The Petticoat Men (44 page)

Dodo and me were both thinking of their visit, I know, and Ma’s outburst.

‘Mr Dent,’ said Dodo. ‘Much damage has been done in this’ – and I saw her stop, decide not to make it personal – ‘in many people’s lives who have been – without understanding almost – caught up in this case.’

Tom Dent said: ‘If you are a lawyer—’

‘Are you a lawyer?’

‘No, I’m just a clerk, like I said. But before too long I’ll have my solicitor’s credentials. No one in my family has had such an exalted position in the world! Lewis and Lewis work for the nobility and even the monarchy, and usually use only very noble clerks but I’m considered a bit clever so they took me,’ and he laughed, sort of like Billy would have laughed if he’d been talking like that, and it made me and Dodo laugh too. ‘But if you work in a lawyers’ practice, Mrs Fortune, then you often see that people get caught up in things and have their lives changed and it’s nothing they did at all, just circumstances.’ He bit into the last mouthful of cake. ‘And if you work in a lawyers’ practice you find out that the world is full of hypocrites. Especially in this case.’

‘You’re like my brother,’ I said.

He swallowed cake rather nervously and then coughed. ‘I’m sorry, I think – um – I think I have just now been a little indiscreet,’ he said ruefully. ‘It was the cake. And the company.’

‘You dont have to butter us up,’ I said, but I was only teasing because he had been nice. ‘I’ll say like I said last time, they were very pleasant tenants and we liked having them here and we knew they did some acting and they used our house to put on their women’s clothes and we saw them, course we did, it wasn’t in the least secret – even old Mr Flamp saw them and he clapped!’

‘Who?’

‘Mr Flamp. He’s our permanent tenant and very old.’

‘And he was never shocked?’

‘Course not!’

‘May I make a note of that?’

‘Yes! And you can cross-examine me all you like and try and turn me into knots but I’ll say the same.’

‘Good Lord, it wont be me! Mr Boulton and Mr Park and the others are going to be represented by some of the greatest barristers in England!’

‘What, Mr Lewis and Lewis?’

‘No, no! We’re just the organisers at the back, arranging, escorting, taking notes. Really famous barristers. On both sides – the prosecution is using the Attorney-General, the highest lawyer in the land! It’s a show-off trial.’

‘What does that mean?’

Mr Tom Dent looked a bit embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean to say that at all,’ he said, like he was taken aback at himself, and he stood up. ‘I must go on to the other witnesses. You’ve filled me with cake, Mrs Fortune, and made me injudicious! But – Mr Park did say I might talk freely here.’

And Tom Dent bowed to Dodo, and thanked her, and I took him to the door. Just before I opened it he said: ‘I’ll probably have to come back once more before the trial. I think Mr Park’s barrister might want to give you a private message about your evidence beforehand, about the cross-examination. Mr Park has the best barrister in England! Mr Serjeant Parry.’

‘Serjeant? Is he a soldier or something?

‘No, no – it’s the way very senior barristers are addressed. Mr Serjeant Parry is my – my mark.’

‘Your mark?’

‘I – I would like to be as good as him one day. You know what they say about him? They say he speaks like an angel – but cross-examines like a knife.

‘And you said he wants to give me a private message?
Really?
’

‘Really.’

‘I s’pose he thinks I might mess it up because I’m uneducated, but I wont – please tell Mr – Serjeant – Parry that I want to help Freddie and Ernest in any way I can.’

He looked at me. ‘Mrs Stacey, I know perfectly well you are not uneducated at all. Can I say something private to you and you keep it to yourself?’

I saw his open, honest face and big eyes, he had blond floppy hair and he kept pushing it away from his eyes impatiently. He didn’t
look
like Billy but he reminded me of Billy. ‘Course you can.’

‘Barristers send private messages to all sorts of people.’ He lowered his voice even though there was no one there. ‘And when the Prince of Wales was called in the Mordaunt divorce case last year, a particular person – somebody very legally important – went over and over with him what it would be like to be cross-examined if – that is – I mean – if cross-examination couldn’t be prevented. I know this because the firm of Lewis and Lewis were involved in that case too.’

‘
Really?
Is – is
that
how it all works? Behind the doors?’

‘But of course lawyers prepare their witnesses. That’s part of their work! That’s how it all happens, especially in big important cases.’

‘Is this a big important case?’

‘In an odd way it has become so, yes.’

‘Is it – legal?’

‘I think many things are legal to a lawyer, to win his case. And everyone knew that time that they had to keep the Prince of Wales from scandal.’

I thought quickly. ‘Does that “everyone” include the Prime Minister?’

‘Mrs Stacey,
everybody
had to help the Prince of Wales. It was a very dangerous time for the monarchy. Should one so care.’

‘You’ll like my brother!’ I said. ‘I’m not Mrs Stacey.’

‘That’s your name on the Magistrates’ Court reports.’

‘I just wanted to give evidence for them, so I said I was the landlady instead of my mother. My name is Mattie.’

‘I know. Freddie – Mr Park – told me.’

‘Can you say – am I allowed to ask – is Mr Gladstone involved this time?’

His face closed slightly. ‘I cant say anything more, Miss Mattie,’ he said. ‘I’ve been very indiscreet and said far too much already. And it wont help Mr Park and Mr Boulton – talking about others working behind the scenes – in fact it will do the opposite – they have to seem
not guilty
of what they are accused, dont you see that? It must
not
seem that they are getting assistance from higher places!’

‘I can see that,’ I said. ‘But I know that Freddie and Ernest aren’t important people, not really – and I know they would
never
have been able to afford all this – paraphernalia and big lawyers without—’

‘Other important people did – become involved, yes.’ But I saw he was discomforted at having been so open and I touched his arm.

‘You can trust me, Mr Dent,’ I said.

He looked at me carefully and I saw him nod very slightly, as if he had decided he could, but he said no more. He didn’t know what to do next, he looked around at the flowers and the polished table by the door. ‘This is nothing like I first thought 13 Wakefield-street would be,’ he said. ‘But Mr Park, he said I would like it.’

‘Did he? Do you talk to him?’

‘Of course. We are preparing the defence case and we talk to them a lot. Mr Park said’ – he cleared his throat – ‘he said that I would like you too, Miss Mattie, as well as the house. And I do.’ I felt myself go a bit red, in surprise, but also in embarrassment because his cheeks were red too. ‘And that I was to be sure to give you his very best wishes and’ – he was looking slightly puzzled as well as embarrassed but he had obviously been given some particular words – ‘to thank you for all the good memories and the sad ones.’

It’s strange how tears just – they just get there in your eyes when you’re not even expecting them and I had to really bite my lip for a minute, really really hard, as I opened the front door.

43

The sad announcement was made that His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales had lost a child, their sixth, born too early to live. It was christened Prince Alexander John Charles Albert, was given a solemn funeral, and the court went into mourning.

The
Reynolds Newspaper
wrote an editorial.

We have much satisfaction in announcing that the newly born child of the Prince and Princess of Wales died shortly after its birth, thus relieving the working men of England from having to support hereafter another addition to the long roll of State beggars they at present maintain.

‘That’s cruel,’ said Mattie Stacey sharply to her brother. ‘Don’t read any more.’ But afterwards, satisfied that nobody was watching her, Mattie picked up the newspaper
and read further.

The miserable mockery of interring with a Royal Funeral ceremony a shrivelled piece of skin and bone grandiloquently entitled ‘Prince’ not twenty-four hours old took place at Sandringham on Monday, as described in the Court Circular. And to augment the folly of the entire proceeding, the Court goes into mourning for the loss of the wretched abortion, which our readers will observe was carried to the grave by four stalwart men!

Next day when everybody was at work and her mother was with her soup-ladies and Dodo was reading
Bleak House
, Mattie went to the nearby churchyard and pulled up a small honeysuckle, already in flower, as she and Jamey had done so long ago. She took it into the back of 13 Wakefield-street and carefully planted it near the old covered cesspit. While she was digging the earth she came across some strands of Freddie’s blue shawl. She suddenly did not dig any further. But she mixed the loose blue strands with the earth, and planted the small honeysuckle carefully. She wished happiness for the Princess of Wales.

Her mother saw, of course, and understood.

Isabella Stacey’s theory that Freddie and Ernest were dangerous to know for the people who were around them applied – she had supposed – only to the people who didn’t really matter, although the case had obviously reached right up to Freddie’s poor father, certainly. But he was not the nobility. The nobility as usual, she believed, apart from that sad and balding Lord Arthur Clinton, would emerge safely from the scandal of the Men in Petticoats unchanged, unscathed: the way they always did.

This was not exactly true.

Because also that year the spring brought not only the death of a baby Prince, but the confirmation for Lady Susan Vane-Tempest, widow, mistress to the Prince of Wales (and sister of Lord Arthur Clinton), that she was also with child.

Her mother had insisted she be bold.

The desperate fear she had experienced when she had realised she might lose the Prince because of her brother’s involvement in a huge scandal had finally made her bold.

Lady Susan Vane-Tempest was bold enough to make sure she would not be able to be ‘treated’ by the discreet and pomade-scented Dr Oscar Clayton, who was always brought forth
at once
by the Prince of Wales, if required.

She told herself it would be cruel to give the Prince the news so soon after the death of his sixth child, which had made him so sad, when he came to her after the sad death, for consolation.

Soon.

She would tell him soon.

On his next visit, as he smoked his cigar and she smoked her long Turkish cigarette, the Prince told her that the final trial of the Men in Petticoats was about to begin, and would take no more than one week.

‘That old thing,’ said Lady Susan lightly. ‘I thought it was all forgot.’

‘It has been decided that the matter must be dealt with for once and for all, and quietly die.’

‘For Arthur’s sake?’

‘For the sake of the country. The felony charge has already been removed.’ (Of course Lady Susan had in fact been following matters very carefully indeed, and knew this.)

The Prince explained that a few other really very unimportant men, as well as the unimportant Mr Boulton and Mr Park, would now also be tried at the Court of the Queen’s Bench at Westminster, a much more refined place than the Old Bailey. And that with the very, very important legal team that had been set up for them, they would all – including her brother – be likely found not guilty, unless of a minor misdemeanour to pacify public opinion, but probably not even that.

Smoke drifted upwards. ‘I am so glad, for Arthur’s sake.’ (She knew she also meant, for her own.) ‘For surely, my dearest sir, they will not even mention poor Arthur now!’

‘His name is still attached, of course, but only to the minor charge. And it is indeed hoped he will be mentioned solely with the respect and decorum due to those who have passed on, my dear Susan. To that end I believe it has been arranged that the same solicitors will be used who advised me in the Mordaunt case, that is, the Lewis firm.’