Читать книгу Gallows Thief - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 8

Sandman reached Bunhill Row just before the city clocks struck three, the jangling of the bells momentarily drowning the crack of bat on ball, the deep shouts and applause of the spectators. It sounded like a large crowd and, judging by the shouts, a good match. The gatekeeper waved him through. ‘I ain’t taking your sixpence, Captain.’

‘You should, Joe.’

‘Aye, and you should be playing, Captain.’ Joe Mallock, gatekeeper at the Artillery Ground, had once bowled for the finest clubs in London before painful joints had laid him low, and he well remembered one of his last games when a young army officer, scarce out of school, had thrashed him all over the New Road outfield in Marylebone. ‘Been too long since we seen you bat, Captain.’

‘I’m past my prime, Joe.’

‘Past your prime, boy? Past your prime! You aren’t even thirty yet. Now go on in. Last I heard England was fifty-six runs up with only four in hand. They need you!’

A raucous jeer rewarded a passage of play as Sandman walked towards the boundary. The Marquess of Canfield’s eleven were playing an England eleven and one of the Marquess’s fielders had dropped an easy catch and now endured the crowd’s scorn. ‘Butter-fingers!’ they roared. ‘Fetch him a bucket!’

Sandman glanced at the blackboard and saw that England, in their second innings, were only sixty runs ahead and still had four wickets in hand. Most of the crowd were cheering the England eleven and a roar greeted a smart hit that sent the ball scorching towards the field’s far side. The Marquess’s bowler, a bearded giant, spat on the grass then stared up at the blue sky as if he was deaf to the crowd’s noise. Sandman watched the batsman, Budd it was, walk down the wicket and pat down an already smooth piece of turf.

Sandman strolled past the carriages parked by the boundary. The Marquess of Canfield, white-haired, white-bearded and ensconced with a telescope in a landau, offered Sandman a curt nod, then pointedly looked away. A year ago, before the disgrace of Sandman’s father, the Marquess would have called out a greeting, insisted on sharing a few moments of gossip and begged Sandman to play for his team, but now the Sandman name was dirt and the Marquess had pointedly cut him. But then, from further about the boundary and as if in recompense, a hand waved vigorously from another open carriage and an eager voice shouted a greeting. ‘Rider! Here! Rider!’

The hand and voice belonged to a tall, ragged young man who was painfully thin, very bony and lanky, dressed in shabby black and smoking a clay pipe that trickled a drift of ash down his waistcoat and jacket. His red hair was in need of a pair of scissors for it collapsed across his long-nosed face and flared above his wide and old-fashioned collar. ‘Drop the carriage steps,’ he instructed Sandman, ‘come on in. You’re monstrous late. Heydell scored thirty-four in the first innings and very well scored they were too. How are you, my dear fellow? Fowkes is bowling creditably well, but is a bit errant on the off side. Budd is carrying his bat, and the creature who has just come in is called Fellowes and I know nothing about him. You should be playing. You also look pale. Are you eating properly?’

‘I eat,’ Sandman said, ‘and you?’

‘God preserves me, in His effable wisdom He preserves me.’ The Reverend Lord Alexander Pleydell settled back on his seat. ‘I see my father ignored you?’

‘He nodded to me.’

‘He nodded? Ah! What graciousness. Is it true you played for Sir John Hart?’

‘Played and lost,’ Sandman said bitterly. ‘They were bribed.’

‘Dear Rider! I warned you of Sir John! Man’s nothing but greed. He only wanted you to play so that everyone would assume his team was incorruptible and it worked, didn’t it? I just hope he paid you well for he must have made a great deal of money from your gullibility. Would you like some tea? Of course you would. I shall have Hughes bring us tea and cake from Mrs Hillman’s stall, I think, don’t you? Budd looks good as ever, don’t he? What a hitter he is! Have you ever lifted his bat? It’s a club, a cudgel! Oh, well done, sir! Well struck! Go hard, sir, go hard!’ He was cheering on England and doing it in a very loud voice so that his father, whose team was playing against England, would hear him. ‘Capital, sir, well done! Hughes, my dear fellow, where are you?’

Hughes, Lord Alexander’s manservant, approached the side of the carriage. ‘My lord?’

‘Say hello to Captain Sandman, Hughes, and I think we might venture a pot of Mrs Hillman’s tea, don’t you? And perhaps some of her apricot cake?’ His lordship put money into his servant’s hand. ‘What are the bookies saying now, Hughes?’

‘They strongly favour your father’s eleven, my lord.’

Lord Alexander pressed two more coins on his servant. ‘Captain Sandman and I will wager a guinea apiece on an England win.’

‘I can’t afford such a thing,’ Sandman protested, ‘and besides I detest gambling on cricket.’

‘Don’t be pompous,’ Lord Alexander said, ‘we’re not bribing the players, merely risking cash on our appreciation of their skill. You truly do look pale, Rider, are you sickening? Cholera, perhaps? The plague? Consumption, maybe?’

‘Prison fever.’

‘My dear fellow!’ Lord Alexander looked horrified. ‘Prison fever? And for God’s sake sit down.’ The carriage swayed as Sandman sat opposite his friend. They had attended the same school where they had become inseparable friends and where Sandman, who had always excelled at games and was thus one of the school’s heroes, had protected Lord Alexander from the bullies who believed his lordship’s clubbed foot made him an object of ridicule. Sandman, on leaving school, had purchased a commission in the infantry while Lord Alexander, who was the Marquess of Canfield’s second son, had gone to Oxford where, in the first year that such things were awarded, he had taken a double first. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been imprisoned,’ Lord Alexander now chided Sandman.

Sandman smiled and showed his friend the letter from the Home Office and then described his afternoon, though the telling of his tale was constantly interrupted by Lord Alexander’s exclamations of praise or scorn for the cricket, many of them uttered through a mouthful of Mrs Hillman’s apricot cake which his lordship reduced to a spattering of crumbs that joined the ashes on his waistcoat. Beside his chair he kept a bag filled with clay pipes and as soon as one became plugged he would take out another and strike flint on steel. The sparks chipped from the flint smouldered on his coat and on the carriage’s leather seat where they were either beaten out or faded on their own as his lordship puffed more smoke. ‘I must say,’ he said when he had considered Sandman’s story, ‘that I should deem it most unlikely that young Corday is guilty.’

‘But he’s been tried.’

‘My dear Rider! My dear, dear Rider! Rider, Rider, Rider. Rider! Have you ever been to the Old Bailey sessions? Of course you haven’t, you’ve been far too busy smiting the French, you wretch. But I dare say that inside of a week those four judges get through a hundred cases. Five a day apiece? They often do more. These folk don’t get trials, Rider, they get dragged through the tunnel from Newgate, come blinking into the Session House, are knocked down like bullocks and hustled off in manacles! It ain’t justice!’

‘They are defended, surely?’

Lord Alexander turned a shocked face on his friend. ‘The sessions ain’t your Courts Martial, Rider. This is England! What barrister will defend some penniless youth accused of sheep stealing?’

‘Corday isn’t penniless.’

‘But I’ll wager he isn’t rich. Good Lord, Rider, the woman was found naked, smothered in blood, with his palette knife in her throat.’

Sandman, watching the batsmen steal a quick single after an inelegant poke had trickled the ball down to square leg, was amused that his friend knew the details of Corday’s crime, suggesting that Lord Alexander, when he was not deep in volumes of philosophy, theology and literature, was dipping into the vulgar broadsheets that described England’s more violent crimes. ‘So you’re suggesting Corday is guilty,’ Sandman said.

‘No, Rider, I am suggesting that he looks guilty. There is a difference. And in any respectable system of justice we would devise ways of distinguishing between the appearance and the reality of guilt. But not in Sir John Silvester’s courtroom. The man’s a brute, a conscienceless brute. Oh, well struck, Budd, well struck! Run, man, run! Don’t dawdle!’ His lordship took up a new pipe and began setting fire to himself. ‘The whole system,’ he said between puffs, ‘is pernicious. Pernicious! They’ll sentence a hundred folk to hang, then only kill ten of them because the rest have commuted sentences. And how do you obtain a commutation? Why, by having the squire or the parson or his lordship sign the petition. But what if you don’t know such elevated folk? Then you’ll hang. Hang. You fool! You fool! Did you see that? Fellowes is bowled, by God! Middle stump! Closed his eyes and swung! He should be hanged. You see, Rider, what is happening? Society, that’s the respectable folk, you and me, well you at least, have devised a way to keep the lower orders under our control. We make them depend upon our mercy and our loving kindness. We condemn them to the gallows, then spare them and they are supposed to be grateful. Grateful! It is pernicious.’ Lord Alexander was thoroughly worked up now. His long hands were wringing together and his hair, already hopelessly tousled, was being shaken into a worse disorder. ‘Those damned Tories;’ he glared at Sandman, including him in this condemnation, ‘utterly pernicious!’ He frowned for a second, then a happy idea struck him. ‘You and I, Rider, we shall go to a hanging!’

‘No!’

‘It’s your duty, my dear fellow. Now that you are a functionary of this oppressive state you should understand just what brutality awaits these innocent souls. I shall write to the Keeper of Newgate and demand that you and I are given privileged access to the next execution. Oh, a change of bowler. This fellow’s said to twist it very cannily. You will have supper with me tonight?’

‘In Hampstead?’

‘Of course in Hampstead,’ Lord Alexander said, ‘it is where I live and dine, Rider.’

‘Then I won’t.’

Lord Alexander sighed. He had tried hard to persuade Sandman to move into his house and Sandman had been tempted, for Lord Alexander’s father, despite disagreeing with all his son’s radical beliefs, lavished an allowance on him that permitted the radical to enjoy a carriage, stables, servants and a rare library, but Sandman had learnt that to spend more than a few hours in his friend’s company was to end up arguing bitterly. It was better, far better, to be independent.

‘I saw Eleanor last Saturday,’ Lord Alexander said with his usual tactlessness.

‘I trust she was well?’

‘I’m sure she was, but I rather think I forgot to ask. But then, why should one ask? It seems so redundant. She was obviously not dying, she looked well, so why should I ask? You recall Paley’s Principles?’

‘Is that a book?’ Sandman asked, and was rewarded with an incredulous look. ‘I’ve not read it,’ he added hastily.

‘What have you been doing with your life?’ Lord Alexander asked testily. ‘I shall lend it to you, but only so that you can understand the vile arguments that are advanced on the scaffold’s behalf. Do you know,’ Lord Alexander emphasised his next point by stabbing Sandman with the mouthpiece of his pipe, ‘that Paley actually condoned hanging the innocent on the specious grounds that capital punishment is a necessity, that errors cannot be avoided in an imperfect world and that the guiltless suffer, therefore, so that general society might be safer. The innocent who are executed thus form an inevitable, if regrettable, sacrifice. Can you credit such an argument? They should have hanged Paley for it!’

‘He was a clergyman, I believe?’ Sandman said, applauding a subtle snick that sent a fielder running towards the Chiswell Street boundary.

‘Of course he was a clergyman, but what does that have to do with the matter? I am a clergyman, does that give my arguments divine force? You are absurd at times.’ Lord Alexander had broken the stem of his pipe while prodding his friend and now needed to light another. ‘I confess that Thomas Jefferson makes the exact same point, of course, but I find his reasoning more elegant than Paley’s.’

‘Meaning,’ Sandman said, ‘that Jefferson is a hero of yours and can do no wrong.’

‘I hope I am more discerning than that,’ Lord Alexander replied huffily, ‘and even you must allow that Jefferson has political reasons for his beliefs.’

‘Which makes them all the more reprehensible,’ Sandman said, ‘and you’re on fire.’

‘So I am,’ Lord Alexander beat at his coat. ‘Eleanor asked after you, as I recall.’

‘She did?’

‘Did I not just say so? And I said I had no doubt you were in fine fettle. Oh, well struck, sir, well struck. Budd hits almost as hard as you! She and I met at the Egyptian Hall. There was a lecture about,’ he paused, frowning as he stared at the batsmen, ‘bless me, I’ve quite forgotten why I went, but Eleanor was there with Doctor Vaux and his wife. My God, that man is a fool.’

‘Vaux?’

‘No, the new batsman! No point in waving the bat idly! Strike, man, strike, it’s what the bat is for! Eleanor had a message for you.’

‘She did?’ Sandman’s heart quickened. His engagement to Eleanor might be broken off, but he was still in love with her. ‘What?’

‘What, indeed?’ Lord Alexander frowned. ‘Slipped my mind, Rider, slipped it altogether. Dear me, but it can’t have been important. Wasn’t important at all. And as for the Countess of Avebury!’ He shuddered, evidently unable to express any kind of opinion on the murdered woman.

‘What of her ladyship?’ Sandman asked, knowing it would be pointless to pursue Eleanor’s forgotten message.

‘Ladyship! Ha!’ Lord Alexander’s exclamation was loud enough to draw the gaze of a hundred spectators. ‘That baggage,’ he said, then remembered his calling. ‘Poor woman, but translated to a warmer place, no doubt. If anyone wanted her dead I should think it would be her husband. The wretched man must be weighted down with horns!’

‘You think the Earl killed her?’ Sandman asked.

‘They’re estranged, Rider, is that not an indication?’

‘Estranged?’

‘You sound surprised. May one ask why? Half England’s husbands seem to be estranged from their wives. It is hardly an uncommon situation.’

Sandman was surprised because he could have sworn Corday had said the Earl had commissioned his wife’s portrait, but why would he do that if they were estranged? ‘Are you certain they’re estranged?’ he asked.

‘I have it on the highest authority,’ Lord Alexander said defensively. ‘I am a friend of the Earl’s son. Christopher, his name is, and he’s a most cordial man. He was at Brasenose when I was at Trinity.’

‘Cordial?’ Sandman asked. It seemed an odd word.

‘Oh, very!’ Alexander said energetically. ‘He took an extremely respectable degree, I remember, then went off to study with Lasalle at the Sorbonne. His field is etymology.’

‘Bugs?’

‘Words, Rider, words.’ Lord Alexander rolled his eyes at Sandman’s ignorance. ‘The study of the origins of words. Not a serious field, I always think, but Christopher seemed to think there was work to be done there. The dead woman, of course, was his stepmother.’

‘He talked to you of her?’

‘We talked of serious things,’ Alexander said reprovingly, ‘but naturally, in the course of any acquaintanceship, one learns trivia. There was little love lost in that family, I can tell you. Father despising the son, father hating the wife, wife detesting the husband and the son bitterly disposed towards both. I must say the Earl and Countess of Avebury form an object lesson in the perils of family life. Oh, well struck! Well struck! Good man! Capital work! Scamper, scamper!’

Sandman applauded the batsman, then sipped the last of his tea. ‘I’m surprised to learn that Earl and Countess were estranged,’ he said, ‘because Corday claimed that the Earl commissioned the portrait. Why would he do that if they’re estranged?’

‘You must ask him,’ Lord Alexander said, ‘though my guess, for what it is worth, is that Avebury, though jealous, was still enamoured of her. She was a noted beauty and he is a noted fool. Mind you, Rider, I make no accusations. I merely assert that if anyone wanted the lady dead then it could well have been her husband, though I doubt he would have struck the fatal blow himself. Even Avebury is sensible enough to hire someone else to do his dirty work. Besides which he is a martyr to gout. Oh, well hit! Well hit! Go hard, go hard!’

‘Is the son still in Paris?’

‘He came back. I see him from time to time, though we’re not as close as when we were at Oxford. Look at that! Fiddling with the bat. It’s no good poking at balls!’

‘Could you introduce me?’

‘To Avebury’s son? I suppose so.’

The game ended at shortly past eight when the Marquess’s side, needing only ninety-three runs to win, collapsed. Their defeat pleased Lord Alexander, but made Sandman suspect that bribery had once again ruined a game. He could not prove it, and Lord Alexander scoffed at the suspicion and would not hear of it when Sandman tried to refuse his gambling winnings. ‘Of course you must take it,’ Lord Alexander insisted. ‘Are you still lodging in the Wheatsheaf? You do know it’s a flash tavern?’

‘I know now,’ Sandman admitted.

‘Why don’t we have supper there? I can learn some demotic flash, but I suppose all flash is demotic. Hughes? Summon the carriage horses, and tell Williams we’re going to Drury Lane.’

Flash was the slang name for London’s criminal life and the label attached to its language. No one stole a purse, they filed a bit or boned the cole or clicked the ready bag. Prison was a sheep walk or the quod, Newgate was the King’s Head Inn and its turnkeys were gaggers. A good man was flash scamp and his victim a mum scull. Lord Alexander was reckoned a mum scull, but a genial one. He learnt the flash vocabulary and paid for the words by buying ale and gin, and he did not leave till well past midnight and it was then that Sally Hood came home on her brother’s arm, both of them worse for drink, and they passed Lord Alexander who was standing by his carriage, which he had been delighted to learn was really a rattler, while its lamps were a pair of glims. He was holding himself upright by gripping a wheel when Sally hurried past. He stared after her open-mouthed. ‘I am in love, Rider,’ he declared too loudly.

Sally glanced back over her shoulder and gave Sandman a dazzling smile. ‘You are not in love, Alexander,’ Sandman said firmly.

Lord Alexander kept staring after Sally until she had vanished through the Wheatsheaf’s front door. ‘I am in love,’ Lord Alexander insisted. ‘I have been smitten by Cupid’s arrow. I am enamoured. I am fatally in love.’

‘You’re a very drunken clergyman, Alexander.’

‘I am a very drunken clergyman in love. Do you know the lady? You can arrange an introduction?’ He lurched after Sally, but his club foot slipped on the cobbles and he fell full length. ‘I insist, Rider!’ he said from the ground. ‘I insist upon paying the lady my respects. I wish to marry her.’ In truth he was so drunk he could not stand, but Sandman, Hughes and the coachman managed to get his lordship into his carriage and then, glims glimmering, it rattled north.

It was raining next morning and all London seemed in a bad mood. Sandman had a headache, a sore belly and the memory of Lord Alexander singing the gallows song that he had been taught in the taproom.

And now I’m going to hell, going to hell,

And wouldn’t we do well, we do well,

If you go there to dwell, there to dwell,

Damn your eyes.

The tune was lodged in Sandman’s mind and he could not rid himself of it as he shaved, then made tea over the back room fire where the tenants were allowed to boil their water. Sally hurried in, her hair in disarray, but with her dress already hooked up. She ladled herself a cup of water and lifted it in a mock toast. ‘Breakfast,’ she told Sandman, then grinned. ‘I hear you was jolly last night?’

‘Good morning, Miss Hood,’ Sandman groaned.

She laughed. ‘Who was that cripple cove you was with?’

‘He is my particular friend,’ Sandman said, ‘the Reverend Lord Alexander Pleydell, MA, is second son of the Marquess and Marchioness of Canfield.’

Sally stared at Sandman. ‘You’re gammoning me.’

‘I promise I am not.’

‘He said he was in love with me.’

Sandman had hoped she had not heard. ‘And doubtless this morning, Miss Hood,’ he said, ‘when he is sober, he will still be in love with you.’

Sally laughed at Sandman’s tact. ‘Is he really a reverend? He don’t dress like one.’

‘He took orders when he left Oxford,’ Sandman explained, ‘but I rather think he did it to annoy his father. Or perhaps, at the time, he wanted to become a fellow of his college? But he’s never looked for a living. He doesn’t need a parish or any other kind of job because he’s rather rich. He claims he’s writing a book, but I’ve seen no evidence of it.’

Sally drank her water, then grimaced at the taste. ‘A reverend rich cripple?’ She thought for a moment, then smiled mischievously. ‘Is he married?’

‘No,’ Sandman said, and did not add that Alexander regularly fell in love with every pretty shopgirl he saw.

‘Well, I could do a hell of a lot worse than a crocked parson, couldn’t I?’ Sally said, then gasped as a clock struck nine. ‘Lord above, I’m late. This bugger I’m working for likes to start early.’ She ran.

Sandman pulled on his greatcoat and set off for Mount Street. Investigate, Alexander had urged him, so he would. He had six days to discover the truth, and he decided he would begin with the missing maid, Meg. If she existed, and on this wet morning Sandman was dubious of Corday’s story, then she could end Sandman’s confusion by confirming or denying the painter’s tale. He hurried up New Bond Street, then realised with a start that he would have to walk past Eleanor’s house in Davies Street and, because he did not want anyone there to think he was being importunate, he avoided it by taking the long way round and so was soaked to the skin by the time he reached the house in Mount Street where the murder had taken place.

It was easy enough to tell which was the Earl of Avebury’s town house, for even in this weather and despite a paucity of pedestrians, a broadsheet seller was crouching beneath a tarpaulin in an effort to hawk her wares just outside the murder house. ‘Tale of a murder, sir,’ she greeted Sandman, ‘just a penny. ‘Orrible murder, sir.’

‘Give me one.’ Sandman waited as she extricated a sheet from her tarpaulin bag, then he climbed the steps and rapped on the front door. The windows of the house were shuttered, but that meant little. Many folk, stuck in London outside of the season, closed their shutters to suggest they had gone to the country, but it seemed the house really was empty for Sandman’s knocking achieved nothing.

‘There’s no one home,’ the woman selling the broadsheets said, ‘not been anyone home since the murder, sir.’ A crossing sweeper, attracted by Sandman’s hammering, had come to the house and he also confirmed that it was empty.

‘But this is the Earl of Avebury’s house?’ Sandman asked.

‘It is, sir, yes, sir,’ the crossing sweeper, a boy of about ten, was hoping for a tip, ‘and it’s empty, your lordship.’

‘There was a maid here,’ Sandman said, ‘called Meg. Did you know her?’

The crossing sweeper shook his head. ‘Don’t know no one, your honour.’ Two more boys, both paid to sweep horse manure off the streets, had joined the crossing sweeper. ‘Gorn away,’ one of them commented.

A charlie, carrying his watchman’s staff, came to gawp at Sandman, but did not interfere, and just then the front door of the next house along opened and a middle-aged woman in dowdy clothes appeared on the step. She shuddered at the rain, glanced nervously at the small crowd outside her neighbour’s door, then put up an umbrella. ‘Madam!’ Sandman called. ‘Madam!’

‘Sir?’ The woman’s clothes suggested she was a servant, perhaps a housekeeper.

Sandman pushed past his small audience and took off his hat. ‘Forgive me, madam, but Viscount Sidmouth has charged me with investigating the sad events that occurred here.’ He paused and the woman just gaped at him as the rain dripped off the edges of her umbrella, though she seemed impressed by the mention of a viscount, which was why Sandman had introduced it. ‘Is it true, ma’am,’ Sandman went on, ‘that there was a maid called Meg in the house?’

The woman looked back at her closed front door as if seeking an escape, but then nodded. ‘There was, sir, there was.’

‘Do you know where she is?’

‘They’ve gone, sir, gone. All gone, sir.’

‘But where?’

‘They went to the country, sir, I think.’ She dropped Sandman a curtsey, evidently hoping that would persuade him to go away.

‘The country?’

‘They went away, sir. And the Earl, sir, he has a house in the country, sir, near Marlborough, sir.’

She knew nothing more. Sandman pressed her, but the more he questioned her the less certain she was of what she had already told him. Indeed, she was sure of only one thing, that the Countess’s cooks, footmen, coachmen and maids were all gone and she thought, she did not know, that they must have gone to the Earl’s country house that lay close to Marlborough. ‘That’s what I told you,’ one of the sweeping boys said, ‘they’ve gorn.’

‘Her ladyship’s gorn,’ the watchman said, then laughed, ‘torn and gorn.’

‘Read all about it,’ the broadsheet seller called optimistically.

It seemed evident that there was little more to learn in Mount Street, so Sandman walked away. Meg existed? That confirmed part of Corday’s tale, but only part, for the painter’s apprentice could still have done the murder when the maid was out of the room. Sandman thought of the Newgate porter’s assurance that all felons lied and he wondered if he was being unforgivably naïve in doubting Corday’s guilt. The wretched boy had, after all, been tried and convicted, and though Lord Alexander might scorn British justice, Sandman found it hard to be so dismissive. He had spent most of the last decade fighting for his country against a tyranny that Lord Alexander celebrated. A portrait of Napoleon hung on his friend’s wall, together with George Washington and Thomas Paine. Nothing English, it seemed to Sandman, ever pleased Lord Alexander, while anything foreign was preferable, and not all the blood that had dripped from the guillotine’s blade would ever convince Lord Alexander that liberty and equality were incompatible, a point of view which seemed glaringly obvious to Sandman. Thus, it seemed, were they doomed to disagree. Lord Alexander Pleydell would fight for equality while Sandman believed in liberty, and it was unthinkable to Sandman that a freeborn Englishman would not get a fair trial, yet that was precisely what his appointment as Investigator was encouraging him to think. It was more comforting to believe Corday was a liar, yet Meg undoubtedly existed and her existence cast doubt on Sandman’s stout belief in British justice.

He was walking east on Burlington Gardens, thinking these wild thoughts and only half aware of the rattle of carriages splashing through the rain, when he saw that the end of the street was plugged by a stonemason’s wagons and scaffolding, so he turned down Sackville Street where he had to step into the gutter because a small crowd was standing under the awning of Gray’s jewellery shop. They were mostly sheltering from the rain, but a few were admiring the rubies and sapphires of a magnificent necklace that was on display inside a gilded cage in the jeweller’s window. Gray’s. The name reminded Sandman of something, so that he stopped in the street and stared up past the awning.

‘You tired of bleeding life?’ a carter snarled at Sandman, and hauled on his reins. Sandman ignored the man. Corday had said that Sir George Phillips’s studio was here, but Sandman could see nothing in the windows above the shop. He stepped back to the pavement to find a doorway to one side of the shop, plainly separate from the jewellery business, but no plate announced who lived or traded behind the door that was painted a shining green and furnished with a well-polished brass knocker. A one-legged beggar sat in the doorway, his face disfigured by ulcers. ‘Spare a coin for an old soldier, sir?’

‘Where did you serve?’ Sandman asked.

‘Portugal, sir, Spain, sir, and Waterloo, sir.’ The beggar patted his stump. ‘Lost the gam at Waterloo, sir. Been through it all, sir, I have.’

‘What regiment?’

‘Artillery, sir. Gunner, sir.’ He sounded more nervous now.

‘Which battalion and company?’

‘Eighth battalion, sir,’ the beggar was now plainly uncomfortable and his answer was unconvincing.

‘Company?’ Sandman demanded. ‘And company commander’s name?’

‘Why don’t you brush off,’ the man snarled.

‘I wasn’t long in Portugal,’ Sandman told the man, ‘but I did fight through Spain and I was at Waterloo.’ He lifted the brass knocker and rapped it hard. ‘We had some difficult times in Spain,’ he went on, ‘but Waterloo was by far the worst and I have great sympathy for all who fought there.’ He knocked again. ‘But I can get angry, bloody angry,’ his temper was rising, ‘with men who claim to have fought there and did not! It bloody annoys me!’

The beggar scrambled away from Sandman’s temper and just then the green door opened and a black pageboy of thirteen or fourteen recoiled from Sandman’s savage face. He must have thought the face meant trouble for he tried to close the door, but Sandman managed to put his boot in the way. Behind the boy was a short elegant hallway, then a narrow staircase. ‘Is this Sir George Phillips’s studio?’ Sandman asked.

The pageboy, who was wearing a shabby livery and a wig in desperate need of powdering, heaved on the door, but could not prevail against Sandman’s much greater strength. ‘If you ain’t got an appointment,’ the boy said, ‘then you ain’t welcome.’

‘I have got an appointment.’

‘You have?’ The surprised boy let go of the door, making Sandman stumble as it suddenly swung open. ‘You have?’ the boy asked again.

‘I have an appointment,’ Sandman said grandly, ‘from Viscount Sidmouth.’

‘Who is it, Sammy?’ a voice boomed from upstairs.

‘He says he’s from Viscount Sidmouth.’

‘Then let him up! Let him up! We are not too proud to paint politicians. We just charge the bastards more.’

‘Take your coat, sir?’ Sammy asked, giving Sandman a perfunctory bow.

‘I’ll keep it.’ Sandman edged into the hallway which was tiny, but nevertheless decorated in a fashionable striped wallpaper and hung with a small chandelier. Sir George’s rich patrons were to be welcomed by a liveried page and a carpeted entrance, but as Sandman climbed the stairs the elegance was tainted by the reek of turpentine and the room at the top, which was supposed to be as elegant as the hallway, had been conquered by untidiness. The room was a salon where Sir George could show his finished paintings and entice would-be subjects to pay for their portraits, but it had become a dumping place for half-finished work, for palettes of crusted paint, for an abandoned game pie that had mould on its pastry, for old brushes, rags and a pile of men’s and women’s clothes. A second flight of stairs went to the top floor and Sammy indicated that Sandman should go on up. ‘You want coffee, sir?’ he asked, going to a curtained doorway that evidently hid a kitchen. ‘Or tea?’

‘Tea would be kind.’

The ceiling had been knocked out of the top floor to open the long room to the rafters of the attic, then skylights had been put in the roof so that Sandman seemed to be climbing into the light. Rain pattered on the tiles and enough dripped through to need catchment buckets that had been placed all about the studio. A black pot-bellied stove dominated the room’s centre, though now it did nothing except serve as a table for a bottle of wine and a glass. Next to the stove an easel supported a massive canvas while a naval officer posed with a sailor and a woman on a platform at the farther end. The woman screamed when Sandman appeared, then snatched up a drab cloth that covered a tea chest on which the naval officer was sitting.

It was Sally Hood. Sandman, his wet hat in his right hand, bowed to her. She was holding a trident and wearing a brass helmet and very little else. Actually, Sandman realised, she was wearing nothing else, though her hips and thighs were mostly screened by an oval wooden shield on which a union flag had been hastily drawn in charcoal. She was, Sandman realised, Britannia. ‘You are feasting your eyes,’ the man beside the easel said, ‘on Miss Hood’s tits. And why not? As tits go, they are splendid, quintessence of bubby.’

‘Captain,’ Sally acknowledged Sandman in a small voice.

‘Your servant, Miss Hood,’ Sandman said, bowing again.

‘Good Lord Almighty!’ the painter said. ‘Have you come to see me or Sally?’ He was an enormous man, fat as a hogshead, with great jowls, a bloated nose and a belly that distended a paint-smeared shirt decorated with ruffles. His white hair was bound by a tight cap of the kind that used to be worn beneath wigs.

‘Sir George?’ Sandman asked.

‘At your service, sir.’ Sir George attempted a bow, but was so fat he could only manage a slight bend at what passed for his waist, but he made a pretty gesture with the brush in his hand, sweeping it as though it were a folded fan. ‘You are welcome,’ he said, ‘so long as you seek a commission. I charge eight hundred guineas for a full length, six hundred from the waist up, and I don’t do heads unless I’m starving and I ain’t been starving since ’ninety-nine. Viscount Sidmouth sent you?’

‘He doesn’t wish to be painted, Sir George.’

‘Then you can bugger off!’ the painter said. Sandman ignored the suggestion, instead looking about the studio which was a riot of plaster statues, curtains, discarded rags and half-finished canvases. ‘Oh, make yourself at home here, do,’ Sir George snarled, then shouted down the stairs. ‘Sammy, you black bastard, where’s the tea?’

‘Brewing!’ Sammy called back.

‘Hurry it!’ Sir George threw down his palette and brush. Two youths were flanking him, both painting waves on the canvas and Sandman guessed they were his apprentices. The canvas itself was vast, at least ten feet wide, and it showed a solitary rock in a sunlit sea on which a half-painted fleet was afloat. An admiral was seated on the rock’s summit where he was flanked by a good-looking young man dressed as a sailor and by Sally Hood undressed as Britannia. Quite why the admiral, the sailor and the goddess should have been so marooned on their isolated rock was not clear and Sandman did not like to ask, but then he noticed that the officer who was posing as the admiral could not have been a day over eighteen yet he was wearing a gold-encrusted uniform on which shone two jewelled stars. That puzzled Sandman for a heartbeat, then he saw that the boy’s empty right sleeve was pinned to his coat’s breast. ‘The real Nelson is dead,’ Sir George had been following Sandman’s eyes and thus deducing his train of thought, ‘so we make do as best we can with young Master Corbett there, and do you know what is the tragedy of young Master Corbett’s life? It is that his back is turned to Britannia, thus he must sit there for hours every day in the knowledge that one of the ripest pairs of naked tits in all London are just two feet behind his left ear and he can’t see them. Ha! And for God’s sake, Sally, stop hiding.’

‘You ain’t painting,’ Sally said, ‘so I can cover up.’ She had dropped the grey cloth that turned the tea chest into a rock and was instead wearing her street coat.

Sir George picked up his brush. ‘I’m painting now,’ he snarled.

‘I’m cold,’ Sally complained.

‘Too grand suddenly to show us your bubbies, are you?’ Sir George snarled, then looked at Sandman. ‘Has she told you about her lord? The one who’s sweet on her? We’ll soon all be bowing and scraping to her, won’t we? Yes, your ladyship, show us your tits, your ladyship.’ He laughed, and the apprentices all grinned.

‘She hasn’t lied to you,’ Sandman said. ‘His lordship exists, I know him, he is indeed enamoured of Miss Hood, and he is very rich. More than rich enough to commission a dozen portraits from you, Sir George.’

Sally gave him a look of pure gratitude while Sir George, discomfited, dabbed the brush into the paint on his palette. ‘So who the devil are you?’ he demanded of Sandman. ‘Besides being an envoy of Sidmouth’s?’

‘My name is Captain Rider Sandman.’

‘Navy, army, fencibles, yeomanry or is the captaincy a fiction? Most ranks are these days.’

‘I was in the army,’ Sandman said.

‘You can uncover,’ Sir George explained to Sally, ‘because the captain was a soldier which means he’s seen more tits than I have.’

‘He ain’t seen mine,’ Sally said, clutching the coat to her bosom.

‘How do you know her?’ Sir George asked Sandman in a suspicious tone.

‘We lodge in the same tavern, Sir George.’

Sir George snorted. ‘Then either she lives higher in the world than she deserves, or you live lower. Drop the coat, you stupid bitch.’

‘I’m embarrassed,’ Sally confessed, reddening.

‘He’s seen worse than you naked,’ Sir George commented sourly, then stepped back to survey his painting. ‘“The Apotheosis of Lord Nelson”, would you believe? And you are wondering, are you not, why I don’t have the little bugger in an eyepatch? Are you not wondering that?’

‘No,’ Sandman said.

‘Because he never wore an eyepatch, that’s why. Never! I painted him twice from life. He sometimes wore a green eyeshade, but never a patch, so he won’t have one in this masterpiece commissioned by their Lordships of the Admiralty. They couldn’t stand the little bugger when he was alive, now they want him up on their wall. But what they really want to suspend on their panelling, Captain Sandman, is Sally Hood’s tits. Sammy, you black bastard! What in God’s name are you bloody doing down there? Growing the bloody tea leaves? Bring me some brandy!’ He glared at Sandman. ‘So what do you want of me, Captain?’

‘To talk about Charles Corday.’

‘Oh, Good Christ alive,’ Sir George blasphemed, and stared belligerently at Sandman. ‘Charles Corday?’ He said the name very portentously. ‘You mean grubby little Charlie Cruttwell?’

‘Who now calls himself Corday, yes.’

‘Doesn’t bloody matter what he calls himself,’ Sir George said, ‘they’re still going to stretch his skinny neck next Monday. I thought I might go and watch. It ain’t every day a man sees one of his own apprentices hanged, more’s the pity.’ He cuffed one of the youths who was laboriously painting in the white-flecked waves, then scowled at his three models. ‘Sally, for God’s sake, your tits are my money. Now, pose as you’re paid to!’

Sandman courteously turned his back as she dropped the coat. ‘The Home Secretary,’ he said, ‘has asked me to investigate Corday’s case.’

Sir George laughed. ‘His mother’s been bleating to the Queen, is that it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Lucky little Charlie that he has such a mother. You want to know whether he did it?’

‘He tells me he didn’t.’

‘Of course he tells you that,’ Sir George said scornfully. ‘He’s hardly likely to offer you a confession, is he? But oddly enough he’s probably telling the truth. At least about the rape.’

‘He didn’t rape her?’

‘He might have done,’ Sir George was making delicate little dabs with the brush which were magically bringing Sally’s face alive under the helmet. ‘He might have done, but it would have been against his nature.’ Sir George gave Sandman a sly glance. ‘Our Monsieur Corday, Captain, is a sodomite.’ He laughed at Sandman’s expression. ‘They’ll hang you for being one of those, so it don’t make much difference to Charlie whether he’s guilty or innocent of murder, do it? He’s certainly guilty of sodomy so he thoroughly deserves to hang. They all do. Nasty little buggers. I’d hang them all and not by the neck either.’

Sammy, minus his livery coat and wig, brought up a tray on which were some ill-assorted cups, a pot of tea and a bottle of brandy. The boy poured tea for Sir George and Sandman, but only Sir George received a glass of brandy. ‘You’ll get your tea in a minute,’ Sir George told his three models, ‘when I’m ready.’

‘Are you sure?’ Sandman asked him.

‘About them getting their tea? Or about Charlie being a sodomite? Of course I’m bloody sure. You could unpeel Sally and a dozen like her right down to the raw and he wouldn’t bother to look, but he was always trying to get his paws on young Sammy here, wasn’t he, Sammy?’

‘I told him to fake away off,’ Sammy said.

‘Good for you, Samuel!’ Sir George said. He put down his brush and gulped the brandy. ‘And you are wondering, Captain, are you not, why I would allow a filthy sodomite into this temple of art? I shall tell you. Because Charlie was good. Oh, he was good.’ He poured more brandy, drank half of it, then returned to the canvas. ‘He drew beautifully, Captain, drew like the young Raphael. He was a joy to watch. He had the gift, which is more than I can say for this pair of butcher boys.’ He cuffed the second apprentice. ‘No, Charlie was good. He could paint as well as draw, which meant I could trust him with flesh, not just draperies. In another year or two he’d have been off on his own. The picture of the Countess? It’s there if you want to see how good he was.’ He gestured to some unframed canvases that were stacked against a table that was littered with jars, paste, knives, pestles and oil flasks. ‘Find it, Barney,’ Sir George ordered one of his apprentices. ‘It’s all his work, Captain,’ Sir George went on, ‘because it ain’t got to the point where it needs my talent.’

‘He couldn’t have finished it himself?’ Sandman asked. He sipped the tea, which was an excellent blend of gunpowder and green.

Sir George laughed. ‘What did he tell you, Captain? No, let me guess. Charlie told you that I wasn’t up to it, didn’t he? He said I was drunk, so he had to paint her ladyship. Is that what he told you?’

‘Yes,’ Sandman admitted.

Sir George was amused. ‘The lying little bastard. He deserves to hang for that.’

‘So why did you let him paint the Countess?’

‘Think about it,’ Sir George said. ‘Sally, shoulders back, head up, nipples out, that’s my girl. You’re Britannia, you rule the bleeding waves, you’re not some bloody Brighton whore drooping on a boulder.’

‘Why?’ Sandman persisted.

‘Because, Captain,’ Sir George paused to make a stroke with the brush, ‘because we were gammoning the lady. We were painting her in a frock, but once the canvas got back here we were going to make her naked. That’s what the Earl wanted and that’s what Charlie would have done. But when a man asks a painter to depict his wife naked, and a remarkable number do, then you can be certain that the resulting portrait will not be displayed. Does a man hang such a painting in his morning room for the titillation of his friends? He does not. Does he show it in his London house for the edification of society? He does not. He hangs it in his dressing room or in his study where none but himself can see it. And what use is that to me? If I paint a picture, Captain, I want all London gaping at it. I want them queueing up those stairs begging me to paint one just like it for themselves and that means there ain’t no money in society tits. I paint the profitable pictures, Charlie was taking care of the boudoir portraits.’ He stepped back and frowned at the young man posing as a sailor. ‘You’re holding that oar all wrong, Johnny. Maybe I should have you naked. As Neptune.’ He turned and leered at Sandman. ‘Why didn’t I think of that before? You’d make a good Neptune, Captain. Fine figure you’ve got. You could oblige me by stripping naked and standing opposite Sally? We’ll give you a triton shell to hold, erect. I’ve got a triton shell somewhere, I used it for the Apotheosis of the Earl St Vincent.’

‘What do you pay?’ Sandman asked.

‘Five shillings a day.’ Sir George had been surprised by the response.

‘You don’t pay me that!’ Sally protested.

‘Because you’re a bloody woman!’ Sir George snapped, then looked at Sandman. ‘Well?’

‘No,’ Sandman said, then went very still. The apprentice had been turning over the canvases and Sandman now stopped him. ‘Let me see that one,’ he said, pointing to a full-length portrait.

The apprentice pulled it from the stack and propped it on a chair so that the light from a skylight fell on the canvas, which showed a young woman sitting at a table with her head cocked in what was almost but not quite a belligerent fashion. Her right hand was resting on a pile of books while her left held an hourglass. Her red hair was piled high to reveal a long and slender neck that was circled by sapphires. She was wearing a dress of silver and blue with white lace at the neck and wrists. Her eyes stared boldly out of the canvas and added to the suggestion of belligerence, which was softened by the mere suspicion that she was about to smile.

‘Now that,’ Sir George said reverently, ‘is a very clever young lady. And be careful with it, Barney, it’s going for varnishing this afternoon. You like it, Captain?’

‘It’s—’ Sandman paused, wanting a word that would flatter Sir George, ‘it’s wonderful,’ he said lamely.

‘It is indeed,’ Sir George said enthusiastically, stepping away from Nelson’s half-finished apotheosis to admire the young woman whose red hair was brushed away from a forehead that was high and broad, whose nose was straight and long and whose mouth was generous and wide, and who had been painted in a lavish sitting room beneath a wall of ancestral portraits which suggested she came from a family of great antiquity, though in truth her father was the son of an apothecary and her mother a parson’s daughter who was considered to have married beneath herself. ‘Miss Eleanor Forrest,’ Sir George said. ‘Her nose is too long, her chin too sharp, her eyes more widely spaced than convention would allow to be beautiful, her hair is lamentably red and her mouth is too lavish, yet the effect is extraordinary, is it not?’

‘It is,’ Sandman said fervently.

‘Yet of all the young woman’s attributes,’ Sir George had entirely dropped his bantering manner and was speaking with real warmth, ‘it is her intelligence I most admire. I fear she is to be wasted in marriage.’

‘She is?’ Sandman had to struggle to keep his voice from betraying his feelings.

‘The last I heard,’ Sir George returned to Nelson, ‘she was spoken of as the future Lady Eagleton. Indeed I believe the portrait is a gift for him, yet Miss Eleanor is much too clever to be married to a fool like Eagleton.’ Sir George snorted. ‘Wasted.’

‘Eagleton?’ Sandman felt as though a cold hand had gripped his heart. Had that been the import of the message Lord Alexander had forgotten? That Eleanor was engaged to Lord Eagleton?

‘Lord Eagleton, heir to the Earl of Bridport and a bore. A bore, Captain, a bore and I detest bores. Is Sally Hood really to be a lady? Good God incarnate, England has gone to the weasels. Stick ’em out, darling, they ain’t noble yet and they’re what the Admiralty is paying for. Barney, find the Countess.’

The apprentice hunted on through the canvases. The wind gusted, making the rafters creak. Sammy emptied two of the buckets into which rain was leaking, chucking them out of the back window and provoking a roar of protest from below. Sandman stared out of the front windows, looking past the awning of Gray’s jewellery shop into Sackville Street. Was Eleanor really to marry? He had not seen her in over six months and it was very possible. Her mother, at least, was in a hurry to have Eleanor walk to an altar, preferably an aristocratic altar, for Eleanor was twenty-five now and would soon be reckoned a shelved spinster. Damn it, Sandman thought, but forget her. ‘This is it, sir.’ Barney, the apprentice, interrupted his thoughts. He propped an unfinished portrait over Eleanor’s picture. ‘The Countess of Avebury, sir.’

Another beauty, Sandman thought. The painting was hardly begun, yet it was strangely effective. The canvas had been sized, then a charcoal drawing made of a woman reclining on a bed that was surmounted by a tent of peaked material. Corday had then painted in patches of the wallpaper, the material of the bed’s tent, the bedspread, the carpet, and the woman’s face. He had lightly painted the hair, making it seem wild as though the Countess was in a country wind rather than her London bedroom, and though the rest of the canvas was hardly touched by any other colour, yet somehow it was still breathtaking and full of life.

‘Oh, he could paint, our Charlie, he could paint.’ Sir George, wiping his hands with a rag, had come to look at the picture. His voice was reverent and his eyes betrayed a mixture of admiration and jealousy. ‘He’s a clever little devil, ain’t he?’

‘Is it a good likeness?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Sir George nodded, ‘indeed yes. She was a beauty, Captain, a woman who could make heads turn, but that’s all she was. She was out of the gutter, Captain. She was what our Sally is. She was an opera dancer.’

‘I’m an actress,’ Sally insisted hotly.

‘An actress, an opera dancer, a whore, they’re all the same,’ Sir George growled, ‘and Avebury was a fool to have married her. He should have kept her as his mistress, but never married her.’

‘This tea’s bloody cold,’ Sally complained. She had left the dais and discarded her helmet.

‘Go and have some dinner, child,’ Sir George said grandly, ‘but be back here by two of the clock. Have you finished, Captain?’

Sandman nodded. He was staring at the Countess’s picture. Her dress had been very lightly sketched, presumably because it was doomed to be obliterated, but her face, as striking as it was alluring, was almost completed. ‘You said, did you not,’ he asked, ‘that the Earl of Avebury commissioned the portrait?’

‘I did say so,’ Sir George agreed, ‘and he did.’

‘Yet I heard that he and his wife were estranged?’ Sandman said.

‘So I understand,’ Sir George said airily, then gave a wicked laugh. ‘He was certainly cuckolded. Her ladyship had a reputation, Captain, and it didn’t involve feeding the poor and comforting the afflicted.’ He was pulling on an old-fashioned coat, all wide cuffs, broad collars and gilt buttons. ‘Sammy,’ he shouted down the stairs, ‘I’ll eat the game pie up here! And some of that salmagundi if it ain’t mouldy. And you can open another of the ’nine clarets.’ He lumbered to the window and scowled at the rain fighting against the smoke of a thousand chimneys.

‘Why would a man estranged from his wife spend a fortune on her portrait?’ Sandman asked.

‘The ways of the world, Captain,’ Sir George said portentously, ‘are a mystery even unto me. How the hell would I know?’ Sir George turned from the window. ‘You’d have to ask his cuckolded lordship. I believe he lives near Marlborough, though he’s reputed to be a recluse so I suspect you’d be wasting your journey. On the other hand, perhaps it isn’t a mystery. Maybe he wanted revenge on her? Hanging her naked tits on his wall would be a kind of revenge, would it not?’

‘Would it?’

Sir George chuckled. ‘There is none so conscious of their high estate as an ennobled whore, Captain, so why not remind the bitch of what brought her the title? Tits, sir, tits. If it had not been for her good tits and long legs she’d still be charging ten shillings a night. But did little Charlie the sodomite kill her? I doubt it, Captain, I doubt it very much, but nor do I care very much. Little Charlie was getting too big for his boots, so I won’t mourn to see him twitching at the end of a rope. Ah!’ He rubbed his hands as his servant climbed the stairs with a heavy tray. ‘Dinner! Good day to you, Captain, I trust I have been of service.’

Sandman was not sure Sir George had been of any service, unless increasing Sandman’s confusion was of use, but Sir George was done with him now and Sandman was dismissed.

So he left. And the rain fell harder.

‘That fat bastard never offers us dinner!’ Sally Hood complained. She was sitting opposite Sandman in a tavern on Piccadilly where, inspired by Sir George Phillips’s dinner, they shared a bowl of salmagundi: a cold mixture of cooked meats, anchovies, hard-boiled eggs and onions. ‘He guzzles himself, he does,’ Sally went on, ‘and we’re supposed to bleeding starve.’ She tore a piece of bread from the loaf, poured more oil into the bowl then smiled shyly at Sandman. ‘I was so embarrassed when you walked in.’