Gallows Thief

‘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.’