Grave Expectations by Sherri Browning Erwin

Author:Sherri Browning Erwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2011-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 28

ONE DAY WHEN I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I received a note that sent me into quite a flutter. It read:

I am to come to London the day after tomorrow by the midday coach. I believe it was settled you should meet me? At all events, Miss Havisham has that impression, and I write in obedience to it. She sends you her regard.

Yours, ESTELLA

If there had been time, I should probably have ordered several suits of clothes for the occasion. My appetite doubled instantly, the craving to hunt fresh meat springing to the fore. I knew no peace or rest until the day arrived.

When the day arrived, I was worse than ever. I began haunting the coach-office in Wood Street, Cheapside, before the coach had even left the Blue Boar in our town. For all that I knew this perfectly well, I felt it unsafe to let the coach-office out of my sight longer than five minutes at a time. While prowling my watch, I ran into Wemmick.

“Halloa, Mr. Pip,” he said. “How do you do? I should hardly have thought this was your beat.”

I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was coming up by coach, and I enquired after the Castle and the Aged.

“Both flourishing thankye,” said Wemmick. “However, this is not London talk. Where do you think I am going to?”

“To the office?” said I, for he was tending in that direction.

“Next thing to it,” returned Wemmick. “I am going to Newgate. We are in a case just at present, and I have been down the road taking a squint at the scene of action, and thereupon must have a word or two with our client.”

“Did your client commit the crime?” I asked.

“Bless your soul and body, no,” answered Wemmick, very drily. “But he is accused of it. So might you or I be. Missing goats, blood at the scene. Either of us might be accused of it, you know.”

“Only neither of us is,” I remarked.

“Yah!” said Wemmick, touching me on the breast with his forefinger. “You’re a deep one, Mr. Pip! Would you like to have a look at Newgate? Have you time to spare?”

I had so much time to spare that the proposal came as a relief, even if it did take me from the coach office. We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed through the lodge where some silver fetters were hanging up on the bare walls among the prison rules, into the interior of the containment wing of the jail. It was visiting time when Wemmick took me in, and a potman was going his rounds with beer. The prisoners, behind bars, were buying beer, and talking to friends, and an ugly, disorderly, depressing scene it was.

It struck me that Wemmick walked among the Scapegrace prisoners much as a gardener might walk among his plants. “What, Captain Tom? Are you there? Ah, indeed!” he said. “Is that Black Bill? Why I didn’t look for you these two months.

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