The Cunning House

by Richard Marggraf Turley

  Wyre glanced at the magistrate. Surely, they weren’t going to let this go? “Would you say,” he cut in, “it was considered acceptable for a loaded weapon to be kept near the Duke’s person?”

  She gave a little shrug. “I’ve no idea. Mr Neale put it there.”

  “Why do you think he did that?”

  She gave Wyre a withering look. “I believe you know why. In case my husband ever tried to enter the room at night.”

  “Why didn’t your husband simply take the pistol down?” A lazy bluebottle landed on Wyre’s arm. Its weight shocked him.

  Her expression hardened. “Mr Paulet didn’t like it hanging there either, but Neale made it a principle. My husband was forced either to accept the slight or allow things to come to blows, and I expressly forbade that. Joseph would have lost his position, which was precisely what Neale intended.”

  “You must have noticed your husband wasn’t sleeping with you that night,” Read said. “According to the schedule, he wasn’t on call. Didn’t you wonder where he was? Or perhaps you already knew. Why don’t you explain his sleeping arrangements for Mr Wyre.”

  She smiled thinly. “Whenever my husband was on duty, he slept in the Valet’s Room. When he was on call, he slept in his private bedroom. Otherwise, he slept with me in the family apartment. The assault on the Duke of Cumberland took place on one of Joseph’s days off. And you’re quite right, Mr Read, normally, in those circumstances, my husband would have spent the night in my bed. However, that evening my youngest child was ill. Joseph agreed to move out so Frances, my maid, could sleep with me and help care for my daughter. It wasn’t planned. We decided on it that evening.”

  “What time did he leave you?” Read asked bluffly.

  “It couldn’t have been earlier than nine o’clock. My daughter was cross because her papa promised he’d read to her that night.” She stopped, her face suddenly destitute.

  “No mention of a trip to Windsor?” said Wyre.

  She gave him a look of puzzlement.

  “Who draws up the schedule of duty?”

  “That would be Neale.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Wyre said. “There are three valets, one of whom – ”

  “There are four valets,” Mrs Sellis interrupted. “If you count Mr Gew.”

  “Gew?” He frowned. It was the first time the name had come up.

  “A thin man, with a lean, chitty face. He was indentured to the Duke of York, but was always to be found with Paulet and Neale. The three were thick as thieves. Mr Gew even stood in for them on occasion. Strictly speaking, that wasn’t permitted.”

  Read was shaking his head. “Forget it, Wyre,” he said quietly. “The man she means was at the Palace barely more than a few months, and he left a week ago, well before the attack. We know all about him. If you must know, I have officers out looking for him concerning another matter. Petty theft. Articles belonging to the First Lady of the Duchess of York’s Chamber. Christ, these titles.”

  Wyre looked back at Mrs Sellis. He suddenly felt a pang of pity for this woman – vulnerable, adrift, prey to Mrs Varley’s rumour-mongering, to Paulet’s slip of the tongue (Mrs Sellis’s suspicions, sir . . . ). There was no love lost in this house. Still, the question had to be posed. This was a Royal inquest, after all.

  “Had you any cause to be angry with the Duke?”

  Read straightened.

  “None whatsoever.”

  “We’ve heard enough,” Read said, waving the valet’s wife forward. “If you’ve nothing to add, you may sign your affidavit.”

  Putting her name to it, she turned on her heel, her steps to the door small, deliberate.

  53. Gristle

  It was all too easy to imagine a dispassionate observer casting him mentally in the role of torturer. But the fact remained he was trying to cure this patient. This unspeakable monster.

  He’d heard of a sect of religious enthusiasts in St Petersburg who willingly practised emasculation on each other, equating the procedure with the purest form of knowledge. The ultimate stigmata of piety, or so they held, was the ‘great seal’, thus termed because removal of the penis, scrotum and testicles left a flat, disc-like scar. Devotees embarking on this path away from worldly corruption usually began with the ‘lesser seal’, where only the testicles were taken, allowing micturition to be accomplished with greater ease. Those electing for the great seal were obliged to squat to urinate, as women did.

  He’d read, too, of tribes in the Caribbean isles that practised mambo rites on kidnapped boys, which involved similar excisions, though perhaps these were mere sea-dog tales. The procedure in those dark places, he explained to the man strapped down to the wooden gurney, patting one of his shaved legs, was simplicity itself. (His eyes went to the end of the patient’s yard, where the veins were hard and clotted like knots along a length of string, a shibboleth of habitual onanism.) The operator, he continued, merely seized the parts to be removed with one hand, and struck them away with the other. A nail was inserted into the urethra, preventing strictures.

  In England, such things were conducted with rather more finesse. The surgeon made his incision a little above the place where he proposed to divide the spermatic cord, continuing down at an angle of thirty degrees. The hard matter was detached from the adjoining fat and a finger hooked beneath, allowing a ligature to be tied around the exposed cord, and pulled firmly. The loose scrotum could be removed with elliptical incisions, the edges brought together and sutured tightly. Not a speck of disease was left behind. Not a trace of corruption.

  The fingers of the strapped-down man tightened around the gurney-rail.

  Inexperienced surgeons, the medical man went on, were enjoined to take the utmost care in distinguishing between putrefying diseases of the yard and mere inconveniences such as warty excrescences. He knew of several lamentable cases where men’s yards had been needlessly removed.

  He offered his patient some brandy for the pain; the man drank greedily. The doctor rested his palm on a hairless thigh, picturing two gleaming lumps of gristle on a tin plate, a spaghetti of ducts and capillaries still clinging to them.

  Something for Parlez-Vous to enjoy later, when everyone else in the house was in bed.

  54. Push, Balance

  Read threw his palms on the table with a slapping sound. With an exasperated tone, he announced half an hour’s hiatus. It was eleven o’clock, and the heat had risen intolerably.

  In his sopping shirt, Wyre traipsed outside. The rose garden lay before him; hoping its predictable geometries might imprint themselves on his own desultory thoughts, he entered through an arch of dense blooms. A green marble bird-bath marked the middle. He watched a sparrow at its dustbath – turning at the sound of crunching gravel. Mr Adams, the Palace Coroner, stood there. He didn’t seem surprised to see the lawyer.

  “Drawn to roses, Mr Wyre? I like them pink and glistening. No chance of that in this infernal weather, but they say we’re building to a proper downpour. When the rage allays, the rain begins, eh?” He smiled. “I trust our procedures have met with your approval.” His hatted head was framed by dry-as-bone petals.

  They walked together, the trimmed borders curiously scentless in the still air.

  “Tell me, Mr Adams,” Wyre said, “was the jury given an opportunity to examine Sellis’s body before it was gifted to Mr Cline?”

  “They were shown the corpse exactly as it was discovered in bed.”

  “Did Mr Jackson point out the insides of Sellis’s hands were clean?”

  Adams tipped his hat at three holy sisters huddled around a fine deep red specimen. “I’m sure he did, if it was salient.”

  “You’re aware of the rumours?”

  The Coroner pulled up. “That the Duke killed his valet, or ordered him to be killed? Those rumours? Or that the Duke’s a buggeranto, a philanderer, a lady’s man, an unfeeling monster who buggered Sellis’s wife, buggered husband and wife together, both begging for it in one bed?” Adams made a
bony spire out of two long index fingers. “I’m aware of them, and of a whole concerto of variations.” He showed the tips of his teeth. “The war with France is at a cardinal point. I dare say, in the Courthouse’s cosseted halls, you feel sufficiently far removed from the horrors our soldiers and sailors daily face with fortitude. Imagine, if you are able, how their morale suffers with each hour the Duke, a general in his Majesty’s army, is exposed to such disgraceful insinuations.” He placed his head at a courtier’s angle. “But the inquest’s verdict will silence them.”

  “Such a hasty investigation is unlikely to satisfy anyone.”

  “Cumberland is one of the six Dukes who rule England. He will be the next King of Hannover.”

  Wyre started as a volley of musket sounded across the gardens. Adams didn’t flinch.

  “There will always be fantasists prepared to argue black is white, but sometimes things are just as they seem. In such cases, it is foolhardy to suggest otherwise.”

  “Am I to interpret that as a threat?”

  “Dear me, Mr Wyre – ” the Coroner set off again at a leisurely pace “ – our French friends must adore you. Sodomy in valets’ chambers, conspiracies of scullery maids and stable lads, foreign assassins lurking behind the arras. In just two days, you threaten to do for the royal house what the massed armies of the Tyrant have been unable to achieve in ten years.”

  “You mistake my motives,” Wyre said quickly, conscious of how emphatically he was losing the exchange. “What if a second attempt were made on the Duke’s life, or on the King’s? I shouldn’t want that on my conscience.”

  Adams rolled his weathered eyes towards him. “Sir, have you just imagined the King’s death?”

  “Of course not,” Wyre said quickly. “You’re word-catching. I meant merely – ”

  “Shall we debate that ‘merely’?”

  They reached the rose garden’s entrance arch, now an exit. Adams stopped, turning. “There’s a fisherman in Worthing prepared to testify that you asked him for passage to France.” He tilted his head as if listening for birdsong. “Forgive me, is he confusing you with someone else?”

  Wyre opened his mouth to protest, but Adams cut him off. “The inquest jury will return a verdict of fell de se. Suicide, Mr Wyre. Let us leave it at that.” He ducked under the arch.

  “Who’ll believe an inquest conducted behind closed doors?” Wyre called after him, impotently. “Wrapped up in just two days.”

  “Accept the world, Mr Wyre,” the Coroner’s voice floated back, “or withdraw from it. The royals go on. That is what they do. When the King dies, God saves the King.”

  Two sealed letters were waiting at his place on the gilt desk. Folded inside the larger was correspondence addressed to ‘Captain Stephenson, Duke’s secretary’. Wyre’s breath hissed beneath his teeth – the signature was a communication from beyond the grave.

  “Well?” said Read impatiently, “What is it?”

  Wyre handed him the letter. Read reeled off the contents out loud.

  Sir,–

  I am extremely anxious to know Yr decision concerning the Evidence I have produced against Mr Neale. I beg leave you will relieve me from this disagreeable suspense. I do not wish to live in the same room with a man I have accused as a rogue. Mr Neale cheats his Royal Highness in everything he buys. On Toothpicks he gains 50 per cent, by charging 18-pence for that for which he pays only one Shilling. On Soap he charges 2 shillings for that for which he pays only 18-pence. No oath or promise is binding with him. I can no longer live with this monster.

  I am Sir Yr Obt. Servt,

  J. Sellis

  He tossed the letter back. “Stephenson looked into all this at the time. The charges were unfounded, a blatant attempt to blacken Neale’s character. It changes nothing.”

  Wyre peered at the letter; the characters seemed to struggle to maintain their vertical slant. Perhaps an expert would conjecture an escapist attitude, or some deeply seated emotional susceptibility. Could cruelty be inferred from those blunt downstrokes?

  The second letter was a short note from Mr Cline. What it pleased the surgeon to call ‘curious marks’ had been discovered on Sellis’s body. Wyre was welcome to call at the Guy’s Hospital dissecting room. Wyre slipped Cline’s invitation into his jacket pocket. No need to show Read that.

  Read shot him a quizzical look.

  “It’s a personal matter, sir.”

  The Chief Magistrate muttered something about keeping private and professional business separate.

  At two o’clock, Read called a halt to proceedings. The afternoon’s interviews had been cancelled – half a dozen householders on the list were in bed. “Puking their guts up”.

  “Poison?” Wyre said, thinking back to Neale’s attempts to press ‘refreshments’ on them that morning.

  Read snorted. “More a case of flyblown salmon the bloody idiots couldn’t bear to throw away as the cook instructed. Serves them right. Don’t worry, they’ll appear tomorrow – even if they’re shitting their rings out. But it leaves us with a problem.” He looked uncomfortable. “We can’t bring the other interviews forward. Apparently that’s impossible at such short notice. Staff duty rotas.” He snapped his collars forward. “We’ll need more time. I’m going to push back the jury’s verdict meeting by a day. Adams won’t like it, but fuck the arrogant bastard. You can tell Mr Best that, as proof of the inquest’s independence. For now, we might as well take the bloody afternoon off. Our audience with the Duke is at five. Make sure you’re back by then, or not at all.”

  Wyre left directly for Guy’s. He made his way down to the stables to retrieve Leighton’s yellow dandy-charger. Sitting astride the contraption, he made a wobbly circuit of the courtyard. He was definitely, if slowly, getting the hang of the technique. Push, balance; push, balance. There wasn’t much more to it than that, really – though steering remained a haphazard affair. The tiller was simply too narrow. Perhaps he’d make a list of possible improvements to present Bow Street with when he returned the machine. In return for having kept it.

  He skated out into St James’s Road, feeling a marvellous release. The late, low sun had made a cracked gold sea of the cobbles. On he flared (in his imagination, at least), the city’s public squares and civic parks dissolving into green archipelagos.

  Push, balance; push, balance.

  55. Old Friends

  Sarah pushed her ledger book aside. She waited until the brewery agent’s footsteps had faded before burying her head in her arm and weeping bitterly.

  The pittance she’d managed to get for her lease on The White Swan barely covered James’s prison fees. The premises remained hers till the end of the month, for all the good that would do her. Her license was revoked, her windows boarded up.

  She’d had only one thing left to sell. In that respect, she was back where she started.

  Pattering footsteps on the stairs made her lift her head. She quickly dried her eyes on her sleeves – her two little Chinese girls stood at the door, elbows touching.

  “We leaving now,” Liu said. “Thank you, thank you.”

  “But you don’t have any luggage . . .”

  “Everything gone.” Liu pressed her dark lips together. “Charlies take it all.” She pointed to her head. “Only experience left. That weightless. Carry everywhere.” She bowed daintily. Her companion followed suit, dipping at the waist in that awkwardly graceful way of theirs. Arms linked, they continued down the stairs, long tunics flapping at their ankles.

  Sarah made her own way down. James glowered at her from the ale counter. He’d grown thin since his injury, but in other respects precious little had changed. He waved her over, eager to discuss his latest wheeze. They’d call on old friends – the light danced in his one good eye – on the old, familiar faces. They’d start with Mr Shadworth. That old bum-tapper must be good for some ready cash. He’d been a dedicated Swan patron throughout its glory days, practically their first customer. Yes, a little reminder of that fact ought
to be enough.

  Sarah stared. Kindly old Mr Shadworth . . . It wasn’t right. She thought on her feet. Surely there was nothing, she suggested, to be had from that quarter. Didn’t James remember his threadbare shirt? They’d be risking the magistrate for nothing.

  James shrugged. Parson, then. Old quim-lips had raked in more shillings from his Sunday plates than they took on a Saturday night. Aye, they’d pay Parson a visit. Thought he was all respectable now, did he? They’d see how he liked being squeezed from the other end.

  56. View Halloo!

  Taking Leighton’s leather strap, Wyre locked his wooden gelding to Guy’s wrought-iron gates. The hospital’s long stone wings were overlooked by a high brick clock tower, whose enormous hands showed half past two. Plenty of time to see what Cline had for him, meet with Miss Crawford in St James’s Park, and return to the Palace for the Duke’s deposition.

  A porter directed him down a shallow flight of granite steps to a festooned door.

  Cline appeared in the foyer in an unwashed surgical frock coat. He adjusted the coloured ribbon holding on his wire-rimmed glasses, and gave Wyre his hand. “My letter found you. I had my doubts. I should imagine the inquest’s at a delicate stage, and perhaps new information will not be welcome.”

  “I hardly think they’d dare melt a surgeon’s wax.”

  Cline smiled. “I’m told in France every letter, irrespective of sender or destination, is re-routed through Paris. Whole armies of penmen painstakingly transcribe each sheet, whether seditious tract, billet-doux or laundry receipt. The facsimiles are stored in gigantic warehouses along the Seine. Vast reams of information.”

  “Why go to such lengths?” Wyre said dubiously.

  “France is too populous to supervise its inhabitants in unfolding time. This way the authorities can sift through at their leisure, and none of the guilt is lost.”

  Wyre cast another sceptical look in his direction. “Yours wasn’t the only communiqué to find its way to my desk whole. You’d be surprised at how many outside parties have felt compuncted to help in the investigation.”