The Masters of Bow Street by John Creasey Read Free Book Online

away.
    A smaller carriage arrived and the coachman called out: ‘I’ve one for the Master Debtors’ quarters. Who’ll come for him?’
    A man dressed in the height of fashion climbed down, looked disdainfully about him and walked, unescorted, to the lodge. Only a single jailer came to him, a big-bellied man who touched his forehead and said, ‘Mr. Eustace, sir?’
    ‘Yes. That is my name.’
    ‘All ready for you, sir,’ the jailer said in a hoarse voice. ‘Everything’s as comfortable as it can be. If you want anything just let me know.’ It was difficult to judge whether his ugly brown teeth were bared in a smile or a snarl.
    James Marshall turned away, disgusted. A ‘master debtor’, thanks to his friends, could afford to pay for the best, as if this were a hotel. And while he had money, even the senior jailer would toady to him.
    James knew the prison was comprised of the Master Debtors’ Side, the Master Felons’ Side, the Common Side for Debtors and the Common Side for Felons, as well as the Press Yard, the Castle and the Gate. Both the Common Side for Debtors and the Common Side for Felons were supposed to be for women only, but he knew from his father that the whole prison was a jungle. The terms ‘Master Side’ and ‘Common Side’ referred to the lodgments of those who paid and those who did not pay the keeper of the jail for their accommodation.
    James’s legs began to feel achy and tired but it did not occur to him to stop. He was two miles from the rooms he shared with his mother and two sisters, chosen because of their proximity to Bow Street and his father’s work. The only change was that his thinking was blurred now, and he did not look at the sights he passed, did not feel the raw chill of the autumn night, did not hear the laughter of drunken men or the wailing of women or the sounds of evening traffic.
    It was nearly ten o’clock when he turned off Long Acre into a side street, then into a yard, or small square, close to Bow Yard, and slipped into a narrow alley lit by two flares sheltered inside glass frames. Here was Cobbold Yard, where tradespeople lived, prosperous enough to keep servants, to pay for ‘protection’ in the form of two men even now dozing in the doors, staffs aslant, placed so as to give them a sharp crack across head or shoulder if they slipped because the men slept.
    One woke enough to ask in a sharp but frightened voice: ‘Who is it now? Who passes?’
    ‘It’s all right, William,’ the boy said. ‘’Tis only I, James Marshall.’
    ‘I don’t know what the young are coming to, coming home in the middle of the night. And your poor mother, scared half to death she is because you didn’t get home on time.’
    ‘Good night.’ James Marshall strode briskly to the door leading to the back stairs which led to their two rooms. He started up them quickly but confidently enough, but slowed down as he drew near the door which his mother might open at any moment. He did not know why he was afraid, for his mother would at most remonstrate with him. Had his father been alive he could have expected a beating for being out so late; he had often been frightened of returning late without a good excuse.
    Yet he felt differently now - worse.
    He did not know, although later the years told him, that on this day when Jackson’s execution could not fail to awaken painful memories of the shooting, already six months past because Jackson had used every device to postpone his trial and to buy false witnesses, he should have been with his mother. He simply knew that there was disquiet within him; new sensations which were not simply fear.
     
    Ruth Marshall heard her son’s voice in the yard, and the querulous tone of the guard, but she did not get out of her chair. A glow of red embers which filled the fireplace and cookstove provided the only warmth in these two rooms. The younger children were already in the smaller room, asleep, one at each end of a bed built from the wall;