by Robin Paige
Before he answered, Charles thought back to what Kate had said. His wife had an intuitive understanding of what motivated people to act and what actions they might be capable of, and he had always before trusted her judgment. But Lillie Langtry was skilled at impersonations. She had carved out a place for herself in the world because she knew how to deceive—and not just on the stage, either. Thinking back on what he knew of her relationship with the Prince and others, it was clear that deception must be habitual for her. Recognizing this, did he dare to rely on Kate’s belief that Lillie Langtry was innocent of the murder? He wished that he could, but feared he could not.
“I think Mrs. Langtry is capable of killing Day,” Charles said cautiously. “But unless we recover the gun—”
He shook his head. Even if Mrs. Langtry’s derringer were found and proved to have fired the fatal bullet, it could not be conclusively proved that she had fired it. Dr. Stubbings was right. The circumstantial evidence offered by a ballistics expert would not sway an English jury, nor would fingerprint evidence, even if they were fortunate enough to secure it. In a case like this, a jury would convict only upon the testimony of an eyewitness, or a confession. And at this point, neither seemed likely.
He sighed. “What did you learn, Jack?”
Murray delivered his report succinctly, between swigs of beer and mouthfuls of fish and greasy chips. When he and Charles parted company that morning, he had gone to the Great Horse, where the owner, a burly fellow named Harold, had just flung open the doors and was airing out the place. Murray had purchased a glass of ale and led Harold into a narration of the events of the previous night. Harold had plenty to tell, and a decided opinion as to the identity of Badger’s killer.
Badger had come into the pub at his usual time, around eight-thirty, an hour prior to the evening’s scheduled entertainment—a rat-killing dog and a boxing match—which Harold described at some length. The dog was Billy Sturgeon’s celebrated terrier bitch Queenie, who set a local record by dispatching seventy rats in five minutes. Following Queenie’s triumph, the rat-pit had been quickly converted to a boxing ring and Red Roy and the Manchester Strong Man had gone twenty-two rounds. The Strong Man prevailed. Harold said that both Queenie and the Strong Man—“fair champions in a fair fight”—were toasted long and loud before the evening came to an end, while Queenie herself, regally enthroned on the bar, lapped up her customary dish of ale.
Prior to these festivities, Badger had seated himself at his usual table in the far corner and conducted a little business. All was calm until a quarter to nine, when Eddie Baggs, Badger’s partner, had entered, in the company of Mr. Pinkie Duncan, the assistant trainer at the Grange House Stable, and Jesse Clark, one of the American trainers at the Red House Stable. Clark, Harold said contemptuously, was a filthy horse-doper, and Pinkie bid fair to follow in his footsteps. Harold himself did not like Clark, he confided, because the man, as he put it, was in the “pockets of them American rogues and scoundrels ’oo’ve come over ’ere with no other purpose than to steal honest folks’ money.”
The sight of Baggs in the company of this entreprenurial pair had angered Badger. (“Couldn’t blame ’im, meself,” Harold confided. “ ’Twas like ’is bloody partner ’ad gone over to the enemy.”) The four of them fell into a loud argument about the merits of horse-doping, Badger asserting that it ruined the horse and altered the odds in unpredictable ways, and the other two retorting that all was fair in love and horse-racing.
This disagreement had gone on for some time, getting louder and angrier, when Badger suddenly pounded on the table for silence. When he had the crowd’s attention, he stood and announced a radical plan to organize the Newmarket and London bookmakers into a coalition against Jesse and his cronies. Since the Jockey Club’s stewards refused to outlaw the disgraceful and unsportsmanlike practice of horse-doping, the coalition would take the matter into its own hands. Members would refuse to accept wagers on horses that had run doped in the past or were owned by individuals or a stable that had run doped horses. Badger intended to see that every reputable bookmaker became a member. At this, most of the crowd gave a loud cheer, for they were sick to death of watching their money end up in the Americans’ pockets. Not all, though. The dopers had their backers too, and there was a sharp division among the onlookers.
Charles whistled under his breath. “Would such a coalition have any effect?”
“Cert’nly,” Murray replied. “There’s plenty of sharp feeling among bookmakers on the subject, and Badger could prob’ly recruit enough to make their influence felt. But whether it worked or not, the newspapers would grab the story and use it to raise a public hue and cry, which the stewards do not want. They might find it politic to take some sort of action that would shut Badger up and halt the scandal.”
Or find a surer and more direct way to shut Badger up, Charles thought to himself, remembering the odd look on Owen North’s face that morning. But he didn’t voice the thought, for Jack Murray, likable though he might be, was the Club’s man. He would have his own talk with Harold, and ask him whether any members of the Jockey Club had been in the pub the night before.
Charles brought his attention back to Murray’s last remark. “So one way or the other,” he said, “Badger would win. I suppose,” he added, “this likelihood was not lost on Pinkie and Clark. And Baggs too, I’ll warrant. Strange that he was with them,” he added. “Do you suppose he was planning to leave the partnership?”
“I wondered that too, sir,” Murray said, taking another pull on his beer. “According to Harold, Pinkie was furious at Badger, as was Clark, and Baggs too. Harold thought Badger seemed pleased with himself, gloating, actually. Maybe he thought that the more trouble he caused, the quicker the stewards would hear of it. He might have been planning to go around to some of the other pubs and make the same announcement.”
“What time did Badger leave?”
“Something after nine, Harold says. P’rhaps ten past.”
“He must have been on his way to meet Mrs. Langtry,” Charles mused. Hearing all this, he was now more inclined to agree with Kate that Lillie was innocent.
Murray nodded. “Some of the men who were arguing followed Badger out the door. Some came back in a few minutes, others didn’t. Harold noticed, because he thought that several were very angry. He remembers wondering whether Badger knew how to take care of himself.”
“Who didn’t come back?” Charles asked sharply.
“Pinkie Duncan, Jesse Clark, and Eddie Baggs.” Murray swigged the last of his beer. “Of course, they might have gone on to another pub.”
“Or they might have followed Badger into the alley and shot him,” Charles said.
“That’s what Harold thinks.” Murray rolled the greasy paper into a bundle and thrust it and the empty bottles under the seat. “He says his money is on Clark, because he and Enoch Wishard, the other American trainer, had the most to lose if Badger succeeded in organizing the bookies, or forcing the Jockey Club to outlaw doping.”
“We should talk to Baggs,” Charles said.
Murray nodded. “I went to his lodging, but the landlady said he’d left. Took his clothes with him.” He gave Charles a significant look. “We’re not the only ones looking for him, either. She said that another gentleman had been around, asking for him.”
“She couldn’t say who, I don’t suppose.”
“No,” Murray said regretfully. “She couldn’t. But whoever he was, the fact that he’d missed Baggs made him angry.”
Charles wiped his hands on his handkerchief and picked up the reins. “How about Sobersides? Was he at the Great Horse with the others?”
“Not then. Harold said he came in earlier in the evening. He had left by the time Badger arrived.”
“Did you discover where we might find him?”
Murray nodded. “His brother Thomas has a small farm the other side of Snailwell. Harold says he may’ve gone there, or to another brother, in Edinburgh. His real name, by the way
, is Oliver Moore. He’s called Sobersides because he never smiles.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have anything to smile about,” Charles said, and urged the horse back onto the road. “Let us hope that Oliver Moore stayed close. I have no great wish to track him to Edinburgh.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
At Regal Lodge
Kate, Lillie, & Jeanne
It was for me that [Oscar Wilde] wrote Lady Windemere’s Fan. Why he ever supposed that it would have been at the time a suitable play for me, I cannot imagine. [The character had a twenty-year-old daughter, who had never been acknowledged.] ‘My dear Oscar,’ I remonstrated, ‘am I old enough to have a grown-up daughter?’
Days I Knew: The Autobiography
of Lillie Langtry
Lillie Langtry
“How on earth could I pose as a mother with a grown-up daughter? I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.”
Mrs. Erlynne in Lady Windemere’s Fan
by Oscar Wilde
When Charles had gone, Kate sat very still, trying to collect her thoughts. The man who had been in this room—stern-faced, so severe as to be almost abusive—was not her husband, but some other person, a stranger she had never seen before and hoped never to see again.
But at the same time that her heart felt wounded by the harshness of his words and the coldness of his expression, her mind understood that he had been playing a part, and that he had done so in an effort to force Lillie Langtry to tell the truth. Kate knew, too, that he had left Regal Lodge unconvinced of Lillie’s innocence, and for that she was sorry. For she herself was sure that Lillie had told the truth, about the murder, at least, and also about the gun. The actress might well be hiding something else—indeed, Kate knew that she almost certainly was—but she had not been aware of the bookmaker’s death until that morning at breakfast, and she had fully expected to find her gun when she opened that drawer.
When at last Lillie spoke, her voice was ironic. “Beryl, I must say you are right on one count. Lord Sheridan is certainly a ‘rare’ man—although not, I think, in the way you meant.”
“I’m sorry,” Kate said sincerely. “He was unpardonably rude. But he was only trying—”
Lillie began to pace across the room. “I know what he was trying to do,” she said bitterly. “He was trying to wring the truth out of me—or at least, the truth he wanted to hear.” She turned and held out her hands with a look of pure appeal. “I swear to you, Beryl. I learned of Alfred Day’s death from you, this morning. And I had no idea that the gun was gone. Everything I said to Lord Charles was the truth.”
“I know,” Kate said simply. Whatever the reasons Charles had for coming here, she trusted that they must be important. Perhaps she could help him by finding out what he could not. Perhaps she could persuade Lillie to tell her—
“Well, thank God for that,” Lillie exclaimed, casting her eyes upward. “But you must convince your husband, Beryl. You must! Imagine the scandal if I am accused in court of murdering a bookmaker, on top of all my other sins!” She closed her eyes and clasped her hands to her breast. “Even if I were acquitted, the Prince could never again be able to give me any notice. And if it came out that—” She stopped. “I would be ruined,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Utterly and eternally ruined.”
“If I am to convince Charles of your innocence,” Kate said in a practical tone, “I must know all the truth. For instance, I must know who might have taken your gun—besides the servants, that is.”
“It was a servant,” Lillie snapped. “I’ve never trusted them, none of them. They steal and gossip and—” She threw up her hands. “Why, the person who is serving as my temporary lady’s maid here cannot even dress hair! One is such a victim of one’s servants.”
“You saw the gun yesterday, you said. Who besides the servants has been in this room since yesterday morning?”
“Well . . .” Lillie frowned. “You, of course. And Dick Doyle and Tod Sloan, whom you met here. But I can’t think why either of them would want to take my little pistol. It makes no sense.”
Kate thought about the enormously fat man and the slender young jockey. Both of them were involved with racing, and Alfred Day had been a bookmaker. Surely they had known the dead man, and might have had a more sinister connection with him. But there was something else.
“I was in the garden yesterday afternoon,” she said, “and saw a gentleman leaving the house. Was he in this room alone? Would he have had an opportunity to take the gun?”
The change in Lillie’s face was so subtle that if Kate hadn’t been watching closely, she would have missed the tension in the mouth, the almost imperceptible narrowing of the eyes. But when Lillie spoke, her voice was light and easy.
“Oh, that was just Spider,” she said, with a careless toss of her head. “And he wasn’t in this room at all—we met and talked in the library.”
For the moment, Kate did not challenge Lillie’s lie. She remarked, instead: “Spider—an odd nickname.”
“I give nicknames to all my male friends,” Lillie replied. She frowned. “It had to be one of the servants, I’m sure of it. It wouldn’t be the first thing they’ve stolen. Jewelry, silver, pieces of valuable lace. One never knows what will go missing next.” She returned to the sofa and sat down, an irritated look on her face. But there was something else, too. Was it apprehension? Fear? Had Lillie realized that her afternoon visitor had taken the gun?
“Well, then,” Kate said, “let’s try a different angle. You’ve known Mr. Day for some time, I think you said. Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill him?”
“Who didn’t want to kill the man?” Lillie retorted, arranging her skirts around her. “He had enemies everywhere, not just in Newmarket.” She became scornful. “In London, he was nothing more than a common thief, dealing in stolen goods.”
“A fence, you mean?” Kate asked, wondering how Lillie had come by this information about Mr. Day, and whether Charles knew it as well. “Like Harold Knight in ‘The Duchess’s Dilemma’?”
Lillie sat suddenly very still, pinching a fold of silk between her fingers. “Yes,” she said slowly, “now that you mention it. He was a fence, like Harold Knight.” She lifted her chin, regarding Kate with a guarded expression. “In fact, I must confess that when I read your story, Beryl, I was sure that you had known someone like Alfred Day, perhaps even Day himself. After all, the names Knight and Day—” She shrugged expressively.
Kate gazed at her, and suddenly into her mind came the tale of Lillie’s missing jewels and the similarity she had already noted between that story and the “Duchess’s Dilemma.” Did Lillie Langtry fear that she might have some secret knowledge about those gems? Had the actress invited her to Regal Lodge, not to discuss the staging of her story, but rather to determine how much she knew about the theft of Lillie’s own jewels?
She gave an uncomfortable laugh. “I do assure you, Lillie, Harold Knight is not a real person. I’m afraid that my acquaintance is rather limited when it comes to criminals. I made him up.”
“But the two are so much alike,” Lillie persisted, an odd tension in her voice. She eyed Kate narrowly. “Even the manner of their deaths is similar. Don’t you see?”
The hair on the back of Kate’s neck prickled. She hadn’t thought of it until this moment, but what Lillie said was true. In the play, the man who had sold the duchess’s jewels had been shot to death when he and one of the other thieves had fallen out—a just reward for his many evil deeds.
She smiled a little. “Art and life frequently mirror each other. The events may be similar, but Harold Knight is an entirely fictitious character. I assure you, Lillie—there is no connection between him and Alfred Day. None at all.”
Lillie’s eyes held hers. “And the duchess? Did you make her up, too?”
“Not exactly,” Kate said, and saw the involuntary flare of Lillie’s nostrils
, the pulling-in of her breath. She leaned forward. “The duchess is modeled after one of my neighbors, you see, and the theft in the story was based on a real event that occurred several years ago. The lady’s emeralds were taken and pawned by her son to buy some worthless stock, and were only thought to have been stolen. In real life, they were eventually redeemed and returned to their owner.” What she didn’t say was that the neighbor was Bradford Marsden’s mother, Lady Marsden, and that Charles had written a check for five thousand pounds to redeem the pawned emeralds and keep Lady Marsden from learning what her son had done.*
* The story of the missing Marsden emeralds is told in its entirety in Death at Gallows Green.
“I see,” Lillie said, relaxing almost imperceptibly. “So there was a real event behind your story, after all. Perhaps that’s what gave it the ring of truth.”
“Yes,” Kate said, with a rueful sigh. “In fact, I’ve often regretted having drawn the duchess so near to life. While it is tempting to take real people as the models for one’s characters, it may be dangerous to blur the line between fiction and reality. Someone who knows the facts might be misled by the fiction, or a reader of the fiction might be deceived by taking invention for the truth.” She took a deep breath. This discussion gave her the opportunity to make her intention clear—and an understandable excuse. “That is why I must tell you that I cannot allow you to stage the story,” Kate added. “If the owner of the emeralds were to see it or hear of it, she might feel betrayed.”
If she were disappointed, Lillie hid it rather well. In fact, she was clearly relieved.
“Now that you’ve put the matter in those terms,” she said brightly, “I understand completely. When one’s artistic work is important to one, one does not want it misinterpreted.”