The Masters of Bow Street

  Copyright & Information

  The Masters of Bow Street

  First published in 1974

  Copyright: John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1974-2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of John Creaseyto be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  0755114094 9780755114092 Print

  0755118693 9780755118694 Pdf

  075512572X 9780755125722 Kindle/Mobi

  0755125711 9780755125715 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.

  Creasy wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the ‘C’ section in stores. They included:

  Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.

  Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.

  He also founded the British Crime Writers’ Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey’s stories are as compelling today as ever.

  INTRODUCTION

  Suddenly, James saw the lips of the man he hated part, and, as if some magic had been cast, the noise ceased and silence fell, broken by one man’s voice, which made the silence seem even deeper.

  ‘Hear me all who have come here to watch me die, to see my legs kicking and my body tossing, hear me. Never in the history of Tyburn was such a monstrous crime committed, never a more innocent man condemned. . .’

  Four people besides the boy listened with intensity which matched his although none knew the others - except that the boy’s mother was one of them. Each was present with a special purpose; each had come early and found a point of vantage. Each had waited with enforced patience, knowing that the hanging could not be over too soon or the people would scream their rage in disappointment and nothing was uglier or more difficult to control than a riot at a hanging on Tyburn Hill.

  There were some people here who hated, many who feared, and one who loved the man who was about to die.

  BOOK I

  1739–1746

  1: THE HATRED AND THE HANGING

  There was the man who had killed his father; the man he hated as only a child who had been robbed of the man he had worshipped could hate.

  Now, they were about to hang the murderer, and he, James Marshall, had come to see the hanging.

  He was among the strident thousands, most of whom had come to gape for the pleasure of hearing the condemned man’s peroration, for this newly made ‘hero’ would surely die with words of defiance on his lips, would die in the midst of his turbulent, pulsating, vibrant life; a man in whom there had once been the seeds of greatness.

  And the seeds of evil.

  The boy, who was ten years old on this fifteenth of September 1739, did not know but sensed these things; could not explain the thoughts in his mind or the thumping of his heart or the mist which sometimes covered his eyes.

  James, son of Richard and of Ruth Marshall, had come not in vengeance but to see vengeance done. He had followed the carts containing the manacled prisoners from Newgate Prison, each sitting on his own coffin in the groaning, creaking tumbrel, and had watched when, with the others who were to be hanged, his father’s murderer had been half carried, half led into the alehouse to have his last free drink and make his last macabre joke.

  Today there were two carts carrying seventeen condemned men headed for Tyburn. Most, by some strange miracle, behaved as if they were going not to their executions but to their weddings, although one youth, who could be no more than sixteen or seventeen, sat staring straight ahead of him. Most were dressed in their best or else in borrowed finery, but Frederick Jackson was by far the most resplendent. He wore a bright-green velvet coat with elaborate brown trimming, a nosegay of fresh flowers surely made by someone out of love for him, and breeches of bright-yellow velvet, the knees tied with multicoloured ribbons. In his two-coloured hat he had a huge white cockade, a silent declaration of his innocence.

  In the cart with him, two were dressed already in their shrouds. Also in the cart was the Ordinary of Newgate, a prison chaplain concerned more in extorting confessions from each man so that he could publish and sell them tomorrow and in the weeks to follow. In between his pleadings for confessions were mechanical words of comfort, but wine was a greater comforter than any God this priest could conjure up.

  As they had left the alehouse, the Bow Tavern in St. Giles, one of London’s foulest rookeries and a city of vice within the metropolis, Frederick Jackson had shouted to the mob: ‘Harken to me, fellow citizens! I am in the mood for singing. Who knows “As clever Tom Clinch. . .”?’

  A roar of approval had cut across his words, and like a bandmaster he had used his hand as an imaginary baton and had led the singing:

  ‘As clever Tom Clinch, while the rabble was bawling, Rode stately through Holborn to die in his calling, He stopped at The George for a bottle of sack. And promised to pay for it on his way back!’

  There, on the steps of the alehouse, the landlord had roared the words as loud as any. Even the hangman had chanted, and was smiling broadly now as he slipped the ropes over the condemned men’s heads.

  On that mellow autumn day in 1739 the boy stood on the fringe of the milling crowd at Tyburn Fields on a rise in the stony earth from which were visible the carts and the gallows, the black-draped preacher and the victims. But the boy saw only Jackson, his dark head held back, sharp chin thrust upward and outward, the noose not yet tight about his neck. Between the boy and the murderer were the thousands of sightseers, yet he saw no one; not man or woman or suckling babe or skirt-clinging child. No seller of ballads or pamphlets telling of the dying speeches of rogues who had died this way before; no seller of oranges or chestnuts, of gin or beer, of coarse bread dipped in beef drippings or mutton fat; no seller of pasties or of tarts, black puddings or favours; none of the gentry and their ladies seated in the windows of nearby houses or on especially constructed stands near the place of execution
. All were agog to hear what Frederick Jackson, whom many thought a bolder villain than Jonathan Wild, would say in the minutes left to him before the horses were thwacked and made to bolt, so that the cart was jerked from beneath his feet and he and the others were left dangling and kicking.

  The boy did not really see the other condemned men. He saw no whores, no pickpockets, no stealthy probing hands; James Marshall, son of a murdered man, son of a thief-taker, son of a God, was vividly aware only of Jackson’s black head and, perhaps in wish-demanded fancy, Jackson’s flashing dark eyes, the bright clothes and the brave medals stolen from some dead hero.

  He heard no single voice, but all the voices. The chants of the tiny religious groups that had come to sing and pray for Jackson’s soul, the shouts of the hawkers, the raucous voices of men whose hands were slapped from some pretty girl’s breasts or buttocks or, if the press were tight enough, from the warmth between her thighs. He did not hear the preachers calling on Jackson to repent or the dozens of men and women crying out: ‘Dying confessions, as written by the Ordinary of Newgate - one penny.’ These were true enough, although the confessions were not of today’s victims but those of the last mass execution, two weeks ago.

  Suddenly, James saw the lips of the man he hated part, and, as if some magic had been cast, the noise ceased and silence fell, broken by one man’s voice, which made the silence seem even deeper.

  ‘Hear me all who have come here to watch me die, to see my legs kicking and my body tossing, hear me. Never in the history of Tyburn was such a monstrous crime committed, never a more innocent man condemned. . .’

  Four people besides the boy listened with intensity which matched his although none knew the others - except that the boy’s mother was one of them. Each was present with a special purpose; each had come early and found a point of vantage. Each had waited with enforced patience, knowing that the hanging could not be over too soon or the people would scream their rage in disappointment and nothing was uglier or more difficult to control than a riot at a hanging on Tyburn Hill.

  There were some people here who hated, many who feared, and one who loved the man who was about to die.

  She was Eve Milharvey - the condemned man’s mistress; in all but name, his wife, as beautiful as the years could leave a woman in her thirties who had been ravaged by the brothels and the stink and the torment of London; a woman who, had she been carefully nurtured and protected and married to a man who respected even if he did not love her, would have been the mother of a family now and mistress not of a murderer, thief, cheat and fraud, but of a household.

  But she had been born in a cottage behind a row of brothels in Westminster and her world had been one of filth and lust and brutality, of stealing from a man who had her willing mother pressed against a wall. At twelve she had known men and what they wanted and what they did. At thirteen she had found herself, alone, in a dark alley, on the edge of her world, surrounded by leering drunken men who all wanted their way with her and from whom she could not run because they hemmed her in while they peered at the black spots on thrown dice to decide who should take her first.

  There was hardly a crime Frederick Jackson had not committed, hardly a savagery or brutality he had not exulted in, except one.

  He had never taken a woman against her will.

  He had succoured her.

  His voice now was not loud, but was as clear as it had been on the night he had come upon her and the seven men tormenting her. She had not seen or heard him, heard only the triumph and the roar of the man who had ‘won’ her first, who pushed the others away from him and sent them, muttering and grumbling, to wait; a great hulk of a man whose weight would crush her. Already, he had one hand beneath her petticoats and another easing himself free of his breeches to take her.

  A man had spoken in a quiet but carrying voice: ‘Release her, Matty.’ And when the man in front of her had taken no notice, had just fumbled and had nearly fallen on her, the stranger had called: ‘If you want to lie with a woman again, Matty let her go.’ And she had seen his face above the hulk’s shoulder and his hand on the big man’s arm. Suddenly, she had seen the winner stagger, had heard him swear, had seen him turn to strike the man who had dared to interfere.

  ‘Gawd!’ he breathed. ‘Jacker!’

  On the instant all lust seemed to vanish from him; he turned and ran at a shambling gait towards the end of the alley. And all the others had gone. She was alone with one man who now stood looking at her from the height of at least six feet, as if studying every feature closely in the light of a fading torch. He put out his right hand and cupped her chin in the crutch between thumb and forefinger, slowly turning her face from left to right. At last, when she was facing him, he let her go.

  ‘Are you a whore?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered in a voice he could hardly hear.

  ‘Speak up, girl!’ His tone hardened as if her timidity angered him.

  She drew a deep breath and answered more clearly, ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘An honest whore,’ he said, and laughed. ‘Do you work for Moll Sasson or anyone else?’

  ‘No - no, sir.’

  ‘Speak up, girl!’

  ‘No!’ she almost shouted, not from courage or boldness, but out of fear. Moll Sasson controlled this area; nearly every prostitute paid her for both introducing customers and for protection against certain kinds of perverts.

  ‘Then whom do you work for?’

  ‘I - I work for myself,’ she answered.

  ‘A chit of a girl like you? Don’t lie to me.’

  ‘I am not, sir. I swear it, I work for myself.’

  ‘No bully? No twang?’

  ‘I’m nobody’s moll,’ she insisted, and her voice grew stronger, drawing some courage from the man. ‘I’ll take a man standing or I’ll take a man lying down but I won’t take his pouch and I won’t have a bully to take it or to protect me.’

  ‘Upon my soul, I’m inclined to believe you,’ he said, and laughed again. ‘Don’t you know what Moll Sasson would do to you if you were caught working on her territory?’

  ‘I - I wasn’t working here, sir. They set on me. They know I’m always alone.’

  ‘I can believe that too,’ he said, and took her arm, turning her towards the nearer end of the lane. ‘You take my advice. Never work on Moll’s territory. She’ll do a lot worse to you than those drunken oafs would have done; a breastless woman’s no pleasure to them. Where do you live?’ he added abruptly.

  ‘Where do you live?’ The meaningless question echoed inside her head.

  In the gutters, in the alleys, in the taprooms and the brothels, in the fields, in a barge upon the river, in a warehouse, in a coal house; anywhere she could lay her head. Bent and crooked over the troughs or tubs outside in the bitter-cold courtyard, in the sewers with the rats.

  The man stared down at her and she dared to look up at him.

  ‘Who are your customers?’ he asked.

  ‘Whoever comes by,’ she said.

  ‘Faugh!’ he barked. ‘You stink. When did you last have a bath?’ he asked her. ‘When did you wash all over?’

  ‘In May,’ she told him with near-eagerness. ‘In the river by the meadows at Chelsea.’

  ‘In May! Three months ago!’ He looked at her as if with new disgust, and she did not know what had displeased him. Suddenly he demanded: ‘Whom do you belong to?’

  And she replied; she could hear her voice now, even fancied there was a ring of pride, pride in those days of such squalor.

  ‘Myself,’ she said. ‘I told you, sir.’

  ‘Speak up, girl. Whom do you belong to?’

  ‘I belong to myself, sir.’

  ‘M’God!’ he said in a voice which was half filled with laughter and at least touched with respect. ‘I believe you do.’ After a while he went on: ‘Will you come with me?’

  ‘Yes - yes, sir,’ she replied meekly. ‘If I please you.’

  Cobbled lanes and cobbled streets, like the cobb
les she stood on now, bare feet slipping, sore toes hurting, while he walked as if he were a king and it did not occur to him that she could not keep up such pace. Past dim-lit inns and dark closed houses, past decrepit old watchmen leaning on the poles they could scarcely carry, past a carriage and two horses close to Moll’s, past a flaming torch outside a bank, along a narrow lane to a flickering oil lantern over a doorway. She knew the place and now she knew him and could understand why her molesters had disappeared so quickly and without protest at his approach; why the man he had called Matty had released her so swiftly.

  Up the narrow wooden stairs into a room twice as large as any she had even been in, along a passage with other rooms leading off. A woman, an old woman, saying: ‘Yes, Jacker, yes, Jacker, yes,’ obeying him literally, taking Eve into a small room which struck warm from a huge fire over which two caldrons of water shimmered and steamed, ordering her in a high-pitched voice to do just what he had already ordered.

  ‘Fill the bath . . . take off those filthy clothes . . . throw them on the fire. Throw them on the fire, you brat, or I’ll throw you onto it!’

  Her only clothes. She dragged the heavy hip bath from a corner; she placed her hands at her skirt, which was loose at her tiny waist, while the heat stung. ‘Off with your clothes!’ Suddenly the old woman was on her, acting with much more strength than she seemed capable of, skirt off, petticoat, shift. She was being whirled about, hardly able to keep her balance, and in despair saw the hag throw her clothes into the fire where they blazed with blinding light.

  How she had cried!

  Copper pans full of hot water, cold water, mixed and bearable on her fair skin, heat from the fire, pain from a scrubbing, everywhere, everywhere; and suddenly, quiet and stillness, a chill blast from the door as it opened and Frederick Jackson came into the room.