The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins - [8]
He halted, the zealous fire dying in his eyes. He could see I was unmoved. I was a parson’s son – the first skill I’d learned was how to ignore sermons. I was unsermonisable. He scowled, black brows knotted tight. ‘Perhaps you are worse than I dared imagine,’ he mused. ‘Perhaps it is not this shop that pollutes the neighbourhood. Perhaps it is you,Mr Hawkins. Perhaps you lie at the heart of all this corruption and vice. A black spider in a filthy web.’
I laughed, incredulous. Was I to be blamed for all the vice in London? I was almost flattered – until I caught the quiet fury in his expression.‘Mr Gonson…’
‘I’ve heard dark stories about you, sir. Dark and terrible. I’ve heard rumours that you killed a man, down in the Borough.’
Behind him, Kitty faltered for a moment, reaching for a book.
‘I paid them no heed,’ Gonson continued softly, almost to himself. ‘I fear I was wrong. I shall look into the matter.’ He fixed his hat and left.
Kitty sank to the nearest chair and lifted her eyes to mine. She looked terrified. We both knew the rumours were false. But if Gonson investigated the events of last autumn… If he talked to the wrong people down in the Marshalsea gaol… He just might discover the truth. ‘Oh, Tom…’ she breathed, and began to shake.
‘He has no proof, Kitty. No witnesses.’
‘No. But he will dig and dig until he finds something.’ She set her shoulders, resolute. ‘I won’t let him take you from me, Tom. I’d rather die.’
Chapter Three
Sam was not on an errand. Kitty had lied to spare him Gonson’s interrogation. But where was the boy? He was not in his room at the top of the house, nor in the narrow storeroom where he sometimes lurked, tucking himself into impossibly cramped spaces to read uninterrupted. I wouldn’t mind, but the books weren’t even contraband. There was something disturbing about a boy his age choosing Newton’s Principia over Venus in a Smock.
I propped myself in the doorway to his room, gaze travelling across the charcoal portraits he’d sketched. There must have been twenty or more pinned to the wall, curling at the edges from damp. Pictures of his family, of neighbours and street traders. I recognised his father James – straight-backed as a soldier, with a piercing look in his eye. A handsome woman drawn in profile with a sweep of black hair about her face: Sam’s mother, I guessed. A baby sister, merry-eyed and chewing a tiny fist. I searched for affection in the drawings, but there was more precision than love in Sam’s pencil. A mirror that did not always catch the best angle. He had drawn me sitting at my desk, my hand resting on a book. I looked bored. Petulant.
‘Mr Hawkins?’ Jenny, our maidservant, emerged from her garret room across the landing. She’d learned to hide herself when Gonson appeared. She attended the same church and did not want him to discover where she worked. ‘Is it true? Will they arrest Sam?’
I smiled at her. ‘Heavens, no. There was no thief. Alice had a bad dream, no more.’ I thought she would be reassured by this, but if anything she grew more agitated, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
‘Your pardon, sir. Alice ain’t a foolish girl. She knows when she’s dreaming.’
I studied her for a moment, wondering how Sam might sketch her with that unflinching eye of his. She did not seem well – her complexion was almost grey, her eyes red-rimmed and sore. ‘What troubles you, Jenny?’
‘It’s Sam, sir, he’s the thief,’ she said in a rush. ‘He’s been… creeping about the house.’
‘Well – that is the way of him, Jenny. I am not sure he means anything by it.’
‘In the dark, sir. When we’re asleep. I woke the other night and he was stood over my bed.’
I flinched. It was not like Jenny to tell tales. Not like her to offer an opinion on the weather, she was so timid. ‘I didn’t hear-’
‘I made to scream but he clamped a hand over my mouth. And his eyes – I thought he meant to kill me! But then he was gone so fast and it was so dark I thought I’d dreamed it. But now Alice says she saw something…’ She tailed away, looking up at me with a hopeful, expectant expression, as if I might snap my fingers and make all well with the world.
‘This is strange indeed,’ I said, baffled. ‘I will speak with Sam-’
‘No, oh please, sir, no! Please don’t say nothing. I’m so afraid of him. The way he stares… He’ll murder me in my bed, I’m sure of it!’ She broke down, wiping away the tears with the back of her hand.
‘Jenny, come now. There is no need for this. Sam was here in the house all night. I saw him myself. He can’t be in two places at once.’
She sniffed, and shot me a frightened look. ‘The devil finds a way, sir.’
>
I promised Jenny that I would think further on the matter. I also promised to fix a bolt on her door. I was unsettled by her story, but what more could I do without confronting Sam, which she had begged me not to do? There was a chance she had indeed dreamed it all. I had my own reasons not to trust the boy, but I had seen him with my own eyes last night, while the thief was supposedly scurrying about next door. Shadows in the dark, that was all.
