The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  The day’s proceedings had begun with a protest from that ass Owen Williams, demanding to make a statement against the Solicitor-General, Clarke, who, says Williams, had accused him of an “abominable crime – of sacrificing an innocent man”. Coleridge couldn’t remember what exact words had been used, but told Williams that counsel could say what they dam’ well liked in Court, and would Williams kindly keep quiet and give him, Coleridge, some judging-room, or words to that effect. After which Williams presumably retired, gnashing, and Coleridge addressed the twelve good men and true.

  It must have been a sight to see, for he apparently played the wise, simple old codger, peering over his glasses while he told the jury what brilliant chaps Clarke and Russell and Asquith were: he didn’t say they were too clever by half, exactly, but he thought it no bad thing that “the humble jog-trot” of his summing-up should intervene between their fireworks and the verdict.

  Having put the wigged brigade in their place, he told the jury something that was news to me: that cheating at cards was an offence for which you could be nailed in court. He then went on to remind them that Clarke had said Cumming wasn’t interested in soaking his accusers; they would bear that in mind if the question of damages arose. (A hundred to eight he’ll tell ’em to find for Cumming, thinks I.) And another thing: whether they disapproved of gambling or not was beside the point, which was simply this: did Cumming cheat or not?

  He rambled on, fairly reasonably it seemed to me, about the actual play, and the witnesses’ testimony, and caused some mirth by describing Cumming’s system of betting as sounding like “coup d’état”. Well, he knew it couldn’t be coup d’état, but it was some French expression or other … oh, coup de trois, was it? Ah, well … On he went, honest old Coleridge, as gentle and benign as could be, drawing the jury’s attention to various points, reminding them that it didn’t matter a hoot what he thought, it was up to them, and all he could do was raise questions for them, which they must answer. Only once did he rouse himself, to have a brief bicker with Clarke for seeming to turn up his nose at the social standing of some of the accusers. It wasn’t Lycett Green’s fault that his father was an engineer, was it? And if young Jack Wilson was a shiftless layabout, what was wrong with that? And if the Wilsons toad-ate the Prince, why, who did not?

  Clarke said he hadn’t called Lycett Green’s father an engineer, and Coleridge said, well, if he hadn’t, his junior had. No he hadn’t, either, says Clarke, but Coleridge ignored him and said he didn’t see why a chap should be laughed at because his father was an engineer, and if a chap liked hobnobbing with the Prince, where was the harm, eh? It wouldn’t prejudice him against Gordon-Cumming, anyway, and that was the point.

  Furthermore, this stuff about Gordon-Cumming losing his head didn’t impress the bench. Cumming had had lots of time to think before he signed the paper, and knew what he was doing. He hadn’t asked to be confronted by his accusers, either; pretty rum, that seemed to Coleridge. And he hadn’t returned his winnings – put ’em in the bank, 238 quids’ worth. Well, well …

  Having read this far, I felt the odds were shifting in the direction of the defendants, but you still couldn’t tell. Then the silly old buffer got on to a new tack: the Prince of Wales. Well, Coleridge couldn’t see the throne toppling simply because the Prince had played baccarat. The Prince had a busy public life, opening things and making speeches and listening to speeches, and a hell of a bore it must be, in Coleridge’s view, so if he wanted to enjoy himself of an evening, why not? Some people might say why not read the Bible instead of playing baccarat, but it was a free country, wasn’t it?

  Sound stuff, in its way, interspersed with quotations from Shakespeare (including a bit of Henry V at Agincourt on the subject of honour), and other authors with whom he didn’t doubt the jury were familiar, and a few Latin tags to remind them that this was serious work – and then, at the end of his summing-up, when they must have been sitting in a restful fog, he left off playing the genial philosophising old buffer and delivered the thrust that settled the case once and for all.

  Would an innocent man, he wondered, sign a document stating he had cheated, simply to prevent its being known that the Prince of Wales had played baccarat? Would a man allow himself to be called a card-sharp rather than have it known that the Prince had done something of which many people might disapprove? No, Coleridge couldn’t swallow that.

  The jury retired … and that, blast it, was as far as the report went, so I set off for home, and it was in the gentle even-fall that I came on a newsboy hollering “Verdict!” on the corner of Bruton Street, and there it was in the stop press: the jury had taken only thirteen minutes to find for the defendants.

  So that was Cumming ruined. The twelve good men had declared him a cheat and a liar.

  I confess it took me aback – splendid news though it was. How the devil had a jury of Englishmen, brought up to give a man the benefit of the doubt, come to that conclusion? Still, they’d been in court, and I had not – and they’d reached their decision double quick, hadn’t they just, in hardly more time than it would take to call for votes round the table. No doubts, apparently, and certainly no arguments.

  Strangely, where opinion had been evenly divided before, it swung violently to Cumming after the verdict. One learned journal opined that you wouldn’t have hung a dog on the evidence that he’d cheated, and I heard it said on every side that the thing should never have come to trial at all: it should have been settled at Tranby, and would have been but for ill-advised zeal on the part of the Prince’s friends to save him from scandal.

  The irony was that in spite of all the reverential treatment and may-it-please-your-royal-highnessing he’d received in court, the trial did Bertie more damage than any other incident in his well-spotted career. The press, as I’ve said, damned him from Belgrade to breakfast, and when he issued a statement (with the blessing, they say, of the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury) protesting that he had a horror of gambling, and did his utmost to discourage it, he was seen for the windy little hypocrite he was, and hooted in the streets.

  Cumming was finished socially and professionally, of course, and had the sense to resign, marry his American girl, and retire to Scotland; if I knew him at all, any shame he felt would be nothing to his rage against the society that had branded him, and the prince who’d betrayed him, and I dare say he’s brooding in his Highland fastness this minute, armoured in righteous wrath, despising the world that cast him out. Small wonder, for I can tell you now, at the end of my little tale … Gordon-Cumming was railroaded. He didn’t cheat at baccarat.

  I learned this within twenty-four hours of the verdict, but there was nothing to be done, even if I’d wanted to. No one would have credited the truth for a moment; I didn’t myself, at first, for it beggared belief. But there can be no doubt about it, for it fits exactly with the evidence of both sides, and the source is unimpeachable – I’ve lived with her seventy years, after all, and know that while she may suppress a little veri and suggest a touch of falsi on occasion, Elspeth ain’t a liar.

  We were at breakfast, which for me in my indulgent age was Russian style (sausage, brandy, and coffee) and for her the fodder of her native heath: porridge, ham, eggs, black pudding, some piscine abomination called Arbroath smokies, oatcakes, rolls, and marmalade (God knows how she’s kept her figure), while we read the morning journals. Usually she reads and prattles together, but that morning she was silent, absorbing the Cumming debacle. When she’d laid her eye-glasses aside she sat for a while, stirring her tea in a thoughtful, contented manner.

  “Rum business, that,” says I. “D’ye know, old girl, it’s beyond me. Granted he’s a poisonous tick … I still can’t believe he cheated.”

  “Neither he did,” says she.

  “What’s that? Oh, I see … you don’t think it likely, either. Well, I don’t suppose we’ll ever know for certain, but –”

  “Oh, but I do know,” says she, laying down her spoon. “
He did not cheat at all. Well, I think not, on the first night, and I know he did not, on the second.” She sipped her tea, while I choked on my brandy.

  “What d’you mean – you know? You don’t know a thing about it! Why, when I asked you, that night at Tranby … remember, whether he’d been jockeying his stakes, you didn’t know what I meant, even!”

  “I knew perfectly well what you meant, but it would not have been prudent to say anything just then. It would not have suited,” says she calmly, “at all.”

  “You mean … you’re saying you knew then he hadn’t cheated?” In my agitation I overset my cup, coffee all over the shop. “But … how could you possibly … what the blazes are you talking about?”

  “There is no need to fly at me, or take that crabbit tone,” says she, rising swiftly. “Quick, put a plate under the cloth before it stains the table! Drat, such a mess! Here, let me ’tend to it, and you ring for Jane … oh, the best walnut!”

  “Damn Jane and the walnut! Will you tell me what you mean!” She had the cloth back, clucking and mopping the table with a napkin. “Elspeth! What’s this rot about Cumming not cheating? How do you know, dammit?”

  “It’s a mercy your cup had gone cold … oh, how vexing! It’ll have to be French polished.” She peered at the wood. “Oh, dear, why did I not wait till you were settled – guid kens I should know by now what you’re like in the morning.” She discarded the napkin with dainty distaste and resumed her seat. “Sir William Gordon-Cumming did not cheat. That is what I mean.” She sighed, in a Patient Griselda sort of way. “The fact is, you see … I did.”

  Lord knows what I looked like in that moment, a cod on a slab likely. She lifted a swift warning finger.

  “Now, please, my love, do not raise your voice, or rage at me. It’s done, and there is no undoing it, and the servants would hear. If you are angry, I’m sorry, but if you’ll just bide quiet and hear me out, you may not be too angry, I hope.” She smiled at me as though I were an infant drooling in my crib, and took a sip of tea.

  “Now, then. It was I who added counters to his stakes, just once or twice, and not nearly as often as they said – why, I was quite shocked when I read in the papers last week, the kind of evidence they were giving, even Mrs Wilson – dear me, if there had been that much hankey-pankey with the counters the whole world must have seen, the Prince and everyone! The way folk deceive themselves! But I suppose,” she shrugged, “that the General Solicitor or whatever they call him was right, and they saw what they wanted to see … only they didn’t, if you know what I mean, for it wasn’t Billy Cumming cheating, it was me … or should it be I? Anyway, I only did it now and then … well, three or four times, perhaps, I’m not sure, but often enough to make them think he was cheating, I’m glad to say,” she added complacently. “And you should not be angry, I think, because he deserved it, and I was right.”

  It’s hard, when your life has contained as many hellish surprises as mine, to put ’em in order of disturbance – Gul Shah appearing in that Afghan dungeon, Cleonie whipping off her eye-patch, meeting Bismarck in his nightmare castle, waking to find myself trussed over a gun muzzle at Gwalior, and any number of equally beastly shocks, but I’ve never been more thoroughly winded than by those incredible words across the breakfast dishes on Wednesday, June 10th, 1891 … from Elspeth of all people! For a moment I wondered if she was making a ghastly joke, or if that pea-brain had given way at last … but no, I knew her artless prattle too well, and that she meant every damned word and there was no point in bellowing disbelief. I forced myself to be calm and sit mum while I downed my brandy and poured another stiff ’un before demanding, no doubt in an incredulous croak:

  “You’re telling me that he didn’t cheat … but you did – and that you were laying a plant on him?” Seeing her bewildered, I translated: “Making him look guilty, dammit! For the love of God, woman – why?”

  Her eyes widened. “Why, to punish him! To pay him out for his bad conduct! His … his black wickedness!” All of a sudden she was breathing fiery indignation, Boadicea in a lace dressing-gown. “And so I did, and now he is disgraced, and a pariah and a hissing, and serve him right! He should be torn by wild horses, so he should! He is a base, horrid man, and I hope he suffers as he deserves!” She began to butter toast ferociously, while I sat stricken, wondering what the devil he’d done, horrid suspicions leaping to mind, but before I could voice them she gave one of her wordless Caledonian exclamations of impatience, left off buttering, tossed her head, and regained her composure.

  “Oh, feegh! Harry, I beg your pardon, getting het-up in that unseemly way … oh, but when I think of him …” She took a deep breath, and spooned marmalade on to her plate. “But it’s by with now, thank goodness, and he’s paid for a villain, de’il mend him, and I’m the happy woman that’s done it, for I never thought to have the chance, and long I bided, waiting the day.” As always when deeply moved she was getting Scotcher by the minute, but now she paused for a mouthful of toast. “And then, at Tranby, when I heard that Wilson loon whispering to his friend, and understood what was what, I soon saw in a blink how I might settle his hash for him, once for all. And I did that!” says she, taking a grim nibble. “Oh, if only I could make marmalade like Granny Morrison’s … there’s no right flavour to this bought stuff. Would you oblige me with the honey, dearest?”

  I shoved it across in a daze. The enormity, the impossibility of what she said she’d done, her fury against Cumming for heaven knew what unimaginable reason – I still couldn’t take it in, but I knew that if you’re to get sense out of Elspeth you must let her babble to a finish in her own weird way, giving what assistance you may. I clutched at the nearest straw.

  “What did Wilson whisper? To whom? When?”

  “Why, on the first night, when the Prince said ‘Who’s for baccarat, everyone?’ and they went to play in the smoking-room, and Count Lutzow and I and Miss Naylor and Lady Brougham went to watch.” She frowned at the honey. “Is it very fattening, do you suppose? Oh, well … So the Prince said ‘Shall you and I make a jolly bank together, Lady Flashman?’ but I said I did not know the rules and must watch till I got the hang of it, and then I should be honoured to help him, and he said, quite jocose, ‘Ah, well, one of these days, then’, and Count Lutzow found me a chair next to that young fellow with the poker up his back, like all the Guardees, what’s his name –?”

  “Berkeley Levett, you mean? Elspeth, for mercy’s sake –”

  “Like enough … he might have been Berkeley Square for all the sense I could get from him … so then they played, and after a wee while, the Wilson boy – the one they call Jack, though his name is Arthur, I think, or is it Stanley? – anyway, I heard him whisper to Levett, ‘I say, this is a bit hot!’ which I thought odd, when it wasn’t at all, I was quite chilly away from the fire, and without my shawl … but a moment later I saw he meant something quite otherwise, for he whispered again, that the man next to him was cheating – and I saw he meant Billy Cumming … Harry, dear, would you ring for hot water? The pot has gone quite cold – I’m sure they don’t make delft as they used to, or perhaps the cosy is getting thin – they stuff them with anything at all these days, we always had a good thick woollen one at home that Grizel knitted, but they do tend to smell rather, after a while …”

  Husbands tend to lose their reason rather, after a while, too, so lest you should suffer likewise I’ll relieve her account with a précis: she had heard Levett say Wilson must be mistaken, and Wilson had told him to look for himself. Lady Flashman, scenting mischief breast-high, had also fixed her bonny blue gimlets on the suspect, seen him drop red counters on his paper after coups had been called, and heard Levett mutter, ‘By jove, it is too hot!’ – but unlike the two young men she had concluded that Cumming was playing fair. Simple she may be, but she has her country’s instinct for anything to do with money and sharp practice, and her unerring eye had spotted what they had missed …

  “For I was positive, Harry, that he
did not drop his counters until after the Prince had paid the wagers, and what he was doing was laying his wager for the next coup. Well,” says she earnestly, “that was not cheating, was it? But they thought it was, you see. They did not understand that he was playing that French system of his, the coup de thingamabob which was mentioned in court last week – I did not understand it myself till I read about it in the papers and realised he was telling the truth when he said he did not cheat. But at the time, of course, I did not know about the French coup thing … and while I did not think he was cheating, how could I be sure, when they thought he was, and I supposed they knew more about the game than I did? In any event,” she concluded cheerfully, “it did not signify whether he had cheated or not, so long as they thought he did. Do you see, my love?”

  Heaven forfend that I should ever fail to grasp something that was clear to her, but as I gazed into those forget-me-not eyes fixed so eagerly on mine I had to confess myself somewhat buffaloed, and begged her to continue, which she did at length, and gradually light began to dawn. Later that night, after the game, Count Lutzow (the cabbage-eating poont-fancier whom she fleeced at backgammon two nights later) had come to her like Rumour painted full of tongues, with news that a scandalous crisis was at hand: Sir William Gordon-Cumming had been seen cheating, and watch was to be kept on him the following night. How Lutzow had heard this, God alone knows, for according to what was said in court young Wilson had confided his suspicions to no one on the Monday night except Levett and, later, his mother: but there you are, Lutzow had got wind of it somehow. Sly bastards, these squareheads. Of course, he swore dear Lady Flashman to silence …

  I could hold in no longer. “But dammit all, girl, why didn’t you say something then? You believed he hadn’t cheated, and that Wilson and Levett were mistaken … and yet you let ’em lay a trap for him on the following night – for that’s what it was –”