Chapter Ten

THE FIRST SECTION:

At the Montgomery home, Edward, Jasper and Gerard were getting ready for dinner when the Constable arrived to meet with Montgomery. A servant issued him into a room opposite from where the three men were sharing a drink, closed the door and returned to work. Neither of the three men seem particularly concerned about being left out of the meeting as they were certain they would be informed in full over dinner. Coleman was still up in the office watching the night sky fade over the billows of smoke that now dominated the skyline. He had watched the Constable ride onto the grounds and assumed he was there to give his end-of-the-day report. Soon the room filled with darkness and a servant came in to light the candles but Coleman refused, instead he decided to join the men downstairs.

FOR FULL TEXT CLICK READ MORE BELOW

“Ah,” Jasper said, “There is man of the hour. Where have you been boy?”

Coleman told the group that he had been upstairs waiting for the Constable to arrive, and that he preferred to watch over the city for as long as he could; just to see if he could catch any developments by sight. When queried if he had seen anything, Coleman shook his head and moved to request a drink. Gerard explained that the Constable was meeting at that moment with Montgomery behind the closed door opposite them, and they expected the old man to give a report over dinner.

“Will you be staying?” Gerard asked.

“Yes,” Coleman replied, “I would like to hear all the details, especially if they managed to catch someone.”

But the Constable was in the room for a very long time, and the men grew tired of talking with each other as they had spent the entire day together. Coleman removed himself from the room to walk out into the back garden. Edward followed. The two men walked in silence through the rows of hedges and past three or four small flower gardens before they arrived at a small stream that ran through the back of Montgomery’s lot. Coleman dipped his fingers in the cool water and let the stream flow around his hand. He cocked his wrist at a few different angles to see which way the water would flow if his hand blocked different routes. He noticed that when he cupped his palm upstream that a swirl of water rested between his thumb and the opposed edge of his hand. Once that restful water filled up, a gentle swirl slowly rotated the water to the outer edges of his hand and the water re-entered the natural flow; passing well beyond his body in a matter of seconds.

Edward leaned over and also stuck his hand in the water, but placed the back of his hand upstream. Instead of the water gracefully collecting within his grasp, the water rushed around the firmness of his knuckles and bones, never resting enough to watch it go one way or the other. The water on the opposite side of his hand remained still, however, as his hand served as a dam with a reservoir on the wrong side.

“The water is stale here,” Edward said pointing to the downstream side of his hand. “It doesn’t go anywhere, never refreshing itself.”

Coleman looked at his father quizzically but then looked at his own hand when Edward pointed to it. “See your hand,” Edward continued, “the water is caught, cradled, and has time to collect itself before moving on. But mine, the water just flows past, violently crashing into my hand on one side and growing stale on the other.”

A servant came up to the father and son and informed that dinner was to be served shortly. They all walked back to the house in silence and entered the dining room where Montgomery, Gerard and Jasper were already seated. The group waited for the food to be dished out and they ate for a few minutes before anyone spoke.

Montgomery could only manage to eat about half of his food and requested that the rest be taken away. “Not like you sir,” Gerard said happily, “I am working on a very empty stomach today.”

“My appetite is not what it used to be,” Montgomery said. “That happens when you get to be my age.”

The men chuckled with the old man but then he cleared his throat as though he had something more important to say. “I have just spoken with the Constable, and he has given me his report.”
“Good, bad news?” Coleman queried.

“As usual,” Montgomery continued, “A little bit of both.”

Coleman seemed unsure whether this was good news to him or not. It had never dawned on him that he would have to hear bad news about this event because he had felt so strongly that this course of action was the proper one. Of course, there had to be some bad news, he thought, but these things are bound to happen and are usually fixable without any problem.

“Let’s start with the good,” Jasper said. “Those things usually don’t need to be worked on.”
Gerard agreed, “I despise a conversation that cannot deliver all the goods. When you start talking about the bad news you end up diverting yourself to talk about the issues. In the end, you never get to the good news.”

“Are you two finished?” Montgomery asked with a raised eyebrow. They nodded their heads and made it obvious that they were each putting food in their mouths to prevent them from speaking any further. “The good news is that they have caught some of the suspects and believe have retrieved all of the stolen goods. Some fell in disrepair, but all the items reported recently have been returned.”

“I’ll bet you have your servants already cleaning and fixing them up don’t you Jasper?” Gerard asked his counterpart.

“I learned that from you,” Jasper beamed.

“So who are the culprits?” Edward asked. “How did you find out about them?”

“We actually got some help from Richard,” Montgomery started. This did not go over well with Coleman but did not respond. “He was already investigating this as you all know, and part of his investigation included a bit of research. He wanted to find out who might possibly have a need to steal, and so that led us to those who were the poorest or those who were not working. Not much turned up about the poorest, but we did find one man who had quit his job despite having a son at home.”

This raised the men’s eyebrows and they turned their bodies toward Montgomery so that they could pay better attention. Montgomery continued, “This man also happens to have lodgings that he rents. And so the investigator simply asked himself ‘how does this man support himself and his son?’ The answer did not turn out to be completely accurate. By that I mean this man was not the man who had been stealing, but he seemed to know about the thefts and those who did them.”

“Sounds more like luck to me,” Jasper noted.

“It was,” Montgomery agreed. “But he did lead us to the stolen goods directly. In fact, we caught him rummaging through them. We thought about jailing him on the spot, but there was a genuine feeling that he too had just stumbled on them and did not know there whereabouts until we caught him.”

“Good timing,” Gerard added. “We can lock him up now though can’t we? At least for facilitating the theft?”

“The Constable does not believe that is a good idea,” Montgomery cautioned. “He did lead us to the criminals, by keeping him out of jail we may be able to use him for future intelligence.”

“Brilliant,” Coleman commended. “If he becomes dependent on the Constable for support we can use him to rat out every crook in the neighborhood.”

All the men nodded in agreement until Edward asked a second time about the actual thieves. Montgomery forged ahead, “They are a group of young kids, maybe ten, eleven or twelve years old or so. We saw them checking the stashed goods last night. We have two in custody right now. And they have given us the names of a couple of ships they sold the stuff too. I suspect, however, that they were not in it for the money but more the thrill. Two others are rather, how shall I put this, out of commission for a while. We may not get much out of them in the near future, or ever.” Montgomery frowned and looked around for a servant. He requested a cup of tea and fell silent.

Coleman, too, was disappointed at this news; that the children may have been beaten to death. But he was also very happy at the outcome of the riot. The most important thing was that the culprits were caught and the merchandise returned. But he was also impressed with the message that was sent to the residents of Marnie. The poor beggars are less likely to cross the line again soon, he thought.

“So what about the bad news?” Gerard asked.

Montgomery sighed and looked as though he had just lost a great companion, “Richard has taken his own actions.”

Coleman choked on his dinner and when he regained his composure he asked, “What has he done?”

“He has organized a response team from his own office,” Montgomery explained. “He has managed to get his men to order the citizen’s of Marnie to pick themselves up, regardless of injury or mental incapacitation, and put out the fires or repair the homes and clean the streets. It is a rather remarkable feat I must say. The people have just been beaten, I assume that they the mayor is responsible, and here they are responding to his orders. Literally, being told to clean up this body or that glass or to run to that house to put this fire out. They may be angry at him, but they are responding to him.”

Coleman looked at his father and saw the look on his face. His face reddened when he understood what his father was telling him near the stream earlier on. Finally Edward spoke up. “Well, it is certainly easier to stop the flow of progress if you are nurturing it and allow it to move on at its own wish,” he said calmly. “A slap with the back of your hand may achieve immediate result but it only creates a decayed result unless you persist, keep adding on and building around where it resists.”

“There will always be costs,” Montgomery chimed in. “And now we must figure out how to reign in Richard because I am sure he will use this as an opportunity to step out.”

Coleman thought for a moment and calmly responded, “I can take care of that. I have the most valuable thing to him.” He then looked at his father and responded to a comment he had made a few days earlier, “it is not always about love father.”