Gallows Thief. Bernard Cornwell
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is a hero of yours and can do no wrong.’
‘I hope I am more discerning than that,’ Lord Alexander replied huffily, ‘and even you must allow that Jefferson has political reasons for his beliefs.’
‘Which makes them all the more reprehensible,’ Sandman said, ‘and you’re on fire.’
‘So I am,’ Lord Alexander beat at his coat. ‘Eleanor asked after you, as I recall.’
‘She did?’
‘Did I not just say so? And I said I had no doubt you were in fine fettle. Oh, well struck, sir, well struck. Budd hits almost as hard as you! She and I met at the Egyptian Hall. There was a lecture about,’ he paused, frowning as he stared at the batsmen, ‘bless me, I’ve quite forgotten why I went, but Eleanor was there with Doctor Vaux and his wife. My God, that man is a fool.’
‘Vaux?’
‘No, the new batsman! No point in waving the bat idly! Strike, man, strike, it’s what the bat is for! Eleanor had a message for you.’
‘She did?’ Sandman’s heart quickened. His engagement to Eleanor might be broken off, but he was still in love with her. ‘What?’
‘What, indeed?’ Lord Alexander frowned. ‘Slipped my mind, Rider, slipped it altogether. Dear me, but it can’t have been important. Wasn’t important at all. And as for the Countess of Avebury!’ He shuddered, evidently unable to express any kind of opinion on the murdered woman.
‘What of her ladyship?’ Sandman asked, knowing it would be pointless to pursue Eleanor’s forgotten message.
‘Ladyship! Ha!’ Lord Alexander’s exclamation was loud enough to draw the gaze of a hundred spectators. ‘That baggage,’ he said, then remembered his calling. ‘Poor woman, but translated to a warmer place, no doubt. If anyone wanted her dead I should think it would be her husband. The wretched man must be weighted down with horns!’
‘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