Theft of Life

by Imogen Robertson

  Harriet had met Mr Paxton at Graves’s house and thought him a very pleasant man, but was not musical enough to fully understand why he was a celebrity. Both Graves and Susan had simply told her he was of the first rank in his profession, and she believed them.

  ‘Today as well,’ the coroner went on, ‘I am sure all his guests will have the very best spot from which to view the balloon.’

  ‘Mr Trimnell was not at the entertainment on Thursday, however?’

  ‘Perhaps he is not a lover of music.’

  ‘Nor of balloons, I suppose. His wife attends: if he had been invited, would he not have been looked for and missed before this time?’

  Bartholomew shifted his position and folded his arms. ‘I could not say. As I told you, I have never met Mr Trimnell.’

  They drove on in silence a little further. The traffic had become very dense once more, and looking ahead Harriet thought it was probably the balloon-raising causing the crowd. There was some altercation on the corner of Aldersgate and Barbican itself. A large coach with coronets on the doors had become entangled with a hackney carriage and the drivers appeared to be in dispute. Harriet pulled up where she still might have a little room to manage an escape.

  ‘You know Sir Charles through your work as a coroner, I suppose, Mr Bartholomew?’

  He beamed. ‘No. Rather, Mrs Westerman, I owe my position as coroner to the patronage of Sir Charles. I was born on his estate, the son of a carpenter. Sir Charles took notice of me in my youth on his visits home, and paid for my schooling and saw me established in the law. I am deeply grateful to him. He has helped several men like me from humble backgrounds to better themselves.’

  Harriet resisted the impulse to remark that the coroner was lucky not to have been born to one of Sir Charles’s workers in Jamaica. The altercation that was blocking the corner showing no sign of abating, she turned to her groom. ‘Peters, you had better drive the chaise home. Mr Bartholomew, I think we must walk from here.’ She swung herself lightly from her perch and handed her whip to her groom.

  Langhorne’s repository was built off Barbican and was of sufficient size to allow the gentlemen who came to buy their carriage horses there to see the animals trot at a decent pace. For today’s event, however, the carriages and horses had been cleared from the arena, and replaced by the great balloon.

  Harriet was amazed by the crush and despairing of finding anyone in the crowd, but almost as soon as they had pushed their way into the throng, Mr Bartholomew touched her arm and pointed up towards the galleries. In the middle of an upper balcony a long table had been laid. Even at this distance Harriet could see the gleam of white tablecloths and silverware, and the sun touched the gold on the livery of the footmen serving a dozen or so ladies and gentlemen. Harriet was preparing to plunge through the crowd towards the building’s entrance when she heard herself being hailed. Behind her, perched on the top of a coach, squeezed by some miracle against the southern wall of the yard, was the party from Berkeley Square. The horses had been led away, but the coach remained to give the party a platform from which to observe the wonders of M. Blanchard. Graves was waving a chicken leg at her. Little Anne was clasped firmly on her nurse’s lap and seemed absorbed in licking her fingers. Jonathan and Stephen were too engaged in staring at the swelling body of the gold and green balloon to give her more than a distracted wave. Harriet returned the salutes and managed to mime both her love and her intention to go elsewhere, then return later.

  Bartholomew was at her elbow. ‘Isn’t that the shopkeeper who lives off the Thornleigh family? Who is he waving at?’

  Harriet gave him a look that had made many an Admiral nervous when her late husband was in the Navy. ‘That young man has devoted himself to the children and their welfare for five years. He is one of the best men I have ever met in my life.’

  Bartholomew, to his credit, blushed violently. ‘Of course, my apologies. I misunderstood the situation.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘It is simply I was told, when he …’ Wisely, Mr Bartholomew gave up the attempt to excuse himself further. He became instead vigorous and effective in clearing a way for her through the crowd until they could reach the building where Sir Charles was feasting. They passed under the high carriage arch then into the lower, darker interior and climbed the stairs. Partway through their ascent, Mr Bartholomew hesitated and turned to her. ‘Mrs Westerman, may I apologise again for that careless remark? I am sure any young man thrust into such a position of responsibility must occasionally make decisions that appear to older men, more experienced in business, as strange or foolish.’

  She looked at him coldly. ‘Perhaps. I have lived as a neighbour to Thornleigh Hall for many years and I can assure you the estate is a great deal better managed now than it was before Jonathan inherited. Do you have any first-hand knowledge of his business?’

  He admitted he did not, bowed, and they climbed the remaining stairs. He did seem genuinely contrite. The door to the private parlours that led onto the balcony was open, but guarded by a pair of immaculate footmen, facing outwards towards the stairs. Harriet suspected that her own servants would be craning their necks for a view of the balloon. Bartholomew spoke to one, who disappeared for a moment out into the air of the balcony while his fellow stood aside and invited them with an elegant sweep of his white-gloved hand to come into the parlour he guarded. It was a pleasant room, timbered and low; the paint on the plaster smelled fresh and a good run of windows gave out onto the arena outside. The glass was old and thick, but Harriet could see the first footman bend discreetly over the shoulder of one of the party and in a moment the latter had stood, handed off his napkin and appeared in the doorway. He was a handsome man, not more than fifty and dressed in a buff, close-fitting coat and fawn breeches. His only jewellery other than the signet ring on his left hand was a garnet or ruby on a pin in his snow-white cravat. He approached with a quick firm tread, and as Bartholomew made a low bow, put out his hand and placed his other on Bartholomew’s shoulder.

  ‘Fletcher Bartholomew, my dear boy! A pleasure to see you. I had no idea you were interested in these aeronauts. Come, we can shift to make space for you and your companion at our table. I think the show is about to begin.’

  Mr Bartholomew looked very pleased by the warmth of his reception. ‘Forgive me, Sir Charles. May I present Mrs Harriet Westerman.’

  Sir Charles gave no sign of recognising the name, but smiled and bowed low over her hand. ‘Delighted, madam.’

  ‘My warmest thanks for the invitation, Sir Charles, but I fear we cannot join you. Our mission is less pleasant.’ Sir Charles’s expression became one of friendly concern. Harriet thought Mr Bartholomew would ask to speak to Mrs Trimnell at once, but instead the coroner gave Sir Charles all the details of the discovery of Mr Trimnell’s body. Sir Charles did not interrupt or exclaim, but looked only sad and sorry.

  ‘Grim news indeed, my boy.’ Then as Bartholomew described the initial examination of the body and the wounds found, his grey eyes turned to Harriet.

  ‘You took part in the examination of Trimnell, Mrs Westerman?’

  She hoped she did not blush. ‘I have assisted Mr Crowther on numerous occasions, Sir Charles.’

  He smiled politely. ‘Of course. I know Mr Crowther a little from the meetings of the Royal Society. Come to think of it, I am certain he mentioned your name.’ Harriet was surprised to find that something in his manner of saying this made her feel she had been insulted by Crowther and saved by Sir Charles. ‘I hope he may discover more when he opens the body. You gave him leave to do so, Bartholomew?’

  ‘I did, Sir Charles.’

  ‘Very good. James, would you fetch Mrs Trimnell?’ The footman disappeared out onto the balcony again. Through the distortion of the glass and in the narrow view available between the heads of Sir Charles’s guests and the balcony roof, Harriet could see the bulk of the balloon lifting and shifting slightly in the wind. There were cheers coming from the arena now and smatterings of
applause that sounded like a rain squall against the windows.

  Mrs Trimnell appeared in the doorway with a young man on her arm and approached with a wide smile. She was a great deal younger than Harriet had expected, not more than a year or two past thirty at the most. Her dress was extraordinary. Wide crimon skirts, gathered high over a petticoat of emerald silk, the bodice cut very low and only just saved from indecency by folds of sheer lace. Her neck and wrists were garlanded with matching strings of garnets, all cut and set in patterns of stars or flowers. She looked like a bird of paradise. Her hair was very dark, piled high, and the ostrich blooms on her hat added to the impression of the expensive and exotic. The young man on her arm was handsome, younger than she, and looked at her with a sort of hungry admiration. Sir Charles frowned when he saw him.

  ‘Randolph, there is no necessity for you to be here. Please return to our guests. Perhaps though, you might ask Mr Sawbridge and Dr Drax to step in.’

  The youth bowed. ‘Yes, Father.’

  Mrs Trimnell looked up at her squire and smiled at him in such a frankly sensual way, Harriet was shocked. She squeezed his arm as she released him, then turned to Harriet and Bartholomew. To the latter she nodded, and made a curtsey to Harriet.

  ‘Happy to know you, I’m sure.’ There was a lilt in her voice.

  Sir Charles offered Mrs Trimnell his hand and guided her to a chair. She allowed it and her movements were fluid and graceful. How could that thin and unshaven body in the Chapter House be her husband? As Sir Charles took a chair beside her, two more gentlemen appeared in the doorway. One was in plain costume, his hooked nose and hooded eyes giving him the look of a watchful hawk. The other man was younger, wore a plum-coloured coat and as he sauntered across the threshold was feeding a grape to a little monkey that sat on his shoulder. It wore a gold collar attached by a chain to his waistcoat. When it finished its grape it rubbed its paws together as if to clean them.

  Sir Charles ignored them as he took Mrs Trimnell’s hand. ‘My dear, he began. ‘My dear …’

  Outside, the crowd was growing more excited. Harriet could still see the balloon straining against the tight rope mesh around it. Bartholomew took the arm of the hawk-faced man and walked him a few steps away. In the arena there was a moment of silence. A distant voice shouted, ‘Allez! Coupez les lignes!’ and the sound of a half-dozen axes brought down at once rang through the sudden still. The cheers became deafening and Harriet saw through the narrow window available the balloon lifting away from the ground. For a moment she glimpsed Monsieur Blanchard waving hard with his pocket handkerchief from the basket, and the frightened face of a woman by his side. It seemed they were being lifted on the shouts of the crowd. Mrs Trimnell gasped and fell back in her chair – and at the same moment the hawk-faced man shook Bartholomew off, strode across the room and dropped to his knees beside her. That must be her father, Mr Sawbridge.

  Harriet felt a sting under her ribs and moved away, embarrassed to be watching at that moment. She glanced out of the doorway onto the balcony. The arena was packed; men and women of the better class, the shopkeepers and tradesmen of London, the gentlemen and scholars, their womenfolk watching progress take form in the shape of the balloon. They followed its movements, shifted by those same breezes that brought into their shops and homes their porcelains and spices, their Indian muslin, their wines, their sugar and rum. Their mouths were slightly agape, and from where Harriet watched as she tried not to hear the weeping behind her, all she could see were their white, exposed throats.

  I.10

  HARRIET JOINED GRAVES AND the children as the arena emptied, and travelled back with them to Berkeley Square. She told him briefly of Mr Trimnell’s death and her reason for appearing at the raising. Jonathan and Stephen competed with each other talking of the balloon, how far it might have gone and how high. Anne fell asleep on the nurse’s lap. While the boys chattered, Harriet thought about the handsome Mrs Trimnell and the men around her. Her clothes were dramatic, but not necessarily expensive. Those jewels though looked to Harriet as well beyond the means of anyone living in rented rooms in a house on Cheapside.

  The day rolled steadily on towards evening. In the shadows of the outhouse near St Paul’s, Crowther lifted Mr Trimnell’s heart out of his chest, and by the light of an oil lamp examined the aortic valves, trying to fit his long thin finger into the vessel, and failing. The pink-faced canon Crowther had requested as an assistant went grey and gagged. Not far away, Francis Glass wrote up his notes for his weekly meeting with Mr Hinckley in Hampstead on Sunday, making his guesses as to what the public appetite might be in the weeks to come, and thought about the strange children who had invaded his shop. The story of the body in the churchyard ran through the streets with the crowds. Several gentlemen near Paternoster Row set pen to paper and handed their paragraphs, outraged, disturbed and horrified, to the printers to be set into morning papers on Monday, then shrugged into their coats and set off comfortably for their homes or their clubs in the gloom. The streets began to empty and a fog crawled up from the river, dampening the echoes and folding each household up in its cold arms.

  The coffee house on the corner of King Street and Charles Street, Westminster, was always relatively quiet at this time of the evening. There were a number of tables occupied and a low hum of conversation, but those who did public business near Parliament went in general to more fashionable places to see and be seen. That said, anyone might stop in there for a moment and fall into conversation without it being remarked upon. It was known to the more influential people in the capital that a Mr Palmer was to be found in this place every evening for an hour or two with the newspapers, his favourite table being one that gave him a view of the door, yet remained in the half-shadows. Various people spoke to him during the course of an evening and the regular patrons and waiting staff found it was more profitable not to notice who they were, nor what their demeanour was on entering or leaving. This evening, as Mr Palmer folded the Gazette with a sigh and opened the Advertiser, he noticed a man in a plum-coloured coat just coming in at the door. He made some enquiry of the waiter and then turned in Palmer’s direction. It was only then that Mr Palmer noticed the monkey sitting on his shoulder. Palmer shifted slightly in his chair and seemed somehow with that subtle movement to make himself visible. The man with the monkey saw him, approached and was invited to take a seat.

  Mr Palmer was a valued man at the Admiralty though his duties were somewhat obscure, and his wage, and the expenses of his office, were paid from certain confidential funds controlled by His Majesty’s Government. For that Government he traded in confidential information, favours, rumours and secrets, followed threads and ideas across the oceans without leaving the streets around Whitehall, and by so doing guarded the interests of Britain against the squalls caused by disruption in foreign courts. Politicians from all parties sought him out, and it was not unknown for influential citizens to do the same in this manner when the city’s interest in trade became political and it was necessary to have a friend who had the ear of the First Lord. He had not been sought out by Dr Drax before, however. He knew him, of course – a physician who, without owning land, had built up a modest fortune in the West Indies. Now he had a large and fashionable practice in the city and cared for the health of the men whose money made England healthy. He was often seen in the company of Sir Charles Jennings and that nobleman’s circle of bankers, merchants and the City Aldermen. Mr Palmer also knew that Drax had written to the newspapers under various names on matters of trade affecting Britain’s colonies in the West Indies. He had talent as a writer, a style of apparently shaking his head in despair at the naviety of those who disagreed with him. His arguments made his enemies indignant and defensive while flattering his friends.

  Drax pulled out a chair and made himself comfortable while Palmer folded his paper and set it down. The monkey clambered down from Drax’s shoulder then placed one paw on his sleeve. Drax looked at the little creature and raised an eyebrow.

>   ‘Now, Cleopatra?’ The monkey bobbed its head and Drax pulled out an enamelled snuffbox from his waistcoat, opened it and held it out. The monkey reached forward and took a pinch from the box, then waited until Drax had snapped the box shut again. At this signal the little creature put the pinch to its nostril and inhaled, sneezed and stretched itself upwards, pirouetting on its back legs. The chain on its collar clinked. It then sprang up Drax’s arm again and buried its head in the man’s neck.

  ‘Would you care for any refreshment, Dr Drax?’ Palmer asked.

  ‘My thanks, but no, Mr Palmer. This is an out-of-the-way place, isn’t it? How many dark corners there are in London.’ Mr Palmer felt no need to answer so waited. Drax smiled swiftly.

  ‘You have heard, I think, of this murder this morning at St Paul’s?’ he said, tapping on the short squashed paragraph in the evening paper. Palmer only nodded. ‘I understand you are acquainted with Lord Keswick – that is, the man who calls himself Gabriel Crowther – and with the Widow Westerman.’

  ‘Captain Westerman was much admired in the service, Dr Drax. And is still greatly missed.’

  Drax seemed to be trying to read his face. Mr Palmer silently wished him luck.

  ‘That is, some friends out of Germany hinted perhaps … and that business at the opera house some years ago. There was some suggestion you might …’ Drax’s eyes were almost hazel and the half-smile on his lips did not reach them. Without looking round, he put his hand up to stroke the monkey. She gripped his fingers and rubbed her cheek against them. Palmer watched for a moment before replying.

  ‘I am still acquainted with Mrs Westerman, and I have met Mr Crowther on occasion. He has spoken twice at the Royal Society this year and is not, I think, the recluse he once was. Does the Lord Mayor perhaps wish for their assistance? Or the Aldermen? Is that why you mention the killing?’