Jack, Knave and Fool (4 page)

As we waited, Mr. Alfred Humber regaled us with tales of the patron’s past foolishness: how he did, on one occasion, become so carried away with the pomp of the Royal Fireworks Music that he descended the stairs from the stage and led a parade through the audience; and on another, wishing to show his appreciation to the orchestra for what he judged a superlative performance of something or other (and lacking a hat), he doffed his wig to them, revealing a head quite bald except for a bit of fuzz at the ears.

“He is such an embarrassment,” said Mr. Humber. “Some come just to laugh at him. I don’t know why the Academy puts up with the old fellow—-though I suppose they must. It’s all that wine he drinks, I suppose.”

All the members of the orchestra had reassembled and were back in their chairs. The choir had taken its place on a platform to the left of the musicians, with the sopranos, Annie among them, at the far end.

I half expected Lord Laningham to make some sort of announcement — but no, he remained seated. He seemed subdued somewhat, yet bothered, shifting frequently and, it seemed, somewhat uncomfortably in his chair of honor.

Perhaps he was merely bestirring his old bones, limbering them up to perform, for sure enough, once choir and orchestra had begun he was up on his feet, no doubt inspired by the booming sound of the great kettledrums. Yet this time he did no more than beat his staff upon the floor. He wandered about a bit uncertainly; then he found his way over to the choir, where he did ogle the sopranos —pretty Annie, it seemed, in particular. The choirmaster was openly annoyed by this.

I cannot, by the bye, say that I actually heard our Annie singing on that occasion. Certainly I heard the choir, and she was one of them. Her lips moved, and her mouth opened. I watched her closely until Lord Laningham drew near to her, at which time she put her music up before her and hid behind it.

Still he wandered, yet with faltering step. The ceremonial staff he simply dragged after him, bringing it down only now and then upon the floor. He had paled. Sweat stood upon his face. A murmur of comment at his condition went through the crowd as he found his way back to his chair and collapsed into it. He dropped his staff, and it rolled a few feet from him across the stage. Then did he lean forward as if to retrieve it. Having so leaned, he could somehow not stop himself, and quite out of control, he toppled lengthwise upon the floor. His lower body quivered and jerked, knocking down the chair from which he had fallen and sending the half-consumed bottle of wine spinning across the floor, spilling its contents. Then, in what may have been his last willed act, he raised his head —but only to vomit. Beef, bits of pudding, and a good deal of nasty red liquid, which I took to be wine, spewed forth from his gaping mouth. It was a most unpleasant sight to behold.

For a moment there was silence. The orchestra had halted, and so, too, the choir. Those in the audience were too stunned to do more than gawk. Yet only for a single eye-blink of a moment did that silence last, for in the next instant all onstage seemed to be converging upon the fallen figure. There were shouts and screams from them, as from the great crowd in the ballroom. Of a sudden all was chaos.

“What a disgrace!” shouted Mr. Humber. “He’s fallen drunk and vomited out his guts before us. This certainly exceeds the limit.”

There were others all around who joined him in similar cries of disgust.

Mr. Donnelly, however, already on his feet, put a different interpretation upon those actions all had witnessed. “Dear God,” said he, “the man is ill. I must do what I can to help him.” And so saying, he left us at the table and ran to the steps nearby leading up to the stage. I saw him pressing through the crowd that suddenly surrounded Lord Laningham.

There was shouting:

“Give him room!”

“Do not push so! You’ll crush my violin.”

Then just as Mr. Donnelly reached the figure on the floor of the stage and knelt down to him, I felt a tug at my sleeve. It was Sir John, who had come round the table to seek me out special.

“Jeremy,” said he to me in a hoarse whisper, “you’ve a good pair of eyes and mind enough to note peculiarities. Tell me quickly, boy, exactly what you saw from the time Lord Laningham appeared on the stage.”

That I did in no more than a minute’s time. Sir John listened, concentrating carefully on what I had to say. He nodded when I finished.

“And the last you saw of that bottle of wine, it was rolling around on the floor up there?”

“That’s true, sir,” said I, “spilling its contents all round.”

“Then take me up to the stage, for we must restore order somehow, clear the area, and find that bottle.”

“Yes, Sir John. Grab hold my shoulder.”

The crowd up on the stage seemed to have increased threefold by the time Sir John and I arrived. He tried shouting them down. Yet his considerable voice was lost in the tumult. Then had I an idea of what might be done. We stood in the midst of the orchestra, or where the orchestra had been minutes before. If I might but …

“Here, Sir John,” said I, “let me help you up on a chair. If I can reduce them to something like silence, you may deliver one of your magnificent threats.”

“Well and good,” said he. “Do what you can.”

Taking my hand, he made it up to the seat of the chair. I then helped point him in the right direction and urged him not to move, lest he fall. Then did I go right swift to the orchestra’s loudest instrument, which stood untended.

I picked up the mallets — covered in sheepskin they were —and I began beating upon the kettledrums as Tom O Bedlam might, making them boom forth like cannon, then rolling them out long and loud like thunder, then booming and banging again and again.

When I looked up and saw all turned toward me, openmouthed in surprise, I knew that I must stop. Reluctantly, I did so. Then rang forth the stentorian voice of the great man himself.

“I am Sir John Fielding, Magistrate of the Bow Street Court. I order you all to clear the stage at once. With the exception of Lord Laningham, members of his immediate family, and Gabriel Donnelly, the doctor in attendance, all must leave immediately. The Bow Street Runners have been sent for to enforce this order. All who remain in defiance of it may expect to spend the next month in Newgate Gaol.”

What a rush there was! Musicians and chorus fled out the door at the rear of the stage. Those of the audience who had come up out of curiosity or concern left, as they had come, by the steps at either side. In less than three minutes, only Lord Laningham, Mr. Donnelly, and a grandly dressed woman whom I took to be Lady Laningham, remained there with us.

But look as I might —and I spent the next ten minutes poking in every corner — no bottle of any sort was there to be found.

The men of our table at the Crown and Anchor assembled once again in Sir John’s chambers back of the courtroom at Number 4 Bow Street. It had been over an hour since Lord Laningham had fallen so sudden ill upon the stage and died so ingloriously before hundreds of witnesses. While some had filed out immediately, aware that the musical entertainment was not likely to resume, which of course it did not, most remained, some no doubt out of concern for the aged noble, but the greater number simply to gawk at a man in the throes of death. At last death had come and taken him. Lady Laningham, who had knelt beside him through all, then gave the word and two servers of the Crown and Anchor hauled off the body between them to an embalmer nearby on Fleet Street.

That done, Sir John had allowed back the musicians and members of the chorus to retrieve their instruments and music from the stage; then did he send me off to find the innkeeper and bring him hither. It did not surprise me that he who had acted as the master of the ceremonies proved to be the one I sought. He went most willingly to Sir John; I merely trailed after. Yet I was then sent off to find Annie and bring her to the table, so that I heard nothing of the question and answer that passed between them. Instead I lound her with the choirmaster, he giving her a stern talking-to, one complete with linger shaking and frown. Whatever she had done seemed to have displeased him greatly. Nevertheless I heard no details, for as I approached close enough to listen there was, of a sudden, nothing to be heard. He turned from her and stalked off, perhaps in search of some other poor soprano he might abuse. All this took place in the space behind the stage reached through that door through which both orchestra and choir had passed. Asking simply if we were ready now to return to Bow Street, Annie came along, music in hand, accepting my response that it would be soon.

And so it was. Sir John was at the table with the rest — his interview with the innkeeper could not have lasted long —and we all set off together, among the last to leave the scene of that unhappy event. He declined to discuss it, saying that he wished to give it some thought as we made our way home. “If, however,” he had said on the walkway before the Crown and Anchor, “you gentlemen wish to accompany us, I would be curious to hear your comments and observations on the matter. Perhaps we might do that at Number Four.”

They had indeed wished to come along, and though they could not wait to talk of the death amongst themselves, Messrs. Donnelly, Goldsmith, and Humber trailed our party at such a distance that they could not have greatly disturbed Sir John. Upon our arrival at Bow Street, Lady Fielding and Annie had mounted the stairs to our quarters, and I, on Sir John’s orders, had gone ahead to light candles in his chambers and otherwise prepare it for his guests.

Thus, when they entered, the place was well lit, and upon Sir John’s desk stood a bottle of good brandy (fetched from the bottom drawer of his desk) and four glasses, wiped clean and ready.

“Ho!” crowed Mr. Goldsmith in celebration. “What have we there? Is it the Spanish fundador or the French cognac?”

“I know not its country of origin,” said Sir John, “only that it has a pleasant taste and warms the stomach well.”

“Well and good,” spoke Mr. Humber.

I filled glasses for all but myself and handed them out. They took chairs scattered about the room and pulled them close. I, not being asked to leave, found one for myself, as well.

“Sir John?”

“Yes, Mr. Goldsmith?”

“Your interest in this matter seems to indicate a suspicion that Lord Lan-ingham did not die of natural causes.”

“Oh … not necessarily. As described by Jeremy, the scene upon the stage following Laningham’s collapse was one of great disorder. At the very least, I thought it wise to clear the stage that Mr. Donnelly might minister to the poor man. That, following Jeremy’s solo on the bass drum, I was able to do.”

“And grateful I am to you both,” said Mr. Donnelly.

“On the other hand,” said Sir John, “the order of events prior to his collapse, again described to me by Jeremy, were such that the possibility of an unnatural death cannot be dismissed.”

“But why?” said Mr. Goldsmith, ever the doubter.

“Yes, why?” echoed Mr. Humber. “Lord Laningham was most certainly of an age for dying —seventy-five years, as I understand. He’d a bad heart and one attack of apoplexy known to me.”

“You seem to know a good deal about his former state of health,” said Sir John.

“That, Jack,” said Mr. Humber, “is because I had been critical a year past of Laningham’s behavior at the concerts, and I was told all this by a medico who happened to be at my table. It was his opinion that Lord Laningham was attempting with all his foolish jumping about to prove himself fit and hale in spite of his years.”

“There, you see, sir?” said Mr. Goldsmith. “That seems well vouched for. In light of all that, how is it you still harbor a suspicion —be it even a mild one?”

“Well, first of all, Mr. Goldsmith —and you also, Alfred —because I am a magistrate, it is my place and my duty to harbor suspicions of all sorts. It is true that I often put a dark interpretation upon a set of facts —yet also true that as often as not such a view is proven justified. When in the back of my mind I have some doubt —not a thought but a feeling —there is usually good reason for it. I have come to trust my doubts.”

“But at this point,” said Mr. Goldsmith, “you have merely feelings … doubts? Not yet a good reason for such?”

“Well, let us consider the sequence of events, shall we? As I understand them, Lord Laningham quite hopped up to the stage when introduced by the innkeeper. He frisked about the stage for a good half of an hour until there came a break, at which time the choir came upon stage for the singing of the Saint Cecilia ode. As this transpired, he sat himself upon a chair to rest, and having developed a thirst, hailed a server and sent him off to fetch a bottle of wine. Now, where that bottle came from we cannot at this point be absolutely certain, for I have not yet had the opportunity to speak with the server. The innkeeper, however, volunteered to me that he was near certain it would have come from Lord Laningham’s own table, for it was Laningham’s habit to bring wines from his private stock to the Crown and Anchor on concert Sundays. The innkeeper has promised to ask among the servers until he has found the one who brought the wine and then to send him to us. Why should this be of such importance? Because Lord Laningham drank greedily of that bottle of wine, and it was only after he did so that he began to show signs of distress.”

“But,” objected Mr. Goldsmith, “those signs were by no means immediate. The better part of an hour passed before the spectacle of his collapse upon the stage.”

“Oh? Truly? I had judged it to be not near so long as that, myself,” said Sir John. “How long would you estimate the time that elapsed between the lord’s first taste of the wine and the moment he fell to the floor and vomited, Alfred?”

Mr. Humber considered. “Closer to half an hour, I should say, perhaps less.” Then, giving the matter a moment’s further thought, he added: “We could find out from the choirmaster or the concertmaster just how far along they were in the piece. That might help in making a more accurate estimate.

“Indeed it might,” said Sir John. “If it becomes a point of prime importance, we might consult with them. But leave it that it was only after he had drunk of the wine that he began to act, according to Jeremy’s description, ‘queer’ —to wit, that he wandered a bit aimlessly, let drag his staff, and staggered about before returning to his chair and suffering that final episode which we have chosen to call his ‘collapse.’”

“Yes, I seem to recall those earlier signs that all was not right with him,” said Mr. Humber. “You’re saying, Jack, that he was at least affected not long after drinking from that bottle? Well, it was indeed plain that he was less lively after the wine than before.”

It seemed that Mr. Humber, who had begun in doubt, was coming round to Sir John’s way of thinking on this matter. Mr. Goldsmith, however, remained firmly in opposition.

“The wine! the wine!” he blustered. “Ifyou will forgive me, Sir John—and I mean no disrespect —but your argument is not reasonable. It is based upon a logical fallacy — ” And here did Mr. Goldsmith raise a finger and point above him as he quoted: “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.”

“I have little Latin,” said Sir John, “but enough, I think, to English that. Roughly, what you have said means, ‘after which, therefore because of which.’ Am I correct?”

“Indeed. You seem to feel — “

“Oh, I understand right enough,” said Sir John, cutting him off sharply. “You suggest I argue that the bottle of wine from which he drank accounts for his death. Nothing of the kind! I offer no argument, neither fallacious nor logical. I merely seek to account for my doubts. Yet I do concede, Mr. Goldsmith, that if the appearance of that bottle of wine were all I had to support my doubts, then it would certainly not be enough.”

Thinking he had won a point, Mr. Goldsmith puffed up a bit and smiled a smile that could only be termed self-satisfied. “Good of you to say so, Sir John,” said he.

“Nevertheless,” continued the magistrate, “when we consider the appearance of that bottle of wine along with its sudden and complete ^/appearance during that space of time when Lord Laningham was stricken and all did crowd around him, then — then, I say, there is quite sufficient support for doubt.”

“Come now, Jack,” said Mr. Humber. “A ‘disappearance, you say? Is that not too strong, too dramatic a word? Say, rather, that it was not afterward to be seen.”

“Yet it was searched for. Jeremy —I take it that you are still here —did you not search?”

“I did indeed, sir,” said I, “for ten minutes’ time and over every foot of the stage.”

“But good God,” said Goldsmith in evident exasperation, “there must have been near a hundred people up there —musicians, singers, Lord Laningham’s family, some of the Crown and Anchor staff, and the … the merely curious — all of them crowding in. I daresay a server may have picked up the bottle which we saw rolling around on the floor and spilling its contents, picked it up and simply disposed of it. That would be the most logical explanation for what you call its disappearance.”

Sir John then let forth a sigh, a rather melancholy sound in that room lit by only three candles. The depth and force of it extinguished the one on his desk and made the number two. Silence for a moment; then said he: “I shall, however, hold to my doubts. But Mr. Donnelly?”

“Yes, Sir John?” The surgeon spoke up almost reluctantly. He sat somewhat apart from the rest and had listened to the debate abstractedly, as if his mind were elsewhere.

“We have not heard from you. I had hoped you could enlighten us a bit on the nature of Lord Laningham’s death, a few facts perhaps. For instance, if you will indulge this maggot that nags at my brain, how long after he drank of that bottle of wine did he die?”

“About an hour, I should say.”

“Would you describe the nature of his death —his symptoms, so to speak?”

“Well, you noted the vomiting, of course.”

“Aye!” crowed Mr. Humber. “Like it or not, we all saw that!”

“Alfred, please, let Mr. Donnelly continue.”

And continue he did: “Like Jeremy, I’d noticed earlier signs —apparent dizziness and discomfort — but I counted them to his drunken state. Following his collapse and vomiting— By the bye, it was a true collapse, for he seemed to have little control over himself afterward, and it seemed there was nothing I could do for him. But after the collapse, I turned him over and loosened his collar to aid his breathing, which gave him obvious difficulty. There he lay, conscious but quite overcome, for a good many minutes. His wife arrived and tried to communicate with him, but he was unable to answer. Whether or not he grasped what she said to him —messages of endearment and encouragement they were —I really have no idea. He went into convulsions and then a state of coma, from which he could not be roused. I should say that last stage was of a duration of near ten minutes. His pulse grew weaker, and finally his heart stopped altogether.”

“Thank you, Mr. Donnelly,” said Sir John. “I should call that grim description up to your usual high standard —precise, graphic, and dispassionate. Now, again, simply to indulge me in this matter, do you know of any poison —to utter the word at last —which could cause a death such as the one you described?”

“No, Sir John, I do not.”

“There! You see?” hooted Mr. Goldsmith. “He knows ol none!

“But,” said Mr. Donnelly, raising his voice, overriding him somewhat, “I must make it clear that I know next to naught of poisons. They did not figure in my career with the Navy as a ship’s surgeon. As for my abortive practice in Lancashire, who knows? Perhaps some of those deaths I deemed natural may have been hurried on by henbane or foxglove. I had no reason to suspect, in any case.”

“I quite understand,” said Sir John. “But you have at your disposal books such as might give some light on the matter?”