The Thief-Taker : Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner by T.F. Banks

onto the gravel path. He could hear the rasp of something scraping in earth, and then a softly rendered old country air. Morton cleared his throat.
    Rebecca's face appeared among the hydrangea, a straw sun hat pushed onto the back of her head. Her startled expression gave way to a smile, and she brushed back a strand of hair with a soil-stained hand.
    “Well, if it isn't Gentleman Jim! 'Enry!” she cried. “Oh, I've forgotten your h'aitch,” she added, laughing. It was an old jest, a reminder of a woman they'd once known.
    She came out of the garden bed, wearing a farm labourer's boots, the skirts of her dress hitched up a little into a sash. There was a smudge of brown beside her freckled nose, which wrinkled up as she smiled. She kissed him lightly on both cheeks, rising up to her toes to do so.
    “Don't take my hands,” she said, “they're all over dirt from the garden. But you've come just in time. Something is thieving my carrots.”
    “Is it a person?”
    She gazed thoughtfully at the rows of vegetables. “No, I suspect it isn't.”
    “I fear my skills are limited to the apprehension and prosecution of men.”
    “What is the point of having a thief-taker for a son if he can't protect even your garden? Oh, well. I shall have what the thieves leave, I suppose.”
    His mother led him to a small table set beneath the trees, and Morton lowered himself, with some misgivings, into a decrepit wicker chair. His mother disappeared insideto make tea, and Morton sat watching her pass back and forth before the window. She had once been a very comely young woman, and some echo of that remained as she aged. Not that she was old—only seventeen years older than Morton himself. But her life had been a hard one.
    Still, her hair, now silvery white, retained its lustre, and her face was not deeply wrinkled, but etched instead by myriad wire-thin lines. Through the window, she still appeared youthful, for she had so far avoided the stooping and slowing that overtook people as they aged.
    A moment later she emerged. “Kettle's on,” she announced, and lit in the chair opposite. The sun dappled down through the leaves onto her face and dress.
    “How's your new thatch?” Morton asked.
    “It's as good as magic. Not a drop can find its way through.” She bobbed her head to him. “And I thank you again.”
    “You shouldn't thank me, Mother.”
    “Then you shouldn't bring it up,” she said, and Morton laughed.
    From some distant corner of that summer afternoon a cuckoo called, and both Morton and his mother fell silent, listening. He looked up and found she was gazing at him, her face shadowed now by her hat brim.
    “You've grown to look remarkably like your father,” she told him. Morton's reaction to this did not go unnoticed, and she reached out to press her now scrubbed fingers to his wrist. “But let's not speak of the devil,” she added.
    Tea was soon made, and they sat drinking Old Gunpowder as around them bees hummed and pushed their determined way into trembling blossoms.
    “I've been engaged in the most lucrative commission of my career,” Morton said, realizing how awkward that sounded. The problem was he wanted to leave his mother some money, but her pride wouldn't abide it. Not unless he could convince her it wasn't money he needed himself.
    “The tailors of London will rejoice,” she said.
    “I'm not really such a dandy. You've just not seen the way gentlemen are dressing in London these days. But I've no need of another frock-coat or pair of breeches.”
    His mother played with the tassel of her shawl. “No doubt you'll find some use for it,” she said quietly. “Do you still see your actress?”
    “When time allows,” Morton admitted.
    His mother raised her cup and saucer, but said, “She does not treat you as you deserve.”
    “No mother's son has ever been treated as he deserves,” Morton replied, and saw her quick smile before she sipped her tea.
    “And what of Mr. Townsend?”
    “He is