Riot Most Uncouth (2 page)

The Professor sighed. We had both grown accustomed to dealing with our intellectual inferiors, but idiocy was tiresome nonetheless. “He is Mr. Collins, the murderer,” I said. “People are rarely only one thing. Wheelwrights can also be murderers.”

The constable didn't look convinced. “But I've known Mr. Collins for near to twenty years. He goes to my church. Decent-enough fellow. Family man.”

I nodded. “Very well. You can tax his children to pay for his hanging, then.”

“I didn't do nothing, Angus,” said Collins the Murderer.

“He'll confess easy enough when the Professor interrogates him,” I said.

Collins wailed.

“That doesn't seem like a good idea at all,” said the constable. “When Whippleby's man arrives, he'll sort everything out.”

“What are you going to do, then, with this criminal?” I asked.

Angus gave my suspect a dismissive wave with his fleshy hand. “You move on along, Mr. Collins. Send me best to the missus.”

Collins scurried off, probably to kill some more people.

“The mistake you've made today is very grave,” I told Angus.

“I don't think Mr. Collins is the murderer. If I had to make a guess, I'd be inclined to blame Mr. Leif Sedgewyck.”

The name was familiar. “Sedgewyck is a student at the College,” I said. “What's he got to do with this?”

“He was a frequent companion of the dead girl's; a man who might have married her. I spoke to him earlier this morning.”

“Why do you think he did it?”

Angus started to say something, and then stopped, and paused to rub the loose flesh beneath his chin. “I'm sorry for wagging my tongue; I oughtn't have. I'm only an amateur constable,” he said. “I'm just fine at running off rowdies from a pub, and I can patrol the streets well enough, but unless it's pretty obvious, I really don't have any way of knowing who has done a murder. That's why a professional is coming.”

“You're keeping something from me,” I said.

“Nothing that's really any of your business, Lord Byron. Why don't you go home? I think I got things squared until the man from London gets here.” He kept his voice low and soothing, but he was obviously relishing this rare opportunity to pretend to be a figure of some importance. I didn't appreciate his condescension. “You should head back to your rooms and write some more of them pretty poems. I quite enjoyed
Hours of Idleness.
”

Maybe he was right, and I ought to have just gone home. But I rarely do the things I ought.

 

Chapter 2

Within this narrow cell reclines her clay,

That clay, where once such animation beam'd;

The King of Terrors seized her as his prey,

Not worth, nor beauty, have her life redeem'd.

—
Lord Byron,
“On the Death of a Young Lady, Cousin to the Author, and Very Dear to Him”

Leif Sedgewyck was the son of a wealthy family, but his people were common, so he had rooms in one of the less prestigious residential buildings abutting Trinity's Great Court; accommodations of a quality that barely toed the threshold of being adequate to almost justify the egregious tuition the College demanded in exchange for admitting men of his sort.

A pretty housemaid let me into his quarters, and Sedgewyck received me in his sitting room, which was expensively appointed, but garishly so. His furniture was upholstered in purple velvet and fringed with gold. Bad art hung on his walls in heavy gilt frames, and his rugs were so thick and opulent that treading upon them felt like walking in mud. It was a room decorated by the sort of person who believed that wealth conferred credibility, and that the wanton display of wealth was an adequate proxy for good taste.

“The notorious Lord Byron!” he said as I entered. “Even on this blackest of days, it is very much an honor to receive you.” He was drinking wine straight from a bottle and looked somewhat impaired. I was probably drunker than he; I had not been sober in days. But I knew how to carry it better, so I figured I had the advantage.

“I am so sorry to hear of your loss,” I said. “I wish you my utmost sympathies.” It was a meaningless thing to say; idle chatter masquerading as sentiment. But it seemed wise to stick to pleasantries and volunteer as little as possible of my own agenda until I could take measure of the man.

He did not rise to greet me, but he did raise the bottle toward me and, in doing so, spilt some on his plush velvet divan. I could tell from the yellowed label that his wine was of an excellent vintage and most likely the good French stuff, which had become difficult to obtain due to His Majesty's little quarrel with Napoleon. I envied Sedgewyck's furnishings, and particularly his cellar; though I'd been in high spirits of late, lavishing champagne on the bear, my resources were dwindling, and I knew I'd soon be back to drinking sour German hock.

“Can I offer you a drink?” he asked.

My loathing toward him abated slightly. “I'd never refuse such an offer, but I'll have mine from a fresh bottle,” I said. “Yours looks somewhat unsanitary.”

Sedgewyck flapped his arm at the maid, spilling wine all over his trousers and his sofa. “I am normally more hygienic,” he said. “I am grieving for my murdered betrothed.”

“Is this the fashionable manner of mourning, then?” I asked. “I'm a bit traditional myself. I favor tearing one's hair and rending one's garments.”

“Heavens!” he said. “My attire is quite expensive, as I'm sure you've noticed. Father would be ever so disappointed if my clothing got rent. I suppose he will be disappointed regardless; he was so very keen on my match with Felicity.”

He wore his grief like a coal miner wears a dinner jacket: with considerable discomfort and no small measure of irony. I couldn't tell if he was insincere, or if he was merely trying to impress me with his inelegant approximation of wit.

“You must send him my deepest condolences,” I said.

The girl brought me a bottle and a glass, and then retreated from the room. I was peeved to have to pour it myself, but the wine was, indeed, of the highest quality. Being well mannered, I quickly began matching my host, drink for drink.

“Is that your bear you've brought with you?” he asked. “How terribly eccentric it is to keep such a creature. It is precisely the sort of weirdness one might expect you to engage in. You know, it's been my aspiration to join your glamorous circle of associates for some time, but you are always so contemptuous toward everyone, and I find you difficult to approach.”

I decided to respond to only the least offensive of his various observations: “Yes,” I said. “It is a bear.”

“Christ.” He seemed genuinely impressed, and he lifted himself into a seated position for a better look. “Is it safe to have him around?”

“There's an implicit limitation on how safe a live bear can be. But he's reasonably placid, so long as he's well fed.”

“Should I feed him?”

“He'd also never refuse such an offer,” I said.

Sedgewyck, seeing the wisdom in my words, summoned his girl to fetch some meat. She found a lamb shank in the cool part of the pantry; a fresh one, which the Professor preferred to salted varieties.

We watched as she approached the bear, holding the meat at arm's length and moving with small, halting steps. Sedgewyck laughed aloud. Her fear seemed to amuse him.

“What's your name?” I asked her.

“Noreen,” she said.

“You needn't be afraid, Noreen,” I told her. “The Professor is a civilized sort of beast, and he mauls people only on the rarest of occasions.”

She threw the lamb at the bear and then scurried out of the room. The Professor settled down to gnaw his prize and sharpen his claws on the walls.

Sedgewyck waited just long enough for Noreen to get wherever she'd run off to, and then he began ringing a little bell to summon her back. As he did this, he grinned at me, as though the two of us shared some secret.

After a moment, she returned. It was really unusual that she was there at all; it was customary for a gentleman to staff his Cambridge residence with only a single manservant while studying at the College. I, for example, was attended by a wheezing seventy-year-old valet named Joe Murray, whom I had inherited from my great-uncle, the previous Lord Byron. A larger retinue would seem fussy, and would crowd even the most spacious student rooms. If young men were ordinarily allowed to keep nubile servant girls like Noreen in their quarters, nobody would ever get married.

“So, is it the murder that has finally made me worthy of your esteemed attention?” Sedgewyck asked.

I drained my wineglass and refilled it. “Do you desire attention?”

“I've got lots of desires, but my desire for attention is among the most urgent.” He smiled at me again, as if he and I were engaged together in some sort of conspiracy.

I was starting to grow bored of the conversation, so I said: “Is that why you killed Felicity? Because you wanted to be noticed?”

Sedgewyck was so surprised at the accusation that he spat a mouthful of wine onto Noreen's apron. “You think I killed her? Why on earth would I do such a thing?”

“Perhaps you'd grown sick of making love to her, and wanted to be rid of her,” I said. “I couldn't blame you for wanting to unencumber yourself, but there are other ways to break an engagement.”

He laughed. “Don't be ridiculous. I never tasted Felicity's fruits. Nobody did. Her knees were tougher to pry open than the sturdiest of padlocks. Marriage was a precondition to rummaging that girl's nethers. I courted her chastely, and I was most gentle and proper in my pursuit. I'm disappointed to have missed my chance, and in any case, her death is injurious to my interests.”

“And what interests are those?” I asked.

“I seek to improve my social standing, of course,” Sedgewyck said. The dilated pupils of his eyes seemed to contract partway, and his brow knit with concentration. Other than the deliberate and self-evident care that he put into preventing himself from slurring his words, he seemed remarkably lucid for a drunk. “My grandfather was a Dutch sailor. He made a few lucrative voyages before he settled in London and left a small fortune to my father, who made it much larger through prudent business maneuvers. But wealth means little in England unless it is properly aged, and the Sedgewycks and their new money are unwelcome among London society. My father perceives this as a slight, and my mother finds it humiliating.”

He tilted his body into a seated position on the damp sofa cushion and mopped at his purple-stained lips with the back of a hand. He was a tall, striking man with white-blond hair and high, sharp cheekbones. If his eyes weren't so red and his nose weren't so inflamed, he'd have been nearly dashing enough to pass for the sort of person he seemed to want to pretend to be.

“There are two ways to become respectable in England. The first is to befriend the King and get him to bestow an honor upon you. The second is to marry into a good family, which has become my parents' greatest aspiration for me. It's easier to do that than it used to be, since people like my parents have amassed great wealth while people like Lord Whippleby have squandered theirs. Felicity's father drank away his fortune. He needed our money, and we wanted his friends and his name. Felicity had only one older sister, a woman who has given her husband no children. With only a little luck; a fortuitous case of tuberculosis, perhaps, my own son might have been a baron. But now, Felicity is dead and my family's hopes are dashed.”

I imagined what it might be like to punch him. I suspected it might hurt a little. He was thin and rangy, and his face was all angles, without flat or soft surfaces to properly accommodate a fist. “You've clearly suffered a great loss,” I said.

“Felicity had a pretty laugh,” Sedgewyck told me. “And sometimes, she played the piano.” As he said this, he looked almost wistful, and I wondered if perhaps my suspicions were mistaken, and he might be innocent.

But then, he smiled at me again. “Tell me, Lord Byron, is it true you're about to be kicked out of school?” he asked. “I've heard the faculty has finally tired of your outrageous conduct.”

I finished my wine, rose from my seat, and left him there without giving any further response.

 

Chapter 3

It is very iniquitous to make me pay my debts—you have no idea of the pain it gives one.

—
Lord Byron,
from an 1818 letter to Douglas Kinnaird, his literary agent

It was my intense displeasure upon returning to my residence to find that cherished sanctum befouled by the uninvited presence one Frederick Burke, Esq., a solicitor retained by Banque Crédit Française to correct his client's foolish decision to loan me money.

Joe Murray, my manservant, apologized as he introduced the guest. The lawyer, like most vermin, had refused to leave, despite Murray's repeated, polite requests. Burke offered his hand, and I made an elaborate show of not shaking it.

“I must say, whatever is cooking smells quite delicious,” said Burke, who seemed to be possessed of the fantastic notion that I might invite him to join me at my table.

“I agree,” I agreed. “I hope you will be kind enough to leave before it gets cold.”

“His preparations seem quite extensive for just one man's midday repast.” Burke's hope was a hard weed to kill.

“I take lunch with my associate,” I said, gesturing toward the bear, who sat down heavily upon his rear haunches and asserted himself by making a noise; a sort of rumbling honk. In doing so, he opened his mouth, giving Burke full view of his teeth, which were rather impressive. The Professor, in addition to his prestigious academic credentials, was outfitted with two pairs of enormous fangs; four teeth, each as long as a man's finger and thicker around the base than a candlestick. One could easily imagine such implements, driven by the mighty engine of the beast's well-muscled jaw, punching through flesh and crushing bone. This was, in fact, their purpose; when bears find they have occasion for intra-species negotiation over females or territory, they employ their teeth in much the same manner as men use lawyers.