by Robin Blake
‘I don’t know that. But I do think I know who it was that provided the ingredient you mention.’
‘Oh, who?’
‘I will tell you later. I want to make a few more inquiries first.’
In the afternoon, I brought my new Chaucer into the parlour so that my wife and I could read together the poem that had induced me to buy it – The Parliament of Fowls. Sometimes we stopped to puzzle over the strange vocabulary – ‘make’ instead of ‘mate’, ‘slit’ for ‘slide’ – but we got in the swing of it soon enough.
Expecting to be plunged straight into the world of birds and their politics, I was surprised to find that it began with lines about love.
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,
Th’assay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge,
The dreadful joy alwey that sit so yerne:
Al this mene I by love.
It was Elizabeth who, with her eyes shining, opened mine to the genius of the poetry.
‘I think those are very beautiful lines, Titus. It is true for many that love is a “dreadful joy” though it is a surprising phrase – a paradox, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, or it might be called an oxymoron.’
Without a word she rose, gently took the book from me and placed it on the floor.
‘But our love is not an oxymoron,’ she whispered. ‘It is only a joy.’
Then she sank into my lap to kiss me, her fingers digging into the back of my neck as she pulled my mouth fiercely onto hers. It seemed a long time before she finished kissing me.
‘Love does slide away, as Chaucer says, from many,’ she said, drawing away at last and looking me hard in the face, ‘but it shall not from us, unless we let it. But your poet is right to say that life is short: we must remember that too.’
‘I do. How can I forget it, in my profession?’
‘So, let’s go on with the reading.’
* * *
It was apparent that Fidelis had regained some of his good humour, when he stood on our doorstep an hour and a half later. From the sparkle in his eye it even looked as if he might have been laughing.
‘Have you found Miss Plumb?’ I asked, thinking this must be the explanation.
His face clouded for a moment, and then lightened again.
‘No, I have not, and shall not. I have told myself, if she can go away without a word, I must resign myself to being nothing to her.’
‘I should tell you she—’
But once again my attempt to pass on Miss Plumb’s confidence was stalled. Fidelis raised his hand.
‘No, Titus, not another word about her. Tell me instead, is there any news of the mountebanks? Have you interviewed Shackleberry?’
‘No. The pair gave Barty the slip. The last we heard, they were at Bamber, headed south. But come into the library. I have something to show you.’
We went inside and I related my adventures of the night before, once I’d left Fidelis on Fisher Gate – how Wilson had talked of dispensing poisons and how I had later copied certain details out of his dispensing ledger. I soon had Fidelis’s complete attention.
‘You have the paper that you copied onto?’ he asked.
I opened the drawer of the escritoire and produced the paper. Fidelis took it and laid it on the desktop. He studied it.
‘These are the sales he made on Thursday, is that right?’
‘Not all of them. I was interrupted in my writing by his wife. There were at least as many that I didn’t have time to write down.’
‘Never mind. I think we have the salient ones.’
‘They are all impenetrable to me. I hope not to you.’
‘No, indeed.’
Fidelis was smiling and nodding to himself as he ran through Wilson’s notations. It brought to mind a musician casting his eye over a stave of notes and hearing the tune in his head.
‘See here?’ he said at last, putting his finger on the paper. ‘Between Mr Boothby’s Hungary Water and Miss Wellson’s linctus, what do we have?’
I looked. The item was, ‘Strngr. Grnd Atrp 2 scrp agg. 100:1 ½ lb.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘It means Wilson was dispensing poison. “Atrp” can only be atropinum – the root of the deadly nightshade.’
‘And on such a scale – half a pound!’
‘Yes, but only two scruples of the active ingredient – the atropinum grounds. It is normal when a dangerous poison is sold to the public to mingle it in a certain proportion with an inert substance such as acorn flour – here it is a hundred to one. When one is dealing with very tiny amounts of a noxious element it is very easy to use too much, and perhaps kill someone. By this method even a good pinch of the stuff will deliver only a minute dose of actual poison.’
‘And I suppose he writes “Stranger” because he couldn’t admit in his records that he knew Shackleberry.’
‘Yes, he may have been covering his tracks. The effects of atropinum closely mirror the symptoms we saw yesterday across the town – hallucinations, loss of balance, fear of bright light, constipation, retention of urine, extreme thirst and all the rest. If Wilson had written the name Shackleberry in the left-hand column he might be exposed as the source of poison. He may not have been sober when he wrote the record, but he was not completely careless.’
‘We don’t know he was drunk.’
‘He met Shackleberry in an alehouse, and Shackleberry certainly drank.’
‘Does the entry tell us anything else?’
Fidelis rubbed his hands together with undoubted relish.
‘Yes, it does – but not about the Patent Preservative.’
‘What, then?’
‘It is a marvellous chance that you show me this, Titus. It tells us not only what Wilson might have meant last night in his drunken ramblings, but casts medical light on the bedside I was called to today. May I have a pipe and I will tell you?’
Chapter Sixteen
SO WE SMOKED, and Fidelis narrated. He had arrived at the outer gate of Hoghton Tower, still without knowing the name of the stricken person he was summoned to attend. Ralph Randall, when he came out to admit him, was silent on the subject. With the horse entrusted to a groom, the steward conducted Fidelis across the outer court, through the second gate and into the inner court, which they crossed to the door of the tower itself. He again asked Randall the name of his patient, but received no reply, except to be urged to quicken his step.
Passing through the hall, Randall led the way up the stair and along a corridor, well windowed with leaded panes on one side and panelled in oak on the other. He opened the door at the end, stood aside, and gestured Fidelis to pass through. He then shut the door, without following the doctor inside.
Sir Henry Hoghton was lying beneath the covers of the great canopied bed, wearing a nightcap and gown. But far from enjoying a peaceful rest, he was writhing in agony, groaning and continually licking his lips. At sixty years old, he had a face with a purple-tinged complexion, and a certain pop to the eyes that gave him an air of permanent grievance. On this occasion, at least, there was an easily seen reason for the grievance. His nose was swollen and his lower lip was split.
There was no one else in the room, so Fidelis presented himself at the bedside and asked Hoghton how he was.
Sir Henry muttered something inaudible and when Fidelis asked again, the stricken man impatiently roared, ‘See for yourself, and damn your eyes!’
He threw back the sheet and blanket. Through the linen of his gown Fidelis could see the full extent of the problem: the parliamentary candidate’s membrum virilis stood in a condition of gigantic and pulsating erection.
‘The bugger won’t go soft,’ stuttered Hoghton. ‘Been like that for twelve hours! It’s got harder if anything. And it burns, man; it burns like some damnable fire’s got into it. I can’t piss. I can’t do anything, not with my tool like that. It’s intolerable. It’s hell. It doesn’t feel like mine any more. You must do something.’
Fidel
is raised the nightgown to examine the engorged member. Gingerly poking it, he asked if this had ever happened before.
‘Course it hasn’t. Always been perfectly normal in every way. Never a cause for complaint.’
Fidelis observed that there must therefore have been something different, some new influence, in this instance. Had he been stung by an insect or plant, eaten or drunk anything unusual, or done some other activity immediately before it happened – dancing, riding, bathing – or boxing, perhaps?
‘Boxing?’ Hoghton roared. ‘Don’t be bloody absurd. And I wasn’t playing ring-a-roses either. Use your wits, if you have any. What do you think I was doing?’
‘You were … with a lady, then?’
At which Hoghton writhed around again and, without answering, demanded again that the doctor do something.
‘So what did you do?’ I asked my friend, between laughter and suspense.
‘I relieved the bladder. I had been wondering if this stubborn erection was being maintained by pressure on either the prostate gland or the urethra. So I used a catheter, and presto! It worked. I drew off the urine and within a few minutes the member had noticeably deflated.’
‘He was cured?’
‘Not quite, but I thought matters would improve from there. I suggested that a cold compress, even a cold bath, might help soothe the burning, and that the discomfort would slowly dissipate. But there was not much more for me to do except tell him plainly that the influence which had caused this would be best avoided.’
‘How did Sir Henry take your warning?’
‘Growled and griped at me, but admitted nothing. So I left him, after I had treated the split lip and the nose, about which he was equally unforthcoming, by the way. I’d looked at his knuckles, and the joke of it is they were abraded. It seemed he really had been boxing.’
I remembered what Elizabeth had been telling me in the early morning.
‘Another gentleman, I hear, has been seen this morning with signs of fist fighting on him.’
‘Yes. As you know, I normally attend the chapel for Sunday Mass, and I saw him. Mr Arne, his name is, and he is half Sir Henry’s age. Of course, there is disorder of all kinds at the moment, but I would say if the London musician and the parliamentary candidate had been fighting each other, there’s not much doubt who would have come out on top.’
‘But the blow of a fist could not have brought about Sir Harry’s other embarrassment.’
‘There have been stranger effects in physiology. But the truth, which I already suspected, is different. See this?’
He brandished the paper on which I had copied Wilson’s transactions, then laid it on the desk again. He pointed to the line that read, ‘Boy pro H.H.? Cnthds pdr. 10 grn.’
‘That means ten grains of cantharides – half a scruple – in powdered form, sold to a representative of a certain H.H. I think we now know who that is.’
‘What’s cantharides?’
‘Spanish fly, to you, crushed and powdered. It is a powerful irritant to the sexual organs, which is why it is reputed to be aphrodisiacal. But its general effect is less pleasant – not as dangerous as atropinum, but if two or three scruples of this were imbibed at once I would expect it to be fatal. What Wilson gave out was less than a mortal dose, but enough to produce the symptoms that I saw in Sir Harry. Indeed, I suspected he had been taking cantharides as soon as I saw the urine.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it was streaked with blood.’
‘Did he admit that he’d deliberately tried to stimulate his organ?’
‘Of course not. Kept repeating that he couldn’t account for his embarrassment. But this must be what Wilson was telling you in his drunkenness, when he talked about a eunuch, and all that. It was Hoghton.’
‘And what else did he call him? Sir Cocky Cocksman. Was all this for the benefit of Lady Hoghton, do you suppose? It seems unlikely.’
It certainly did. Sir Henry’s wife was an austere Presbyterian lady, older than himself. She was rarely seen in Preston.
‘It does, rather,’ agreed Fidelis. ‘More likely he anticipated a joust with a younger woman who, he feared, might prove more passionate and demanding than he could manage. Wilson provided him with what he hoped would starch him up.’
‘It did more than that.’
We laughed together, and Fidelis looked happy, and I let go another opportunity to tell him what had passed between me and Miss Plumb. The woman had apparently gone, and I did not want to remind him of her.
Of course, I would later wish that I had.
* * *
When we approached the theatre that evening, the mood round about was rowdy. A group of Tories had gathered on one side of the entrance to taunt any Whig supporters as they arrived for the drama. An opposing group had similarly formed on the other side to bait the Tories. And in between were our deputy constables, the Parkin brothers, walking up and down and keeping the two groups apart, their poles of office held horizontally at waist level in the defensive position.
As in all theatres, the main interest for the audience before the play began was – the audience. We sat in our rows passing comments to each other about who was sitting with whom, what on earth young Mrs Skimble was wearing, and whether old Mr Skamble had accidentally dropped his wig in the jakes before coming out. Eventually the curtains across the stage parted for a moment and the slim, tall figure of a man slipped through to face us. The flickering footlights made him look at first sight like an actor, and it took us a moment to realize that this was Lord Strange himself. He waited for us to settle, then spoke out in a clear voice.
‘We beg to present a play of noble sentiments, with uplifting music – written expressly by my very good friend, Mr Thomas Arne, who also undertakes to direct the orchestra. It is the Prince of Wales’s best-loved play and it will surely inspire the people of Preston to cast true votes in the interests of our nation. I’ll warrant it, or call me a turnip.’
The final touch of bathos raised a general laugh, and a cheer somewhere at the back. Then, to the astonishment of all, His Lordship performed an athletic leap across the orchestra pit, landing in the space in front of the first row of seats where – as our poor theatre does not run to boxes – Lord and Lady Derby, his parents, were sitting, and where a vacant seat was kept for him. The jump itself was graceful, but the landing was not. He came down in front of the plump and bejewelled Lady Pinkleby and pitched forward into her lap with such impetus that, if it had not been for the shield of her fan, her bosom would have received a smack from his face.
The young nobleman disentangled himself from the lady, receiving an even bigger cheer from the rowdy element. He seemed not a bit embarrassed but, smiling and bowing an apology to Lady Pinkleby, raised his arms in a wave to the audience at large, and sat down. He indicated with a hand signal that he was ready and the small orchestra produced the first chords of an overture, the time beaten for them by a smartly dressed man of about thirty – Mr Arne. Since his back was towards us, I could not see the bruised eye socket.
As soon as the overture had played itself out the curtain opened on the scene: a long-ago England, in the course of being conquered by a heathen army of Danes. At the centre of the stage stood an ancient oak tree beneath which, huddled under a blanket, lay the fugitive, ragged, all-but-defeated King Alfred, waking from an exhausted sleep. A chorus of spirits now appeared to the sound of solemn strains. ‘What proves the hero truly great,’ they sang, ‘is never, never to despair.’
The words braced Alfred, even though the ill fortunes of war had cruelly separated him from his loving wife, Eltruda. He was further braced by the appearance of a sort of philosopher–hermit, perhaps domiciled in a neighbouring cave, who began to conjure visions of Alfred’s great successors, although, paradoxically, they were figures out of history to the present audience: King Edward III, Queen Bess and King William of Orange.
Alfred was braced by these exemplars tighter than a lady’s stays. He swore by God
to cast out flatterers and be the common father of his people, a patriot king. Men naturally take from art what pleases them, so the jibe about flatterers sailed unrecognized past the government’s supporters: they were busy gloating at the impossibility of patriotism in the skulking family of Stuarts. At the same time their opponents heard only the denunciation of flatterers, and thought how they hated ‘Robbing’ Walpole.
I feared that Miss Colley, full of hope for ghosts and violent sword fights, would be disappointed by the play. I looked around but could not see her, though I did catch the eye of Luke Fidelis in the row behind ours. He swivelled up his eyes and discreetly tapped his mouth with a flat hand.
Then something happened to shake him out of his boredom. Onstage, Alfred cupped his ear, saying, ‘But hark! Methinks I hear a plaintive voice.’
The orchestra struck up once more, and we all heard it: a weird, wavering soprano drifting over us from somewhere off the stage:
Sweet valley say where, pensive lying,
For me, our children, England sighing,
The best of mortals leans his head!
As his ear caught the sound, the best of mortals at once adopted an attitude of amazement, and no wonder for, trilling fervently, a young woman now edged onto the stage – a palpably lovely young woman, dressed in a gown of red silk, with her golden hair crowned by a chaplet of wild red roses.
I blinked. Probably my mouth fell open. This was undoubtedly Alfred’s great love, the beautiful Queen Eltruda. But it was also, and even more incontrovertibly, my friend Fidelis’s great love, Miss Lysistrata Plumb.
Whispers rustled through the stalls as the song unfolded, with the men in the audience marvelling sotto voce at the singer’s charm. Her voice was highly distinctive – ethereal at the high end, breathy and corporeal in the lower notes. I could hardly imagine what Fidelis’s thoughts must have been at the idea of Miss Plumb – Lysistrata – exposing herself onstage. It rather contradicted his image of her as an angel to the angels, for actors and actresses are certainly not angels. Their whole purpose is to deceive – not to be what they seem, or to seem what they are not – which is not too far from being a professional immoralist like Richard Andrews, though with the important difference that we disparage him and applaud them. I looked around to see my friend’s reaction to the reappearance of his guiding star. He had turned as white as a goose feather.