The Devil in Velvet Read online

  Each person stood in the same place. Only the wax lights leaped at the draught of the closing door.

  “It would seem,” said Fenton, “that Mistress Pamphlin is now cleared. There remain but three of you.”

  Nan Curtis, the young but too-stout kitchenmaid in the cloth cap, could no longer be repressed. She put her hands to the sides of the cap, as though stricken with toothache, and tears trickled down her cheeks.

  “Oh, we are poor wretches in poor plight!” she cried out, so that Fenton could not help feeling sympathy for her. “We are undone, Tom! Tom, we are undone!”

  “Nay!” growled Big Tom in heavy bass, and boomed away in so thick an accent that Fenton called Giles to translate.

  “Why, sir,” smiled Giles, rattling the whip, “his talk runs thus, since he much admires you. ‘Harm him or his own? Him, the best swordsman in all England?’”

  Fenton was taken aback. “It is increasingly clear,” he thought, “that I am notorious for my rapier play. If only they knew the feeble truth!”

  “I thank you, Tom,” he said with courtesy. “I would wish it so, if I could.”

  During this time Kitty Softcover watched him openly, and disturbingly as though she saw a different man there. Her eyes were as quick and alert as those of a magpie with a bright new thimble clutched in its beak. She sidled up to Fenton.

  “Pray, sir,” she begged, with a wheedling look and half-smile, “you say Mistress Pamphlin is cleared. Well! Am I not cleared too? Didst not hear (eh) the bracket-face say I put in no poison?” Her voice dropped to an intimate whisper. “Tip us truth, dear Rome-Culle.” Up went her voice. “Am I not cleared too?”

  Fenton looked her up and down, without favour.

  “That, good wench, depends upon her eyesight and your own daring. Still! Let us suppose, for discourse’ sake, that you are all innocent. Now stand aside.”

  Kitty showed her teeth. Fenton, ignoring her, went to the desk of polished dark wood set endways to the window. He moved round to the desk chair. For so many years he had conned Giles’s script that he had fully memorized it. His mind’s eye saw the curling characters of the script flow across in front of him.

  “… mid-afternoon of Monday, 9th May [it ran; the 9th May was yesterday], as I Remember, that Sir Nicholas discovered, in the desk in his Study, a paper packet. On it was writ, in clarkly Hand, the words, ‘Arsenick, Deadly Poyson.’ Under this was a Mark or Desy’n in blue ink. Being much surpryz’d, Sir Nicholas did summon me to ask, How came it there? I reply’d, That I knew not. But what make you, saith He, of this Mark here? Why, sir, I make no doubt ’tis the street-desy’n that hangs above the Door of some Apothecary. …”

  Fenton cleared the memory of the manuscript from his mind and looked down at the desk. Except in imagination, he had never seen it. It had only one drawer, underneath the flat top. Someone, who for once was not Sir Nick, had put there a “paper packet.” He pulled open the squeaky drawer.

  Well, it was still there. A little rumpled, but fresh. Heavy whitish paper, about three inches wide, folded lengthwise and tucked over at each end. Rather thick, too. He touched it, and found the contents in powdered form after all. White arsenic, old when Greece was young. And enough of it to satisfy old Locusta herself.

  He turned round from the desk, opening out the packet gingerly.

  “Here’s arsenic,” he said. “The poison itself. Which of you finds it familiar?”

  Big Tom growled and shook his head. Nan Curtis, after one quick glance of insatiable curiosity, fell to sobbing again. Kitty, who had retreated into the shadow of the high cabinet, muttered words so low-voiced that Fenton nearly missed them.

  “Stow your whids, Rome-Culle!” she breathed. “The’ talkst overmuch!”

  “Now tell me,” Fenton addressed Nan Curtis gently, to prevent screams. “These materials for my lady’s sack posset: are they drawn from common stock in the house, or are they kept apart in particular for the posset?”

  “Nay, sir,” sobbed Nan, after pausing to consider what he meant. “They are all kept apart, each in particular. Even the milk is fresh-fetched from the dairy.”

  “Now here’s an admirable thing!” declared Fenton. “Here’s a way to explain much! What’s the answer, Giles? Do you apprehend it, Giles?”

  He said this out of pure devilment. At that moment Giles was leaning round the side of the high cabinet and looking at Kitty, who did not see him. Giles’s upstanding light-red hair and Kitty’s dark-red gleaming hair stood out against dark wood carved in satyrs’ heads. Giles’s expression, as his eyes devoured Kitty, was more goatish than the carved heads.

  But you could not catch him off balance. He was himself almost instantly.

  “Why, sir,” he replied, “I call it simple.”

  “How?”

  “Sir, we learn that no poison was dropped into the bowl by … by this poor wench. We learn that none touched the bowl as it was carried up. Then, mayhap, the poison was in one of the ingredients before the posset was made.”

  “Good, fair Giles!” Fenton faced the other three. “Now if this be so, we have a plain way to try it. We descend to the kitchen. We prepare a sack posset precisely as ’tis done for my lady. And all of you shall drink of it.”

  Except for a high wind prowling at the window, the study was so deathly quiet that there was not even the scrape of a foot. Slowly, as his meaning penetrated, the lines in their faces altered.

  “Ay; good!” Big Tom roared suddenly, and rumbled out some words which were evidently meant for approval.

  Nan Curtis, even her cap now tear-drenched, fell on her knees.

  “Nay, master, would you kill us all that are but your poor servants?”

  “Kill you?” inquired Fenton. “Is my wife dead?”

  Holding the paper packet of arsenic in front of them, he slowly refolded it, tucked over the ends, and put it into the deep right-hand pocket of his coat.

  “You will suffer,” he said, “but a day of cramp; perhaps, if the dose should be strong, a sense that a fire is lit in your belly, and will not be put out. There is one part of the test. Should any draw back, or refuse to drink …”

  He paused, and then went on. “Nay, I have not done. It may be there is no poison in the bowl. But that I, detecting one reluctant to drink,” he touched his pocket, “may conjure into the bowl enough of arsenic to ensure death. So that only the guilty shall suffer, and the innocent take no harm. In either case, one who should refuse to drink …”

  “I refuse,” said Kitty.

  Again Fenton looked her up and down, without favour.

  “Do you so? Then we must try the other way.”

  Kitty opened her mouth, showing the bad teeth, but shut it again. She stood with her back to the cabinet, arms outspread on either side, each hand grasping a satyr’s head.

  “If t’ mean tha’ cat—”

  “Not at all. We must fetch you up before each magistrate, until we find the one who knows. Now I’ll lay a gold angel to a lead shilling, by way of wager, that you’ve already been charged with theft or other offence that’s a matter for hanging. You’re a handsome mort, overaged at nineteen. Why do you huddle here, over a hot fire in a vile hole, except for safety’s sake?”

  Kitty’s eyes grew narrow and ugly.

  “Plant your whids, cokir!” she sneered. “Me a thief? Th’ couldst na know!”

  “I could not know? Come! You discovered it a pleasure, I suppose, to prattle sweet nonsense into the ear of thick-witted Sir Nick Fenton? Myself, yes! All so artless, that you could laugh inside you and he was befooled?”

  Then Fenton’s voice lashed out at her like the whip.

  “But I am not your ‘rich coxcomb,’” he said, “as twice you dubbed me with ‘Rome-Culle.’ I need not be wary, as you bade me with, ‘Stow your whids!’ Now you have shouted, ‘Have a care what you say, liar,’ I know
your place in life. —You forget I speak thieves’ cant too.”

  With an effort Kitty threw off both dialect and thick speech.

  “What I can speak of you …!”

  “Then speak it. But first choose. Shall it be the sack posset—or the magistrate?”

  There was a sharp rapping on the door of the study, which was instantly thrown open.

  “Now, scratch me,” proclaimed a genial, hearty, what-does-it-matter voice, “but I’ve sought you in every nook and cranny of this house except a room with books in it. I take it as a favour, Nick, scratch me if I don’t, that at last you ceased pleasuring your wife and clapped on your clothes to meet me. ’Twas to be eight-thirty prompt, d’ye recall? I near died in the waking up. And now …”

  Here the voice stopped short.

  Into the room blew a large breath of the stable and of heavy white wine, but overcoming more offensive air from below. Fenton turned round, and immediately grinned. The engraver made it easiest of all to recognize Lord George Harwell.

  George’s broad-brimmed beaver-skin hat, which had a low crown with a gold band, was stuck rakishly on his long flaxen periwig. Out of this frame twinkled brown bold eyes, together with a good-sized nose, a narrow line of (blond) moustache, a broad grin, and the suggestion of a second chin.

  Though George was two inches taller than Fenton, he had grown a little stout; it impeded, or so Giles wrote, his fine swordplay. Wearing purple velvet, his fingers afire with jewelled rings, with ruffles at his wrist and a fine fall of lace at his throat, the newcomer made the gaudy display he intended.

  George sensed there was something wrong here; he frowned; yet he could not quite seem to find it. He and Fenton went through the formula of friendship.

  “George!” said the latter affectionately. “May your soul rot as deep among cinders as Oliver’s!”

  “Nick!” said George, with sincere affection. “May you have the pox worse than Charles Sedley, and every doctor in the world struck dead!”

  During these amenities, George had been industriously clearing his shoes of stable mire against the lower edge of the door.

  “Nay, pay no heed to my manners,” he advised everybody in general, trying to look tragic. “I’ve been a ruined man since my christening; stay; no jest; dead earnest! I’ve told people a thousand times—” He paused, and his eyes rested on Giles. “Come! Did I ever tell you?”

  “No, my lord,” lied Giles, with a deep bow.

  “Didn’t I? Scratch me!” said Lord George Harwell, with honest brown eyes bulging out. “Well, ’tis no secret. We’re good old stock in general. But my cursed granddam was a cursed Germanic frog; my cur—blessed parents wanted her money; they christened me George. (My name is George).” None could now doubt his sincerity. “Foggy Germanic name like everlasting rheumatics. May God send there be never another German George in this land.”

  “Amen to that,” Fenton said grimly. “But I much fear you won’t have your wish.”

  “And how not? If—”

  For the first time George really looked at Giles Collins, and saw the steel-tipped thongs of the whip. He placed the elusive sense of wrongness.

  “That’s it!” he muttered. George snapped his fingers, and shifting colours of diamond and ruby and emerald burned against the silver setting of his rings. Kitty, who had again become a truly beautiful woman, could not take her eyes from them.

  “Here’s a court; here’s judge and jury; here’s a trial,” George said hastily. His sword, with a pierced-silver guard and even a smooth silver grip, blundered and clattered against the door as he turned round. “Nay, Nick, I’ll leave you. These things must be done; but I don’t like ’em. The stable, now …”

  From the corner of his eye Fenton saw Judith Pamphlin marching upstairs with a large laden tray.

  “Don’t go, George. My business here is ended, for the moment. —Giles!”

  “Sir?”

  “Keep them in this room,” Fenton nodded at the group, “until I return. Let them be easy; give them chairs; but none is to stir belowstairs, lest matters be tampered with. Lord George and I have business of moment; but we shall be short.”

  Now that he saw removed (for a time, at least) the prospect of a flogging which could half-kill a woman in twenty lashes, George’s rosy face broadened and beamed.

  “Scratch me, but there’s a fine wench!” he exclaimed, nodding broad-brimmed hat and flaxen peruke towards Kitty. “How d’ye go, m’girl?”

  “The better for your lordship’s notice, my lord,” sweetly answered Kitty, with a low curtsy.

  “Hah!” said George, delighted. “Nick, she has wit too! Eh?”

  “It is remotely possible.”

  “But look you, Nick! This ‘business of moment.’ In your letter you were so cursed mystérieux (as the French say, curse ’em) that I understood no word of it.”

  Fenton took from his pocket the wrapped-up poison and handed it to him.

  “I found it yesterday, hidden unbeknownst to me. Read the inscription.”

  “Poison!” said George, shrinking back and holding the packet as though it might burn him. “Here, be quick; have it back!”

  Fenton took it. Though George always plunged headlong into a fight, saying with tears that he was a man of peace, the presence of arsenic scared the colour from his face.

  “D’ye think, now,” he said, “that already it might have infected my hand? Causing it to swell up and turn black? Nay; dead earnest! Do ye?”

  “Come, man, there’s no harm here! Observe how I touch it. Now, then: did you note the mark or design drawn in blue ink under the writing?”

  “I … to speak truth …”

  “Well! I made nothing of it, until Giles Collins aided me. ’Twas the street sign above the door of an apothecary, he said.”

  “Eh? How?”

  “The design is like to a mortar, with a pestle above it. Some sign, it might be, as the Blue Mortar.” (Here Giles smirked complacently, and contemplated a corner of the ceiling.) “If we fetched in a street porter, he might well know the place itself.”

  “And did the porter know?”

  “At once,” said Fenton, quoting the manuscript. “At the sign of the Blue Mortar, in Dead Man’s Lane, off the Strand by the Savage’s Head. We go there to discover who bought the arsenic of the apothecary.”

  “Ah, crafty!” nodded George, who was never conspicuous for his shining intellect. “Crafty as a daggle-gown at Westminster Hall! Are we ready now?” “Yes. I have but to go upstairs, presenting my person to my wife …”

  George’s eyes bulged out. “Ecod, Nick! Not again?”

  “Your mind, good fellow, is more nauseous than Snow Hill in August. Lydia must hear my voice, and know it for mine. Then …”

  Fenton paused. Though he could not have said why, a premonition of dread shot through him.

  “To the Blue Mortar,” he said, “in Dead Man’s Lane!”

  CHAPTER VI

  OF CONFIDENCES AT THE “BLUE MORTAR”

  CRUNN-BANG! went the squeal and clatter of two heavy street signs, as they whacked together overhead in the Strand. Crack! went another, like a pistol shot. The crashes and bangs were mingled with a heavy crunch as some sign turned over without hitting anything, or the high-pitched cree-ak of another which merely swung.

  Thus a high wind whooped down the Strand from Charing Cross. It drove before it the sooty drizzle from chimney pots; it endangered hats and flapped the curls of periwigs; it set the street signs a-dance. They might be old or dirty, these signs, but their avenue brightened as the sun crept out, with crude imagery and blazing colour.

  Here a red mouth gaped wide in a face the hue of a new chimney pot. There a green mermaid cavorted above the door of a cookshop. Eyes, dog’s heads, three drunken fishes at once, bobbed up and down in flashes of crimson and purple and gold, whil
e wind and soot fought each other and then whirled together.

  But the din of the signs was hardly greater than the din made by those who walked or rode. The Strand, once a stately thoroughfare of noblemen’s town houses with their backs to the smoky-sparkling Thames, had been invaded by commerce even before the Great Fire nine years ago had gutted the farthest Cheapside and Eastcheap.

  Here, where the kennel or sewage ditch sent up heavy vapours from the middle of the street, iron-rimmed wheels crashed on cobbles amid the oaths of drivers. Street hawkers screamed their wares. A tinker beat his call on a brass kettle. They were outdone by the shouts of apprentices, who leaned out over half-doors or walked up and down outside the shops.

  “Cloth, sir! Like velvet; pray touch it; yet but one-fourth the price!”

  “Lily-white vinegar! Lily-white vinegar!”

  “Have you a brass pot, iron pot, skillet, kettle, or frying pan to mend?”

  “And a finer bawdyhouse,” proclaimed Lord George Harwell, yelling into his companion’s ear, “I never saw in my whole life! None such as Mother Creswell’s; faugh!”

  “Er—better?”

  “A true Temple of Venus, scratch me! I’ll tell you. … Curse it, Nick, take care where you walk! You’ll be under those wheels or down in the kennel! Hah! Back again!”

  This sort of thing had been happening for a long time, ever since he and Fenton walked east along Pall Mall. They had passed the long wall of very high, thick hedge which bounded Spring Gardens on this side, turning a little southwards, and emerged into a huge open space whose dry earth was scored by the boot marks of soldiery.

  “Now look you, Nick!” George began his first protest.

  His companion’s eyes were glazed and half-closed. As they moved across the open space, he began slowly to turn round and round as he walked. When his eyes encountered anything which seemed vaguely familiar, he would silently open and close his mouth as though confirming its name.

  George had begun to grow nervous. He laid a hand on his companion’s arm as they neared the equestrian statue of Charles the First across the open space.