The Petticoat Men

by Barbara Ewing

  ‘Very gentlemanly clothes you have for your new position,’ said Mackie dryly.

  Billy nodded, spread jam, said nothing more. We were all silent for a moment as if we were shy.

  Then Mackie said quietly: ‘Those hypocrites,’ surprising Ma and Billy and me. ‘All the noble gentlemen, saved from scandal and it was you who lost your job I hear, lad. Did you know Lord Arthur Clinton was the brother of the Duke of Newcastle, that young fella that gambles all the time in Paris and his father was in the government?’

  ‘It never exactly mentioned all that in the newspapers,’ said Ma. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘We’re not stupid down in Mudeford. We even saw that young duke briefly. Or at least, it was said to be him but no one was really sure. Whoever it was couldn’t get away from the funeral quick enough, him and that Mr Roberts. I reckon they weren’t there above fifteen minutes.’ He put down a piece of bread he was in the middle of eating and leaned back in our chair that was almost too small for him. ‘What happened in the end to those young fellows Lord Arthur was involved with that lived here? It all went very quiet after he died didn’t it?’

  ‘Freddie and Ernest?’ Ma’s voice was scornful. ‘We dont know. Our lives have been turned upside down and Billy fired but I suppose they wont come near Wakefield-street again. They let them out on bail months ago but we aint seen them, never saw them again. The papers said there would be a trial “one day”, ha!’

  ‘Do you know what?’ said Mackie. ‘Hardly anyone in Mudeford or Christchurch got paid for spending money to look after that sad fellow. Except the King’s Arms Hotel – owned by a big businessman in the town and known to a few royals who sometimes stay along the Mudeford coast. You two came to the egg lady’s house – do you know where she was? She took a blanket and lived down the back with her hens those days he was there, she didn’t have a good year and Johnny Hewlettson thought she could make a bit extra, giving a hiding nobleman in trouble her own house. Eightpence a night was all she asked him, eightpence – not even a shilling! To a Lord – and who’d look for Lord Arthur Clinton in the egg lady’s house? Not a penny has she seen. Other debts everywhere, most of them with people who dont have much money and put themselves out for him – and they’re still unpaid. And he the brother of the Duke of Newcastle.’ He shook his head and then he looked at Ma.

  ‘Mrs Stacey, do you have a room for a few weeks?’ All our faces must’ve looked really surprised. ‘I can work on this ferry as long as I like and I have to – decide what to do next.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a walk to Blackfriars and back from here,’ said Ma.

  ‘We’re walkers in Mudeford,’ said Mackie. ‘Even though we own a horse.’

  ‘We do have a room on the first floor,’ said Ma, but I could tell she was a bit reluctant. ‘We’re not as full as we used to be, thanks to Ernest and Freddie and Lord Arthur. Ten and sixpence per week.’

  He took out his purse from his waistcoat and immediately put a guinea on the table.

  ‘Where’s your things?’

  He looked a bit surprised. From the big pocket inside his cloak he pulled out a toothbrush that was all the rage, and some folded gentleman’s undergarments. He placed these next to his purse.

  ‘Those are my things,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy another shirt. If you’ll show me the room and give me a key I’d best be off to Blackfriars,’ and he stood.

  ‘Wait,’ said Billy quickly. He stopped eating, looked at Mackie very carefully. ‘Could you stay for a minute?’ Mackie waited, but a bit careful also: they were both looking at each other, sort of weighing each other. Then Billy said: ‘Would you sit down again?’ Mackie sat, didn’t speak. Then Billy just plunged in, like diving. ‘About what you said. There’s another man living here in our house who lost his job also. Elijah Fortune, he was the Head Doorkeeper at the Parliament, been there for years and years. And he was trying to raise some money to help Lord Arthur to get to France, because he knew Lord Arthur’s father. So he lost his position too.’ Again he looked at Mackie carefully before he spoke further. ‘We found out things about Lord Arthur Clinton. Did you find out things, Mackie?’

  Mackie’s voice was suddenly very quiet, rumbling quietness. ‘We had a few suspicions,’ he said. ‘What did you find out?’

  I looked at Billy’s face looking at Mackie: he had decided to share what we knew. ‘Mr Gladstone was made Lord Arthur’s guardian when he was a little boy for one thing. And Mr Gladstone is a trustee of the Newcastle family estate and would know all their affairs.’

  If it was possible, Mackie’s voice was even quieter. ‘Is that so?’ he said. He repeated the words, only even softer, like an echo. ‘Is that so? Perhaps Mr Gladstone should have guarded him more carefully in Mudeford then.’

  ‘Do you think he killed himself?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘He threatened it but – I wonder if—’ Billy looked at Ma, he looked at me. ‘I cant help wondering if – someone else might have been there,’ said Billy finally, watching Mackie warily.

  I felt a bit blooming hot. This conversation was not going the way I had expected when I invited Mackie in for a cup of tea, and I suddenly thought: what if Mackie and Johnny Hewlettson had killed Lord Arthur for – I dunno – becoming too much of a danger to smugglers? and now he was sitting in our downstairs kitchen and asking to stay in our house? Well – it wasn’t that far-fetched – he said he was a fisherman but he was probably a smuggler, we didn’t even know him, not really. Maybe I’ve got a face that shows too much of what I think – anyway Mackie suddenly laughed.

  ‘Do you think Mudeford’s full of murderers, Miss Mattie?’ he said in that strange, different Mudeford voice. ‘You saw us, you make up your own mind.’ He thought for a while and then he sighed. ‘We’ve had our suspicions too,’ he said. ‘But we cant prove anything like that – and the people in Mudeford had only taken him in because nobody else would. They are very good people in their way – but – weren’t too keen to have policemen swarming all over our quay frankly – especially on account of someone they didn’t even know, who was on the run, who they’d taken in, in kindness, and who was only there for four or five days. Johnny Hewlettson said: he’s dead, leave it. So we left it – it was hard enough anyway to get some instructions from his family about his burial, never mind look into his possible murder!’ But Mackie then regarded Billy again. ‘I hear you worked with Mr Gladstone himself, and him more involved you say than people know. Well now, would he be able to arrange a murder?’

  Billy looked shocked at the question. ‘Mr Gladstone? No, I wasn’t thinking like that,’ he said. But he stared at Mackie thoughtfully for a few moments. Mackie waited. ‘No,’ said Billy. ‘He’s a very religious man.’

  ‘Religious men have been murdering for centuries,’ said Mackie dryly and Billy laughed.

  ‘No. I mean something else entirely.’ Billy considered how to say it. ‘I used to watch Mr Gladstone a lot, course I did, working for such a famous man. He’s too – moral, too strict, even with himself. I’ve seen it somehow. He’s sometimes not very – well – he’s pompous – he booms and talks very loudly, well he’s Prime Minister – among all those Lords too, Mr Gladstone, no wonder people in the street like him! But he’s – I just think he’s a good man. Well. If you think high moral purpose – for others as well as himself – is a good thing then – he is a good person. In my opinion.’ Again he looked at Mackie. ‘What I do think is he may – just possibly – have had something to do with the main charge of sodomy in the case being quietly dropped, course I do. Now that I know what I know. But – no, not that other sort of stuff. I’m certain.’

  Again he was quiet, again Mackie simply waited. Me, I wasn’t going to say anything at all about Mr Gladstone, I never told anyone what had happened, and I failed anyway.

  Billy pulled at a piece of bread but didn’t eat it. ‘We read in the papers – so it might or might not be true – that there’s many other people probably involved in this case in
some way—’

  ‘Course that’s true,’ said Ma scornfully.

  ‘—churchmen and noblemen—’

  ‘But people like that dont murder people, not in modern times!’ I said.

  ‘—people with money to arrange things. He told Mattie and me he was going to kill himself if he couldn’t get any money to get away. He said he had the means. He said he would never let them take him to prison.’

  ‘Did he indeed?’ Mackie stared down for a long time at his big weather-beaten hands. He shook his head. ‘People came after Johnny sent the telegram to London. There was a man Roberts came – he said he was his lawyer. And he came to the cemetery also and—’

  ‘That name was his lawyer,’ I interrupted. ‘We saw him in the court.’

  ‘Well, a few others appeared – from Christchurch, from London, who knows? – a youngish man told Johnny Hewlettson he was Lord Arthur’s surgeon, but he looked too young to be a surgeon I thought. I think his name might have been Wade but how would we know about any of them?’

  ‘There was definitely someone there called Wade,’ said Billy, ‘all the papers agree on that. He witnessed what they call Lord Arthur’s last letter.’

  ‘Well, we didn’t have polite introductions,’ said Mackie dryly, ‘course we didn’t, it wasn’t a tea party, we just left them to it when they arrived. We were bloody relieved, that’s all, we didn’t listen at the door! Of course we assumed they were his friends, we expected they would take over the situation, however it developed.’ Mackie shrugged. ‘We didn’t consider for a moment they might help with the development as it were. And – we all of us in Mudeford know young Mr Newlyn from the King’s Arms, who was there just before he died. He would have told the whole of Christchurch in five minutes if they’d done something obvious like put a pillow over his Lordship’s face to stop him breathing!’

  I couldn’t help it, I got carried away with all the possibilities and Billy had suggested all this long ago and I said, ‘Maybe – maybe someone else stuffed Lord Arthur’s own “means” right down his throat in that little room just while Mr Newlyn from the King’s Arms was trying to get a breath of air.’ They looked at me as if I was mad. ‘Well that tiny room in the egg lady’s house was so hot, Mr Newlyn might have gone down the stairs to have a swig of brandy from a flask he probably carried in his cloak. Well I wished I had a brandy in my cloak when we got out of that tiny room!’ And it came instantly into my head: Everyone in London knows his arse is as big as the Thames Tunnel, and most of them have been through it!

  ‘This is not one of your novels, Mattie,’ said Ma, sounding as if she was starting to ruffle. ‘This is real life. Dont get carried away entirely.’ But I saw she looked at Mackie sharply to see what he would say.

  ‘Well let’s put it like this,’ his voice rumbled. I suddenly wondered if the deep rumbling sound of his voice made it easier for Ma to hear. ‘None of the rest of us who were involved in this matter have got scarlet fever. Nor you two, I’m presuming. So I think we can go so far as to say it is possible, but highly unlikely, that Lord Arthur Clinton died last June of scarlet fever. Which is the official story in the newspapers.’

  Ma suddenly got up from the kitchen table. Mackie’s money still lay there. ‘I think we should leave the subject!’ she said. ‘Talk it over all you want, youse and Elijah, all walking down Tottenham Court Road plotting and gossiping but I dont want any more trouble here in Wakefield-street. We could be glad to have you stay, Mackie, most of our regulars have drifted away now, people who have been coming here for years suddenly not coming any more because of all this. But not if you’re going to be trouble also. The real court case is over and damage has been done, but nobody in noble society has been harmed except that sad specimen Lord Arthur and the rest will be covered up. But damage has been done.’

  She looked really angry. Not even ruffling like the turkey but a different anger that made her seem sort of tall.

  ‘Lord Arthur died somehow. Our lives have certainly been damaged, especially Billy’s life and Elijah’s life, and that sad man Mattie has told us of, Freddie’s father – not to mention my daughter being called a whore. The case will have to come back one day, not the same, no noble names – but no doubt our address smeared and advertised all over again, and nobody wanting to stay in a bordello and things writ on our walls again, O ye gods!’ She pushed at her hair. ‘You’d be welcome to a room, Mackie, and we’d be glad of your custom but I dont want any more trouble, and I certainly dont want any blooming amateur detectives talking about blooming murder in my kitchen! I want this whole case to die, do you all hear me?’ She was unstoppable by now, that way she gets, just sometimes. ‘Frankly, Mackie, Mattie and Billy told me they thought you might be a smuggler, well I dont really want smugglers here to be honest.’

  He stood at once. ‘That’s fine then,’ he said. ‘And understood.’ He took his seaman’s cloak and when he’d put it on, and looking so completely out of place in our kitchen, he said to Ma: ‘I’m a fisherman actually, Mrs Stacey, never quite got the feel for smuggling – I used to go out with Johnny in the old days but – well, I’d rather be a fisherman, I like to go right out into the open sea, free, so that I can see France. Not weaving and diving and running up the channel from customs boats. Me and the fish and the sea. But at the moment I’m not anything because I was out in that open sea when the storm came. And I decided to come to London and work the ferries for a while.’

  ‘Do you have police looking for you for anything?’

  ‘I do not.’ Me and Billy watched this exchange in fascinated silence: we waited to see what would happen next. ‘And I thank you for the food and I’m glad to meet you. I liked your lad and lass, and always remembered them, they were the only people who came to see Lord Arthur of their own account, and they gave him money – it was their money Johnny Hewlettson used to get the doctor from Bournemouth in the first place and send a telegram to that Mr Ouvry – even smugglers have hearts by the way.’

  We watched Ma. We heard the stew bubbling.

  ‘Oh – sit down, Mackie,’ said Ma, at last, and she again pushed at her hair. ‘You cant be more trouble than sodomites I suppose!’

  He stood there looking at her. I thought she had offended him.

  ‘We weren’t just being kind, Mackie,’ said Billy. ‘We did go there to try and find out things. I was trying to find out how to get my job in the Parliament back.’

  ‘Actually it was our Ma’s money we gave, Mackie,’ I said, but still I thought he was leaving.

  Mackie, this unlikely visitor, looked at us all. And then suddenly he laughed and the laugh rumbled out round the kitchen. ‘I wont be trouble, Mrs Stacey,’ he said firmly. ‘To be honest I knew I could easily get a bed with the sailors down by the docks but some of them’d knife you soon as look as you. And – it is true that I was curious whether your Billy and your Mattie had been wondering about Lord Arthur’s death also. So I walked to Wakefield-street from the railway. I might not be here for long, depends what happens. But I wont be trouble.’

  Ma studied him for a moment longer. And then she shook herself almost: the anger was gone and she laughed too. ‘If you’re trouble as well, Mackie,’ she said, ‘I give you my word, never mind the sailors down by the docks, I’ll bleeding knife you myself!’

  38

  Nevertheless, Mackie had not, quite, discussed all his London business with the Stacey family.

  A fisherman in the offices surrounding Lincoln’s Inn Fields is a somewhat unusual visitor; clients, even shady gentlemen, were usually seen in very respectable attire. Mackie was not in the least imperfectly dressed, and his beard and his hair were combed, but he definitely looked out of place as he walked up the steps of the huge formal building that was number 66. He had the address from Johnny Hewlettson, who had got it from Lord Arthur Clinton to telegraph for money and family. Now, with no appointment, Mackie simply presented himself to the stern gentleman in the reception area, asked to speak to Mr Frederick Ouvry, an
d waited.

  Several times other gentlemen appeared, told him that Mr Ouvry was unavailable, asked him firmly to state his name and business. Finally Mackie simply said, ‘Please tell Mr Ouvry I have come to see him from Mudeford. It is a small village near Christchurch. He will understand.’

  And certainly Mr Ouvry understood, for after that it was not long before Mackie was ushered into a private, dark, mahogany-panelled back office; it looked out not over Lincoln’s Inn Fields but over a smaller back street and other buildings, and even this view was partly obscured by blinds.

  ‘I am Frederick Ouvry,’ said the man on the other side of the desk. ‘This is my private office and we can speak freely. Please sit down, sir.’

  Mackie did so, but seemed too large somehow for the fine straight-backed chair that had held many respectable posteriors. ‘Everybody calls me Mackie, Mr Ouvry. I’m a fisherman from Mudeford and I have been asked by a number of people in the area to tell you that money spent regarding Lord Arthur Clinton’s last weeks, and his death, has not been paid to people who can ill afford to wait any longer.’

  ‘I am not sure that I understand you, sir,’ said Mr Ouvry stiffly.

  Mackie sighed. ‘The builder made a coffin and why? Because it was not possible to leave Lord Arthur’s uncollected body unattended any longer, in a house where he was residing on the promise of rent to be paid that wasn’t. Incidentally a young girl of ten wrapped his body in her shawl because it seemed to her unkind not to, even though he was a stranger to her, because her parents had taught her charity. The cart-driver came from Christchurch to drive the body to Christchurch Cemetery: why? Because nobody had engaged anybody to do so. As you know, the cemetery was paid because the body would not have been buried there else.’