Troubled Waters l-14

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Even if that means I must hang in the process? Shit!" Lewrie spat, getting to his feet in search of Twigg's study for something wet and spiritous. He found a large-ish cruet sort of bottle, but its contents stank bad as hyena piss, so he restoppered it. "Wait a bit…! Did you merely take advantage of me… or, did you see to it that my case had to go forward, get splashed all over the papers? Could I have been swept under a rug, your powers used t'get me off?"

  "To your previous question, Lewrie… you stumbled into it, as you usually do," Twigg said with what most people might deem a sympathic smile. "You, alone, leaped into a dung-hill of your own volition, and the Beaumans followed their typically rapacious wont in pursuing you, though Lord Balcarres, Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, and your Captain Nicely did try to sweep you under the rug, as you say. Once the matter became public, about the same time that I became aware of it, I decided to get involved… to get you acquitted, firstly and force the issue onto the public conscience. And that is the bald truth.

  "Oh, for God's sake, Lewrie!" Twigg snapped, mercurially changing tone. "You wish a drink, there's a bottle of brandy sitting right beside my day-lilies… the bloody flowers, yonder! And, I seriously doubt you will hang."

  "How can you be so sure?" Lewrie asked, after a goodly slug and a smaller second, right from the bottle, as he sat back down.

  "Your barrister, Mister Andrew MacDougall, sent me a note this evening, in reply to mine," Twigg related, sucking meditatively on the mouthpiece of his hookah. "Though many Lord Justices are away on the summer Assizes tour, some few remain in London to dispense justice… so much crime these days, so many trials to be held. 'Tis the war, I expect, which so unsettles our society; that, and the remnants of the Spithead and Nore mutinies, the lawless examples of the American, and the French, revolutions, and…"

  "Ahem?" Lewrie grumpily reminded him, impatiently shifting upon his chair. "Some Lord Justices who preside at King's Bench are impatient, rash sorts, who give the accused short shrift," Twigg said, lips thin in asperity to be pressed to the point before he had ended his philosophical ramblings. "Perhaps they're paid by their number of convictions and executions? They do not wish to involve themselves with any complex cases. Mister MacDougall, though, has managed to have you appear before Lord Justice Oglethorpe, a most cautious, and deliberative, man. A member of one of my clubs, in point of fact, Lewrie…" Damme, is it already rigged, I wonder? he thought.

  "… bit of a pedant, really, and a dead, ruminative bore, do you meet him in person," Twigg continued, "so much so that he requires nigh an hour choosing from a chop-house menu! But, Oglethorpe's your man when it comes to reading, glooming, and meditating over every jot and tittle. Should have been appointed to Chancery Court, where just crossing all the T's and dotting all the I's could take five years or better, and cases stretch out a young lawyer's entire lifetime.

  "Once MacDougall presents the transcript of your trial in absentia on Jamaica… no lover of rude colonial concepts of justice is Oglethorpe… and sees the flaws in it, you stand a very good chance of being carried forward to Hilary Term, next January."

  Oh, joy I Lewrie thought with a groan; six more months of agony an 'fret/ Six more months for you, Twigg, t 'shout abolition in papers and tracts. Hmmm, though… "Six months o' Hugh Beauman stuck in London, bleedin' pounds sterling out his arse. Lovely!

  "Our ambush, too," Lewrie further mused aloud. "Word o' that'd put him out o' sorts, too, I'd expect."

  "Word of that, right alongside the announcement of your appearance at King's Bench this morning, will hit the streets in the early editions," Twigg smugly told him. "Mister MacDougall was appalled at the news of it… but, also delighted. Pleased as punch, he said in his note, that the Beaumans, or some other interest closely involved with slavery, could have been so infernally stupid and arrogant as to attempt such a clumsy and brutal murder, in broad daylight. Trust to the tract printers, as well, Lewrie, who have been toiling away this night, running off express numbers which condemn the attempt in exclamations of the most florid sort… the Kingston magistrate's written conclusions, and eyewitness accounts from among our party, your father and Major Chiswick, principally… forgive me if I prefer that my part in the affair remains unmentioned… will be quite the sensation, so much so that even an impartial Lord Justice may not be immune."

  "Well…" Lewrie dithered, bottle resting on one knee, and his limbs sprawled in contemplation. "You won't be there, then?"

  "Oh, yes, I shall be," Twigg informed him, frowning as the fire in the upper bowl of his hubble-bubble pipe went out. "Though, not in close proximity to! you in the dock, nor with the first rows of attendees. Will that be all, Lewrie? Are you more settled of mind? Drunk enough for sleep at last, pray God? For I still have several more letters that must be distributed about the city just after dawn."

  "Aye, I s'pose," Lewrie decided, corking the bottle and rising to stretch and force a yawn, which always helped put his body in touch with his mind and fool it into rest. "With any luck at all, perhaps my trial may get postponed 'til after Easter. Hah! More time for Hugh Beauman t'stew and twiddle his thumbs, away from his precious plantations… spendin' money like a drunken sailor."

  "He has brought quite the entourage, as the French call such a large retinue… his witnesses and Jamaican attorney, and… his new wife." Twigg sniggered. "A classic young and beautiful 'batter pudding'… so I am informed. And, their personal Black servants."

  "That won't make 'em popular in London," Lewrie scoffed. "Anne died? I'm sorry t'hear that. She was the one redeemin' member of the whole damned clan. Damned shame," he said more soberly.

  "They have not been in London a fortnight," Twigg continued in a somewhat merry taking, "and I doubt there's a single fashionable shop she has not set foot in, as my 'Irregulars' report. Hugh Beauman dotes on her like the most foolish 'colt's tooth' cully. I doubt that they shall much enjoy their enforced stay. Not if your father and I have anything to say about the matter. The Mob indeed, hmm hmm."

  "I'll wish you goodnight, then, Mister Twigg. See you at seven." "Ajit Roy will wake you at six. Achchhaa raat, Lewrie," Twigg coolly bade him. "Now go, shoo… bugger off and let me work!"

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  "Another little matter," Lewrie dared say to the taciturn Twigg at breakfast, for he had learned through wretched previous experience that Zachariah Twigg was not a man to speak to before his fourth cup of coffee. "You recall our talk last year, at your country estate in Hampstead…"

  "I know where I reside, sir!" Twigg snapped as if vexed beyond all temperance. "Must you?"

  "About those anonymous letters to my wife?" Lewrie dared essay.

  "Hmmph! What of them?" Twigg said with a stern warning glare.

  "I have two of 'em with me, Mister Twigg," Lewrie said, pulling the two most recent letters from the breast pocket of his best uniform coat, left there and forgotten 'til he had dressed that morning; and, a tad trepidatious, slid them over towards Twigg's breakfast plate. "If ye haven't actually seen one, before, well… don't think my father had an example t'show ye, either. You said ye might be able t'smoak out who it was sendin' 'em, so…"

  "Ah," Twigg said with a put-upon sniff. "Those. Which you once suspected that /sent, just to plague you? Those damning and anonymous letters, Lewrie?"

  "Aye" was Lewrie's daunted reply.

  "Well, damme…," Twigg said, issuing forth the sort of sigh that usually preceded a death-sentence from a judge. He laid aside his fork and knife, though, swivelled sideways, and crossed his legs, his coffee cup in one hand, and the first letter in the other. "An expensive bond paper… most-like sold in two dozen of the better stationers' shops in the larger cities, besides London. A rather fair, copper-plate hand as well… the letters smaller and finer than those done with a quill pen, so I might deduce that your anonymous tormentor owns a fine-point steel-nib pen. Flourishes and un-necessary serifs here and there, so I doubt the writer is a military man. Almost… prissy, hmm. At one time, I recall that
you also suspected one Commander Fillebrowne? Yet, have you run into him since your service in the Adriatic? "

  "Neither hide nor hair, sir," Lewrie answered, emboldened by the man's curiosity, which was now piqued.

  "And, during your brief association with Fillebrowne, did you gather any impression of… fussiness?"

  "Idle… languid, vain, and arrogant, aye, but not fussy," Lewrie told him before returning his attention to his toast, butter, and jam. After a bite, chew, and swallow, he added, "Came of a rich family, they all did their Grand Tours of the Continent. Art collectors, all that? Thinks damned well of himself. I can't recall we ever corresponded by letter, so I wouldn't know his writing style."

  "I shall ask of him at Admiralty, and compare his hand to this," Twigg promised. "Though I very much doubt…" Twigg shuffled pages, scowling at what he read. "Did any of this bawdiness occur, Lewrie?"

  "Absolutely not" Lewrie could say, and with some heat, too. "I swear on my sacred word of honour! Not with Sophie, nor Eudoxia, either!"

  "Odd," Twigg said with a smirk; evidently he was now fully awake and back to his usual top-lofty asperity. "No mention is here made of your bastard son, Desmond McGilliveray. Peel wrote me on that head," Twigg said with a sunnily sarcastic smile. "Indeed, a British frigate captain meeting his by-blow, a Midshipman in the United States Navy, in the West Indies… offspring of a temporary marriage to a Cherokee Indian wench, well! Your reputation, and sobriquet of the 'Ram-Cat,' is now widespread in the Fleet, so I do not understand why Fillebrowne… is he your tormentor… would not have heard of it. Has your wife at any time thrown this particular bastard in your face?"

  "The only own she seemed aware of was Theoni Connor's," Lewrie told him. And, damme, that'un was bad enough! he grimly thought.

  "Then it is patently obvious that your unknown scribbler has no knowledge of Desmond McGilliveray's existence, either," Twigg assumed. "Hence… not a Navy man, nor anyone of long acquaintance with you." "Doesn't narrow the field, much, though," Lewrie said. "Yayss, there's a myriad of people with a grudge against you," Twigg sniggered. "Damme, Lewrie, but I could spend the rest of my entire career, defending you from yourself."

  Lewrie winced, and hid behind the rim of his own coffee cup.

  "Intriguing, this, though," Twigg muttered, quickly re-reading both letters, and frowning in deep study. "I've a suspicion, but… I will say no more, for the nonce." He folded the letters and stuffed them into a side pocket of his sober black coat. A pull on his watch and a peer at its face, and he turned brisk at finishing his last cup of coffee and dabbing his lips before rising and throwing his napkin onto his plate. "Time we should be going. You're to meet MacDougall by eight. My coach is already brought round."

  Half a chop, half his eggs, and a fresh-buttered slice of toast remaining; Lewrie had barely made a dent in his own meal, but "grumble you may, but go you must" was the day's motto. Besides, by noon, he could be remanded to gaol in the Old Bailey; which dread thought made what little he had consumed turn to a 12-pounder round-shot.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  But for the circumstances, it might have been a hearty reunion in the grim and dour courtroom, so darkly panelled and gloom-making. Lord Peter Rush-ton was there, all huzzahs, and taking a morning from Parliament (not that he did all that much when he did sit in session!), along with a fancily dressed Clotworthy Chute, another old companion from Harrow, a moon-faced, fubsy "Captain Sharp," who looked as if his career at fleecing new-come "Country-Put" heirs was progressing nicely.

  Sir Malcolm Shockley had taken the morning from the House of Commons, along with his wife, Lucy, ironically once Hugh Beauman's sister; still stunningly pretty, blond and fair, with the most amazing aquamarine eyes, bee-stung red lips, short and sweetly rounded figure… and the wits of an addled sheep, one discovered after an hour in her company, and why Lewrie ever thought her a fine match back in 1781, he could no longer fathom.

  Beauman money, and those tits, he decided, thinking back on his early years as a penniless, futureless Midshipman.

  His father and Burgess Chiswick were both there in full uniforms of their respective services, Burgess attending Miss Theodora Trencher and her parents from the Abolitionist Society, so it appeared that he'd made good progress in his suit… as was the Rev. Clarkson, whom Lewrie had met at the Trenchers' home to gain the Abolitionists' support, and, by God, so were the Rev. William Wilberforce, Mistress Hannah More, and a platoon of the leading lights in the Clapham Sect and reform-minded!

  His barrister, Mr. MacDougall, made the introductions to a very well-dressed youngish man as Sir Samuel Whitbread, he of the vast brewery fortune, who led a pack of like-minded younger progressives in both Commons and Lords, all of whom had to pump Lewrie's paw and tell him that he was "the very Devil of a fellow"! The greetings and introductions took so long that Lewrie could imagine that he was at "Old Boys' Week" at one of the many public schools he had (briefly) attended, and the captain of the champion cricket team, to boot!

  "Your wife and family, Captain Lewrie," MacDougall fretted in a whisper as they finally neared the defence table, "they do not attend? T'would have been better, were they to be seen in support."

  "Don't even ask, Mister MacDougall," Lewrie muttered back, with a forced smile plastered on his phyz, and a cynical roll of his eyes. "Now we're here, what exactly am I to do?"

  "Look innocent, of course," MacDougall softly instructed, wryly grinning. "Rise with the others when the Lord Justice is announced… hat off… and, when called upon, enter the prisoner's dock… there," he said, directing Lewrie's attention to a railed square dais, before the judge's higher, and ornate, bench. "Identify yourself when asked, and, when put to the question of guilt or innocence, state firmly that you are not guilty… it is pro forma. Not too loudly or emphatically, mind… nil desperando, hmm? Calm, forthright, perhaps with a touch of indignation that you are forced to be here, but not so much of that as to appear arrogant, else you might put off the jury. Once we begin to lay our arguments, you may sit, but you must remain erect and attentive, continuing your calm demeanour. No twitches, shivers, tics, or pulling faces. The Lord Justice will note such as signs of guilt, as would a jury, once empanelled, though I firmly doubt we shall get that far today. You may even evince surprise or disagreement with what Sir George Norman, the prosecutor, may use in his statement, but you must not cry out in protest."

  "Like playin' whist, is it? Stone-faced?" Lewrie asked, ascowl.

  "Very like, Captain Lewrie," MacDougall said. "Ah, here comes our opposition.

  "Can I glower at 'em?"

  "Glowering, to a point, is allowed," MacDougall told him, indicating that he should take a seat behind the accused's table for a bit.

  Glower, Lewrie did, developing an instant and instinctive abhorrence for the prosecuting attorney, Sir George Norman, for that worthy was a very sleek and elegant fellow in his early thirties with perfect wavy blond hair underneath his side-curled court peruke, and strutting languid as a peacock in his black silk robe, attended by a pair of law clerks who carried his files and such for him.

  Glower even hotter, for right behind him came Hugh Beauman, the stout bastard, glaring angrily at one and all. Hugh Beauman had come as grandly dressed as anyone could wish; his hat was a sleek and fat beaver planter's hat, pinned up on one side, adrip with egret plumes, and trimmed at the brims with silver lace over light blue ribbon, his coat an older frock style richly embroidered in almost a paisley swirl of turquoise, light blue, and light grey satin; under that his waist-coat was a longer old-style, figured and embroidered pale gold silk or some other shimmery stuff. His breeches were the same pale gold colour, but thankfully plain silk or satin, with white silk stockings, and his clunky-heeled black shoes bore real gold buckles inlaid with diamond chips! He slowly paced, employing a long ebony walking-stick with its gold ferrule and a large gold knob atop…

  A clompin' breedin' bull, tarted up for auction/ Lewrie thought; tryin 'for languid an'graceful, too. And,
a wig like that? Powdered? Haven't seen such a "Macaroni" in twenty years! Height o' fashion, my arse! Who found his tailor, Clotworthy Chute?

  Hugh Beauman's face was set in a porcine, full-chinned, high-nosed look of royal boredom, surely an affected sham taught him far in the past by out-dated tutors… though he did let it slip a bit when he finally deigned to let his slow gaze turn far enough to espy Lewrie at the accused's table, Sprised I'm still alive, are ye? Lewrie sarcastically thought. Or, perhaps Beauman's arrogant demeanour had been shaken more by the rustle of titters and snide whispers that those who attended the court made when they saw his garish suitings.

  The snickers among the ladies present certainly nettled the arch woman on Beauman's arm! Whoever she was, or had been before, Beauman's new wife had not been exposed to London fashion, or the harsh judgement of the "fashionable." For she was tricked out like a bookend to her husband, too-elegantly gowned in the same embroidered and figured pale gold material as Hugh Beauman's waist-coat, her wide straw bonnet ribboned with cloth that matched his coat, and bound under her chin with a pale blue ribbon. Over her shoulders she wore a gauzy and diaphanous blue shawl figured in silver lace, and Lewrie just knew that her shoes held real gold buckles with diamond chips, too.

  She was tall for a woman, about five inches shy of six feet in her heeled shoes, slim and willowy, coolly ash blond, and with eyes of the most disconcerting and icy pale green. She was strikingly lovely, Lewrie thought her, but with the air of an unimpressed empress forced to appear among the lowly; imperious, cold, but very aware of the power of her looks. Deserve each other, I swear they do! Lewrie thought, and speculated who had selected their attire, Hugh Beauman, or her; and, at the end of the day, who would get scathed for it in the privacy of their lodgings! That 'd put a chill on Beauman's new "domestic bliss"!