Gallows Thief

‘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.