The Masters of Bow Street Read Free

Furnival, also, was surely here today.
    She did not know for certain because she had not set eyes on the big, honey-blond man with the near-yellow eyes and the massive strength, and yet she felt quite positive. He would not miss this day of triumph, after twenty years of conflict between him and Jacker, a conflict already fierce when Jacker had plucked her from the cobbled lane and taken her to Loxley Yard, near Gray’s Inn and the fields, and claimed her for himself.
     
    Most of the other condemned men were quiet now. One was calling on his nearby friends and relatives to rescue him; one, dressed in rich brown velvet and green shoes and hat, was tossing halfpence among the crowd, where the old and the young scrambled for them. Throughout Jackson went on talking in that carrying voice; it was as if he believed that for as long as he could talk, so he would defy the noose and the hangman and the men who had sent him here.
    ‘. . . among you here today are many thief-takers, justices, constables, each and every one of them more corrupt than I. Guilty of more crimes. Pariahs living off the people, living off you, the good, honest English people. . .’
    A man near the platform shouted: ‘He’s right!’ Another, from the midst of the crowd, roared: ‘Hang them all!’ Roars of approval came from a dozen places; close to the platform a surge of people was carried forward, threatening, and from all parts of the crowd came cries of:
    ‘Cut him down!’
    ‘Free him!’’
    ‘Save Jacker!’
    ‘Hang the thief-takers.’
    From close by John Furnival, who stood with only three of his own paid officers, there came other cries, deeper and more menacing:
    ‘Hang Furnival.’
    ‘Kill Furnival.’
    ‘Kill the devil.’
    ‘Hang him - kill him - cut his throat - cut off his head.’
    Now the cry ‘Hang Furnival’ became a chant, taken up not in two or three, not in a dozen, but in a hundred places. Men and women turned to see him as he towered above their heads, the timid began to move to a safer distance, the bold ones cursed and screamed at him, while Frederick Jackson’s ruffians forced their way through the crowd towards him, ugly and menacing, harsh-voiced with hatred. The crowd divided to let them through. From the fringes many ran so that they could watch with greater safety while the cut-throats and the highwaymen, the thieves and the murderers, who got their living from Frederick Jackson or else were protected by him, pressed mercilessly on towards Furnival.
    A small company of soldiers stood by the gallows, with the sheriff in charge of the executions, splendid in their bright-green uniforms and cockaded three-cornered hats, muskets grounded, sun glistening on long, narrow bayonets.
    John Furnival saw the ruffians coming from all directions, saw the people near him scatter, knew how deeply they were afraid, knew that his aides would stay by his side even if they were cut to pieces trying to defend him. He had anticipated some such attack and had made arrangements with the sheriff. If it were possible, he desired to win this confrontation unaided; such a victory would be of great value in the future. Unless the sheriff ordered in the troops, few if any of the citizens of London would dare to help; most would prefer to see him hacked to death so as to be able to tell their children and their children’s children of the hideous sight they had seen on the day Frederick Jackson and John Furnival had died.
    He stood tall and aloof, as if impervious to any danger, and with great deliberation took out his golden snuffbox and placed a pinch of snuff on the back of his left hand. In his ears the chant was ringing: ‘Hang, hang, hang Furnival.’
    Slowly, he raised his left hand to his nose and sniffed delicately, an almost feminine gesture in so big a man. As the snuff went up his right nostril a single shot rang out, so sharp and clear that it echoed high above all other sounds, even the chanting which drowned the words