Savage Magic

by Lloyd Shepherd

  The picture still has the power to appal. Graham is amazed at himself, and at his recall of the details of the picture. Such is the hold of Dashwood and his acolytes on the English imagination, even at a distance of a half-century. And is Royal Terrace really the headquarters of a new society of Medmenhamites, modern acolytes of Sir Francis Dashwood’s legendary band of hedonists? Has Dashwood’s Cistercian monastery by the banks of the upper Thames been transplanted here, to this elegant terrace by the same river? Graham has no illusions as to the appetites of society gentlemen, having witnessed them firsthand on too many occasions.

  And then Sir John arrives.

  He is wearing a dressing gown and slippers, of a piece with the rampant opulence of his house. The dressing gown is fashioned with stars and comets streaking through a purple-blue Void, and his slippers curl up at the toes as if eating themselves. On his head is a cap, the point of which leans over his eyes. He is a fat man with a young face, hooded eyes which flutter with exhaustion and a thick, sensuous mouth which puffs, intermittently, on a pipe as big as a baby’s arm.

  ‘What is it?’ he asks, in a quiet whisper. He does not offer Graham a seat.

  ‘Sir John Cope, I take it.’

  ‘You take it, yes. What do you want from me?’

  ‘You have not heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘Heard of the fate of your friend Wodehouse.’

  The man frowns through his pipe smoke and sits in one of the chairs. Graham, considering it unlikely that he is ever going to be invited, sits down anyway. Cope does not seem to notice.

  ‘I have heard nothing of Wodehouse,’ he says.

  ‘He is dead, Sir John. Murdered in his bedchamber.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘He is an acquaintance of yours, is he not? A fellow member of the Sybarites?’

  Even under the effete exhaustion of those hooded eyes, Graham can see he has struck home. Cope holds the pipe in his hand and his voluptuous mouth hangs stupidly open. Graham is beginning to feel an impatient anger.

  ‘Before you say anything, Sir John, I should say that I have information that connects the deceased Sir Edmund Wodehouse with a society called the Sybarites. Wodehouse was found wearing the mask of a satyr. I understand that members of the Sybarites wear such masks at their evenings. The pursuit of pleasure is the primary purpose of these gatherings. Am I correct? Wine and, perhaps more pertinently, women. London’s nymphs, pursued by a group of hedonistic men. Sir Henry Tempest is another member. Is he not?’

  It is a calculated risk, playing his cards so very early in the rubber. But Graham can see that Cope is intoxicated in some way – or at least very profoundly hung over – and a man in such a state cannot play games. He must push Cope into revealing something.

  ‘There is no … law … against parties.’ Spoken slowly and carefully. Graham begins to see there is no mystery to Cope’s demeanour. The man is, to put it simply, drunk.

  ‘No, Sir John, there is not. But whoever killed Sir Edmund meant it to be known he was a member of the Sybarites. Why would he do such a thing?’

  Cope looks at the pipe in his hand as if seeing it for the first time. Graham decides enough is enough.

  ‘Call your manservant, Cope. Maybe I’ll get some more sense from him.’

  Cope’s manservant is austere, alert and sanguine – everything his employer is not. He is also, notes Graham, deliberately and almost defiantly close-mouthed. If Cope’s reputation is anything like Graham has heard, he would need a reliable and discreet man to look after him. Discretion clothes this man as neatly as his well-pressed coat.

  The servant stands in the drawing room, his back to the fireplace, his hands clasped in front of his stomach, looking at Graham with the neutral half-smile of a curate. Nothing perturbs him. He doesn’t once look at his employer.

  ‘Now, sir, my name is Aaron Graham. I am a magistrate at Bow Street.’

  ‘Indeed, such is as I understood from your card, sir.’

  ‘And your name?’

  ‘Burgess, sir.’

  ‘Well, as I have been saying to Sir John here, there has been a terrible slaughter. A man called Sir Edmund Wodehouse is dead.’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  ‘Do you know of this man?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I know of him.’

  ‘Has he attended parties at this house?’

  ‘Parties, sir?’

  ‘Yes, parties, Burgess. Gatherings of people for the pursuit of pleasure.’

  ‘Is his own manservant not able to answer this question?’

  ‘I am asking you, Burgess.’

  ‘Well, then, sir. I am not sure I am at liberty to say.’

  ‘You may consider it the case that you are. Sir John here has agreed to help me with my inquiries.’

  ‘He has?’

  ‘Yes, Burgess, he has. You are required to answer my questions. Any refusal to do so may lead to me charging you for obstructing the course of justice.’

  ‘Well, then, sir. You have made the situation quite clear. Yes, Sir Edmund has attended parties at this house.’

  ‘Thank you. And when was the last of these parties?’

  ‘The night before last.’

  ‘I will require a list of names of those attending.’

  ‘As you wish, sir.’

  ‘How would you characterise the party, Burgess?’

  ‘I’m not at all sure I take your meaning, sir.’

  ‘Was it a dinner party? A drinks party? How many people attended?’

  ‘It was the usual kind of thing.’

  ‘The usual? And what is the usual kind of thing?’

  ‘A small group of men. No more than a dozen, sir. They were served food and then retired to the salon.’

  ‘The salon? Another room in the house?’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  ‘Will you take me to see it?’

  ‘As you wish, sir.’

  ‘Who else was in the house during the party, Burgess?’

  The smile on the servant’s face opens a little wider, the eyes narrow a small way, the nostrils flare almost imperceptibly. Burgess, sees Graham, is about to lie.

  ‘Only the servants, sir. I can provide you with a list of those, as well.’

  ‘That will be for the best. And what about women, Burgess?’

  ‘Women, sir?’

  ‘Burgess, obstructing the course of justice is a crime. A very serious crime.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Were there women at the party, Burgess?’

  Again, the eyes flick to Sir John. Again, there is no help there.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘There are always women at these parties, are there not?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you acquire them, do you not?’

  It is a chancy question, a gamble, but as often happens it pays off immediately.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘I have an understanding with a fellow at the Bedford Head Tavern.’

  Discretion is falling from Burgess’s shoulders like a loosened robe. It piles up at his feet. His misery is apparent in the set of every limb. The name of the Covent Garden tavern depresses Graham profoundly.

  ‘Talty?’ asks Graham. He spits the name, with the same distaste he might say Bonaparte.

  ‘Aye, sir. Talty.’

  ‘And he supplied women for the party two nights ago?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Well, then, Burgess. You have been most helpful. Now, the salon, if you please.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Burgess, without once looking at Sir John, leads Graham to the door. The baronet, notes Graham, appears to have fallen asleep.

  He walks out of the Royal Terrace house and up towards the Strand. It has grown late and dark, and the streetwalkers are out in force. He thinks of Sarah, and how this night-time display of sexual commerce upset her. Dozens of prostitutes line the pavements, overflowing from Covent Garden, in a
nd out of the lights from the main thoroughfares. The Garden trades around the clock: fruit and vegetables and coffee during the day, gin and beer and sex at night.

  He turns left at Drury Lane, and walks up past the theatre which has consumed so much of his time for so long, the surrogate wife which filled the void left behind by Sarah’s departure. The theatre attracts whores and their gulls like a naked candle attracts moths. There they are now, flirting and spinning down the pavements, seeming to bounce off one another like those same moths frantic for the light, peeling off to attach themselves to silhouetted men in newly fashionable top hats, disappearing into the lodging houses and so-called hotels of the side-streets.

  Like so many magistrates before him, Aaron Graham had once believed that all it would take to clear the streets of these countless members of the Cyprian corps would be determination and application. But like all those before him he has been frustrated in his efforts. The desperate painted jades always return, their thuggish bullies watching in the shadows, and the men streaming into Covent Garden every night with their shillings and their hot desires.

  It always makes him mournful, this thought. He has desires of his own. He would wish for a clean, honourable stretch of street hereby. It shames him that his beloved Bow Street office sits at the centre of a disgusting cobweb of street vice which, like a disease, seems to replicate itself in other venues in the metropolis. St James’s is now as bad, and Farringdon Without even worse.

  But Covent Garden is the original, the definitive neighbourhood of disgust. He walks up Drury Lane and right into Great Queen Street, the enormity of London’s degeneracy heavy on his shoulders, his own degeneracy black in his belly.

  THORPE

  It is evening. Horton contemplates Sarah Graham’s scroll while sitting at the rough kitchen table where he is being served dinner by the cook Stephen Moore, who has already made several attempts to read the scroll over Horton’s shoulder. Each of them Horton has prevented.

  What to call this note, now, after such a strange day? A mere list does not seem to do it justice. It has been given to him, but now the woman who wrote it has disappeared into her room and will not, it seems, come out. On returning from Thorpe he had found Jane Ackroyd and asked to speak to Sarah Graham, but she had shaken her head and said Mrs Graham was unwell and unwilling to discuss matters. He had also asked after Miss Tempest Graham, but was told the young miss had also taken to her bed, and her mother had instructed the servants that she was not to be disturbed.

  Why call him here and then hide? It seems the strangest behaviour of all.

  Horton is used to strangeness. He has seen a great many puzzling things. As a Navy seaman he has seen the bodies of comrades blown to pieces, the glowing smoke from fireships off distant capes, the eyes of savages rolling with despair and hatred. He has hidden from the searching eyes of spies and judges, betrayed fellow mutineers, discarded friendships and abandoned family. He has married beyond all his expectations, but even this solid thing has been tarnished by insanity, his adored wife now an inmate of an asylum, dozens of miles and an entire metropolis away from here. And in his last years as a waterman-constable he has seen and heard such things which, did he but admit to them to a third party, would be nourishment for his own incarceration.

  So it comes as a surprise to him that he does, when all is said and all is done, find Thorpe Lee House very odd indeed.

  The servants themselves are not notably unusual, with the exception of the cook Moore, who stands out not just because of his gender but also because of his easy, accustomed manner.

  No, it is the stories and the situation that create the strangeness. Mrs Graham’s larcenous, near-incestuous relationship with her cousin fractures the air of normality which should exist in a house like this, situated on a mid-sized estate in a pleasant position in the orbit of London. Sitting in this kitchen with the sound of rats in the walls, watched over by a strange young man with too much interest in his business than is right for a cook, Horton finds himself wondering if a place can indeed be bewitched, not by witchcraft or cunning-folk, but by the people who live in it and their behaviour towards one another.

  He looks at the scroll, and he remembers Elizabeth Hook’s bruised and scratched arm. He wonders at how the scroll and the arm relate to each other. He notes to himself a curious fact: that Mrs Graham has called out to her husband for help from a witch, even while her servants imagine the witch to have been banished. Do they fear Elizabeth Hook – fear what she might do, now her living has been taken from her, her fellow villagers turned against her?

  One thing seems overwhelmingly clear: not all the strange events in Thorpe Lee House can be ascribed to Elizabeth Hook. She did not smash the looking-glasses in Mrs Graham’s room. And she did not stand in the woods looking at O’Reilly as he dug his hag track in the darkness.

  Outside, the flat muddy fields, the surrendering trees, the whispering river.

  Eventually, Moore makes himself scarce, muttering a surly ‘good night’ as if offended that Horton hasn’t shared the mysterious document with him. Horton merely nods back, fighting an unaccountable dislike for this young man. Upstairs, he imagines, Mrs Graham is finishing her own supper, alone in the dining room, watched over by the servants who seem, in some unaccountable way, to despise her. And what do they make of the humble London constable, no better than his village counterpart, who is no doubt even now sitting in a Thorpe alehouse, hearing the local chitter-chatter of the arrival from London of a lonely pale-faced man in dark clothes who asks a great many questions? And who seems not to believe in witches – this accompanied by contemptuous chuckles.

  He finishes his meal, rushing rather when he once again imagines hearing rats scurrying behind the cupboards. He has always hated rats. He remembers the first time he saw them at sea, aboard the Apollo, running in a line from shore-to-ship along a rope, looking as if they were speaking to each other as they stowed away.

  And then the ghost of Thorpe Lee House appears.

  ‘You are alone? That is unkind.’

  A girl stands at the door into the kitchen, a wispy thing dressed in a simple white nightgown, her hair loose and dishevelled.

  ‘I wanted something to drink,’ she says. ‘I thought Stephen would be here to supply it.’

  ‘Well, allow me, Miss … ?’

  ‘Miss Graham.’

  Not Miss Tempest Graham? Well, then.

  ‘Of course. Do sit down, Miss Graham.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She sits, wrapping the robe beneath her legs as she seats herself, exposing the angular shape of her legs and rear, and he watches her from the corner of his eye as he fetches her something to drink. She gazes round the room searchingly, perhaps looking for the same rats as he. She is thin, terribly so, her chest almost completely flat, the angles of her jaw visible along the edges of her face. How old is she? He has forgotten to ask this obvious question. This thin ghost could be anything between ten and fifteen years. She arranges her hair behind her ears, and he notices that some parts of her scalp are completely bald. Her arms are bare to the elbows and as substantial as the dry twigs of a dead tree. He brings over her drink, and sits back down, pushing his plate away.

  ‘No, please, finish your meal, sir. I do not wish to disturb you.’

  ‘I have eaten enough, thank you, Miss Graham.’

  ‘I do not believe we have met?’

  ‘No indeed. My name is Horton. I am a constable from the River Police Office. Your father asked me to visit you here.’

  She frowns.

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Horton. But by “my father”, you mean Mr Graham?’

  Horton frowns in bemusement, though a sudden understanding then comes upon him.

  ‘Oh, Miss Graham, forgive me. I imagined …’

  ‘Please. There is nothing to forgive. It is Sir Henry that I am to call father, these days.’

  What an odd construction that sentence seems to Horton.

  ‘Mr Graham is concerned for me?’


  ‘Very much so. And your mother, too.’

  ‘Ah yes, my mother. She believes the house to be under a spell of maleficium.’

  ‘It is an odd word to use, is it not?’

  ‘It’s what they used to call the curses old witches once put on families. It means evil thoughts.’

  ‘Do you believe in such evil?’

  She ponders the question.

  ‘I believe this is an evil house.’

  The answer is surprising.

  ‘Evil? In what way?’

  ‘The villagers came, you know. They stood outside the house one night, and they banged pans and shouted. Rough music, Mrs Chesterton called it. To drive out the witch.’

  ‘You believe there was a witch here?’

  ‘Oh, perhaps. Perhaps not. Witches may come and they may go. Strangers may teach us forbidden things, and we may act upon them.’

  ‘Strangers came here?’

  ‘Why not? It is a place of evil spirit and evil intent.’

  ‘In what way, Miss Graham?’

  ‘I believe the people within this house have done and continue to do evil things. My mother left Mr Graham and came here. I am too young to understand such matters, but she is still married to Mr Graham, as far as I can see. So she lives in sin here at Thorpe Lee House. And I now carry the name of the man she lives with. Her cousin, no less.’

  ‘You speak very freely, Miss Graham.’

  ‘Do I? Well, I will die soon. That rather loosens one’s tongue.’

  ‘Who said you will die soon?’

  ‘Oh, no one. They do not wish to upset me. But I am ill, and I know why. My sin is as great as anyone’s in Thorpe Lee House, constable. My death may redeem it or it may not. I admit to feeling terrified lest what comes after my death is infected with the sin that came before it. But I have made my penance, and God must decide as he sees fit.’

  ‘What is your sin, child?’