Dark Waters (25 page)

‘Do you not think politics are very like the drama, though? Roles are acted in much the same way.'

‘Yes, by the Tories!'

‘By both sides, I think. Besides, Lord Strange's family are hardly Tories. I would say the theme of the play we saw tonight should be acceptable to all. It spoke admiringly of things that any man of goodwill ought to admire.'

‘I think not. It had nothing to say about business, nothing about finance, nothing about trade, nothing about fearing God. It speaks not of lowering the national debt or preserving the land tax. Instead it insults our lawful and good king by making him equal to Danes that worshipped the sun and wore horns in their helmets.'

I might have pointed out that the song ‘Rule Britannia!' did speak of trade. ‘Thy cities shall with commerce shine', I recalled, was one of its assurances. But I did not. Wilson would not be shaken off his platform by a line of verse.

I noticed a falling-off of conversation throughout the supper room, and grateful for a chance to leave the subject I turned to see the Derbys entering, followed half a minute later by their son, our young host. He made his way towards the high table, bowing to right and left with seigneurial assurance, as his guests called out their appreciation for the supper and the play. Wilson's lips curled in a sneer. Like
Alfred
's original patron, young Strange expected one day to inherit great power and prestige; like Prince Frederick, he was at home with wits, musicians, artists and, especially, playwrights and actors. And this preference was most strongly underlined, tonight, by the companion on his arm. Still wearing the same red silken dress and tripping proudly by his side, her face a picture of pure serenity, was Lysistrata Plumb.

Wilson's single comment was uttered like a judgement.

‘Libertine!'

Chapter Seventeen

B
Y HALF PAST
nine Lord and Lady Derby had left, allowing the older members of the party to drift away after them to their early beds. Space was cleared for the younger guests to dance, as Mr Arne's men assembled in a corner, with viols, clarinets, trumpet and sackbut at the ready. At his first sight of these preparations Wilson rose. I had been unable up to this point to turn our conversation in the direction I wanted – towards Shackleberry, and where he had obtained his belladonna. In hopes of still doing so I tried to detain him.

‘No, Cragg,' he insisted, ‘I must go. I cannot endure dancing.'

He stalked away and I rose too, looking around for Luke Fidelis. Sitting alone by the wall, he was holding out his glass for a serving man to refill. As I crossed the room to take the place beside him, the music struck up and we watched Lord Strange take the floor with his scarlet-gowned inamorata, both of them beckoning others to follow and form the dance. One of those who did was Mr Thomas Arne with, as his partner, the actress who had taken the role of the peasant wife.

We watched the dancers break into a vigorous gavotte, Luke viewing the proceedings moodily, even truculently. The musician and his actress made a striking couple: he a neat figure, dressed to a pitch of fashion that fell just short of extravagance; she red lipped, full bosomed and with a pert upturned nose. I judged her to be the older: over thirty-five to his (I guessed) about thirty years. Formally they were employer and employee, but their eyes and glances told a different tale.

At the other end of the set were Lord Strange and Miss Plumb. His face was a study of impassivity, almost complacency, while hers glowed with happiness. It was clear why she had travelled down to us on her own. She could not have come in her lover's carriage without provoking the kind of gossip that easily spills over into scandal, particularly at election time. And I guessed that she was not a regular member of the acting company. Lord Strange would have imposed his mistress on the manager who, however unwilling to accept her, would have had no choice but to bow to the wishes of the man paying the bills. Lysistrata's few days' lodging at the Lorrises' were an expedience. As soon as her lover arrived she had gone to him at Patten House, to the extreme detriment of Luke Fidelis's hopes. Seeing her again, seeing the truth of her situation, had shattered the mask of recovery he'd been wearing earlier in the day. Feeling for him, I gently nudged his arm.

‘You must not take it badly, Luke.'

But he was taking everything badly, even my sympathy.

‘What? That she is Strange's mistress? That she is carrying his child?'

I was astounded.

‘His child? What on earth do you mean?'

‘The signs were unmistakable but I was blind to them.'

For a moment I was dumbfounded. Then I remembered her words to me at Lorris's house.
I am bound to him, and doubly bound.
So that was the second bond: her unborn child.

‘Can you not merely accept it?' I suggested. ‘Plot a new path for yourself?'

He looked at me with incredulity.

‘
Merely?
'

‘I mean—'

But Fidelis was not in any mind to listen. He jumped to his feet with clenched fists and for a moment I thought he was going to wade into the middle of the dancers and carry out his threat against Strange and Miss Plumb.

Instead he bent stiffly and hissed close to my ear, ‘I know what you mean. Not for the first time, Cragg, you show your powers of understanding to be limited. Goodnight!'

I watched him walk stiffly from the room. A few moments later my wife came over to claim me for a dance.

*   *   *

‘I've been talking with two unhappy men tonight,' I said to Elizabeth. With the last dance done, the last cup of punch drained, we had walked home. Now we were preparing for bed. ‘First Wilson, the apothecary, except that he did all the talking – I could hardly get a word in. He abhors all of that – song and dance, players, Lord Derby's son and heir. I wondered what made him come out tonight. Why was he there?'

‘He is a divided man, Titus: a puritan when sober and a devil when drunk. I have never liked him. Was poor Fidelis your other misery? I saw him leave the room looking woeful.'

I told her that he thought Lysistrata was expecting a child. She took the news without a hint of surprise.

‘That would explain much. No wonder he is despondent.'

‘When I commiserated, he left me with an angry parting shot. He wanted to wound me.'

I told her what Fidelis had said, and at once Elizabeth reached up and pinched my cheek.

‘Don't be sorry for yourself, Mr Cragg. Be sorry for poor Luke. I think he wounds himself more than he does you. But he will recover, as sure as green leaves, and in the meantime you must reflect that he is quite right – your understanding
is
limited. Will you help me with these ribbons?'

She turned her back to me, and I began to loosen the bands tying her hair.

‘And what did you ladies talk about?' I asked. But as I released the hair I could not stop myself from kissing the slim neck beneath, and running my lips down the delightful bumps of her spine.

‘May I tell you later?' she whispered, arching her back like a cat.

When at last we came to rest, Elizabeth lay contentedly in my arms.

‘The ladies were all a-flutter about His young Lordship,' she murmured. ‘They could not formally approve of course, but they were excited by the thought of him having a mistress. And of the two of them doing – what we have just done.'

‘Prurience trumps prudery. What did they make of Mr Arne and his music?'

‘They liked the music immoderately, and the same for his appearance. The black eye seemed to inflame them even more.'

‘What is the report, then? Don't tell me you still haven't heard how he got it?'

‘Oh, I have. The ladies knew. Miss Malcolmson heard it from Miss Langford, who got it from Miss Colley, who heard it from Mrs Bryce.'

‘And?'

‘Well, it was like this. With all the inns in town full, the theatre company stopped last night at Hoghton Tower. Sir Harry's disapproval of plays is only for public show, it seems. You noted the actress who played the peasant girl, and who danced this evening with Mr Arne? Her name is Belinda. During the evening she attracted her host's attentions, and during the night he got into her bedroom. He was trying to – you know.'

‘We saw the same thing last week, with Mrs Bryce and Mr Reynolds. He is incorrigible.'

‘Well, he had not got very far along when Mr Arne interrupted him. Coming suddenly into the room, he saw what was going on and violently dragged Sir Harry off the bed. Sir Harry took a swing at him and boxed his eye, but of course he came off the worst in the end.'

‘And has not been seen out since. He is one of those men that tries his luck with any woman as a matter of course.'

‘Yes, but possibly he didn't appreciate that Belinda is Mr Arne's girl. Or maybe he didn't care. I have heard it said that some libertines are inflamed by a woman just because she belongs to another man.'

I laughed.

‘Sir Harry was inflamed all right. But not only by that.'

*   *   *

The next morning, the beginning of the polling week, men were at work early with saws, hammers and drills, getting the polling hall ready. The appointed room was inside the Moot Hall and, in normal times, it served as the courtroom, where the mayor conducted everything from civil suits and petty sessions to the grand ceremonials of the guild. This was an appropriate place because the election itself was, in part, a judicial hearing, with the mayor, in the guise of returning officer, sitting in judgement on the credentials of every voter who came before him. If there arose any doubt about his eligibility the mayor would question the man and either allow, or refuse, him. The recorder, his legal officer, was constantly at his elbow to give advice.

The scare over contagion had already blown away. When people first read the corporation's notices
Contra Pestis,
there was much understandable alarm. But this was soon balanced by the spreading gossip that the sickness had only visited those who drank Shackleberry's and Andrews's ‘Preservative'. Within two hours there was hardly a Prestonian who believed any more in the second coming of the plague. As those who had been sick got up one by one from their beds – with none, mercifully, having died – the general mood changed from one of gestating panic to rising indignation, and a desire to see the mountebanks dragged back in chains from wherever they had got to and banged into the stocks.

Nick Oldswick must have recovered very well under Parsonage's care, since he had attended the play, and even Lord Strange's supper. I heard he had been conferring with the attorney Arsenius Tench about the prosecution of Shackleberry for attempted murder. Even Mayor Biggs had seen which way the tide was running. By morning he had give fresh orders to Mallender that he go through town, taking down the plague notices and spreading the word that if Shackleberry and Andrews should be seen, they were to be taken up and brought before him.

In the election the Whigs' hopes were beginning to shrivel. Neither candidate was seen on the hustings. The baronet skulked in his family castle and, at any mention of his name, men sniggered and ladies exchanged knowing smiles. Francis Reynolds had not been seen in public since the previous week, and there was speculation about what he thought of his election partner's fall into disgrace. Meanwhile, with no help from either of the Whig candidates, Denis Destercore was running around with increasing desperation trying to organize the party vote.

*   *   *

In the office, Furzey was crouched over his writing desk. I resisted the temptation to say anything about the declining fortunes of his party, and went straight to business.

‘I've been thinking about John Allcroft's death, asking myself if we have been cowardly about it.'

He did not look up, but continued to scratch away with his pen.

‘We are not cowards, sir.'

‘Well, fearful, let's say. I simply cannot forget that he did not die naturally – and that I
knew
he did not within a few hours of the event. I wish I had held an inquest, and yet there are grounds to fear what such an inquest might uncover.'

‘We should never be afeared of such matters. Our job is to uncover everything, whatever it might be.'

‘No, it is not, Furzey. Sometimes, as you know, we must use discretion. Now, Allcroft was here for the election. In this election week, would inquesting him be against the interest of a fair contest?'

‘What's your point, sir? The death had nothing to do with the election.'

‘I disagree. I suspect murder, Furzey, which may have been done to affect the election result.'

The clerk raised his head from his copying for the first time since I had come in.

‘The removal of one Tory from the vote cannot make much difference.'

‘No. My wife has made the same remark. But this isn't just one voter. Mrs Allcroft told me that her husband had raised a group of out-of-town freemen, and that he would lead them to Preston as a single tally to vote against Sir Henry Hoghton: to help turn him out, is how they put it. So what about the other members of the tally, now without their tally captain? It is not too much to suppose that they might lose all heart, or run away out of fear for their own lives. And if that happened widely it
would
make a difference.'

Now Furzey laid down his pen and bit his lip, thinking.

‘If there were people so devoted to Sir Harry's cause that they would kill for him, I think we must discriminate the cause from those people, and incriminate only the people. I speak up for the reputation of politics in general but also for the good of the Whig party which, as you know, I myself support.'

I sighed deeply.

‘I am beginning to think you are right. It is a little late to open an inquest, but I can legitimately say that after Dr Fidelis's trick with the rat we have sufficient evidence in our hands. What we do not have is a body. And without that we can't proceed.'