Murder in Park Lane
Page 29
Lavender nodded. Lady Tyndall’s case had never come to court. Following her arrest, her strong-minded, wealthy and influential nephew had stormed into Bow Street. He’d no intention of letting his aristocratic aunt swing on the gallows for the murder of David MacAdam. Once he learned that Lady Tyndall had confessed to being in love with a much younger man from a totally unsuitable background, he’d instructed her lawyers to have her declared insane. Lady Tyndall was whisked away, to live out her days in a remote but comfortable lunatic asylum.
‘It were like everyone thought her biggest crime weren’t the killin’ of MacAdam – but the lovin’ of him instead.’
‘It’s the world we live in,’ Lavender said sharply. ‘The justice system is designed to protect the wealthy and influential from the rest of us – not to punish them.’
‘You’re thinkin’ too much again, sir. It’ll end badly.’
Lavender shrugged. ‘Mind you, most of the witnesses for the case disappeared once the scandal erupted in the news-sheets. Mr Howard shut up his house in Bruton Street and took his granddaughters back to India. Even Lady Louisa Fitzgerald grabbed her hounds and retreated to the family estates in Ireland until the fuss died down. The only witnesses to Lady Tyndall’s confession who were left in London were Sir Richard and Mrs Palmer. The attention on them at a trial would have been intense and devastating. It was probably for the best she went to a secure asylum.’
‘Oh, a bit of pressure wouldn’t have done that wheedlin’ sawbones any harm,’ Woods said darkly. ‘What happened to that Bentley chap?’
‘He was transported to Botany Bay just after Christmas.’
‘Well, at least he got his just deserts.’
‘Yes. Ike Rawlings gave evidence at his trial. He recognised Bentley as the young man who’d brought that coffin to Chelmsford. Mrs MacAdam was with him in court – but she’s Mrs Rawlings now. She married him in the end.’
‘So that’s one happy endin’, at least.’
‘So it would seem.’
Young Rachel stepped forward to bat. Lavender noted with surprise that she was left-handed. She seemed so tiny next to the stumps with her eldest brother towering behind her at the wicket. Woods’ younger son, Dan, bowled – slightly softer than normal, Lavender thought. Rachel swung the bat with all her might and cracked it towards the far railings.
The ball flew like a pistol shot – and went straight through a ground-floor window of one of the houses opposite.
For a moment, the children froze like statues at the sound of the shattering glass. Then, as one, they turned on their heels and stampeded back across the grass towards Lavender, Woods and the house.
Woods held up his arms to stop them and hollered, ‘Whoa! Stop runnin’, you young scamps!’
The fleeing children braked to a halt just in front of them.
Woods lowered his voice. ‘It seems to me that a crime’s just been committed against the property of one of the neighbours.’ He nodded at Eddie and added quietly: ‘You should know better than to run, son.’
Eddie blushed.
Little Rachel’s freckled face puckered in anguish. ‘Will I go to gaol, Da?’ she asked.
Sebastián stepped forward and took the bat out of her hand. ‘I’ll take the blame,’ he announced.
Eddie scowled and blushed harder. ‘No, you won’t, you daft saphead.’ He took the bat from Sebastián. ‘She’s my sister. I’ll go and apologise and say I did it.’
‘Why don’t you all go?’ Woods suggested.
The children looked a bit alarmed but they turned and trooped back round to the other side of the square, dragging the bats and the stumps behind them. Lavender and Woods watched them with satisfaction. Sebastián ran alongside Eddie, still arguing about who was to take the blame for Rachel’s mishap.
‘See what I mean?’ Woods said. ‘All it takes is a word now and then and they work it out for themselves. Mind you, I hope you’ve got some money left in your pocketbook after payin’ for this fancy party. Since our sons are fightin’ amongst themselves for the privilege of havin’ their heads bitten off by your angry neighbour, I expect you to pay half for their new window.’
Lavender smiled. Our sons. He liked that. ‘Of course.’
‘And that’s another thing – don’t expect to retire from work a wealthy man. In fact, don’t expect to retire at all. The nippers cost us a fortune.’
‘I don’t know what I’d do without your pearls of wisdom, Ned.’
Woods gave him another sideways glance and grinned. ‘And I don’t either.’
Author’s Notes
I first came across the unusual effect corsets can have on stab victims while researching the assassination of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in 1898. This poor lady was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist while she walked with her lady-in-waiting to catch a steamboat on Lake Geneva. The Empress collapsed, was helped to her feet and walked another one hundred yards to the gangplank, where she boarded the steamer. Due to the pressure from her tight corseting, the haemorrhage of blood was slowed to mere drops. This confused her attendants, who didn’t realise she was fatally injured and were slow to seek medical help. The steamer left port and was part way across the lake before she lost consciousness and they realised that they needed to turn back.
When I read about Empress Elisabeth’s tragic death, I knew I’d discovered an unusual device I could use in my fiction. Fat Regency gentlemen (including the Prince Regent) often used male corsets so it didn’t take me long to change Empress Elisabeth into a man for the purposes of my plot.
As for the bigamy – well, I’ve had an unhealthy interest in the subject ever since I was accused of being a bigamist by my vicar.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Organising a wedding is a nerve-wracking business at the best of times. I was particularly nervous when Chris and I approached the vicar of my childhood church. I’d moved away from the family home and was no longer a member of the congregation but I wanted to get married there, surrounded by family and childhood friends. I expected a lot of questions from the vicar – but the last thing I expected was his outlandish accusation of bigamy.
Apparently, the vicar had recently married a young woman with the same surname as mine. She forgot to mention that she was already married to someone else. The vicar suffered several strained visits from the police after her crime came to light and he was determined never to go through that again. He was convinced I was the same woman – and that I’d brazenly returned with a different man to do it all over again.
To say I was distressed is an understatement. To say that this probably wasn’t the vicar’s finest moment either is also an understatement. Fortunately, after a phone call from my furious and indignant little mother, the situation was resolved. Chris and I eventually, and somewhat nervously, had our wedding in my childhood church on 23 May 1993.
It was an early indication that my own life would always be stranger than fiction.
I laugh about it now. But it’s not the kind of incident a girl easily forgets and it led to my lifelong fascination with bigamists. I read everything I could find about the subject.
Bigamy and marital desertion were rife in England during the nineteenth century. In one month alone in County Durham, half of all the court cases involved bigamists or men (and women) charged with abandoning their families. Both crimes were imprisonable offences but this didn’t deter desperate spouses trying to escape from an unhappy marriage. The historical past is not always a romantic place when we dig beneath the surface.
I made David MacAdam into a commercial traveller because his roaming made it easier for him to lead a double life. As most lovers of Regency fiction will be aware, women’s fashion of this era was highly ornate and dependent on a precise fit, so ready-to-wear garments for women weren’t widely available. However, the relatively simple, flattering cuts and muted tones of men’s fashion made proportionate sizing possible in mass production. By the late 1700s, Bristol, England was home t
o over 200 businesses that exported hats, gloves, drawers, pants, stockings, shirts, jackets, and footwear, mostly to the United States. My fictional character Saul Drachmann, with his catalogues, commercial travellers and ready-to-wear menswear, is an entrepreneur in an industry that rapidly expanded in Britain in the early years of the nineteenth century.
The excellent BBC TV series Taboo reignited my interest in the notorious East India Company and led to the creation of the exotic Howard family.
Unlike my last two novels, this book is not based on a true crime solved by the real-life Stephen Lavender; it’s all fiction.
Apart from Lavender and Magistrate Read, the only other real historical figure I alluded to in the novel was Doctor Willis, the famous physician of ‘Mad’ King George III. However, please note there’s no record of Willis ever having had a daughter; Lady Allison is also fictitious.
I would like to acknowledge the love, help and support given to me by The Historical (hysterical) Fictionnaires during the months I spent in my writing cave. I’m especially grateful to Jean Gill for her wonderful help with the ‘dog’ scene and Jane Harlond for her expert assistance with all things horsey and Spanish. I also value the help I received from Kristin Gleeson, Claire Stibbe and Babs Morton. Thanks, ladies.
Thanks must also go to the people of Puerto Rico in Gran Canaria, who for the second year on the trot provided me with a supportive and sunny writing retreat during the dreadful British winter. I would like to pay tribute to my wonderful cover designer, Lisa Horton, and the excellent editorial team at Thomas & Mercer.
Finally, to you, the reader, thank you for following this series to book five. I hope you enjoyed reading Murder in Park Lane as much as I enjoyed writing it. This linear structure, where Lavender and Woods move from one set of clues to another, made it far quicker and easier to write than my last two novels, with their complicated multi-stranded plots. The words flowed across the page like silk. I feel this book bears more in common with The Heiress of Linn Hagh than any of the others.
If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on Amazon.
Karen Charlton
www.karencharlton.com
14th October 2018
Marske-by-the Sea,
North Yorkshire
About the Author
Photo © 2014 Jean Gill
Karen Charlton writes historical mysteries and is also the author of a non-fiction genealogy book, Seeking Our Eagle. She has published short stories and numerous articles and reviews in newspapers and magazines. An English graduate and former teacher, Karen has led writing workshops and has spoken at a number of literary events across the north of England, where she lives. Karen now writes full-time.
A stalwart of the village pub quiz and a member of a winning team on the BBC quiz show Eggheads, Karen also enjoys the theatre and won a Yorkshire Tourist Board award for her Murder Mystery Weekends.
Find out more about Karen’s work at www.karencharlton.com.