Death at St. James's Palace (35 page)

“Was he on the balcony?”

“Yes.”

“He loves it out there, poor lost soul. Oh, Mr. Rawlings, he is so very frail. Please will you see him?”

“Of course. But Lucinda, don’t expect anything. I am not a miracle worker.”

And it would take that indeed, John thought as he stepped out onto the balcony and saw all that was left of Fat Fred. A changeling, a waif, a skeletal thing, turned its poor head with effort and he recognised the great sad eyes of the page- of-honour who had directed him at the investiture. But

Frederick was worse, far far worse, than he had been on that occasion. At the ceremony he had been thin and spindly, now he was emaciated to a degree beyond anything the Apothecary had ever seen before. It was repulsive, revolting, yet pitiful.

Involuntarily, John shook his head. “God help him,” he said.

The boy attempted a smile, a terrible sight to see.

“Oh my dear,” cried Lucinda, rushing to her brother’s side and gathering him into her arms. “This is Mr. Rawlings. He is going to help you.”

John turned to the Duke, who had followed him out onto the balcony. “I can’t,” he murmured. “Nobody could. The child is on the point of death.”

“It will break Lucinda’s heart.”

“All you can do is ease his passing. What has Dr. Bolsover prescribed for him?”

“His physicks and powders are all on a tray in the bedroom. Please feel free to look.”

It was a good selection and the Duke’s assertion that the physician was excellent was certainly confirmed in John’s eyes. There was a decoction of Carduus Benedictus, better known as Blessed Thistle, often used as an attempted cure for wasting disease. As was the powdered dried root of Autumn Gentian, which restored the appetite. There was also, and this was what John had been looking for, some opium powder, a concentrated form of the milky juice of the white poppy. These grains were expensive, having to be imported from the Far East, and, as the Apothecary knew only too well, there was a roaring trade in illegal importation for no apothecary worth the name would sell this to anyone who requested it, prescribing it to known patients only.

He turned to Guernsey. “If your brother-in-law sinks any lower give him one grain of this and send for the physician immediately.”

“Is there no hope for him?”

“None. He has gone too far down the road to death ever to return.”

Lucinda called from the balcony. “Mr. Rawlings, please. Fred is having some sort of convulsion.”

He was there in a stride, as was the Duke.

The elfin creature lay in his sister’s arms like a shrivelled leaf, shaking so violently that his big teeth rattled in his sunken mouth, his twig-thin arms and legs flailing.

“You must eat something,” Lucinda cried out, and burst into tears.

He looked at her with enormous sadness, continuing to shake, but seemingly incapable of speech. John knelt at the boy’s side, reaching for his pulse, feeling totally inadequate, knowing that there was nothing he could do to help, that the poor devil had grown too weak to sustain life much longer.

“He has deteriorated alarmingly since the investiture,” he murmured in Lucinda’s ear. “He is beyond my skill.”

“He has eaten virtually nothing since then,” she answered.

The Apothecary looked at his former servant with a steady gaze. “Guilt?”

Lucinda turned her head away and did not answer, and John was terribly aware of her husband coming to stand close by as if to protect her.

“Well?” he persisted.

“I shall never betray him,” Lucinda replied, and with those words said it all.

The Apothecary got to his feet and went into the bedroom. There he mixed several grains of opium powder with barley water. Then he returned to where the boy still threshed, though more feebly now.

“Let him have this. It will help him to relax.”

He passed Lucinda the glass, catching the Duke’s eye as he did so. Guernsey asked a silent question and John nodded.

“Come Fred,” said his sister, “drink this like a good boy.”

He gulped a little, even a mouthful more than John had anticipated. Then, after a while, he grew still. But before he fell asleep, Frederick gave a small wry smile. “What price fatness now?” he whispered, then snuggled close into Lucinda’s arms and closed his eyes.

Chapter 23

T
he silence in Sir John Fielding’s salon was profound, everyone sitting so still that nothing moved except for the swirls of blue smoke rising from Joe Jago’s pipe. The Blind Beak, as was his way, was motionless, and John, quite exhausted by the early start to the day and all that had taken place, hardly had the energy to raise his glass of punch to his lips, an unusual state for him. Yet despite the quiet there was a strange feeling in the air, a feeling almost of unease, and it was Sir John Fielding who finally voiced the reason for it.

“It is rare,” he said, “to come across a murderous child.”

“I never have,” responded Joe. “Not since I’ve been in your employ, Sir.”

“I did once before,” the Blind Beak continued. “In a way a similar tale. A girl of fourteen, abused by her filthy goat of a father, stabbed him through the heart.”

“Was she brought to justice for such a killing?” asked John.

“She was. But my brother, Henry, had his methods and made sure that she did not get the rope. Pleading mitigation, he arranged for her to be transported to the colonies where she made a new and good life for herself.”

“Something poor Frederick will never do.”

“You say he died just after you left the house?”

“Yes, a rider caught up with the coach and informed me. The pathetic child went in his sleep, which I admit I induced with opium. Apparently his sister held him till the end.”

“And it was definitely he who pushed George Goward?”

“There can be no doubt. Lucinda uttered the phrase, ‘I will never betray him,’ and that told me everything. Just before he slept, Frederick said, ‘What price fatness now?’ I think, Sir John, that that must have been the phrase you overheard.”

“Yes,” answered the Blind Beak, “that makes complete sense. It also explains why the voice had that unearthly quality to it. It was a boy’s.”

“And why the shoes that Jack Morocco glimpsed were so small.”

“It strikes me,” said Joe Jago, puffing away, “that one or more of those pages must have seen something.”

“I always believed there to be a conspiracy of silence,” Sir John answered. “And I’ve been proved right. It’s quite understandable. If the other pages knew anything of poor Lomond’s background, none would betray him.”

“Sir,” said John Rawlings urgently, “are you going to make this situation public?”

The Beak was quiet, weighing the matter up, then he said, “No, I think it better not to do so. It can be announced by the Public Office that a mistake was made, that the victim slipped and the whole thing was a tragic accident. I believe that sad sister of young Frederick’s has suffered enough.”

“To say nothing of Aminta Wilson, Goward’s daughter. Let it all be forgotten out of Christian charity.”

“Quite right,” said Joe Jago, who seemed to have mellowed somewhat since his fleeting encounter with Elizabeth Chudleigh. “What’s done is done.”

The Apothecary sighed deeply and finally managed to gather sufficient strength to raise his glass. “Sir John, I thank you with all my heart for what you have just said. If you had seen the lad, had seen to what he was reduced by the cruel attitude of his stepfather, then you would know as clearly as I that no blame can be attached to him. It was he who was the victim, not his cruel torturer.”

“Thank God he died when he did,” said Joe Jago, turning his light blue eyes on John in a long deep look.

“He had suffered enough for two lifetimes. Believe me, death came as his friend,” the Apothecary answered slowly.

And with those words, uttered in the seclusion of Sir John Fielding’s private quarters, the story of poor Frederick Drummond, Earl of Lomond, came at last to its tragic end.

Chapter 24

T
he box at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, was quite the centre of attention. To start with it contained two extremely attractive women, both dressed to the hilt, though one did appear to be rounding to a child. Secondly, it had been secured by none other than that outrageous personality Jack Morocco, tonight clad from head to toe in crimson and gold, a black boy dressed like a little peacock beside him. As an added attraction there was the strangely dwarfish yet brilliant portrait painter, Julius Witherspoon, in the company. The other two men were not known to the
beau monde,
though the smaller, darker, of the two had a purple and silver suit on that was the envy of many, while the larger had such a jolly visage and booming laugh that he seemed to be worth examination. All in all, they were a young and glamorous party quizzing glasses flashed in their direction from the moment they entered their loge.

There being only six adults present, everyone had a chair except Ebony James, who stood between his master’s knees, excitedly leaning over the parapet.

“No noise from you once it starts,” said Jack Morocco severely. “When I go to the play I go to listen.”

“You do realise that Coralie Clive is in this?” Emilia asked John with a certain acerbity.

“I have not come to see her. I have come to support Aminta,” he answered firmly.

For Jack Morocco’s mistress, obviously with an eye to her future, knowing that it could not lie with her flamboyant lover, had achieved her ambition and had been given a small part in this night’s production of
The Merchant of Venice
in which the great David Garrick was to play Shylock to Coralie’s Portia, a part in which her sister, Kitty, had excelled.

“None the less, you must be curious.”

“Leave it, Emilia. My relationship with Coralie ended years ago, as well you know.”

His wife relapsed into silence, only for Samuel’s voice to soar above the others. Leaning close to Christabel Witherspoon’s ear, he said in a loud whisper, “John and Coralie Clive were very close at one time you know.” He winked at her. “Very close indeed.”

Julius chimed in. “I am about to paint her portrait. David Garrick has asked me to do so.”

With a concerted effort, the Apothecary changed the subject. “Such a shame that the Duke and Duchess of Guernsey are still in mourning. I am sure they would have liked to join us.”

Fortunately for him Jack Morocco took up the theme and the conversation steered away from the beautiful actress with whom John had once been in love, so long ago now that it almost seemed like another lifetime.

“A very rum business that, her brother catching a wasting disease. I’ve never heard of such a thing before.”

“It does happen,” said John, “though more often to girls. But he had been teased so long by his stepfather about being fat, that the boy renounced food almost entirely.”

“So he starved himself to death?”

“Yes.”

“It was round about the time he died that the Public Office announced there had been a mistake, that George Goward’s death was an accident after all.” The negro’s huge dark eyes turned on John and the Apothecary saw the gleam of intelligence in them. “So I couldn’t have seen those feet after all.”

“No,” said John, “it must have been something else.”

The black buck held his gaze steadfastly. “So it must,” he said.

The elfin Christabel steered the conversation away. “Julius and I have decided to leave Islington and move closer to town. He is getting so busy that the travelling is becoming a nuisance, while I…” She smiled at Samuel in a secretive way.
 

“… find that my interests are being drawn more and more towards London.”

Emilia nudged John violently in the ribs and he jumped a little. “Wedding?” she whispered. He shrugged his shoulders to show that he didn’t know and felt a positive rush of relief when the curtain went up and the theatre fell as silent as it ever did, which wasn’t greatly, as the play began.

It was a superb performance, moving and profound, Garrick bringing to Shylock a depth of meaning that the Apothecary had never seen in the character before, while Coralie radiated charm as a truly delightful Portia. But in a strange way he was as glad to see the end of the show as he had been the beginning. Watching Coralie, remembering all her delightful idosyncracies, the way she had held him when they made love, the sweep of her black hair against his skin, was still painful after all this time, despite the fact that he had loved two women, Emilia and Elizabeth, since. So it was in a mood of introspection and soul searching that John Rawlings left Drury Lane that night.

The crowd outside jostled for chairs and hackneys and so it was in this melee that the Apothecary found himself pushed against someone and turned to apologise to them.

“Why, it’s Mr. Rawlings,” said a familiar voice, and John saw that Digby Turnbull stood bowing before him.

“Mr. Turnbull, how very nice to meet you again. Were you in the audience? Did you see Aminta?”

“Not only that. I have called on her and suggested that as I was so devoted to her mother and have no family of my own, I might act as an honorary uncle.”