Countess murdered others is, once more, rather difficult to prove. Especially as you don't appear to have actually witnessed anything. And you've seen no bodies either. "

The children remained quiet and watched Blake as he walked towards his desk. He sat down and took out a piece of paper and began to write.

After a few minutes, he stopped, turned back to the children and announced, "Tonight you shall stay here under my sister's roof. Don't worry she's away at her cousin's for the remainder of the summer. And there's nobody here but me."

"In the meantime, I have to construct a convincing argument for my superiors. I have to persuade them of the merits of your story. Further, I have to hope they will make a handful of officers available to me to search the home and estate of a rich and, I should expect, a well-respected lady. I have to make them believe, too, she is responsible for the murders of innocent children in the most gruesome manner imaginable. All the while, we have riots and workers creating havoc and unrest across the city. As well as a manhunt for a most dangerous individual, who, I recently discovered, happens to be your father!"

He smiled at Maggie. "It shan't be an easy undertaking."

Maggie smiled, "Thank you, Sir. Thank you for believing us."

Over the next couple of days, Blake worked quickly and methodically. He was a whirl of intense activity, hardly stopping for a moment to eat at home. He told the children to remain within the house during the day as he went about his daily business.

He left early in the morning and returned late at night, after meeting with his superiors at the Metropolitan Police Headquarters. And when he arrived back home during the evening he would update the children on his progress.

He informed them he had tracked down the family of the missing girl, Christabel. Her mother had shown him a brief letter they had received out of the blue, some months after her disappearance.

Her mother confirmed it was Christabel's handwriting and its contents informed them of a new life she had found for herself. There was no return address and no stamp. How it was delivered remained a mystery. Blake unfolded the letter and read a short section to Maggie and the boys:

"For my life now is more wonderful and filled with more riches than I ever could have imagined. I am under the guardianship of a kind and charitable lady who has taken it upon herself to educate me in the ways and manners of a lady...In years to come, I am most hopeful of coming into possession of a great fortune too..."

"I'm sorry for this communication being so brief, and I'm especially sorry for the manner in which I left the bosom of our family. I hope sometime, in the near future perhaps, to be reunited with you, and bring you here to enjoy the delightful existence I now experience day after blissful day."

Maggie snorted with contempt. "I've heard that before! An education fit for a lady who shall enter into society one day, and wealth that shall have every well-bred young gentleman seeking out your hand..." she said with anger and sarcasm echoing the words the Countess had used some weeks earlier. It had been the perfect ploy, she thought. What poor wretch would not fall the promises of riches?

"It sounds like she was under the Countess' spell," added Tom. "Like you used to be, Maggie."

Blake said he had investigated the stories Jack had mentioned about a dark woman in an even darker carriage, who took children off the streets to live a better life. Streets kids often told such tales, he said, and there were stories of people returning from the country many years later with tales of a better life spent working for an eccentric, old lady. Other people he had met had come to believe these stories to be old wives tales or legends and fantasies created to ease the pain of poverty. There was no fairy godmother, nor a dark, wicked witch who whisked people off never to be heard of again.

Then Blake produced from his case a magazine article. He told the children he had been taking lunch earlier that day and struck up a conversation with a journalist friend, who worked on a popular London magazine. He asked his opinion about the legend of an eccentric, old lady who took poor children from the streets and gave them a new life and came to work for her in the country. To his astonishment the friend informed him that he had met such a woman, of a similar description, and had written an article some years before about how she had chosen her household staff from the most ragged and poor of the city.

His friend gave Blake a copy of the article and it described, in detail, Little Serrant, the model farm, the lake and indeed the folly. Blake began quoting a passage in which the Countess gave her reasons for helping the poorest in society. Halfway through the quote, Maggie began to match the words which Blake read aloud from the article: "I have taken them all from the greatest misery and misfortune," Maggie parroted. "I have raised them up. Given them a chance to live again. I believe, if you treat somebody well, they mostly return the kindness and show great loyalty and obedience..."

Blake stared at Maggie, startled. "That is extraordinary, Maggie. How did you know-"

"The Countess spoke those very same words nearly every single day," sighed Tom.

As always when Blake was around, Jack was silent and withdrawn. Each night they spent inside the 'peelers crib' made him more tense and agitated. And each and every night Maggie had to calm him and reassure him.

"What's going to happen afterwards, Maggie?" he asked later that night when they were alone.

"After all this business is over, what then?"

"In all honesty, I don't know," she replied. "I haven't really thought about it."

Blake had earlier told them the search for their father was now reaching fever pitch. He had told his superiors that the children on whose information he was acting upon, in the case of the Countess, were street children but didn't dare reveal his source was the children of the country's most wanted man.

"And what's this copper going to do if he doesn't find anything of these missing children, which you reckon the Countess butchered," asked Jack.

"Again, I don't know. I haven't really thought-"

"We should still go on to Sanctuary," answered Tom turning to Jack. "That's were we should go. Find Father and do all the things we spoke of before. Free ourselves from all these people: Blake, Whitmore, the Countess. All of them."

Maggie sat in silence while the boys continued to discuss the pros and cons of what to do next.

They went back and forth over the past, the present and the future. Jack seemed unconvinced by Tom's proposals and Tom by Jack's. Maggie thought only of Christabel. Blake, for evidence sake, had brought back a small painted likeness of the girl. She now held a face to go with the desperate carving upon the dungeon wall. First and foremost, she said to herself, justice must be done. The future, whatever it held for them, could wait for now.

And their father, too, wherever he may be, would have to wait.

***

Metropolitan Police Evidence: The Power Papers - Document 18

From The Times Newspaper, 19th August 1842 - Chartist Violence Visits Lincoln's-inn-fields.

Yesterday evening great excitement and violence was visited upon the neighbourhood of Lincoln's-inn-fields, as a large body of Chartists and their followers gathered to demonstrate their anger. The majority of shopkeepers in the area had, sensibly, taken precautions and closed up their shops for the evening, for fear of a repeat of the violent encounters which erupted across the capital this week.

When the mobs first descended upon the area, the police were not in attendance and the Chartists erected a temporary husting. Speaker after speaker denounced the government, factory owners and manufacturers the length and breadth of the country, for not improving the abject condition of working men's lives. They demanded the establishment of their six-point Charter immediately and also criticised the government for breaking its promises. One speaker - the chairman, named Brown, continually urged the crowds to stay peaceful as anger and resentment grew with each new speaker.

Then a masked man came upon the husting to great cheers and began addressing the crowd which, sad to report, had a substantial presence of women among its number. He spoke most violently and urged the crowd that "physical force" was now the true spirit of Chartism.

The crowed began yelling, "Down with the rich and up with poor!" Before he finished speaking, and melted back into the crowd, the masked individual quoted from the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley:

"Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number -

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you -

Ye are many - they are few."

At this instant the police arrived and charged the stage to arrest those inciting such unrest.

Later, when police restored order, it was said by many who had attended that the speaker who lit the fuse of anarchy - the masked and anonymous individual calling for 'Physical force' - was none other than Thomas Power: a murderer and returnee from the Van Diemen's Land. Whether or not this was indeed true remains a moot point.

But the general mood among those poor souls, such as local shopkeepers - who were not involved, nor invited the crowds into their neighbourhood - was one of clear resentment. They were especially angry at the Metropolitan Police's inability to deal with such a mob. They spoke of having their lives and livelihoods ruined by the so-called "spirit of Chartism".

As for the elusive Thomas Power, a police reward for his swift recapture still applies. If you have suspicions, contact you local beat officer or seek out your nearest station house and report any information you may have regarding this most urgent matter.

***