Lempriere's Dictionary (62 page)

Wood delays at Cherbourg. The fortifications (called in the officialese of a now-mountainous correspondence
refortifications
) are months behind schedule for want of wood. The heights still look down welcomingly on all and sundry. They should look louring, discouraging, at least dismal. Work has ground to a halt. (High altitude turbulence aloft clears the sky giving the illusion of a serenely blue infinity, on.) Above the channel huge white cumulus formations bank up and around. Below, ships lie at anchor off the coast at Deal, the sloop
Cockatrice
and cutters
Nimble
and
Wasp
. Charles Mitchell of the Indiaman
William Pitt
bound for Fort St George sees the
Commerce
disappear over the horizon for North Carolina. Fishing smacks
loaded with smelt and salmon ride the bars of the Thames estuary, the north foreland is far behind, ahead the wooded slopes of Kent rise behind a marshy acreage of shouting fowl and gravel strands. The alder, willow, oak and birch creep riverwards from nowhere to line the banks of the crowded river and the tide pulls steadily, five or six hours at a time, on the vessels nosing up river for berths at Blackwall and the Upper Pool. The
Countess of Mexborough
is departing for Oporto, but there is a delay, a shortfall is discovered and Captain Guardian watches as bales of wool are off-loaded onto Porter’s Quay. Captain Roy is scurrying about below. He had an idea to travel to Charing Cross this morning. Francis Battalia, alias The Stone-Eater, is performing at No. 10, Cockspur Street for two shillings and sixpence (the Captain’s stumbling-block) and is affirmed an extraordinary phenomenon by people of the lower sort who watch him open-mouthed as he swallows pebbles, stones and small rocks. “Persons as please may bring their stones with them,” and they do. Very few notice the heavy-set men who march directly upstairs and who seem to be exempt from payment. Mister Boyle (surgeon) who has examined the Stone Eater’s grosser excrements pronounces them beige in colour and of a sandy composition. Doubters remain, arty snobs mostly, but even Francis can only guess at the animal-mineral symbiosis which is going on inside him, a ventral mystery about which his technique flutters, the Mouthward-Backward Flip and
gulp
, the Gravel Plume, the Pebble Cannonade (for this he currently wears a cap topped with a small Austrian flag) and the Big Rock Swallow. Even through streaming eyes he cannot help but monitor the to-ings and fro-ings up and down the stairs, along corridors aloft and all the other seemingly innocent convenings of Farina’s lieutenants. Even when one trips noisily over the stumps of a nautical cripple at the back of his audience, they hardly waver. A tribute to his art, even if obscurely used by these conspirators with their studied workaday airs. Young men and women in faded calicos and garish chintz look wonderingly on. The silk and satin set stay away. They await the golden throat of Signor Marchesi, lately arrived in town to sing Sard’s
Guilio Sabino
. His voice is judged no less a prodigy than Gabrielli’s, a tenor mezzo-bass running fluidly through contralto to the highest soprano reaches, and this is only his reputation. Excelling in portamento and expression, he runs through three octaves of semitones with as much rapidity, smoothness and precision as Cramer’s violin, so it’s said. Bidding has been high, Lord Lansdowne’s offer of 100/. for a private recital is already turned down. Marmaduke Stalkart, caught with a bill from Coade’s, was never in the bidding. He settles for Signors Morelli, Calveri and Merigi in a revival of that comical favourite,
Gli Schiavi Per Amore
which alternates through March with Storace’s
La Cameriera Astute
. Houses are reasonable and the dance interlude, featuring a
pas seul
,
pas de deux, cinq, sept, Bernois
and
Russe
, is booed less than usual. Only the tortoises mar his composure. Marmaduke had hoped to have them installed by March at the latest but the Manufactory has delayed, suffered disruptions, offered excuses. Twenty-seven of the amiable beasts should be grinning astutely over the Haymarket Opera House, beckoning theatre goers away from Cobb’s, but his roof is still bare and his balance at the bank depleted. He would like to call off the concert for the New Musical Fund (a sure loss-maker) but fears to disappoint. If only the tortoises would arrive, all would be well. What
is
going on at Coade’s? And what are the slogans which keep appearing on the walls of the theatre?
Take The Enemy Alive, Farina
, in green chalk?

London in March is quite cold and rainy. Much of Lincolnshire is under water and London receives a new influx of discontented refugees, joining Cornish copper miners, laid off following news of last year’s deficit, and the still-vociferous silk-weavers. The Lottery Suicides continue. An old woman in Great Wild Street is found drowned in a tub of water and General Carpenter, who chose the fine black horses which pull the King’s carriage, has his cockaded hat pulled from the Serpentine. Nets, hooks and poles trawl till evening when the pale body is recovered. Mister Antrobus dies. A three act play called
Francomania
opens at Covent Garden. Cruikshank dissects a cadaver whose organs are all reversed, left mapped exactly onto right, right onto left. Mufti wins the Craven Stakes and the Queen of Naples is pregnant.

In the valleys of Croatia, lagging explosions of sound follow close on silent Turkic smoke plumes. The cannon’s fractioned arc delivers a triple charge, sighted smoke-puff and cannon-report sandwiching the cannon-ball,
ding an sich
, which will blow the scene to smithereens. The scene is too still, far too still….

But March is full of quirks and thus the Pork Club, usually preoccupied with a glass of
Maraschino de Zara
and the Paris fashion in shoe buckles at this hour, today has murder on its mind. They are convened at the Craven Arms.

‘A goat?’ Walter Warburton-Burleigh’s eyes lifted from a report on the Austro-Turkic conflict which has told him nothing concerning the fate of the Imperial Internuncio though suitably enthusiastic about the exploits of three chasseurs who, sculling over the blue-grey waters of the Unna….

‘A goat,’ confirmed Monsieur Moustachio and read aloud from the
Lud’s Town Monitor
. “A girl, aged fifteen to twenty, dark hair, costly dress, was found at the top of the King’s Arms Stairs by Coade’s Artificial Stone Manufactory this night before last by a party of lightermen. The girl was wrapped in a hammock fashioned from a slaughtered goat.…”

‘Goat!’ the earl exclaimed., ‘Horrible!’ Septimus flapped frantically through
The World
to no avail. Lemprière did not move.

“… throat slit ear to ear….”

‘Where?’

“Mister Rudge, coroner, expressed the opinion that she was killed that evening, from her variously departing signs of life….” Lemprière rose abruptly.

‘“Neither the girl’s nor her assailant’s identity is known at this time”.
Hey!
’ Lemprière had bumped into Monsieur Moustachio’s chair and stumbled past for the door.

‘John?’ The earl half-rose from his seat. Septimus looked up.

‘Juliette,’ said Lemprière. ‘The girl is Juliette.’ Then he was gone, the door slammed behind him and the Pork Club left in disturbed silence. The Pug broke it.

‘“Lady Yonge’s Concert”,’ he spelled out, thick digit prodding the newsprint, ‘“attended the Casterleighs, both father and daughter.” She’s not dead.’

‘Only sleeping….’ crooned Warburton-Burleigh.

‘What did John mean?’ the earl asked generally, his gaze alighting finally on Septimus who looked over from behind
The World
.

‘Only John knows what John means,’ Septimus said in dismissal. ‘It’s his work. The dictionary makes him odd from time to time.’ He warmed to the theme. ‘He was picking fights with watermen in a Lambeth tavern night before last, had to pull him off myself.’ The Pork Club are faintly impressed by this.

‘I cannot find the story,’ a man moaned from beside the fire.

‘Nor I,’ said another, scanning the columns. A chorus of negatives was welling up for, in fact, none of the other papers carried the story in any shape or form, not the
Morning Chronicle
, not the
Gazette, The World
, not even the august
Universal Daily Register
which, this very month, will change its name to become a far more trusted and familiar organ, a very by-word for sobriety and upright common sense even if leaning typically a little to the side of the established interest when matters were in the balance, but no outrageous bias, nothing to worry about….

The watermen had scooped her off the King’s Arms Stairs an hour before the tide and carried her like a totem, head high, back over the river to Bow Street. Five men had found her. The procession was a hundred strong on arrival and Sir John stood arms akimbo before a mob baying for a murderer’s blood. He raised his arms and exhorted them, ‘Men, you have all done well!’ But he could sense unsatisfied appetites, frustrated needs, the urge to sacrifice something, someone, Sir John at Aulis before the massed soldiery and the goat’s yellow eye on him.
What to do? What to do?

‘Justice will be done,’ he went on in a strong bass-tone, voice of implacable vengeance, what they wanted. Give their blood lusts free rein, justice could be burial alive, slicing off of the limbs, anything they needed to imagine. Good God, was that what he was now, the mob’s Pandar handing over a sacrificial whore? But they were turning away, drifting back. No tide would engulf him, not tonight; tonight he was a beacon radiating order, yes, a tall beacon in his blindness shining out over the lanes of safety.

But it was bad, this one. The symbols were in league: the goat, gold wire sutured the slashed belly in a ragged stitch, the girl a carcass within a carcass, coupled with it on the steps by the river and left there for the turning tides, for fair weather and the Fleet.

‘Fifteen at least, twenty at most,’ said Mister Rudge later, as he snipped the wire and Sir John heard the goat peel open to disclose its fruit. ‘And pretty. Hair black, long. A little undernourished.’ The throat had been cut, knife driven in from the side, pushed forward and out. Sir John thought of Peppard’s body, a professional killing. The same hand?

‘Yes, I would guess that is possible.’ Water rushed in the basin. Mister Rudge was washing his hands. But the symbols…. the extensions of the act reached further. They had touched the mob, himself; even Rudge. In the mortuary’s coldest cellar, the woman in blue stared one-eyed into darkness; gold, an obscene stump swelling out of her mouth, piercing her sides, cooled now with the rest of her waiting for the encumbering flesh to fall away. A sweet smell hung in the cold echoing air. She was rotting, and Rudge wanted her buried. He dared not. That one he had kept quiet. The young earl could be relied upon for silence. Still he had not chased up the loose end from that night. Lemprière, the one the searchers had tracked before they came upon the body. The sweet smell was stronger, decay coming for him, for them all. Rudge’s footsteps slithered on the slabs. He must find the murderer. The mob demanded sacrifice. He must feed their need. Farina was out there, in the rookeries and courts, the alleys visible and invisible, waiting for Sir John’s mistake. He would know about the girl already, and if that were linked to this Peppard’s death, and the first woman’s slaughter came to light, its manner, he could fill the inarticulate heart of the ritual with whatever he chose, any type of fear, any carefully channelled outrage. Already the air was mutating, cross-cut with insurgent impulses and pockets of distortion, the patrician contract was on a blocked frequency emerging in obscure and unintelligible pitches. Strange acts prevailed. The much-bruited cat-eating contest between Lord Barrymore and the Duke of Bedford had entered its third round last week. Live cats too. Carpenter’s suicide bothered him, suicides generally truth to tell. And
the figures were rising. The body politic was turning itself inside out, lewdly exposing its organs for vulgar fingers to pinch and prod. It was a time for moral exempla, but the better sort were dressing like ‘prentices at a tannery and the ‘prentices taking their coffee at Lloyds. Bulwarks were needed, barriers against Farina’s scorbutic influence which was out there massing and gathering. What would Henry have done? Something dazzling and elegant, Sir John reflected gloomily. Swift notice and pursuit, his own watchwords, seemed misplaced. Swift notice of what? Pursue where? The malady was already here, in the city. Perhaps the city was itself the sickness.

The stench of decay was stronger. Rudge’s grisly movements, little gristly cutting sounds and sharp tears filled his thoughts with dead flesh. Pitter-patter of feet, the boy’s.

‘Sir?’ Yes. A woman was waiting upstairs, had waited an hour. She had followed the body from Westminster Bridge.

‘In a moment.’ Sir John sent him scurrying back. The boy was improving. The string about his neck was no longer essential.

‘Rudge!’ he called. His colleague was swabbing goat’s blood off the body, working methodically over the skin’s surface.

‘I have a name for you, an improbable name….’ Rudge dabbed once, twice, looked up at portly Sir John. ‘A most ordinary and yet improbable name.’

‘John Smith,’ said Rudge promptly.

‘Exactly.’ They both thought of the young man bursting wild-eyed into Peppard’s room, already grief-stricken, the calmer Theobald following who had confirmed only ‘John.’

‘Not Smith?’ ventured Rudge.

‘Not Smith, certainly. But what?’

‘The brother, Theobald, he will know. They were together. In any case the coat is an advertisement. Bright pink.’

‘Of course, elem….’ Sir John was on the point of saying “elementary” but the word was misplaced, irredeemably now the times were compound. ‘Mister
Smith
,’ mused Sir John.

‘And spectacles,’ added Rudge as Sir John made his way upstairs, drawing the filaments together
currite fusi
, snip snip, solution and dissolution with the smell of decay growing inexplicably heavier in the air, the bodies were below, while the boy guided him through to the waiting woman who began gabbling to him the moment he entered in hardly intelligible accents, nonsense and sense confounded together.