Death on the Rocks (25 page)

‘That could belong to anybody. Are you sure, Sir?’

‘Positive. Now are you coming in or would you prefer the fresh air?’

As the air was rank with every kind of ghastly smell imaginable there was little choice. The two men made their way inside.

A heap of rags stirred itself behind a battered table. ‘Want a room?’ it said.

‘We are looking for Lady Tyninghame,’ John answered coolly. ‘Do you know if she has been brought here? Probably against her will.’

The rag bag, which turned out to be female, gave him a long, hard stare from eyes as black and as cold as a bird’s.

‘What name did you say?’

‘Tyninghame. She possibly arrived here under protest.’

The old woman shook her head. ‘Nobody come ’ere like that.’

‘Well who has come here then?’

‘Just a buttock and twang. ’E was black.’

The two men stared at one another. ‘Did he give a name?’

‘No, just the money. Names ain’t necessary in this establishment.’

‘Very well. May we book a room for an hour?’

The rag bag growled a laugh. ‘I’d never have taken you two for nans.’

John flapped his hand. ‘You can’t always tell a good quean, dearie.’

Irish Tom, in turn, did an extremely clumsy hip waggle and said, ‘Will you take me upstairs, Johnnie, me sweet boy?’

‘How much?’ John asked.

‘Two and sixpence.’

‘Expensive,’ he answered, handing over the cash.

They made their way up a dirty spiral staircase, quite large and showing evidence of former glory. John guessed that this neighbourhood had once known better days. Halfway up they paused, hearing voices coming from a room leading off the landing. Standing stock still in the dingy gloom they heard a woman say, ‘We’ve come a long way, you and I.’

A man’s voice, deep and mellow, answered, ‘I said once that I would give you anything in my power and I really meant it.’

‘You’ve proved that,’ she answered, and gave a laugh, the like of which John had not heard in a long time. It was harsh and cruel, a laugh that held in its depths a wealth of something – he searched for the word and came up with it. Evil.

‘Who is it?’ whispered Irish Tom, close to his ear.

‘Guess,’ John muttered back.

‘It can’t be …’

But a door had opened above them and a man’s figure, dressed in a flowing red robe, appeared.

‘Who’s down there?’ he called.

John put his finger to his lips as the two men froze. The man took a step forward. ‘Anybody there?’

But he got no further. A figure came hurling past him, screaming like one of the furies. It too was dressed in scarlet, and scantily at that. It flung itself at John, nails raking, lips pulled back like that of a snarling, savage dog. He saw a gob of spittle at the corner of her mouth, heard her scream, ‘You bastard, I always suspected that you were spying on me,’ before she clawed his face relentlessly.

He reeled back under the impact and would have fallen to the ground had not Irish Tom put out a strong arm and broken his fall. She was kicking and rending for all she was worth, but somehow John managed to get hold of her hair and pull her away from him.

She swung in the air as he lifted her off the ground.

Where was beauty now? To where had disappeared fragility and charm and delicacy? It was as if two entirely different women dwelt in the brain of Lady Tyninghame.

John could not resist asking her, ‘But why are you like this? What demon possesses you? Only this morning you were all sweetness and light. And now I come to think of it you were a bit
too
sweet when you told the mealy-mouthed story of your life. Tragic? I don’t imagine so.’

The face which he had admired so much for its fragile loveliness contorted to that of a gargoyle.

‘Put me down,’ she screamed. ‘You’re hurting me.’

John obliged and was rewarded for his pains by a cracking blow between the thighs. He doubled in agony.

Irish Tom, who had been brought up as one of nine children in the slums of Dublin, had had enough. He fetched a blow to Lady Tyninghame’s chin that must have reduced her world to spinning stars before she fell unconscious to the floor. It was only then that Samson – for it was he who lurked above in the red robe – had the courage to creep slowly down the stairs.

Tom turned on him angrily. ‘Look what you’ve done, you grinning fool. Your precious Lady Tyninghame is nothing more than a slut and the devil’s daughter. See what she’s inflicted on my master, damn her eyes.’

If he had expected a fight, Tom was proved wrong. Instead, Samson dropped to his knees and picked up the prostrate form of Violetta Tyninghame, cradling her in his arms and stroking her hair back from her face.

‘What have you done to her?’ he demanded, glaring at Tom over his shoulder. ‘She’s totally unconscious.’

‘I gave her a clout, that’s what. And I’ll give you one yourself if you don’t stop your moaning.’

This was the moment when the rag bag who had let them in climbed the rickety staircase and pointed a pistol at them.

‘Out, the lot of you. I don’t have brawlings on my premises. You, darkie, pick up your lady friend and get out. As for you, you Irish bog-lander, you can escort your molly-mop out and I never want to see your face again.’

Once outside Samson made a run for the coach but was stopped by Tom’s foot, John being in too much pain to do or say anything. With Lady Tyninghame just beginning to recover consciousness, Tom glared at Samson, who still held her in his arms.

‘Now come along the pair of you. I am making a citizen’s arrest and am taking you straight to the Constable of the Hotwell. You’ll travel in my coach and stare down the barrel of my pistol the entire journey. John, you drive.’

In pain though he was, there was something reassuring about sitting on the coachman’s box and driving along beside the docks and eventually the River Avon. The tide was just coming in and the ships were beginning to feel the swell of it, rising off the mud and starting to bob at its pull.

John thought that maybe Violetta Tyninghame had a condition whereby she could change her personality completely, a kind of splitting of the mind. As for Samson, he had more or less told his story. A little black boy, a sexually aware adolescent, an exciting lover. The rest they were yet to discover, as indeed they would, John thought, as he drove the coach to the front door of Gilbert Farr’s shop.

His pain gone – almost – he jumped down from the box and threw open the door. All was very much as he had left it. Irish Tom, who seemed to have grown another few inches since John last looked, was holding his pistol with a ‘one false move’ look on his face. Samson was holding Violetta in his arms, making soothing noises and stroking her hair. She had returned to her normal, somewhat sugar-sweet self, her eyes closed, her face serene. Looking at her, the Apothecary diagnosed a mental illness, recalling the clawing, spitting virago who had kicked him so viciously in his privy parts.

Ordering Tom to stay exactly as he was, John went in and fetched Gilbert Farr, who immediately handed the running of the shop over to his younger brother.

‘Did she admit to greasing the steps?’ Gilbert asked.

‘Not yet,’ John said.

‘But what was her motive for all this? Is she mad?’

‘Yes, Gilbert, it is my honest opinion that she has a mental affliction. And do you know something else?’

‘No, what?’

‘I don’t think she has any memory of it.’

‘You mean that she can commit murder and then, telling her truth, deny it?’

‘Precisely.’

Gilbert locked the prisoners in his compounding room with Tom and pistol to guard them. Then he sent a fast rider to fetch the Constable from Bristol, complete with his van for escorting prisoners. Two warders took away Lady Tyninghame, subdued now and playing the role of bewildered innocent; indeed so well was she acting that the two men from Bristol gaol hesitated about taking so great a lady into custody.

So it was from Samson that the bitter facts were revealed. As he told his story, weeping and shaking his head, John felt immense pity for the man, who had been duped and seduced at the age of fifteen.

‘She was always cuddling me when I was a child, saying I was her beloved black boy, the best boy in all the world. She wouldn’t let me go when I grew hair, Sirs, she kept me and went on holding me close, just like when I was a child. Then one day, I can remember it distinctly, my cock came up and she was excited. She took me to her bedchamber and told me what to do and I did it and she loved it, said I was largely made and the best she’d had.’

John and Gilbert looked at one another, not sure whether to laugh or weep.

‘But the master – the Marquis – found out and beat the living guts from my body and sent me away. Then he set about her.’

‘So was that true that he attacked her on her wedding night with his riding crop?’

‘No, Sir, it was when some little spying chambermaid reported the fact that I was in her bed every afternoon.’

‘I see,’ said Gilbert. ‘Please go on.’

‘Well, then she met Gussie Bagot and she really lost her heart and her decency.’

John raised one of his svelte eyebrows, but said nothing.

‘Well, they were always at it, day and night, couldn’t get enough of one another.’

‘But what about you?’ asked Gilbert.

‘I was allowed a crumb from the sliced cake. But very occasionally.’ Samson started to weep. ‘You see, I loved her with all my heart. There could never be another woman for me, not even when she betrayed me.’

‘So is the rest of the story true? Did she cross the Atlantic and go to Boston?’

‘In parts it’s true. But she went alone, there was no maid, and she did marry that poor old man she met.’

‘So she’s a bigamist.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Samson sadly. ‘But fortunately he died before she returned. And there’s one other thing.’

‘What?’

‘She couldn’t give that baby away fast enough. She hated him, and all that wild talk about loving her son is completely made up. She asked me to kill him when I hit him with a rock. But I hadn’t the heart, not even for her.’

Gilbert remarked quietly, ‘I pity you loving such a terrible creature. Life must have been a veritable torture.’

‘It was – is – like being utterly insane. Like being possessed by the devil. For that is what she could turn into in one of her lunatic rages.’

‘Did Lady Tyninghame put goose fat on the steep steps, and why? She must have known by this time that the man who claimed to be Augustus Bagot was nothing of the sort.’

‘Oh yes, she knew all right. But in her crazy mind he insulted the very memory of Gussie by being such an obnoxious and terrible creature. So, she thought, he must die for the impersonation.’

‘God’s breath, she was completely demented,’ John said. ‘But why turn against Julian Wychwood, whom she claimed to love so much?’

‘She considered that his very presence reminded her of the man she once loved.’ Samson put his head in his hands. ‘Oh God, I don’t know. She must have seen the world through the eyes of pure hatred.’

There was a profound silence, broken only by the sound of the wretched slave’s sobs.

‘Where is she now?’ John asked eventually.

‘On her way to Bristol prison.’

‘Then God have mercy on her.’

There was a sudden scuffle outside and Julian Wychwood thrust his way into the room with a small guard hanging onto his arm like a dog. For once the smooth seducer looked ruffled and slightly dishevelled, with an unbecoming bandage on his head.

‘What has happened to my mother?’ he asked, and John saw that not only was his forehead wet with sweat, but that there were tell-tale signs of dampness beneath his eyes.

‘She is on her way to Bristol.’

‘Why?’

‘Pending questioning by a magistrate.’

Julian thrust the guard to the floor with an impatient flick of his arm. ‘Then I must go after her. She will need my help.’ The guard, who turned out to be Gilbert’s brother, tried to scramble up, but Julian downed him once more with the toe of his boot. He looked round the room, gave a truncated bow, said, ‘Goodbye,’ and then he was off, and before either John or Gilbert could move they heard the sound of his horse’s feet on the cobbles outside.

‘Will he catch her up?’ John asked.

Gilbert shrugged his shoulders. ‘Possibly, but he’ll have to ride like a demon.’

Once Samson had broken down and told them the whole story of forbidden love and a woman with a diseased mind, he, too, had followed in her footsteps and been transported to the gaol. And then the two apothecaries were left, staring at one another.

‘I could do with a drink,’ said Gilbert.

‘Let me buy you one in The Bear. Irish Tom’s already gone there.’

They settled themselves with a pint of ale and sat in silence for a while. Then John said, ‘I can’t understand a mother not loving her child, can you?’

Gilbert answered, ‘I think the woman concerned cannot be judged by normal moral standards. She is a unique being. You have seen her in a blinding rage, Samson has confirmed that she is prone to them, but will a magistrate believe it? Just you wait and see. I’ll bet you a guinea that she gets off.’

‘But I will give evidence. And so can Tom.’

‘If you are even called to the hearing, my friend. There are wheels within wheels in Bristol.’

‘Meaning?’

‘That the name of Tyninghame still wields great power. It would not surprise me in the least if the Marquis would not want the whole thing hushed up.’

‘But why?’

‘He may have been made a cuckold, but to have had that inflicted on him by a black servant of fifteen years would be more than his dignity could allow.’

John was speechless. ‘I think things might be different if she came up before Sir John Fielding.’

Gilbert smiled enigmatically.

‘Just you wait and see.’

A mist crept up from the sea that night. It smoked softly along the River Avon and by the time it reached the Hotwell and, later, Bristol, it had turned into a thick, impenetrable mass. To the solitary figure waiting outside Bristol Gaol it did no favours. An occasional drop descended from the brim of his fashionable hat, and the horrible light thrown from the single lamp made his skin look jaundiced and ill. The man who was regarded by most as darkly handsome and sinisterly attractive looked both small and pathetic in those horrible circumstances. And if truth be told, that was exactly how he felt.