Gentlemen Formerly Dressed

by Sulari Gentill

  “I’m sure they’ll be more than adequate, Captain. Thank you. I do, however, need to access a telephone to let my friends know my whereabouts.”

  “Martha might step out while you change,” the captain said, “and then we can talk about what you’re going to do.”

  “I trust, Mr. Sinclair, that you will never consider doing anything so desperate again,” Martha added. “Cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee. I’m sure your loved ones would be deeply grieved if they knew the terrible extents to which despair drove you. Self-murder is never the solution.”

  Rowland paused momentarily and then smiled. “I was trying to avoid being shot, Miss Pratchett.”

  “Sometimes it seems that way, Mr. Sinclair, and when it does you must let the Lord be your shield against the bullets of misery and temptation. Because of His strength will I wait upon thee: for God is my defence!”

  Rowland gave up. “Yes, Miss Pratchett, I’ll remember that… the Lord shall be my shield.”

  She beamed. “I’ll let you get dressed, Mr. Sinclair, so you may begin the rest of your life.” She trotted triumphantly out into the dormitory.

  Captain Leonard winked apologetically as he shut the door between the rudimentary clinic and the dormitory. “The cadets can be overzealous about the salvation part of our work—their lights are sometimes a little dazzlin’,” he said.

  Rowland smiled. He climbed out of the low iron bed, still slow and unsteady. Leonard lent him a shoulder until he felt stable on his own legs.

  The clothes, as the captain had warned, were old and patched and completely mismatched, but they were clean and they were clothes.

  The outer layer of the cast on Rowland’s right arm had disintegrated somewhat in the water, but he was otherwise intact. He buttoned the donated shirt, rolling up its right sleeve in the hope the plaster would dry out a little.

  “In case you’re concerned, Mr. Sinclair,” Leonard said quietly, “we ’aven’t told the Old Bill that you’re ’ere.”

  “Why not?” Rowland asked, surprised.

  “We felt it would not help your state ’a mind to be arrested.”

  “I don’t understand, Captain Leonard. Why would I be arrested?”

  “Attempted suicide is considered a very serious crime. But we don’t judge, and we only want to help. Were it gamblin’ debts that brought you so low… or a disappointment in love perhaps?”

  “I was not trying to take my own life,” Rowland said wearily. “I was trying to escape.”

  The old soldier smiled sympathetically. “Many people put it that way.” He placed his hand on Rowland’s shoulder. “It’s all right, son. Lord ’arcourt has told us how it was. I’m told the poor man was distraught.”

  Rowland pulled away. “Harcourt? What did he say?”

  Captain Leonard hesitated.

  “Please… I really need to know what’s going on.”

  Nodding finally, Leonard sat on the bed to explain. “The Salvation Army patrols Waterloo Bridge for people trying to jump, or just men in need. Our Sergeant Brooks and some young corps cadets were on the bridge last night, I was on shift with the dinghy. The foot patrol ’eard a disturbance from some ways away and went to see if anyone needed ’elp or comfort.”

  Rowland recalled the torches in the distance.

  “They ’esitated, naturally, when they ’eard gunshots—but with the good Lord’s ’elp, they found the courage to push on and investigate. When they reached the spot from where you’d gone and jumped, a gentleman—Lord ’arcourt, he said he was—told them what ’ad ’appened. He and the other gentlemen ’ad come across you trying to shoot yourself on the bridge. They’d wrestled the firearm from your hand after you’d discharged it wild-like. When they managed to seize the gun, you—being most determined to destroy yourself—vaulted the parapet wall and jumped. Sergeant Brooks says they were very concerned to see if you ’ad survived.”

  Rowland wanted to curse. He clenched his fist in his hair. “Do they know I survived, sir?”

  “Poss’bly not. It were dark and the tides are so fearful strong in the Thames that we pulled you out a fair way from the bridge and we brought you straight ’ere. Sergeant Brooks didn’t even realise we’d found you until he came in this last hour. According to ’im, Lord ’arcourt and his companions departed before the Old Bill arrived, they were so upset about what ’appened.”

  Rowland looked the kindly man in the eye. “Captain Leonard,” he said urgently, “I promise you, sir, I wasn’t intent on committing suicide, I didn’t even contemplate it. Lord Harcourt and his insane associates were trying to kill me… Think, man! What would a peer of the realm and his companions be doing walking across Waterloo Bridge in the middle of the night?”

  Leonard gaped at him, stupefied.

  “Harcourt and his companions are vile and reprehensible murderers—they’ve already killed one man. I was to be the second. Please. God only knows what they’re up to at this moment.”

  The captain bit his lip. “We thought… I’m so sorry, Mr. Sinclair.”

  “Please don’t be. If it wasn’t for you I would have drowned. I do appreciate your help, sir, but I desperately need to contact the police and my brother and friends. They could well believe me dead by now.”

  “Captain Leonard!” Martha Pratchett knocked insistently on the door. “Captain Leonard!”

  “Yes, comrade… We’re nearly—” Leonard began.

  Corps Cadet Pratchett burst in with her hands over her eyes in case Rowland should still be undressed. She was clearly flustered, by more than the thought of a naked man. “There are some gentlemen here, Captain Leonard, who are insisting that we hand Mr. Sinclair over to them.”

  34

  SALVATION ARMY BANDS

  How They Began

  … Soon after the founder, William Booth, had got his struggling little organisation going in London, said the speaker, an ardent worker named Fry, a resident of Salisbury, in the south of England, took his family of boys into the streets to play music as an aid to their work in spreading the influence of the Army, and about the same time a party of miners followed the same practice in the north of England. General Booth, ever watchful for a chance to increase the popularity of the Army and to attract the poor, Godless classes, saw a way in this idea to come in contact with the very people he was out to reform. Thus the Army bands began, and although they had improved greatly since those days, and were worthy of representation in musical festivals, their mission was still the same.

  The West Australian, 1933

  Rowland tensed. Could the Kalokagathia have realised that he hadn’t drowned? Had they seen the captain’s dinghy and tracked him to the Blackfriars Hostel?

  “Thank you, Corps Cadet,” Leonard said. “I’ll talk to them.” He turned to Rowland. “Do not worry, Mr. Sinclair. We are the Lord’s Army and you shall be defended!”

  “Unto thee,” Martha Pratchett cried, “O my strength, will I sing: for God is my defence, and the God of my mercy!”

  “Captain Leonard,” Rowland said quietly. “Harcourt and his companions are dangerous. I don’t suppose the Lord’s Army has weapons?”

  “We have the Gospel, Mr. Sinclair.”

  “Then I’d best come with you, sir. I’ll not have your comrades endangered on my account.”

  “As you wish, Mr. Sinclair, but stay behind me.” The captain frowned thoughtfully. “Corps Cadet,” he said to Martha Pratchett, “summon all our soldiers to the reception. Let us greet the enemy with a show of force… and Martha, per’aps you’d better send for the Old Bill now.”

  And so it was that when Rowland Sinclair walked into the reception room of the Blackfriars Men’s Hostel to confront Lord Harcourt and his Kalokagathia, he did so surrounded by what seemed an entire regiment of the Salvation Army. A young cadet started to sing, and soon the hostel rang with full and earnest voices raised in “Even Greater Things”.

  From the midst of this extraordinary procession, did Rowland find his
brother and his friends at the reception desk.

  For a while their utter relief at finding Rowland alive stayed all questions as to why he would be leading a parade through the hostel. They could not have heard one another in any case, as the army continued to belt out, “Greater things! Greater things! Give us faith, O Lord, we pray, faith for greater things.”

  Edna glanced at the settee where Rowland had drifted off. The police had questioned him until well after dawn and, considering how he had spent the night, it was no wonder he was exhausted.

  Not that any of them had spent the night well. There had been a while when all of them—even Wilfred—had been convinced Rowland Sinclair was dead. Edna shuddered as she remembered the overwhelming horror of believing she would never see or touch or confide in him again. And Wilfred Sinclair, staring out at the Thames in such deep and silent pain. Both Clyde and Milton loved Rowland like a brother, but Wilfred was his brother.

  Edna had walked away from the men, unable to bear the sight of them struggling with their grief. She’d given in to hers. Seized by anguish, she’d wept like a lost child.

  One of the many ragged men who slept on the embankment near the Waterloo Bridge had asked her why she was crying. He was dirty and muttered strangely but she’d talked to him anyway.

  “I seen it,” he said, looking wildly about. “He jumped, your sweetheart did. Went in dere… came up dere… and then the Sallies scooped him up in dere boat and took him. The Sallies take men from ’ere—it ain’t right. The gov’ment should do somefink about it! It ain’t right.”

  Edna knew she had frightened the poor man, screaming so excitedly for Clyde and Milton and Wilfred to come and hear his tale. By the time they’d reached her, he’d darted away and would not speak to any of them again.

  But he’d told the sculptress enough.

  Of course, when they’d finally located the Blackfriars Hostel, Wilfred had been perhaps too fervent in his demands for his brother’s return. It had alarmed the young woman at the reception desk. But Edna could understand his impatience.

  She mused on the manner in which Wilfred simply shook his brother’s hand when at last Rowland emerged. Men said so much with their handshakes. Edna had embraced Rowland, clung to him and wept relief into his neck, but she was not a man and nobody expected her to hide so much.

  The telephone rang. Clyde answered and after a brief exchange he replaced the receiver and woke Rowland.

  “Your brother’s on his way up, mate. He’s got George Allen and Allie.”

  Rowland sat up and attempted to rub the fatigue from his face. Edna uncurled herself from the armchair, smoothed her skirt and put her shoes back on.

  “Pierrepont!” Milton warned and they heard the knock on the door.

  Edna grabbed her shawl from the back of a chair and draped it over the wax head—which still sat on the sideboard—just moments before Clyde opened the door to admit Wilfred Sinclair, George Allen and Miss Allie Dawe.

  The solicitor had been despatched to Holloway to arrange the release of Allie Dawe as soon as the police had taken and accepted Rowland’s statement.

  Rowland was still unsure of how much Allie knew about the discoveries and events of the past days. She seemed happy to see him at least. He hoped that meant she’d forgiven him.

  Allen informed them that Lord Harcourt had been arrested, as had his brother, who worked for the Ministry of Health under the name Diogenes Asquith. Three members of the Kalokagathia had panicked and were providing evidence of all the clandestine activities of the society and the Thistlewaite brothers. It appeared the impregnation of Euphemia Thistlewaite was a premeditated experiment designed to prove the extreme position of the Kalokagathia.

  “Whilst Lady Pierrepont was of course prima facie involved,” Allen concluded, “it is uncertain whether she possessed the requisite mens rea to be considered legally culpable.”

  Wilfred and his family, it had been decided, would join Rowland and his companions in embarking for Sydney in a few days. London’s Economic Conference had stalled irretrievably.

  “God, I’m sorry, Wil,” Rowland said guiltily.

  Wilfred sighed. “It was nothing to do with you, or the Blackshirts, Rowly. Roosevelt has set his mind against an agreement and without the Americans…” he shook his head.

  The American President, it appeared, had withdrawn support and then actively spoken against the conference’s lofty aims. The result was bickering and very little else.

  Allen nodded sagely. “I must say it all reminds me of a story from Cicero’s dialogue—De Legibus—in which Atticus says: me Athenis audire ex Phaedro meo memini Gellium, familiarem tuum, cum pro consule ex praetura in Graeciam venisset essetque Atehis, philosophos, qui tum errant, in lucum unum covocasse ipsisque mango opera auctorem fuisse, ut aliquando controversiarum aliquem facerent modum; quodsi essent eo animo, ut nollent aetatem in litibus conterere, posse rem convenire; et simul operam suam illis esse pollicitum, si posset inter eos aliquid convenire.”

  Clyde cleared his throat, casting a “what-the-Hell” glance in Rowland’s direction.

  “Got to hand it to that Atticus,” Milton said, smiling and nodding. “He knew how to tell a joke!”

  “What are your plans, Allie?” Edna asked before Allen could work out that Milton hadn’t understood a single Latin word.

  “Oh, Lord Bishopthorpe is arranging for me to take singing lessons!” she said, beaming. “He’s going to settle everything for mother and me, and says we mustn’t worry because Uncle Alfred left us quite a lot of money.”

  Rowland smiled. Buchan was as good as his word. Pierrepont could not have left Allie and her mother anything at all, but clearly the Earl of Bishopthorpe intended to see them right.

  Wilfred glanced at his pocket watch. “We must be going,” he said, standing as he closed the timepiece. “I’m sure you could all do with an early night.”

  Edna smiled. “We’ll have to wait till Dr. Ambrose finishes setting Rowly’s arm again. He’s calling tonight when he finishes at the factory.”

  Wilfred sighed and regarded his brother in exasperation. “Yes, Dr. Pennyworth mentioned you refused to allow him to attend properly to your arm. I suppose I should be glad that you chose not to tell the poor man it was because you’d prefer to be treated by a doll-maker!”

  Rowland laughed. Pennyworth had removed the remnants of the old cast immediately, lest the moisture led to some type of skin infection. Though the bone had clearly knitted, the physician had thought Rowland’s refusal to submit to a new cast foolhardy. He expected full well that the still fragile bone would be rebroken in days. “Ambrose knows what he’s doing—with bones as well as plaster,” Rowland assured his brother as he saw his guests to the door. “In any case, I find myself unexpectedly short of a suit.”

  “Yes, quite,” Wilfred muttered as he stood back for Allie Dawe and Allen to proceed ahead of him. He glanced at the head-shaped lump on the sideboard which Edna had hastily cloaked with her shawl. “I thought I told you to get rid of that thing!” he growled.

  “I’ve been a little preoccupied,” Rowland replied tersely. “I’ll take it back to the waxworks first thing tomorrow.”

  “See that you do!” Wilfred shook his brother’s hand. “Ethel would like you all to come to supper tomorrow.”

  “Of course.”

  “Allen tells me that you asked him to arrange quite a substantial contribution to the Salvation Army?”

  Rowland frowned. The size of the donation had obviously so alarmed the solicitor that he had alerted Wilfred. “Yes, I did.”

  Wilfred nodded. “I instructed him to double it.” He patted Rowland’s shoulder. “Return that head,” he ordered as he walked into the hall.

  35

  MR. CHURCHILL AS HISTORIAN

  £20,000 FOR NEW WORK

  London, February 21

  The “Daily Telegraph” understands that Mr. Winston Churchill has agreed to write a “History of the English-speaking Peoples,” running into
400,000 words. Cassells, the well-known publishers, are paying over £20,000 for the copyright.

  Kalgoorlie Miner, 1933

  Rowland and his companions arrived at Madame Tussaud’s early, with Pierrepont in the Gladstone bag. They found Marriott Spencer in a terrible and vocal dither. It appeared his assistant had contracted what he called “some kind of pox” and he’d been left short-handed.

  “I’m measuring today,” he lamented. “The subject will be here in a few minutes and this is not something I can do alone!”

  “Well, can’t I help you, Marriott?” Edna volunteered.

  “The chart is complicated. The measurements must be taken exactly and written into precisely the right column or it will mean nothing,” Spencer wailed. “He will not be happy… not happy at all.”

  “Well, why don’t you take all the measurements and I can record them,” Edna suggested calmly. “You can show me how the chart works right now.”

  “But I can’t take the measurements!” Spencer moaned, holding up his prosthetic and waving it about. “My hook… it scares the subjects.”

  “Too bloody right it would!” Milton murmured as he ducked away from the path of the hook.

  “Now don’t get worked up, Marriott, dear,” Edna said, grabbing his arm before he inadvertently stabbed somebody. “Show me how to use your measuring instruments and I’ll measure. You can write the measurements down.”

  Spencer glanced at his watch. “Perhaps it might be done… you were always the cleverest of my students. Yes, let us pray that he is late and that there will be time to teach you.”

  Edna pushed up her sleeves. “Let’s get started then. You don’t mind waiting, do you gentlemen?”

  “Of course not,” Rowland replied.

  They settled themselves in the modest but well-appointed waiting room, while Edna accompanied the sculptor into the adjoining workshop. Milton and Clyde leafed through the out-of-date newspapers in the magazine rack. Rowland extracted from his breast pocket the artist’s notebook that had been returned to him through Wilfred.