A Thief in the Night

Lord George, as the tall aristocrat is known, has a special interest in danger and the risk taken in the pursuit of villains. This stems from his service in India and in Egypt, in the Royal Horse Guards (The Blues). He has also spent some time in espionage, doing his part in the Great Game against Russia. He has an old enemy in Colonel Velkov, who later ran a spy ring in Paris. Lord George has a penchant for the turf and for acquiring a voluminous knowledge of crime in the city.

Harry Lacey is an eminent literary critic of Jesus College, Cambridge. He is a specialist in English poetry of the Elizabethan period. He has been allotted the task of keeping the Septimus Society records, and tends to work with Lord George on most cases. When his thoughts are not on sonnets, they are on high-class dining and solid English cuisine. He is a close friend of Arthur Sullivan, the composer.

Maria is an Italian society lady, with a cultural circle which welcomes foreign writers and artists to London. Her forte is in diplomacy and she tends to be assigned to special detective services for such matters as assassination and terrorism threats. But her principal role is that of information-gatherer, and she makes it her business to meet anyone who is anyone in London. At her parties, she uses the occasions for gathering useful information for her contacts in Special Branch.

Smythe is a gentleman’s gentleman at the Septimus Society in Piccadilly, where members spend most of their time. His experience as an ex-jockey and bookie proves useful for many of the Society’s cases.

Eddie is the one professional in the Septimus Society, having gone through the ranks in the Metropolitan Police. He has had experience of all varieties of city policing, and knows the range of scams and frauds in the white collar crime categories. He is well known across the City and the East End, and he works closely with the Thames River Police at Wapping, as earlier in his career he was with them. He met Lord George and Harry Lacey at a retirement celebration for his Commissioner in 1883, and leapt at the chance to join the Society.

The newest member of the Septimus Society, Cara is an actress and singer, very much in demand in the bustling, frenetic world of London theatre. Just twenty-two, she has a mind of her own, is strong-willed and not at all afraid of danger. In fact, she has a sense of adventure and welcomes the challenge a spot of trouble can bring.

Sensational novelist Leo (as he is known to his friends) has a keen interest in amateur criminology, and, of course, is always hunting for potential plots as he works with the Septimus Society on their cases. Under the cheery façade and the rattle of his talk there is the acute, incisive mind of an amateur sleuth. He is forty, but behaves like a Regency playboy, and one of the great thrills of his life was being elected a member of the Septimus Society. A considerable city celebrity (the author of
Midnight Danger
, a Balkan mystery), his readers would expect to see him rubbing shoulders with the aristocracy and attending hunt balls.

His family are brewers from Leeds, and Leo’s battle to erase his Tyke vowels has been won by his developing a cut-glass accent. His father became extremely rich and Leo inherited a mansion in one of the most desirable addresses in London.

Leo has a weakness for women and romantic adventures, and tends to be assigned to cases involving subtle information-gathering at wealthy, grand parties.

It all began in the Oriental Hotel on the edge of Hyde Park, when Maria de Bellezza, the honoured guest invited to join the men and Cara at the table for dinner, started talking about her penchant for murder. ‘I find a clean, tidy murder more satisfying than the greatest watercolour or a portrait by Rembrandt. There’s something artistic and of the highest order about such a feat.’

She had said this after Harry Lacey, Professor of English, had threatened to become extremely boring on the subject of John Donne’s
Holy Sonnets
. His opening words had made Lord George Lenham-Cawde splutter as he almost choked on his Chablis. ‘Please, Harry, no more poetry!’

They had been meeting for dinner on the first Friday of every month for a few years now, and enjoyed the gentle teasing and tales of scrapes and adventures in pursuit of either criminals or of sheer pleasure in the city.

Maria was a true European and took a wider, more tolerant view of Harry’s literary harmlessness, but her words on murder provoked Harry to respond, with his usual boyish glee, ‘I say, why don’t we start a murder club?’ He looked around the table of old friends, veterans of student parties and high society art exhibitions. Then he proceeded to address his words to each in turn: ‘You, George, are preoccupied with the horrific tales of the
Newgate Calendar
; you, Maria dear, have even dined with several notorious villains; Smythe, you have spent half your life alongside the schemers and fraudsters of the turf; Eddie, you, as mere duty, actually spend your time among killers in your professional capacity at the Yard; and as for you, Leo, why, you make up the most ridiculous, melodramatic plots ever perpetrated in literature, and therefore it is high time you were faced with real, living rogues.’ Everyone laughed at this, except that is for a young lady at the end of the table. ‘My dear Professor, why omit my good self? Is it simply because I am young?’

Harry sipped his wine and then said, beaming with pleasure, ‘We must welcome Cara Cabrelli, everyone … the newest recruit to our dining circle. Cara, my dear young lady, you are a thespian. No villain stalks the boards! Of course, given the rather questionable status of actresses in our lamentably blinkered society, it is only fitting that you should engage in the respectable pursuit of detection. But as I say, surely the theatre has no rogues?’

‘Hah!’ Cara snorted. ‘Harry, you may be very clever, knowing Latin and all kinds of long words, but you are absolutely wrong in this instance. Why, the theatre is riddled with criminals, like worms in a smelly cheese!’ Cara continued, ‘As to the disgusting opinion that we ladies of the stage are but one step away from … well, ladies of the night … that is something a civilized society should leave behind!’

Again there was general laughter. Cara went on, ‘In fact, in criminal matters, a member of the cast in my last production heartlessly killed a man because he was overlooked for a role that went to his victim. Yes, and he was a man who had courted me, by the way, a man I esteemed greatly until that dreadful day.’

‘What, did you actually
see
the murder my dear?’ Lord George asked.

‘Well no, but it was reported graphically by Carrington Kleiderman, the tenor.’

‘Oh well, if he saw it then it must be true!’ Smythe said, teasingly. ‘But I have to say, speaking as a man who has seen skulduggery on the turf in its most extreme form, that murder is not a matter for fun or recreation.’ The former jockey was a thin man, very lightly built, having scarcely added a pound to his frame since riding his last horse in 1887, three years previously. ‘There is a fashion these days for treating the crime of homicide in a way which is no more realistic and convincing than the worst fantasies of a certain class of popular novelist … hey Leo?’

There was general amusement at this tease, and Leo, taking it well, joined in the laughter at his own expense. ‘Now, Jemmy, you know very well that I apply myself to assiduous research for my novels. People think I simply dash them off with the same haste as I would make a slice of toast. But I sweat and labour over every page like a coal miner!’

‘And you should know about that, as you have a number of such men in your family history I’m sure!’ Maria cajoled him. ‘And your Pa was ever such a manual worker … with his millions made from other poor workers in his breweries!’

‘Well there are worse trades than brewing. He merely gave the working man what he craved when he had laboured by the sweat of his brow all day. If he made a guinea or two out of it, then so what?’

‘A guinea or two! He lives in the same neighbourhood as two Americans who are filthy rich from industry in the cowboy land!’ Maria said, unable to resist baiting him.

As the laughter subsided, Detective Inspector Edward Carney stepped in. ‘Very well, let us play the sleuth. At the Yard we have people coming forward all the time offering to solve crimes for us. It’s a national passion, involving vicars’ wives and retired office clerks, dowagers and dairymen. But you will have to prove yourselves capable and nimble in the wits. Shall you try to solve a case … one I shall present to you now, over brandy and cigars?’

‘Why yes, and the ladies will remain with us … none of that division of the sexes in
our
club!’ declared George.

‘Very well, then here we go. It reads like such a simple, uncomplicated statement of a killing: York Assizes, 1829. Abraham Bairstan, aged sixty, was put to the bar, charged with the wilful murder of Sarah Bairstan, his wife, in the parish of Bradford. In the busy, overworked courts of the Regency, dealing with new and often puzzling crimes from the labouring classes in the fast-growing towns, it was maybe just another homely confrontation that went too far. But this is far from the truth, and the Bairstan case offers an insight into the plight of those unfortunate people who were victims of ignorance as well as of illness. In this instance it was a mental illness that played a major part in this murder – or was it?

When the turnkey brought Bairstan into the court he commented that he had not heard the prisoner say a word since he was brought to York and locked up. This was nothing new to the man’s family. Mr Baron Hullock, presiding, was shocked and pressed the gaoler to explain. He asked if the man in the dock understood the spoken word, and the answer was no. He also ascertained that Bairstan appeared to have no response to any sound whatsoever, nor reacted to any movement. Poor Hullock had a real challenge to try to communicate with the man, trying his best to encourage the prisoner to make any sound at all, asking several questions but receiving no answer. When he asked in a raised voice, “Do you hear what I say to you?” Bairstan simply stared at the officer next to him.’

‘The best lawyer in the country would have been confused there!’ Lord George exclaimed.

Eddie continued: ‘It was obviously going to be one of those trials at which many people were thinking that this silence was the best ruse if a man wanted to avoid the rope. The judge had to instruct the jury about potential fraud and the possibility that this was a tough and amoral killer with a canny wit and impressive acting skills. Legally, the point was, was the man standing there fraudulently, willfully and obstinately mute, or was his silence visited upon him “by the act and providence of God?” It was going to be a hard task, one might think, but not so: enter his sons – Henry and Joseph – and a close friend. They told a very sad story, and an astounding one, given that Bairstan managed to marry and raise a family.’

The others stared in complete fascination. ‘Who spoke at the trial then?’ asked Harry.

‘His friend, Jeremiah Hailey, stated that he had known the prisoner for over fifty years, and that he was sure that ten years had passed since Bairstan had fallen silent. He explained that his two sons had been looking after the old man in that time. He said that while he was sane, his wife and he had lived together very comfortably. In fact, his wife had been in the habit of asking him to kneel and pray with her, almost every hour on most days. She was a holy woman. Hailey added that his friend had been capable of merely saying yes or no, and that the last time he had heard the man speak was when he had asked him if he knew him; “He said aye, but I think he did not know me”.’