Part 6

When we met we were a little embarrassed. She was startled by the success of her former _ruse_ and concealment. I was disconcerted, if not somewhat humbled, by the then evident truth that I had been all along known to her while I had been, as I thought, pumping her. This embarrassment, however, soon yielded to business. She gave me an insight into a plot of which I had hitherto not had a complete idea.

She could not positively assert that her husband had been murdered. On that head she had her suspicions, as others had. All she could say distinctly was, that the Newtons had burned down their house. The fact was, that her husband had been embarrassed. The Newtons had seen this, and proposed to him an elaborate scheme for defrauding the insurance company. The same means would also enable him to get time from his creditors, who might afterwards be arranged with, or "satisfied" by a bankruptcy, as thereafter should seem desirable. Meanwhile the Newtons and he were to take parts in the great scheme of fraud. They settled between them the extension of the premises and the burning of the manufactory, the claim upon the company, and the division of the spoil. All these arrangements had been carried out, as the reader is aware, except the last part of the programme, which was the subject of another fraud, illustrating a truth I have so frequently insisted upon--that there is no honour among thieves.

Newtons might or might not have overtaken Paterson after he left the Dove, who, being drunk, could not walk towards his home very quickly. They might or might not have pitched him over the canal-bridge into the water; but it was clear that they conceived his death gave an opportunity for cheating him, or rather his widow, out of his share of the proceeds of their joint crime. Mrs. Paterson was in her husband's confidence about the destruction of his premises. This was a little circumstance the Newtons were unacquainted with. On the other hand, Paterson had often told them that he did not let his wife know every thing, and had so frequently spoken in disrespectful terms of the gentle sex (especially on the score of speech or intrigue), that he led them to believe his wife knew nothing about the conspiracy; but in point of fact she had been informed all about it. She had held her peace, since Paterson's death, to see how Messrs. Newton would behave when they got the insurance money, secretly having resolved all the while that if they played her false, or did not hand over to her what she considered her fair share, or what it was arranged her husband should have, she would "let the cat out of the bag," and assist the officers of justice in raising that firm to the level of a platform outside the county gaol, where Mr. Jack Ketch had previously been known to perform in a few dismal tragedies. When the Newtons got the money she boldly made her demand upon them. They affected to be indignant, and they menaced her with a criminal information for slander, which raised her fears a little, for she did not clearly see how she was to establish her case against them. She was lawyer enough to know that in any criminal proceedings against her, her mouth would be shut, by the forms of that branch of English jurisprudence. It required not much self-possession on her part to hold her tongue a while longer, to simulate, if not satisfaction, at least resignation, at the loss of her share of the plunder. She however determined to place herself in communication with me, in the full reliance that I could with her aid, overtake the villains, who had not been true to their compact of rascality, and get them punished, as they deserved to be, if not for their original crimes, for their want of honour to the confederate.

I listened to her story, and noted all the circumstances she could relate. I made another report, that went through the same ordeal or ceremonial which my former report was submitted to, and with about the like result. This woman's evidence was tainted. She did not indeed want to be brought forward. She trembled under the fear of being murdered by some other confederates of the Newtons, if she were the ostensible and avowed agent of their punishment. She wanted "the thing done without using her." It appeared to me, and to the other adviser of the insurance company, that with her evidence a prosecution of the Newtons was not a perfectly safe experiment; and that without such support an indictment was an exceedingly dangerous expedient for the company.

It is needless to observe that the disclosures of this woman rendered the fact of the Newtons' crime doubly certain to _us_; but all that could still be done was to watch and wait another opportunity for bringing these wretches to justice.

The explanations which I had from Mrs. Paterson were to the effect that, although her husband was pecuniarily embarrassed at the time when he sold the business, a large portion of the money owing was money that he held as trustee, and which, being in the funds, railway stocks &c., he had the exclusive management of, having taken all the securities several years ago out of the hands of the lawyers concerned in the trust. There was no one to check his malversation, and by the simple expedient of keeping the interest paid, he escaped detection. At length, finding that the affair was getting beyond his control, the means of his permanently concealing it being rendered more and more difficult by its magnitude, and the fact that losses in trade, perhaps the interest upon the lost capital, swelled up an awful total, he took the Newtons into his confidence, and the set devised a scheme for colourably selling his stock-in-trade, fixtures, good-will, &c., &c., for extending the premises, and so forth, and burning the place down, so as to realise a large sum in ready money--considerably more than the value of the things insured. By these means he hoped to retrieve his position as trustee, and put a tidy sum of money in his own pocket--his confederates, the Newtons, of course also profiting somewhat largely.

Paterson was a peculiar and self-reliant man. Moreover, he could not rely upon getting any solicitor to enter into such a confederacy. It is absolutely certain that if he could induce any one in the legal profession to join in such a villanous compact, he would have been the very lowest among low attorneys. He would in all probability have known sufficiently well how to screen himself, and also how to swallow and retain the lion's share of the plunder. All these things were evident to Mr. Paterson, so he kept the bills of exchange which the Newtons had given him in his own hands, and dreading burglary, or the fraudulent and surreptitious removal of them from the apartments he now occupied during his absence, if an opportunity of any kind were furnished, he usually carried these documents about with him in his pocket-book when he left home. This was, of course, a dangerous plan, and one that any honest man in an ordinary position would not adopt; but perhaps, after all, it was the safest for such a man as Paterson in the position he then stood.

The Newtons knew of Paterson's fraudulent trusteeship. They were sufficiently in his confidence to have obtained nearly all the information which enabled them to keep him at arm's length. And of course Paterson also knew of the exaggerated claim which had been presented to the insurance company, based upon inventories and papers supplied to them by him on the transfer of the business. It is hard to say that either was more deeply implicated in the villany than the other; although it is clear that Paterson, who stood behind the scenes and was screened from observation by the prominent defrauders, was, in reality at least, as deep, and perhaps more deeply, involved in the swindle and arson than either of the Newtons. The situation of the parties towards each other was not very unlike that thieves ordinarily stand in. One had reason to fear the other, and there was in consequence mutual jealousy, distrust, and apprehension.

After leaving the Dove, I had no doubt that the Newtons hastened in the direction that Paterson had, go homewards, and succeeded in overtaking him; that, being partially intoxicated he was easily grasped and held by his whilom confederates, one of whom probably held his hand over the victim's mouth while the other hastily seized his pocket-book, removed from it the acceptances which had been given him on the transfer of the business, &c., after which he was pitched into the water. When taken from the canal and searched, a pocket-book was found upon the person of the murdered incendiary, and in it all the papers that he was known to carry except the acceptances, which were, to the mind of Mrs. Paterson, painfully conspicuous by their absence.

I have explained that the Newtons did not know that Mrs. Paterson was in her husband's confidence; that they imagined she was not; and that he, with a desire for counter-check which distinguishes the suspicious, taught them so to believe. He would frequently say, when Mrs. Paterson's name transpired in their conversations prior and subsequently to the fire, that "he never trusted a woman with a secret of any importance, as she was sure to blab or peach," &c. As I have said, however, he was all the while disclosing to her the conspiracy and plot. She was thoroughly informed of every circumstance, and knew all about their proceedings from first to last as well as either of the Newtons did.

After her husband's death, in her emergency, before seeking me she consulted those well-known criminal lawyers, Messrs. Levy Levy, Brothers, and Sons, who (except when they attend a police-court, and think a demonstration requisite for the vindication of their skill to the newspaper-reading World, as an advertisement for business in the same line) conceive that the Carlylese or Chinese motto about silence embodies the prime wisdom or the highest sagacity. They recommended Mrs. Paterson to wait and hold her tongue--for the present. She did this until she knew that the money had been paid by the insurance company, of which circumstance she then informed her clever Mosaic attorneys. They, upon hearing this circumstance from their client, wisely and shrewdly, perhaps, told her the time had now arrived for action, that they were the people to act, and that she had better leave herself in their hands. To this she readily consented; for, as I have said, the Newtons inspired her with awe. If she had not been sensible that she had an advantage in her knowledge of them, and that they at the present moment had no conception she was aware of their villany, she would have trembled lest, as the greed of the brothers led them to the murder of her husband in order to prevent further disclosures, they would murder her.

The action of her attorneys was not a very remarkable or, I think, skilful performance. One thing to be said is, these gentlemen have an enormous amount of very lucrative business, and it does not, I believe, pay them to bestow much thought upon any thing. For instance, when some wholesale forger, some coiner in an extensive way of business, some pivot of pick-pocketing or burglary, or the member of any gang, is arrested, he sends immediately for Messrs. Levy Levy, Brothers, and Sons, and, to secure their best services, makes them a large payment. They hear what he has got to say. They attend the police-court, bully the witnesses for the prosecution, make every conceivable statement about their client's respectability within the limits that evidence will permit; and although, almost as a matter of course in these cases, the criminal gets sent for trial, he goes away to the House of Detention rejoicing in the confident belief that he has got, at all events, the best criminal lawyers in the country to defend him. When he comes up for trial, out of the hundred or two hundred pounds or more which Messrs. Levy Levy and family have extracted from the prisoner, his relatives, his connexions, or his gang, these attorneys give a brief or a couple of briefs to counsel, which contain little if any thing more than copies of the depositions taken before the magistrates, and on the back of those briefs are severally indorsed, "Mr. Noxious Sound, 10 guineas;" and "Mr. Modest Emptypurse, 2 guineas." The leader of these two gentlemen perhaps tries to pick a hole in the indictment, which has for several years past been not very serviceable to prisoners, because if the hole is but a small one, and unless the bench can be satisfied that the indictment, as it stands, describes a different offence to that which a prisoner has been arrested upon, or has come prepared to meet, it is amended in court so as to cure the defect which Mr. Noxious Sound's not miraculous penetration has discovered. Or Mr. Sound may raise what thieves call a "pint of law" for the Court of Criminal Appeal, about which it is needless to say any thing, except that the case then easily glides from the lower to higher tribunal and that in its course Messrs. Levy Levy and kindred get another considerable lump of money out of it. While they thus realise enormous incomes by a process so facile, and one which involves no responsibility and taxes no intellect--a thing, by the way, nearly impossible, for the Levys have not much of the latter article among the lot of them--they are not disposed, even under what would to the ordinary solicitor be a temptation of liberal costs, to take a vast deal of trouble, or, as one of them would observe, "put themselves far out of the way."

Messrs. Levy Levy and family wrote to Messrs. Newton Brothers a letter, which stated that they had been called upon and consulted by a client on a matter in which they (Messrs. Newton Brothers) were concerned; and that they (Messrs. Levy Levy and kindred) would be glad to see them (Messrs. Newton Brothers).

Mr. Albert Newton received this letter and opened it. When he communicated it to his brother, that gentleman elegantly observed that he thought he "smelt a rat;" but I do not think he exactly comprehended who the rat was, or its location. However, the firm also thought it desirable to consult attorneys. Newtons would have gone to Messrs. Levy Levy and family; but as the professional services of these renowned pettifoggers were forestalled, Newton Brothers put themselves into communication with another Levy, who is an attorney, and may or may not be, for any thing I know, a kinsman of the members of the great Old Bailey house. He called upon Messrs. Levy Levy and family, and the result was, that Mrs. Paterson, when she next waited upon them, was told it was "an ugly affair," and that they "did not see how to move in it without peril." They talked to her in the language of professional wisdom--and slang. They said something about stinks that were stirred smelling all the more because of the operation, and used other unequally sage observations. The widow was not broken-hearted, but certainly crest-fallen, and eminently, although silently, indignant.

Mrs. Paterson vowed vengeance, although the inarticulate form of her protestations saved their being registered any where to her disadvantage. She now determined to take her own course in bringing down upon the heads of her husband's confederates in the swindle and in the arson, and her husband's murderers, the vengeance of the law. She was ultimately led by this amiable turn of reflection to communicate with me, and the reader has already been told the immediate result.

Popular belief, I am sorry to say, in the town where the bonnet-factory had stood, was largely tinged with prejudice or superstition, which materially assisted Newtons' future plans. Paterson's breach of trust became known; his losses in trade also became generally known. The fire having broken out so soon after the transfer of the business had been effected, and the suicide--as it was said--of the late proprietor, all confirmed the mass of the people there in the Newtonian belief that a spell, or witchery, or fatal influence of some kind, hung over the establishment. Newtons' professions of faith of the same kind did not, therefore, appear remarkable. A few people wondered, but nobody except the insurance office suspected the reason why the firm determined not to resume business there. They were content to pay such debts as they had contracted in the neighbourhood, to display a little kindness to a few of the workpeople in the bitterest distress; and having thus obtained a very pleasant reputation, they quitted the neighbourhood for London, intending, as they said, to embark in some other line of enterprise.

I kept close watch upon the culprits, and knew all their movements; but still I could not, for a long time, bring any thing home to them with sufficient precision to warrant a prosecution by the insurance company. Among the things I did, however, discover, was an abundant series of links in a chain of evidence which, some day, I felt certain I could attach at its extremity to a great crime; and although my employers were, I think, getting a little impatient, as I also think I was myself, I never doubted that the result would be, if not the hanging of the Newtons, their certain condemnation to the bulks or a convict prison for the term of their natural lives.

I also ascertained that these villains were mixed up with, in divers ways, a gang who for many years past, and for some years after the date of this narrative, played a prominent part in, or were at the root of, all the great crimes of London, and many of those in the provinces. The Newtons appeared to have a special department of the criminal business allotted to or taken up by them. Although they had been concerned in a forgery or two, in a railway "plant," and a burglary on a grand scale, yet their preference was to get up fires. They had been concerned as subordinates and screened performers in a large incendiary fire at Whitechapel, in another at Manchester, and, I also believe, one in Liverpool.

After about sixteen months' waiting and watching--during which time the Newtons had made one or two pleasure-trips to the Continent, had resided at various parts of the metropolis in superior furnished apartments, and had patronised tailors extensively for various costumes--I ascertained that they had resolved to re-commence business.

One of them, Mr. Henry Newton, went into the west of England, to the town of B----, and took a large house and shop there, which he opened as a music-seller's and a pianoforte warehouse. Next door to the goodly and capacious premises which Mr. Henry Newton had taken, was a small, dwarfed, and not by any means pretty building. This had been not long before to let, but had found a tenant about a month or six weeks before Mr. Newton took the adjacent more pretentious structure. The small house was opened, in a humble way of business, by an old man and woman. The old folk sold lollipops, fruit, children's books, &c. Newton complained to the agent of the low character of this business, and went so far as to negotiate with the small shopkeeper for the surrender of his tenancy in the premises; but the negotiation broke off, in consequence of the small shopkeeper demanding what Mr. Newton thought any thing but a small price for his interest in the hovel. Mr. Newton declared that he had an unconquerable objection, on principle, to being swindled or robbed in that way. Rather than submit to the small shopkeeper's gross extortion, he said he would put up with the nuisance, although it would interfere with the respectable business he intended to carry on.

I ought to explain, that Mr. Newton did not appear in the town under the name of Newton. He set up there as "Keeling and Co., wholesale pianoforte manufacturers, dealers, and merchants." His establishment was called the "Temple of the Muses," and a very pretty affair it was.

Mr. Albert Newton remained in London. He started, under the title of "Cross and Co.," as "general commission-agent, importer, and merchants," near Tower Hill, and soon found himself engaged in rather extensive operations at home and abroad. He also served as a reference for his brother, Mr. Keeling.

Mr. Keeling had not opened his premises long when he slightly intimated his intention to insure the "Temple of the Muses." Several of the local agents of insurance companies left at his premises circulars and prospectuses, inviting him thereby to insure his life or his chattels, or both. He had interviews with two or three of the agents about terms, and was critical in comparing the different rates of their offices, the dates of their foundation, the respectability of their management, and all such other things as a prudent insurer would like to be well informed about. The upshot or result was, that he effected an insurance through the local agent of one of the oldest London offices (the title of which need not for the present be mentioned), although it cost him a trifle more than was asked by the agent of a modern office, because he had no belief, he said, in "mushroom concerns." The agent, who profited by it, considered this decision a token of Mr. Keeling's sound practical judgment.

Several pianos arrived, some large parcels of music, and other goods, which were duly taken from the railway station to the "Temple of the Muses," by the railway servants, whose fatigue was usually lightened by a trifling _douceur_ from Messrs. Keeling and Co.

Messrs. Keeling's men, an assistant and a porter, were brought by them from London. The principal had been heard to say that nobody but London men could understand his way of business; and that although he liked the people of B---- very well (especially the better classes), he could not put up with the trade assistants to be got in that town.

Shortly after the "Temple of the Muses" was opened, the proprietor was scandalised by a little stall having been put outside the next house or hovel, with ginger-beer and other trifling articles of refreshment upon it for sale, which, indeed, seemed to be displayed with a sort of vulgar ostentation by the proprietor, as Keeling said, as a sort of means to annoy him, until he gave a fancy price in order to get rid of the fellow. In this, however, the small shopkeeper was not successful. Although Mr. Keeling's indignation and disgust were intense, he would not buy off the nuisance at the price demanded. He talked of going to law with the old man, and consulted the leading solicitor in the town about an action or an indictment; but was advised that the annoyance was insufficient to give him the remedy he sought.

No business seemed to be done by Keeling and Co. A few pieces of music were sold. A good many people called to see the pianos; but the prices asked for them somewhat alarmed the customers. Mr. Keeling occasionally got disgusted, and assured his visitors he could not sell such articles as he had to sell at the prices they were expected to be sold for, although he knew that common trashy things could be supplied at those figures.

One day there was a sale in London of the stock of a pianoforte manufacturer advertised in the daily papers. It announced an auction at some future day, unless the whole stock were previously disposed of by private contract, together with the lease and good-will of the manufacturer's premises. Mr. Keeling received a telegram from Messrs. Cross, which ran thus: "See the _Times_. Advertisement, sale of Mr.----. Stock, good-will, &c."