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

her bed was beneath it, much wider: her bed and Richard’s. With Richard and the quilts there had been no cold nights, but now she was often cold. An iron pot was warm on the black iron stove, filled with meat soup which James liked; bread stood on the table with some cold vegetables and a piece of dried-looking cheese.
    It was such a supper as she had often shared with both Richard and James on nights when they had been home in time to eat and talk before going to bed. In a strange way she missed their discussions more than any other single thing except her loving with Richard.
    How father and son had talked!
    How proud Richard had been of the boy! Even though he had never said so in James’s presence, for fear of making him swelled-headed. For from a very early age - earlier than that of Beth today, with her childish prattle and her giggles and her easy tears - James had used words as if taught their significance in the womb. A prodigy, Richard had called him.
    ‘We’ve brought forth a scholar, Ruth,’ he would say. ‘A boy with a man’s mind already.’
    Richard had had access to many books through his friend the Reverend Sebastian Smith. He borrowed and read them, then allowed his son to read them before discussing with the boy the author’s meaning, the significance of the phrases and the philosophies. The more complex facts he would explain with extreme care, and his son always remembered. As the boy grew older, his interest in the rest of the world, in trade, in the figures quoted in the Annual Register, developed. There were two coffee houses in which he was permitted to sit for hours over a single mug of coffee, reading newspapers, absorbing the events of London especially, reading about crime and criminals, about his father’s work and about that of John Furnival and Bow Street. Afterward he would talk over what he had read with his father, forever seeking explanations and information.
    Sitting and listening, Ruth had absorbed a great deal of knowledge, just as, at James’s age, she had from her own father. But she could not expound, as Richard had; and today as always she found it difficult to talk with her son except on homely matters.
    She knew that he still read a great deal.
    She could only guess how much he missed the talks with his father.
    She heard her son hesitate outside the door, but still she did not move.
    Slowly the door opened and he came in.
    There was nothing furtive about the way James entered; there had never been anything furtive about him. She did not understand his expression but was aware of something different about him; perhaps it was due to the candlelight, but whatever the cause, he seemed older, older and very tired. He closed the door as cold night air swept up the narrow staircase and stood looking at her for a while, as if he were seeing something different in her, too. Quite without warning he crossed to her and went down on his knees, leaning against them and looking up into her face. She opened her mouth but no words came. Her right hand moved and touched and then soothed his forehead. He could feel the roughness at the end of her forefinger where she pushed the head of the needle; too often she sewed without a thimble.
    It was like looking down on her husband, but this mood of nostalgia did not hurt. ‘What made you so late?’ she inquired at last.
    ‘I could not rest.’
    ‘You feel warm although ‘tis cold outside. Have you been walking far?’
    ‘Very far,’ he replied. ‘But that is not new to me.’
    ‘No,’ she said, echoing his words, ‘that is not new to you. Where have you been?’
    He did not reply immediately.’
    He was ten years old, yet in some ways a man. He was ten years old yet felt a great burden of responsibility for his mother and his sisters, and he felt shame because he had left them alone all day, one of the few days when he was free because the merchant for whom he worked knew that it was useless to open his shop on a Tyburn hanging day.