The Blue and the Grey

by M. J. Trow

  Grand and Batchelor emerged on to Jermyn Street and stopped. Both of them realized at once that they weren’t really dressed for the theatre, not even the less good seats. Maskelyne was certainly the talk of the town, and Batchelor had an idea that even the cheaper seats would be filled with some rather wealthy people, and he thought he should mention it to Grand. He hadn’t seen him slow to put his hand in his pocket yet, but he didn’t really know how much he had behind him.

  ‘This might cost quite a lot,’ he said, beginning the conversation in such a way as not to cause offence.

  Grand shrugged. ‘How much is a lot?’ he asked. ‘I’m not quite as experienced as I might be with your money. For example, what’s a bob? A tanner?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Batchelor said. ‘These tickets could cost you as much as five pounds.’

  Grand did a quick sum in his head. ‘Twenty dollars!’ he said. ‘That’s enough for two theatre tickets, I must say.’

  Batchelor gave him the news gently. ‘I think that might be each.’

  ‘I’m not sure I have that much on me,’ Grand said. ‘Let me look.’ He took out his pocketbook and looked inside. ‘Nope. I only have—’ he flicked the notes in his fingers – ‘four pounds. Hold on a minute.’ He opened a small purse on the other side. ‘Two sovereigns, that’s all. Not enough.’

  Batchelor felt somehow warmer towards the man. So his pockets weren’t bottomless after all. ‘How are you going to pay your hotel bill?’ he asked, kindly.

  Grand gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘My father’s man of business is looking after all that. I just need to go and see him tomorrow for some more money. It’s just that, for tonight, we would be wasting our time dashing off to the theatre. I don’t know whether they would let us in, in any event, dressed like this.’ Grand’s clothes were, as always, immaculate but perhaps a little too casual for the theatre. In the good old days he would simply have put on his dress uniform. Batchelor tried to stand so the darns didn’t show.

  ‘We’ll leave it until tomorrow night, then,’ Batchelor said. At least he now knew how rich Grand was. Very.

  Grand put his hand on the journalist’s arm. ‘Come back inside with me,’ he said. ‘We need to plan tomorrow with a lot of care.’

  Batchelor turned and suddenly was aware of a growing noise, the clash of hoofs on stone, the rumble of wheels and the flick of a whip in the air. All familiar enough, but should they be just over his shoulder and getting nearer by the second? He looked up and was almost eyeball to eyeball with a terrified horse, which reared up and away to avoid him if it could. The little gig it was pulling was rocking from side to side, now on one wheel, now on another, and Batchelor felt the breeze as it ripped past his waistcoat buttons. He knew he should cry out, but there simply wasn’t the time. He pushed Grand, but Grand was already leaping for safety. Within what could only have been seconds, they were picking themselves up from the pavement, shaken but unhurt.

  From nowhere, a crowd gathered, brushing the two men down and twittering their excitement. It wasn’t a new thing on the streets of London to see someone knocked for six by a runaway horse, but everyone was agreed – this horse was being aimed deliberately, should anyone ask them.

  Someone did. ‘Was the driver aiming at me?’ Batchelor asked.

  ‘Nah,’ said a cab driver, who had been forced off the road by the careering gig. ‘No offence, mate,’ he said to Grand, ‘but it was you the bloke was after. He lashed out at you with his whip when he missed you. Never seen nothing like it.’

  There were murmurs of agreement from the crowd.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ said a girl standing by with a basket of violets on one arm. ‘Your ear, look.’

  Grand put his hand up and, sure enough, blood was trickling down his neck from a clean nick in his ear.

  ‘That’s from the whip,’ said the cabbie, by default the expert in the crowd. ‘I should get inside, if I was you. He might come back.’

  All heads turned anxiously in the direction in which the gig had gone.

  Again, the cabbie had the knowledge. ‘Don’t think he’ll come that way,’ he said. ‘He could come back round the same way, or he could come out of any of these turnings. A little light gig like that, it can be round a corner and on yer before yer know it.’

  The crowd started to disperse now. Excitement was one thing. Being knocked down by a maniac in a gig was another. Within less than a minute, Grand and Batchelor stood alone on the pavement, the echo of the whip’s crack in their ears and a nagging sense of unease in their chests.

  Grand cleared his throat. ‘Shall we?’ he said, gesturing to the hotel’s imposing entrance.

  Batchelor tried to summon up a smile. ‘I don’t mind if I do,’ he said, and the two men made for the safety of the lobby, trying not to break into a run.

  ‘If I was of a more melodramatic constitution, sir, I’d say it was a murder attempt.’

  ‘Murder?’ Richard Tanner looked up from his paperwork. He had to admit the man in front of him looked the part. From the top of his leather cap to the shit-encrusted boots, Constable Bennett was every inch a London cabbie. He even smelt of horse liniment. Tanner put down his pen. ‘I won’t bore you with the Metropolitan statistics of traffic accidents, Bennett, but let’s just say they are legion on account of the chaos on our streets … for which, needless to say, we are blamed.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I know.’ Bennett wasn’t just about the best undercover man Tanner had, he was also the most obstinate. ‘But this one was deliberate, I’ll swear. The bloke drove directly at the American. It’s a miracle he wasn’t killed.’

  ‘Ordinary cab?’ Tanner twirled the pen between his fingers, spraying fine gobs of ink in all directions.

  ‘Standard rig,’ Bennett told him.

  ‘Growler?’

  ‘The cabbie was medium height. Usual schmatte. Three days’ beard.’

  ‘In other words, anybody.’ Tanner sighed. ‘You didn’t get a cab number, I suppose.’

  ‘It all happened so fast,’ Bennett and Tanner chorused.

  The inspector shook his head. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘This is a bit of a turn-up, isn’t it? A man who habitually carries a revolver turns up looking for a man who owes him money and becomes – or nearly so – the victim of a hit and run.’

  ‘So …’ Bennett was doing his best to stay with the Inspector on this one. ‘The cabbie is the bloke who owes the money?’

  ‘The mysterious Mr Dundreary,’ Tanner said with a nod. ‘Although somehow, I don’t think it’s nearly that simple. Who’s on Grand now?’

  ‘Shannon, sir.’

  ‘Disguise?’

  ‘Man about town, sir. He wanted to go as a cleric, but I did point out to him that if Mr Grand were to go to a house of ill repute, he, Shannon, would be something of a sore thumb.’

  Tanner winked at him. ‘Quite right, Bennett,’ he said. ‘You’re coming on, there’s no doubt about that.’

  Dick Tanner knew that his current tactics would be frowned on by his superiors at the Yard. Dolly Williamson in particular hated disguises and expressed his disapproval on every conceivable occasion. Here at Vine Street, however, Tanner’s rule was law, and it sometimes paid off. ‘All right, Tom,’ he said. ‘Get yourself out of those clothes – and, for God’s sake, have a bath!’

  The room was quiet, except for the scritch of pen-nibs on paper and the sighing of inspiration-free men with deadlines to meet. The editor prowled the lines of desks, looking over shoulders and tsking or nodding approvingly, with rather more of the former in evidence. His paper was losing out to the competition, its circulation was dropping like a dying man’s – and Thornton Leigh Hunt had no intention of letting it die just yet. There must be something he could do to revive it, but what was new in the newspaper game these days? It had all been tried; the number of newspapers had blossomed, but nothing lasted. Almost all the new papers had gone to the wall in very short order – scarcely having time for the paint to dry in their offic
es in most cases. It was so stuffy in here; perhaps that was why he couldn’t think. A breath of fresh air, yes, that would be just the thing.

  As the door swung to behind the editor, there was a huge sigh of relief, and the noise in the journalists’ room rose to its normal level, which was that of a parrot house with a cat loose. He was a good enough editor, as editors went, but everything ran so much more smoothly when he was out of the building. Perhaps not smoothly, some of the more reasonable men would agree, but certainly with a little more flair; it wasn’t easy to let the creative juices flow when ones buttocks were clenched with nerves.

  Dyer turned to Buckley and voiced the thoughts of most of the men there. ‘I don’t know where he’s gone, but I’m glad he has.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Gabriel Horner, from Dyer’s other side. ‘It was never like this in the old days. In the old days, editors knew how to behave. Why, when I was on the old Register, we never saw John Walter from one week’s end to the next.’

  Dyer and Buckley exchanged glances. Whose turn was it to ask the question?

  Buckley said, ‘John Walter, Gabriel?’

  The old journalist chuckled phlegmily. ‘That’s the son, of course. I’m not that old, oh dear me, no. He wasn’t an easy man, mind, to work for. Had very strong views. I remember he had a screaming row with Pitt – that’s the Younger, of course – right in the office. None of us were allowed to write it up, of course, though …’

  Dyer, Buckley and everyone else within earshot was mouthing the words along with Horner. He had told the same story, word for word apart from the odd preposition or two, for more years than anyone could remember. It had become a kind of race memory at the Telegraph, and it would probably outlive him; it might well outlive them all.

  Horner was just reaching the punchline, involving the King of Portugal or similar dignitary, when the double doors swung again and Leigh Hunt was back in the room, his hair awry from the spring breeze outside and his cheeks pink. Silence descended again, leaving Horner’s voice alone for a few syllables before he realized what was happening.

  ‘… sent it back with a note, which said … oh!’

  Leigh Hunt silenced him with a flap of the hand. ‘I’ve just been out there, and do you know what I saw?’

  ‘Pink elephants?’ muttered Dyer out of the corner of his mouth.

  Leigh Hunt spun round. ‘I’ll ignore that, Dyer. But only because I need all of you to listen and then to work as you’ve never worked before. I repeat, do you know what I saw?’

  This time the silence was palpable.

  ‘I saw … women. Hundreds, if not thousands of them. Working, walking … they’re everywhere.’

  No one quite knew how to answer him. It was Fleet Street’s worst kept secret that he had been having an affair with Agnes Lewes, the wife of the editor of the Ebullient, for years. In fact, three of her children definitely had his chin. And here he was, claiming to have just noticed there were women in the world. Several people shuffled their feet, and there was an outbreak of nervous coughing.

  ‘And do you know,’ Leigh Hunt continued, ‘these ornaments of our homes have nothing to read? Oh, yes, there are lending libraries. But do they have something new to read, when their husbands are enjoying the news at breakfast? No, they do not.’

  A few people grunted in agreement. No one could see quite where this might be going.

  ‘So, the Telegraph will fill that yawning chasm. We will produce the first newspaper precisely for women.’

  ‘Er …’ Horner raised a finger. ‘Who will buy it?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know many husbands who would fork out for something so the little woman had her nose in it and neglected her … duties.’ He left just long enough a gap to make some of the younger journalists splutter and redden.

  Leigh Hunt looked at him long and hard but eventually had to turn away from his bland gaze. ‘You have a point there, Gabriel. But if it were free, free inside the paper, then the husbands would buy it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Horner piped up again. He had seen it all in his years in print. ‘But they already buy it. All we get is a lot more work.’

  ‘Ah,’ Leigh Hunt cried. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. Women will insist that their Times-reading husbands change their paper, so they can read what everyone else is reading. Circulation will rocket.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Bonuses will be forthcoming.’

  Everyone sat up rather straighter and tried their best to look intelligent.

  ‘I need to speak to the printers, to see how much can be done to make the Little Woman’s Supplement look different from the main paper. We don’t want them to be accidentally exposed to the world of finance and politics by picking up the wrong part of the paper. But that is just a wrinkle; we need to start working on content straight away. I throw this idea out to see who wants to run with it. Let’s get some interviews done with some of the lions of the theatre. The fair sex enjoy a play, or so I’m told. Thrash it out between you – I want copy on my desk by tomorrow deadline at the latest.’ He ran a hand through his hair, suddenly aware of how tousled he was, and went back into his office, a new spring in his step, looking for a comb.

  When his door had slammed to, the room seemed to hold its breath. Every brain was whirring; who had they spoken to lately, leaning on a bar or queuing in a bordello, what conversation could they turn into an interview with no effort? After a few minutes of private cogitation, everyone turned back to the task they had been engaged in before Leigh Hunt’s impassioned outburst, and his Little Woman’s Supplement died almost before it had taken its first breath.

  Batchelor would never tell Grand, but he was increasingly impressed by Grand’s apparent imperviousness to pain. Not only had he been knocked out, but he had also suffered cuts and bruises being thrown out of the Alhambra, and now there had been a murder attempt, culminating in another collision with a hard London pavement. Yet still he carried on each time, never wincing or complaining. He would simply change his shirt and any other clothes as necessary and soldier on. Perhaps that was it. Did being a soldier actually make you feel pain less? Batchelor, still with his mind on his article about the American in London, asked him.

  ‘Do you mean, do you feel pain less if you have seen people die around you?’ Grand asked, in his usual laconic way, giving nothing away as to how he really felt.

  ‘I don’t think I mean that, as such,’ Batchelor said. ‘I mean, if you have been injured, do you feel pain less?’

  ‘I came through Bull Run, Gettysburg and The Wilderness without a mark on me, since you ask,’ Grand said. ‘I have been injured far more since I left the army than ever I was when I was in it. But I guess my childhood might have been a bit more rough and tumble than yours.’

  Batchelor cast his mind back to when he was young. It was true that he had been luckier than many, having never been shoved up a chimney or forced to work down a mine or in the racket and danger of a factory. But his childhood had not been idyllic. His mother had died when he was ten, and his father had immediately left the children in the care of his own mother, a slatternly old body who had not so much taken care of them as ignored them almost to the point of starvation. Batchelor had managed to scrape an education almost in spite of himself, and he had dragged himself up by his bootstraps and by slow degrees until he worked for Leigh Hunt at the Telegraph. So, no, there had been no rough and tumble, just plain old boring hardship. He precised it. ‘Possibly.’

  Grand knew better than to pry. ‘I was raised on a farm. I was allowed to run a little wild, by your standards, I guess. Got lots of bumps and grazes. Few broken bones. Boy stuff, you know how it is.’

  ‘Your father is a farmer?’ Batchelor was surprised. He hadn’t thought farming was quite as lucrative as all that. Grand appeared to be very well off indeed.

  ‘Not as such. Had been, oh yes, before I was born. But then they found some gold.’ Grand shrugged. ‘The crops were more of a hobby after that. Then he ran for Congress …’ Another shrug, and Batchel
or realized again that he and the American had absolutely nothing in common, except perhaps a strong sense of fairness and justice.

  ‘Gold. That must have been … nice.’

  ‘Biggest nugget since the Reed nugget in 1799.’ Grand couldn’t help some pride creeping in to his voice. He still remembered the day his father had put the lump of dirty rock in his mother’s lap, while he was still in rompers, and their lives had changed forever.

  ‘How big was that?’ Batchelor was thinking he would say ‘thumb-sized’ or some such, but the reply was astounding.

  ‘Seventeen pounds, or near enough,’ Grand said. ‘We’d have been set for life if that was all there was, but of course, there was more. I don’t know how much money my father has. We don’t speak much. He just gives me a line of credit at his bank.’

  So they did have something in common. ‘Who does he bank with?’ Batchelor asked. He knew that Grand needed a cash top-up, and the least he could do was help him find the nearest branch.

  Grand looked puzzled, then his brow cleared. ‘No. His bank. He owns it. But I have to go and see his agent here – he doesn’t have his own place of business in London. If you want to wait for me here, I’ll go to his office now and then we can plan what we can do tonight, after the show.’

  Batchelor looked around him, watching for ears that might be cocked. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was being followed, ludicrous though that idea was. Here in the Cavendish foyer, sunk into leather sofas almost as big as his entire room at Mrs Biggs’, they were surrounded by people, but everyone seemed to have somewhere else to be. No one was lingering, listening, taking notes. It seemed the best place to be alone really was in a crowd.

  ‘Gentlemen.’ Inspector Tanner tapped the blackboard with his cane. Many of the detectives in front of him should have gone home hours ago, and the gas lamps spluttered and flared in the bowels of Vine Street nick. ‘I don’t have to tell you that three unfortunates have met a sticky end near the Haymarket Theatre over the last fortnight. You’ve all been out there with the uniformed branch, knocking on doors and asking questions. And it pains me to say it, but you’ve got absolutely nowhere.’