Death of a Radical (19 page)

“What's the hurry?” a voice said. “They'll all be at Bedford's or t'play.”

“It'll take a good hour and I want us there before eight,” came the curt reply.

It was only as he crossed by the tollbooth, negotiating his way between the pens, that it occurred to Mr. Prattman's curate to wonder what business might cause a person to walk such a distance out of town on a cold night like this.

Favian felt tall and capable and splendidly alive. Miss Bedford was an excellent listener. He fancied he could see his every meaning reflected in her mobile face. In a few snatched moments while dressing he had made a promising beginning on his sonnet. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her about it when an alarming matron in pink descended upon them, feathers bobbing above her head. Keeping her voice low, she addressed Lally passionately.

“I'll have you know, young miss, this is not your house that you may invite any Tom, Dick or Harry that takes your fancy. I've never seen this young man in my life!” she hissed. The hard blue orbs ran over him as if she were tallying up the cost of his evening dress in her head. The bill must have added up to a consideration, because she appeared to check herself. “Well?”

Lally's dark brows drew together in a stubborn expression.

“Aunt Amelia, may I present Mr. Favian Adley. Mr. Adley, my aunt, Mrs. Bedford, your hostess.” Lally's self-possessed tone surprised him. Favian felt a flush of pride in his diminutive companion. He imitated the saloon bow perfected by his most dandyish Oxford friend, a graceful
inclination from the waist with left foot advanced before the right.

“Madam,” he said, looking up into his hostess's cross face. “My apologies; I would not intrude. It is a misunderstanding. My cousin, Lord Charles, swore I was invited—”

“Lord Charles?” said Mrs. Bedford sharply. One of the ostrich feathers in her hat slipped out of place and quivered slyly over her left eye. He bit his lip for fear he might laugh. Her eyes narrowed. She appeared to swell with indignation. Favian wondered in a panicked way what one was supposed to do if one's hostess boxed one's ears.

“I see you've arrived before us!” Charles's voice washed over him with the cooling sensation of relief. The marquess laid a casual hand on Favian's shoulder. “How rude of me to arrive after my guest!” he declared with the cheerful confidence of a man who is welcomed wherever he goes. “You must forgive me, Mrs. Bedford. I see you've already met my young cousin Mr. Adley—but then you will have noticed the family resemblance, I'm sure.”

Mrs. Bedford's expression switched from startled to flirtatious in a blink. She smacked her niece's arm none too gently with her fan.

“Our young people have stolen a march on me, Lord Charles. My husband's naughty niece never told me they were acquainted!”

“What are young girls coming to these days!” exclaimed Charles comically, with a smile to Lally that invited her to join in the joke. Mrs. Bedford's eyes snapped.

“Adelaide, your uncle wants you!” she commanded.

“Let me escort you, Miss Bedford,” said Favian quick as a flash, offering his arm.

Charles watched the couple depart.

“Ah the young,” he said sentimentally.

Mrs. Bedford was glaring at a point in middle distance, as if burning to tell it some home truths. With a convulsive twitch of her gloved hand she summoned a servant. The nervous girl curtsied and offered up thin biscuits piped with pastoral scenes in gold arranged on a painted porcelain charger.

“Gold leaf,” his hostess informed him.

“Thank you,” Charles replied, sweetening his negative with a smile for the maid. “I find precious metals set my teeth on edge.”

Mr. Sugden surveyed his theater, chewing the side of his nail as was his nervous habit on such occasions. Well past seven o'clock and the pit barely three-quarters full. Profits were made in the boxes. They were woefully bare. Just an old bent hunchback of a gentlewoman with her maid.

Jasper Bedlington's barn had been transformed. Platforms ran down each of the long sides at breast height, tapering toward the front and flaring out toward the back, so that the seats faced the stage on a rough curve. The well between formed the pit where the sixpenny ticket holders were accommodated on long benches. The side platforms were divided into stalls with
painted boards. Here the box patrons were offered chairs with backs for two shillings (
cushions obtained at the pay table, thruppence a time
). Jefferies, the comic, was wooing the pit over the stage lamps with his trademark song “Tidi didi lol-lol-lol, kiss and ti-ti-lara.” His squints and lewd gestures were causing much merriment among the country folks. There was none better than Jefferies in low comedy. He was well worth his two pounds a week—when there was the money to pay him. Sugden threw a disconsolate look over to the pay table by the door. Mrs. Monk, in her make-up and the apple-green dress with orange sleeves, ready for her part as the thief-taker's wife Mrs. Peachum, sat, her face abstracted as she counted sixpences. If Justice Raistrick's friends took much longer they'd arrive after the halfway mark and that meant half price; then there'd be no profit in the night at all. He'd have to send the call boy to the bar for Dick Greenwood and the others for the opera soon. He touched the rabbit's foot he kept in his watch pocket. A poor start meant a troublesome engagement, he thought gloomily.

Favian stared at the smooth back of Lieutenant Roberts's nut-brown head across the room; the preposterous feathers of the pink hat beside him were brushing his cheek. The lads would be on their way by now. At first he had meant to join them, until it was pointed out that his absence from the play might draw suspicion. He was eager to discover what progress the others had made. He
would have to wait until tomorrow to find out. In the meantime, Favian consoled himself, he had the happy prospect of Miss Bedford's company. He thought how he might engineer an opportunity to sit by her at the play.

“Tell me—what of this afternoon's disturbances?” It was Raif's voice. Favian drew closer to the group by the fireplace. “Have there been more arrests?”

“A bullock escaped from the pens,” answered the vicar, Mr. Prattman. “And Dan Whittle called Geordie Munsen a thief in the presence of witnesses. He refused to retract for at least an hour …”

“There's been bad blood between them over a diseased hen Geordie supplied Dan last Michaelmas,” explained Captain Adams. He was a middle-aged man with an air of boyish sincerity lingering about his fleshy face.

“Other than that,” the parson shrugged, “to my mind there's been less trouble this opening day than some other years.”

“Remember the time in '08 when the heelanders met the townsmen in pitched battle in the marketplace? Almost closed the fairs that time,” Captain Adams reminisced fondly.

“I believe that was '07 …”

“Surely not. I had just purchased my good Welsh cob—it was '08 for sure.”

“My dear Adams …”

“What about the colonel's radicals? The men the lieutenant took up?” Jarrett looked across at his host. Mr. Bedford had a square head on square shoulders and a
watchful stillness about him. “The vicar says one of them was your coachman, Bedford—is that true?”

“Man was drunk.” The manufacturer's speech was truncated as if unnecessary syllables were a waste of his time. “On his own time; gave him the afternoon off.” He seemed unmoved by his servant's misdemeanors. “Leave him overnight. Learn his lesson.”

“I applaud you, sir!” chimed in Mr. George delightedly. “A firm hand's the thing. Servants are forever taking advantage without it.” Jarrett considered Mr. George, wondering how many servants the civil servant kept. He looked like a man who lived in lodgings. Mr. George's attention was fixed on their host, he noted, like a faithful hound.

“So the other two were the radicals?” he suggested.

“Just miners,” replied Mr. Kelso.

“It is early days, Mr. Jarrett.” Colonel Ison breezed up. He shook hands with his host and nodded to the rest. “Apologies. I was detained.”

When they'd last met, he had been irritable, even alarmed. Now he seemed almost jovial. Jarrett wondered what might have occurred in the few intervening hours. Ison rubbed shoulders with Favian and glanced down at him.

“Colonel Ison! How do you do, sir?” The youth greeted him with a smile. “How goes the investigation into the death at the Bucket and Broom?”

“Investigation? There is no investigation!” responded the colonel with a touch of his old irascibility. “'Twas a natural death. Body's been sent to London for burial.”

“I understood there were signs of foul play …” Favian said.

“Who told you that?” The colonel flicked a glance in Jarrett's direction. He harrumphed. “Nonsense! I have lived in this district all my life. Perhaps I may be allowed to judge matters better than those who've not been here a twelvemonth!”

It was oppressive here by the fire. Too much hot air. Jarrett's thoughts slipped to the Tewards and their inn on the cold, clear moor. The snow should be falling up there by now. Hadn't Duffin mentioned he would be rabbiting out that way tonight? He searched the press of heads for his hostess's ostrich feathers, planning his exit. The party should be leaving for the theater soon.

Charles was over by the buffet. Mrs. Bedford had supplied an extravagant collection of desserts to tempt her guests. The centerpiece of the table was a vaguely offcentre pyramid of crystal dishes holding colored blancmanges and jellies molded in fanciful shapes. It gave the uneasy impression it might come tumbling down if anyone disturbed it by helping themselves to a dish. Every substance was pulled and molded into the semblance of what it was not—flowers, fish, birds, leaves. The nap of Charles's black superfine coat gleamed rich in the light of the candelabra held aloft by a gilded nymph on a polished pink marble plinth. He leaned forward to select a pastry piped into the shape of a plump dove glazed with raspberry jam.

“That's bound to ooze when you bite into it and ten
to one it tastes of warmed wax,” Jarrett murmured, coming up behind him. Such displays were made to impress the eye, not the palate. Charles cast a look down at his handsome waistcoat of embroidered Florentine silk and withdrew his hand with a small reluctant sigh.

“There's Miss Lonsdale! Good company at last!” Charles checked himself, noting the ladies filling the seats around her. “Oh lord! What a tedious collection of old cats!” he said, and wandered off in the opposite direction.

She was looking right at him. It would be rude to leave without paying his respects. Tonight she was dressed in a claret-colored velvet bodice cut low at the neck and cinched at the waist with a mother-of-pearl clasp. Her back was straight and her long legs made an elegant line as the fabric fell in rich velvety folds over an underdress of white satin. A ribbon of matching velvet confined her soft curls, and jewels in her necklace picked up the same tint. Miss Lonsdale had an instinct for color. She drew the eye. Miss Lippett, sitting at her side, in contrast, was a poor counterfeit of a woman. She was wearing dull black satin up to her neck and a sour expression. The eccentric spinster flicked a glance in his direction and quite deliberately turned her back to him.

“The colonel says there is a foreign agent at work among us …” The speaker was a flush-faced woman in yellow he had never seen before. Was the colonel taking everyone into his confidence? So much for his vaunted discretion.

“Among us, Mrs. Eustace?” cried Mrs. Adams, leaning
forward and darting a nervous glance about the room.

“Not among
us,”
corrected Mrs. Eustace, “among the lower sort.”

“One would have thought one might notice a Frenchman.”

“Not a Frenchman!” exclaimed Mrs. Eustace, fanning herself. “I heard it from my cook, who had it from her cousin's niece—she's one of the colonel's maids up at North Park. She was laying fires and heard them talking. They're looking for an Englishman—”

“I don't believe it!” Mrs. Adams exclaimed.

“A traitor of that sort is no Englishman!” stated Miss Lippett vehemently. “Hanging's too good for them.”

“Or one that passes for such—a Yorkshireman, like one of them as is coming up for trial at York,” finished Mrs. Eustace triumphantly, pleased with the effect of her piece of news.

Jarrett marveled at this example of the efficiency of small-town gossip. Really, the spymasters of this world were missing a trick when they overlooked the natural talents of the opposite sex. He wondered idly if he were able to track down the niece of Mrs. Eustace's cook's cousin whether that person might be able to tell him to whom the colonel had been talking.

“It is almost eight—should we not be thinking of going over to the play?” It was Miss Lonsdale who spoke.

“I do not mean to go,” announced Miss Lippett.

Henrietta had arrived alone at Mrs. Bedford's entertainment, her aunt, Mrs. Lonsdale, having taken to her
bed pleading a headache, as was her wont to do when faced with the prospect of leaving her comfortable home on a winter's night. Aunt Lonsdale had been reluctant to let her niece attend that evening, alarmed by the thought of Henrietta stepping foot in a theater without her chaperonage. Only Henrietta's assurance that Miss Lippett—whom Aunt Lonsdale respected for her pedigree—would make one of the party had quieted her objections.

“Miss Josephine,” Henrietta coaxed, hoping to persuade her. “I shall miss your company. Why, the royal family, I hear, is very fond of the theater; even her Majesty the Queen.” Miss Lippett, a hot Tory, had the greatest respect for the royal family, most particularly the poor benighted king and his good queen (their sons, for all they were princes, being, it could not be denied, rather wild).

“I have not heard that,” Miss Josephine said grudgingly. “My father, God rest his soul, abhorred the playhouse. Others may shift and compromise, but the old families have a duty to uphold what is proper.”