‘Skavadale isn’t godly at all,’ Sandman said, and he remembered the Earl of Avebury describing how his wife had blackmailed young men about town. Had Skavadale been blackmailed by the Countess? Skavadale was famously short of money and his father’s estates were evidently mortgaged to the hilt, yet Skavadale had managed to become betrothed to the wealthiest heiress in England and if he had been ploughing the Countess of Avebury’s furrow she would surely have found him a ripe target for blackmail. His family might have lost most of its fortune, but there would be some funds left and there would be porcelain, silver and paintings that could be sold; more than enough to keep the Countess content.
‘You’re mystifying me,’ Eleanor complained.
‘I think the Marquess of Skavadale is my murderer,’ Sandman said, ‘either him or one of his friends.’ If Sandman had been forced to put money on the murderer’s identity he would have chosen Lord Robin Holloway rather than the Marquess, but he was quite certain it was one of them.
‘So you don’t need to know what Lizzie discovered?’ Eleanor asked, disappointed.
‘Your maid? Of course I want to know. I need to know.’
‘Meg wasn’t very popular with the other servants. They thought she was a witch.’
‘She looks like one,’ Sandman said.
‘You’ve already found her?’ Eleanor asked, excited.
‘No, I saw a portrait.’
‘Everyone seems to sit these days,’ Eleanor said.
‘This portrait.’ Sandman pulled the drawing from inside his coat and showed it to Eleanor.
‘Rider, you don’t think she’s the pig-faced woman, do you?’ Eleanor asked. ‘No, she can’t be, she has no whiskers.’ She sighed. ‘Poor girl, to be so ugly.’ She stared at the drawing for a long while, then rolled it up and pushed it back to Sandman. ‘What was I saying? Oh yes, Lizzie discovered that Meg was carried away from the Countess’s town house by a carriage, a very smart carriage that was either black or dark blue, and with a strange coat-of-arms painted on its door. It wasn’t a complete coat-of-arms, just a shield showing a red field decorated with a golden angel.’ Eleanor crumbled a brandy snap. ‘I asked Hammond if he knew of that shield and he became very refined. “A field gules, Miss Forrest,” he insisted to me, “with an angel or”, but astonishingly he didn’t know who it belonged to and consequently he was most upset.’
Sandman smiled at the thought of Sir Henry Forrest’s butler being unable to identify a coat-of-arms. ‘He shouldn’t feel upset,’ Sandman said, ‘because I doubt the College of Arms issued that device. It’s the badge of the Seraphim Club.’
Eleanor grimaced, remembering what Sandman had told her and her father earlier in the week, though in truth Sandman had not revealed all he knew about the Seraphim. ‘And the Marquess of Skavadale,’ she said quietly, ‘is a member of the Seraphim Club?’
‘He is,’ Sandman confirmed.
She frowned. ‘So he’s your murderer? It’s that easy?’
‘The members of the Seraphim Club,’ Sandman said, ‘consider themselves beyond the law. They believe their rank, their money and their privilege will keep them safe. And quite possibly they’re right, unless I can find Meg.’
‘If Meg lives,’ Eleanor said quietly.
‘If Meg lives,’ Sandman agreed.
Eleanor stared at Sandman and her eyes seemed bright and big. ‘I feel rather selfish now,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Worrying about my small problems when you have a murderer to find.’
‘Your problems are small?’ Sandman asked with a smile.
Eleanor did not return the smile. ‘I am not willing, Rider,’ she said, ‘to give you up. I tried.’
He knew how much effort it had taken for her to say those words and so he reached for her hand and kissed her fingers. ‘I have never given you up,’ he said, ‘and next week I shall talk to your father again.’
‘And if he says no?’ She clutched his fingers.
‘Then we shall go to Scotland,’ Sandman said. ‘We shall go to Scotland.’
Eleanor held tight to his hand. She smiled. ‘Rider? My prudent, well-behaved, honourable Rider? You would elope?’
He returned the smile. ‘Of late, my dear,’ he said, ‘I have been thinking about that afternoon and evening I spent on the ridge at Waterloo and I remember making a decision there, and it’s a decision I am constantly in danger of forgetting. If I survived that day, I promised myself, then I would not die with regrets. I would not die with wishes, dreams and desires unfulfilled. So yes, if your father refuses to let us marry, then I shall take you to Scotland and let the devil take the hindmost.’
‘Because I am your wish, dream and desire?’ Eleanor asked with tears in her eyes and a smile on her face.
‘Because you are all of those things,’ Sandman said, ‘and I love you besides.’
And Sergeant Berrigan, dripping with rainwater and grinning with delight at discovering Sandman at so delicate a moment, was suddenly standing beside them.
The Sergeant began to whistle ‘Spanish Ladies’ as they climbed Hay Hill towards Old Bond Street. It was a cheerful whistle, one that proclaimed that he was not at all interested in what he had just seen, and a well-judged whistle that, in the army, would have been recognised as entirely insubordinate, but quite unpunishable. Sandman, still limping, laughed. ‘I was once engaged to Miss Forrest, Sergeant.’
‘German coach there, Captain, see it? Heavy bloody thing.’ Berrigan still pretended to be uninterested, pointing instead at a massive carriage that was sliding dangerously on the hill’s rain-slicked cobbles. The coachman was hauling on the brake, the horses were skittering nervously, but then the wheels struck the kerb and steadied the vehicle. ‘Shouldn’t be allowed,’ Berrigan said, ‘foreign bloody coaches cracking up our roads. They should tax the buggers blind or else send them back across the bloody Channel where they belong.’
‘And Miss Forrest broke off the engagement because her parents did not want her to marry a pauper,’ Sandman said, ‘so now, Sergeant, you know all.’
‘Didn’t look much like a broken bloody engagement to me, sir. Staring into your eyes like the sun, moon and sparkles were trapped there.’
‘Yes, well. Life is complicated.’
‘I hadn’t noticed,’ Berrigan said sarcastically. He grimaced at the weather, though the rain was now spitting rather than cascading. ‘And talking of complications,’ he went on, ‘Mister Sebastian Witherspoon was not a happy man. Not a happy man at all. In fact, if I was to be accurate, he was bloody annoyed.’
‘Ah! He has adduced that I am not behaving as he expected?’
‘He wanted to know what you were bloody up to, Captain, so I said I didn’t know.’
‘He surely refused to accept that assurance?’
‘He could do what he bloody liked, Captain, but I told him yes sir, no sir, I don’t know a blessed thing sir, up your back alley, sir, and go to hell, sir, but all of it in a deeply respectful manner.’
‘You behaved, in other words, like a sergeant?’ Sandman asked, and laughed again. He remembered that subservient insolence from his own sergeants; an apparent cooperation masking a deep intransigence. ‘But did he tell you where the Home Secretary will be on Sunday?’
‘His lordship won’t be at his home, Captain, on account that the builders are putting in a new staircase in his house which they promised to have finished last May and which they ain’t even painted yet, so his lordship is borrowing a house in Great George Street. Mister Witherspoon said he hopes he don’t see you any day soon and, anyway, his lordship won’t thank you for disturbing him on Sunday on account that his lordship is of the Godly persuasion, and anyway Mister Witherspoon, like his holy lordship, trusts that the bloody pixie is hanged by his bloody neck till he’s bloody well dead like what he bloody deserves to be.’
‘I’m sure he didn’t say the last.’
‘Not quite,’ Berrigan admitted cheerfully, ‘but I did, and Mister Withersp
oon began to think well of me. Another few minutes and he’d have given you the butt end and made me the Investigator instead.’
‘God help Corday then, eh?’
‘The little bugger would go to the gallows so bleeding fast that his twinkle toes wouldn’t touch the ground,’ Berrigan said happily. ‘So where are we going now?’
‘We’re going to see Sir George Phillips, because I want to know if he can tell me exactly who commissioned the Countess’s portrait. Know that man’s name, Sergeant, and we have our murderer.’
‘You hope,’ Berrigan said dubiously.
‘Miss Hood is also at Sir George’s studio. She models for him.’
‘Ah!’ Berrigan cheered up.
‘And even if Sir George won’t tell us, then I’ve also learnt that my one witness was carried away in the Seraphim Club’s carriage.’
‘One of their carriages,’ Berrigan corrected him, ‘they have two.’
‘So I assume one of the club’s coachmen can tell us where they took her.’
‘I imagine they might,’ Berrigan said, ‘though they might need some persuading.’
‘A pleasing prospect,’ Sandman said, arriving at the door beside the jeweller’s shop. He knocked and, as before, the door was answered by Sammy, the black page, who immediately tried to shut it. Sandman bulled his way through. ‘Tell Sir George,’ he said imperiously, ‘that Captain Rider Sandman and Sergeant Samuel Berrigan have come to talk to him.’
‘He don’t want to talk to you,’ Sammy said.
‘Go and tell him, child!’ Sandman insisted.
Instead Sammy made an ill-judged attempt to dodge past Sandman into the street, only to be caught by Sergeant Berrigan, who lifted the lad and slammed him against the door post. ‘Where were you going, boy?’ Berrigan demanded.
‘Why don’t you fake off?’ Sammy said defiantly, then yelped. ‘I wasn’t going anywhere!’ Berrigan drew back his fist again. ‘He told me if you was to come again,’ Sammy said hastily, ‘I was to go and fetch help.’
‘From the Seraphim Club?’ Sandman guessed, and the boy nodded. ‘Hold onto him, Sergeant,’ Sandman said, then began climbing the stairs. ‘Fee, fi, fo, fum!’ he chanted at the top of his voice, ‘I smell the blood of an Englishman!’ He was making the noise to warn Sally so that Sergeant Berrigan would not see her naked. Sandman had no doubt that Berrigan would be getting that treat very soon, but Sandman also had no doubt that Sally would want to decide when that would be. ‘Sir George!’ he bellowed. ‘Are you there?’
‘Who the devil is it?’ Sir George shouted. ‘Sammy?’
‘Sammy’s a prisoner,’ Sandman shouted.
‘God’s bollocks! It’s you?’ Sir George, for a fat man, moved with remarkable speed, going to a cupboard from which he took a long-barrelled pistol. He ran with it to the head of the stairs and pointed it down at Sandman. ‘No further, Captain, on pain of your life!’ he growled.
Sandman glanced at the pistol and kept on climbing. ‘Don’t be such a bloody fool,’ he said tiredly. ‘Shoot me, Sir George, and you’ll have to shoot Sergeant Berrigan, then you’ll have to keep Sally quiet and that means shooting her, so then you’ll have three corpses on your hands.’ He climbed the last few steps and, without any fuss, took the pistol from the painter’s hand. ‘It’s always best to cock weapons if you want to look really threatening,’ he added, then turned and nodded at Berrigan. ‘Allow me to introduce Sergeant Berrigan, late of the First Foot Guards, then of the Seraphim Club, but now a volunteer in my army of righteousness.’ Sandman saw, with relief, that Sally had received enough warning to pull on a coat. He took off his hat and bowed to her. ‘Miss Hood, my respects.’
‘You’re still limping, then?’ Sally asked, then blushed as Sergeant Berrigan arrived.
‘He’s bleeding hurting me!’ Sammy complained.
‘I’ll bleeding kill you if you don’t shut up,’ Berrigan growled, then he nodded to Sally. ‘Miss Hood,’ he said, then he saw the canvas and his eyes widened in admiration and Sally blushed even deeper.
‘You can put Sammy down,’ Sandman said to Berrigan, ‘because he won’t go for help.’
‘He’ll do what I tell him!’ Sir George said belligerently.
Sandman crossed to the painting and stared at the central figure of Nelson, and thought that since the admiral’s death the painters and engravers had been making the hero ever more frail so that he was now almost a spectral figure. ‘If you tell Sammy to go for help, Sir George,’ he said, ‘then I shall spread it abroad that your studio deceives women, that you paint them clothed and, when they are gone, you turn them into nudes.’ He turned and smiled at the painter. ‘What will that do to your prices?’
‘Double them!’ Sir George said defiantly, then he saw that Sandman’s threat was real and he seemed to deflate like a pricked bladder. He flapped a paint-stained hand at Sammy. ‘You’re not going anywhere, Sammy.’
Berrigan put the boy down. ‘You can make some tea instead,’ Sandman said.
‘I’ll help you, Sammy,’ Sally said, and followed the boy down the stairs. Sandman suspected she was going to get dressed.
Sandman turned to Sir George. ‘You’re an old man, Sir George, you’re fat and you’re a drunkard. Your hand shakes. You can still paint, but for how long? You’re living off your reputation now, but I can ruin that. I can make quite certain that men like Sir Henry Forrest never hire you again to paint their wives or daughters for fear of you doing to them what you would have done to the Countess of Avebury.’
‘I would never do that to …’ Sir George began.
‘Be quiet,’ Sandman said. ‘And I can put in my report to the Home Secretary that you have deliberately hidden the truth.’ That, in reality, was a much lesser threat, but Sir George did not know it. He only feared prosecution, the dock and jail. Or maybe he saw transportation to Australia, for he began to shudder in unfeigned terror. ‘I know you lied,’ Sandman said, ‘so now you will tell me the truth.’
‘And if I do?’
‘Then Sergeant Berrigan and I will tell no one. Why should we care what happens to you? I know you didn’t murder the Countess and that’s the only person I’m interested in. So tell us the truth, Sir George, and we shall leave you in peace.’
Sir George sank onto a stool. The apprentices and the two men portraying Nelson and Neptune gazed at him until he snarled at them to go downstairs. Only when they were gone did he look at Sandman. ‘The Seraphim Club commissioned the painting.’
‘I know that.’ Sandman walked to the back of the studio, past the table heaped with rags, brushes and jars. He was looking for Eleanor’s portrait, but he could not see it. He turned back. ‘What I want to know, Sir George, is who in the club commissioned it.’
‘I don’t know. Really! I don’t know!’ He was pleading, his fear almost tangible. ‘There were ten or eleven of them, I can’t remember.’
‘Ten or eleven of them?’
‘Sitting at a table,’ Sir George said, ‘like the Last Supper, only without Christ. They said they were having the painting done for their gallery and they promised me there’d be others.’
‘Other paintings?’
‘Of titled women, Captain, naked.’ Sir George snarled the last word. ‘She was their trophy. They explained it to me. If more than three members of the club had swived a woman then she could be hung in their gallery.’
Sandman glanced at Berrigan, who shrugged. ‘Sounds likely,’ the Sergeant said.
‘They have a gallery?’
‘Corridor upstairs,’ Berrigan said, ‘but they’ve only just started hanging paintings up there.’
‘The Marquess of Skavadale was one of the eleven?’ Sandman asked Sir George.
‘Ten or eleven,’ Sir George sounded irritated that he had to correct Sandman, ‘and yes, Skavadale was one. Lord Pellmore was another. I remember Sir John Lassiter, but I didn’t know most of them.’
‘They didn’t introduce themselves?’
‘No.’ Sir Geo
rge made the denial defiantly because it confirmed that he had been treated by the Seraphim Club as a tradesman, not as a gentleman.
‘I think it likely,’ Sandman said quietly, ‘that one of those ten or eleven men is the murderer of the Countess.’ He looked at Sir George quizzically, as though expecting that statement to be confirmed.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Sir George said.
‘But you must have suspected that Charles Corday did not commit the murder?’
‘Little Charlie?’ For a moment Sir George looked amused, then he saw the anger on Sandman’s face and shrugged. ‘It seemed unlikely,’ he admitted.
‘Yet you did not appeal for him? You did not sign his mother’s petition? You did nothing to help.’
‘He was tried, wasn’t he?’ Sir George said. ‘He received justice.’
‘I doubt that,’ Sandman said bitterly, ‘I doubt that very much.’
Sandman lifted the frizzen of the pistol he had taken from Sir George and saw that it was not primed. ‘You have powder and bullets?’ he asked, and then, when he saw the fear on the painter’s face, he scowled. ‘I’m not going to shoot you, you fool! The powder and bullets are for other people, not you.’
‘In that cupboard.’ Sir George nodded across the room.
Sandman opened the door and discovered a small arsenal, most of it, he supposed, for use in paintings. There were naval and army swords, pistols, muskets and a cartridge box. He tossed a cavalry pistol to Berrigan, then took a handful of the cartridges and pushed them into a pocket before stooping to pick up a knife. ‘You’ve wasted my time,’ he told Sir George. ‘You’ve lied to me, you’ve inconvenienced me.’ He carried the knife back across the room and saw the terror on Sir George’s face. ‘Sally!’ Sandman shouted.
‘I’m here!’ she called up the stairs.
‘How much does Sir George owe you?’
‘Two pounds and five shillings!’
‘Pay her,’ Sandman said.
‘You can’t expect me to carry cash on—’
‘Pay her!’ Sandman shouted, and Sir George almost fell off the stool.
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