Character Showcase - Gideon Jones

At the beginning of SLOWLY RISING, Gideon Jones is a Bow Street Runner, who also has experience providing protection services for some important members of society. He has been called upon, in the past, to solve various problems -- such as blackmailing ex-lovers and murderous relatives impatient for their share of a rich old lady's inheritance.

But Gideon's company was not always in high demand. Far from it. As a babe he was left at an orphanage, where he spent the first ten years of his life being abused and told that he was unwanted, nothing more than a burden on society. Then he spent several years in a workhouse, before he took his chance in the outside world. Despite this unhappy start in life, he has always kept his head up, determined never to be pushed under by those who think they're superior.

Recognizing the importance of an education, he taught himself to read using old copies of the "Hue and Cry"* (a weekly newspaper containing details of crimes and criminals wanted), but he also keeps an old, tattered copy of Gulliver's Travels, which once blew into his hands over the orphanage wall. Now, as an adult, he keeps a thick dictionary by his side to look up any words he does not know. Determined never to be looked down upon again, he doesn't want to be known as all brawn for the rest of his days; he wants to be respected for his brain too.

"Gideon didn't believe in pandering to the upper classes. He owed them nothing, saw no cause to cower and demean himself, to save their dainty brows from the furrows of vexation, or shelter their backsides from the bruises of reality. Often he found that they appreciated his manner, for in most cases they were surrounded only by sycophants and his brutal honesty made a refreshing change. In small doses. "They hire Gideon Jones, then they get Gideon Jones. Exactly as he is, scars and all," he liked to say, when people complained about his undecorated form of speech."

When the Dowager Lady Bramley hires Gideon to pose as a valet and look after her good friends, Adam and Sarah Wilding, he finds himself embarking on a new adventure. He has rarely been far outside London, but now he's off to the countryside, to a house called Slowly Rising. He's heard it's haunted - Lady Bramley says there is a "lurking menace" and "deeds afoot" that are beyond her to explain. But Gideon doesn't believe in ghosts, hobgoblins or witches... "they could not possibly hold more horrors than the places in which he spent his childhood." He's a plain-speaking, straightforward cockney and he won't take nonsense from anybody or anything-- whether they be flesh and blood, or a spectral creature bent on mischief.

He's fairly sure there's nothing left in this life that can surprise, or frighten him. And then he arrives at Slowly Rising and meets the odd little lady's maid who works for Mrs. Wilding. He doesn't trust her - not a hair on her pretty head. She's too prim and haughty, too tidy and composed, too good to be true.

As for those dyed-pink silk stockings she wears...surely not fitting for a lady's maid. Possibly meant to distract a man from his job. Oh, and under her bed she keeps a silver chocolate pot that sings to itself.

Is she the "lurking menace" he was sent there to stop?

He'll just have to keep an eye on her...and her stockings, because there is something adrift about Miss McKenna.

SLOWLY RISING will be available online August 29th, 2018

JF

(Image here: Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Freidrich c. 1818)



*after 1839 this publication became known as the Police Gazette.