Savage Magic

by Lloyd Shepherd

  ‘Well, then,’ he says to the young rider. ‘You have something for me?’

  ‘Sir Henry?’ asks the rider.

  ‘Of course I am Sir Henry. Who else would I be?’

  ‘Well, sir, I bring an urgent letter for you from Mr Graham, the …’

  ‘I know who he is, dammit. Give me the letter.’

  As the rider does so, Horton watches the other servants. At the mention of Aaron Graham’s name, Crowley raises an eyebrow towards Mrs Chesterton, thinking himself unwatched. She smiles back at the butler. To Horton’s left, Peter Gowing is himself looking at the ground with the kind of smile on his face which suggests he and the ground have just shared an amusing story. They look like a crowd of smirking children who have just heard an adult say something rude.

  Sir Henry rips open the letter and throws the envelope onto the ground behind him. Gowing picks it up while Sir Henry reads. Horton watches him closely, as do all the servants. The urgency in Sir Henry’s frame tightens unbearably, and when he looks up he appears a man ready to strike out.

  ‘You came straight here?’ he says to the rider.

  ‘Yes, Sir Henry. As ordered by Mr Graham.’

  Sir Henry says nothing else. He turns and glares at Horton, who looks back mystified. Then Sir Henry clatters back into the house.

  ‘I’ve also been asked to speak to Constable Horton,’ says the rider, and Horton turns back to look at him as Sir Henry walks away.

  ‘By the magistrate?’

  ‘Yes. Are you Horton?’

  ‘I am.’

  Horton looks at the servants, one by one.

  ‘If you please. I wish to speak to this man on a policing matter.’

  Gowing looks annoyed, Mrs Chesterton outraged and for a moment Crowley looks like he might pull out a stiletto and plunge it into Horton’s side, there and then. Horton waits, and eventually they do move away. Only O’Reilly remains, his mouth agape, and soon he too walks back to whatever gardening mystery he had been engaged upon before the rider’s sudden arrival.

  The rider climbs down, holding the reins of his horse, and indicates to Horton that they should walk a little away from the servants.

  ‘I’m to give you news of the investigation, from the magistrate.’

  ‘What is your name, officer?’

  ‘William Jealous. Of the Bow Street mounted patrol.’

  The name is familiar. Horton frowns in recall.

  ‘Jealous. Are you of the same family as Charles Jealous?’

  ‘He is my father.’

  The young man looks pleased. Horton feels he has made an ally.

  ‘A good man, your father. Now, tell me.’

  ‘All the members of the Sybarites have been warned that they may be potential victims of this killer. Sir Henry has just received that letter.’

  ‘Ah. Well, then. Perhaps he will talk to me now.’

  ‘Also, we have investigated the gypsies of Norwood.’

  ‘Gypsies? Why on earth is Graham talking to gypsies?’

  ‘One was seen outside Sir John Cope’s house.’

  ‘But gypsies are almost as common in London as whores.’

  ‘I know not the magistrate’s reasoning.’

  ‘Did you learn anything in Norwood?’

  ‘Only that there had been a strange woman there, with a younger woman, earlier this year. She matches the appearance of a gypsy woman seen several times outside the home of Sir John Cope.’

  ‘But this is hardly evidence of foul deeds. Women come and go from Norwood all year round.’

  ‘I cannot say.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Constables are being sent to the London homes of all the Sybarites. To keep watch.’

  ‘What has been learned from the houses of the two dead men?’

  ‘Nothing. There are no signs of any forced entry. All the doors and windows were secured. None of the servants heard or saw anything during the night. It is as if the men were done away with by spirits.’

  The young man’s face is excited. The thrill of investigation is written in his eyes. Horton tells himself this boy may be of use.

  ‘That is all?’

  ‘Yes, constable.’

  The young rider shifts position, and climbs back on his horse.

  ‘Wait,’ says Horton, tearing himself away from his thoughts, which is considerably harder than he might have expected. ‘When are you expected back?’

  The rider looks down at him, perhaps not as impatiently as Horton might have imagined.

  ‘I was given no specific duty today beyond informing you of developments.’

  ‘Well, I have something I’d like you to help me with. But it’ll be a long ride.’

  ‘Raven here likes a run.’

  He pats the side of his horse proudly.

  ‘Does he? Well, perhaps you both would appreciate an even longer run.’

  ‘Perhaps. Where to?’

  ‘A place called Stoke d’Abernon. It is not quite a dozen miles from here. I need you to deliver a letter, and bring back a reply.’

  WESTMINSTER

  The letters he sent out the previous evening have already sparked a reaction by the time Graham returns to Bow Street from Norwood. Six letters in all have been sent in London, to six of the seven names on the list provided by Sir John Cope’s manservant, Burgess. The seventh name is Sir Henry Tempest, and that matter, Graham trusts, is already in hand.

  Of the six letters, two provoke a direct response. Sir Thomas Mackworth sent Graham’s constable back with a terse note saying any further association of his name with the Sybarites will lead to an immediate suit; he even intimates that to preserve his honour he might threaten a duel. He adds that no Bow Street ‘meddler’ is going to be loitering outside his house, and damn the consequences.

  The other note does not come back with the constable; it appears that John Cameron, the youngest of the supposed Sybarites, is going to cooperate with Graham’s request. His note simply thanks Graham for the attention, and informs him that he will be returning to his father’s estate in the country. The note asks for Graham to kindly keep the reasons for his return secret; the Earl of Ruthin and Flint, Alexander Cameron, has an upright reputation (the letter does not say, it only implies, as such letters tend to do), which would be tarnished by Sybaritic associations.

  Three of the other letters have met with no response at all, only a silent and presumably rather embarrassed acquiescence, and so Graham’s constables spent last night in attendance at the residences of Samuel Lake, the second brother of Viscount Lake (who claims direct descent from Lancelot of the Lake), Algernon Lincoln (son of Hugh Lincoln, the Duke of Handforth) and Henry Harcourt Palmer, son of Sir Charles Harcourt Palmer.

  The sixth letter, not to Graham’s surprise, sparked the biggest response of all. An hour after his return from Norwood, the Bow Street servant brings him a note. Graham is required to attend the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Viscount Sidmouth, immediately. Graham is not entirely surprised, and decides to walk, and to think.

  It is the afternoon, and the fruit and vegetable stalls in the Piazza are being cleared away. The streets have an air of preparedness about them, hung between the clattering commerce of the day and the illicit trading of the night. He tries to clear his mind of what is to come with Sidmouth, using a technique he learned from a courtesan who’d once been kept, for some months, by Charles James Fox. ‘He always said, the only way to stay sane is to turn off your thinking,’ Miranda had said, one night as they’d sipped wine in her rooms off Maiden Lane. ‘And the only way to turn your thinking off is to open your senses – your ears, your nose, your eyes – to everything that is around you right now.’ And with that, she’d moved her hand down beneath the bedclothes, and Aaron Graham found that, indeed, one’s senses could overwhelm one’s cares.

  He thinks back to what Talty had said, the previous night. ‘We’ve all got our own information to trade, don’t we?’ Had that been a threat? Did he know, then,
that Aaron Graham, magistrate, was an infrequent but long-standing customer of some of Covent Garden’s finest jades? But surely such knowledge was immaterial; it would have been more of a matter for gossip if a man in Graham’s circumstances did not partake of such pleasures, even before his wife departed to usher in his singleton existence on the fringe of Britain’s most scandalous district. But this only makes Talty’s implied threat more disconcerting; does he know something else? Has Graham said something to one of those women – said all manner of things, tenderly over the pillow in some candle-lit bedroom – which has been passed down and across and into the hands of Maiden Lane’s primary panderer?

  The avenues for investigating the Sybarites are closing up, at least in London. The trip to Norwood had generated intrigue – a mysterious woman, apparently the same one he encountered at Sir John Cope’s, and her daughter, living among the gypsies. But however theatrical Mother Marcus had been, it leaves him with nothing: just another gypsy living among gypsies. The six guineas he’d left with Mother Marcus could have been better spent.

  The previous night has brought no new developments. The six members of the Sybarites he had contacted had all been made aware, all (even the angry Sir Thomas Mackworth) would have had an eye on the street and on their doors and windows. Even John Cameron, who is presumably even now in a coach clattering to a country redoubt, may have been looking to his coach driver and imagining riders approaching the windows.

  Meanwhile, other constables have responded to the search warrant he has issued, demanding the immediate arrest of any or all of the three whores mentioned by Talty: Rose Dawkins, Elizabeth Carrington, Maria Cranfield. Jealous has promised to take up this search himself when he returns from Horton.

  And then there is Horton himself, and Thorpe Lee House. The case is obscure, but nowhere is that obscurity deeper or more distressing than in Thorpe. Graham had considered ordering Horton to return to London, in light of the most recent death. He is impatient for news of the place, and for the results of Horton’s interview with Sir Henry. The more he thinks about matters, the more Sir Henry’s timely flight to Surrey seems significant.

  He reaches the Home Department with barely a thought for the meeting with Sidmouth. He has his own method for avoiding thoughts of an unpleasant meeting, it would seem; replace those thoughts with ones which are even more unpleasant.

  Henry Addington, the Viscount Sidmouth, is the most powerful person with whom Aaron Graham has any personal dealings. The younger Graham, working away on legal and judicial matters in Newfoundland, would have been astonished by the prospect of such an association as the one the magistrate now has with the former prime minister. It would indicate how far he had risen, how much he had made of his meagre family resources. That younger man might even have traded his future domestic happiness for the prospect of such advancement. That younger man, Graham reflects, was a naive fool. For one, he had never lost a wife.

  Sidmouth’s lean, sensible, dull face is poised over a letter when Graham is shown into his office. He does not ask Graham to sit down, nor would Graham expect him to. He does not even immediately acknowledge Graham’s presence, but finishes his letter and puts down his quill. He breathes in through his nose and closes his eyes, as if resetting his thoughts, and then looks at Graham.

  ‘The Sybarites, Graham. Tell me all you know of the Sybarites.’

  ‘A private society, your Lordship. A small group of men. It appears to be an entirely hedonistic enterprise – no political intent whatsoever, as far as I can garner.’

  ‘And two of them are now dead?’

  ‘Yes, your Lordship.’

  ‘I know neither name – Cope, was it? And Wodehouse?’

  The Home Secretary looks at no paper when saying his name. He has, it would appear, read carefully over this matter.

  ‘Indeed, your Lordship. Wodehouse is the third son of Baron Wodehouse of Kimberley; a young man, of no significant achievement. Sir John Cope was the heir to Sir Richard Cope’s title. A rector, I believe his father was.’

  ‘The circumstances of their deaths, if you please.’

  ‘Both were killed in especially violent ways. Their bodies were much mutilated, such that it is almost impossible for the coroner to be entirely certain of the cause of death. Wodehouse’s stomach was opened, and his entrails were partially removed. Cope’s manhood was severed, and the surrounding area eviscerated. The member was placed in his mouth.’

  The Viscount blinks, mildly. He has long made it clear that this kind of dispassionate summary is his preferred mode of discourse. The man lacks imagination, it is well known, but in counterbalance he possesses sense, calm and propriety. Sometimes, he reminds Graham of his friend Sir John Harriott, in that gentleman’s quieter moments.

  ‘You are making something of a habit of these bizarre episodes, Graham. The Ratcliffe Highway murders. That odd occasion around Sir Joseph Banks’s vessel last year. And now this. You have a suspect?’

  ‘No, your Lordship.’

  ‘You have arrested no one?’

  ‘No, your Lordship. There is a warrant in place for the arrest of three Covent Garden prostitutes.’

  ‘You believe them to be the killers?’

  ‘Not entirely, sir. But we believe they may help us to establish a motive for the killings.’

  ‘A motive? Hmm. Well, I have received a letter.’

  He picks up the paper from his desk, for all the world like an absent-minded professor referring to a note from his sister. Graham imagines it is anything but.

  ‘It comes from the Earl of Maidstone. I understand you wrote to him.’

  ‘Yes, your Lordship.’

  ‘You have accused him of membership of the Sybarites.’

  ‘Does he deny this?’

  ‘Ah, not quite, no.’ The Home Secretary smiles, a knowing little expression, and Graham relaxes a little. ‘He does rather resent your bringing it up, however. You perhaps should have contacted me before writing to one such as this, Graham.’

  ‘There was little time, your Lordship. I was acutely concerned that these men might be threatened this past night.’

  ‘That is as it may be. But there is form and there is etiquette, Graham. The Earl is the son of the Marquess of Tonbridge. His mother is the daughter of a Viscount. This is a significant family, and it would seem from his letter that the Earl is most aware of that.’

  ‘Does he require anything of me?’

  ‘He does. He requires four constables.’

  Graham frowns in some confusion. That little smile reappears on the Home Secretary’s face.

  ‘Yes, Graham. He resents your intrusion onto his personal sphere. But he also rather thinks you might be right. Do you have the men available?’

  THORPE

  After Jealous has left, promising to return when he has an answer from Stoke d’Abernon, Horton tries to speak to Sir Henry right away, but there is little immediate chance of that. The baronet has locked himself in his library and has left instructions with Crowley that he is not to be disturbed. By that bloody officer in particular is the unspoken additional command which Horton sees in the old butler’s eyes.

  Stephen Moore has retired to his kitchen, so there is little to be done with regard to that line of inquiry, either. A growing sense of frustration comes over Horton. More hours are to be wasted inside this odd house and this odder investigation. The master and mistress of the house are locked in their respective rooms, like sulking children. He feels himself to be waiting for something to happen – a letter to be answered, or an opportunity to let himself through a locked door. And suddenly, his mind is full of Abigail and London, of Covent Garden constables and Hackney mad-doctors.

  It is another sunny day, so he resolves on a walk around Sir Henry’s estate. He heads for the trees at the edge of the lawn – the direction, he’s been told, the rough music came from that August night weeks before. The phrase had been unfamiliar to him at first, but then he’d recalled it: rough music was the sound mad
e by people shouting and banging anything that came to hand to try and drive out a maddened witch. The people of the village had been standing here, in these woods, with their pots and pans and their fear, shrieking in hate at the poor old cook.

  Yet it was out of these woods that Elizabeth Hook stepped last night. Perhaps this is really why he gravitates towards them. He has no means of finding her, and he would very much like to speak to her again. Perhaps the woods will offer a clue.

  The ground is dry and soft beneath his feet. It has been a hot summer of little rain, and within the trees the air feels dry and exhausted. Abigail had spoken to him of air once, of how it was not a single thing, but compounded of multiple gases laid within and on top of each other (he forgets the precise mechanism). What was the word for the most vital of them? He forgets that, as well. He tries to imagine this vacant air containing matter, or something like matter, but fails. Why can he see through it if it consists of something else? It is like the inverse of the events of Thorpe Lee House, which obfuscate and cloud and interrupt and through which nothing can be perceived.

  A white shape, dancing through the trees. He stands still, as if he were hunting a stag.

  No, not a stag. A white hart, dressed in night-clothes. Miss Ellen, running through the woods. Singing. She seems to be running in a circle, around where he stands. A step in any direction would take him towards her. So a step is what he takes. And another, and another. She does not heed him, and then she does, when he is only a half-dozen yards away.

  She is dressed in the same white cotton shift as the night he met her in the kitchen, and this time the sunlight pierces it obscenely, picking out the angular shapes of her childish body, even displaying the small malnourished circles of her unformed breasts. She might as well be naked.

  O’Reilly’s voice in his head. She warn’t doing nothing. She was just standin’ there, lookin’ at me.

  She says nothing, and her glare is surprising. She looks angry.

  ‘Miss Tempest Graham. We met in the …’

  ‘I know who you are, constable.’

  ‘Well, then. Are you well enough to be running so through the woods? Dressed in … so little?’