Dead Ringer

by Roy Lewis

  ‘Well, we can’t all be winners, hey?’ Wood asserted gaily. ‘And your Orlando put up a gallant fight, a gallant fight.’ He glanced around triumphantly and caught up in the triumph of the moment could not resist the jibe. ‘So will you be putting your nag out to stud, now?’

  Someone nearby laughed, a ripple of amusement spread among the bustling crowd, and Colonel Peel’s sallow features began to flush. Lord George Bentinck was now near the steps leading from the room, his hand on Baron le Tissier’s arm. He turned back, gestured to Colonel Peel. His voice rang clearly above the general hubbub. ‘We should be moving off,’ he called out, ‘if we’re to get back to Coombe Hall in good time.’

  Peel’s cold, baleful glance slipped past Ernest Wood. ‘You’ll excuse me – I must be leaving.’

  The corn merchant waved a careless, happy hand. ‘Of course, Colonel. It’s not a problem. I can call on you later in the week.’

  Peel hesitated. It seemed to me that something dark moved in his narrowing eyes, and his lean, saturnine features were tense. He raised his chin in distant contempt. ‘Settling up … I’m afraid it will take me a little time, Wood.’

  The owner of the Derby winner was grandiosely unconcerned. After all, he was dealing with the Prime Minister’s brother, and they were all gentlemen together here. There was no cause for anxiety. He smiled, waved his hand in a gesture of generous acceptance. ‘Of course, Colonel. Take your time. It’s of no consequence. I’ll call in a few days and we can discuss matters.’

  There was a great deal of money at stake but for the moment Ernest Wood was in no hurry: he was enjoying his triumph. But the cold feeling in my stomach grew as I watched the figure of Colonel Peel cross the room, rejoining the sour-featured Bentinck, the Chief Steward and the committee members of the Jockey Club. Bentinck looked back from the tight little group, glared at the exultant Ernest Wood and said something to Colonel Peel. The owner of Orlando smiled grimly. Then they were gone.

  A half-inebriated young buck at the edge of the crowd called out a toast.

  ‘To Running Rein!’

  Champagne glasses were raised, renewed cheering broke out, but as I watched the Jockey Club committee members leave in a surly group I had an icy foreboding of disaster. I hesitated, then gave way to my anxieties. I stepped forward, reached the corn merchant, touched his elbow. He turned, grinned at me. He did not know me: in those days I was merely a struggling, impecunious almost unknown barrister in his late twenties. Well, early thirties, anyway. And if I then went and broke the rules that day, well, you must understand it was because of the coldness in my gut. And the money I still hoped to collect.

  You see, the rules of the Temple were clear: barristers should not directly approach members of the public, touting for business. But, well, there you are….

  ‘Mr Wood … may I present my card, sir?’

  2

  In parts of the city on a Sunday, London could be likened to a sponge; it sucked in straggling droves of sheep, oxen and pigs, cackling geese and hens, while wagons crammed with calves and lambs were followed into the Uxbridge Road by cattle-jobbers, graziers and pig-fatteners, a swelling of life animal and human all heading for the holding pound at Paddington. Knackers’ drags and insistent beggars mingled with a tide of Bible-thumpers distributing unwanted religious tracts, ragged sellers of journals, purveyors of scandal sheets, and producers of hastily printed pamphlets containing explicit bloody accounts of the latest scaffold confession, while rabble-rousers surged about, noisily yelling among the boisterous, thrusting crowd of low humanity.

  But elsewhere in the city it was different. In social terms, I tell you, my boy, a wet Sunday in London has nothing less than the aspect of a vast, ordered graveyard; in Mayfair and Belgravia nothing seemed to move in those days in the damp, drizzling streets. That particular Sunday in 1844, I kept close in my chambers most of the day and surveyed my prospects, suddenly gloomy again. The fact is, it’s well said that there is not a harder life than that of a barrister in large practice – except, I emphasize, that of a barrister in small practice.

  Particularly if he’s been living well beyond his means by frequenting the clubs and night houses. And that was my situation at that time. Moreover, the bad news I’d been half expecting had just broken and was the talk of the Town: Colonel Peel was refusing to honour his wagers and, with the backing of influential members of the Jockey Committee, was claiming that Running Rein was a ringer. That meant all bets were off, and the money I’d borrowed to lay on Running Rein would have to be repaid along with everything else I owed.

  I was distraught. You see, expecting the windfall from the Derby win, well, what I’d borrowed, I’d already spent on the tables at Almack’s.

  So there it was. I sat in my dreary chambers in front of a meagre coal fire and considered my situation. It was not a promising one. In 1844 I was already turned thirty years of age but making little by way of practice fees at the Thatched House Tavern and the Marylebone Police Court. I was under considerable financial obligations to various rascally, hard-hearted moneylenders and now I’d learned that, as I had feared, Colonel Peel was disputing the running of the Derby, with the consequence that bets were off. It was clear to me that I’d be hard put to it to dun my creditors, and keep the importunate villains at bay.

  The result of the Derby was like a sore boil in my armpit. It was Lester Grenwood who had led me to his moneylender acquaintance, helped me lay on some of the borrowed money I’d put on Running Rein, his so-called sure-fire tip, and there was also the question of the £200 he’d borrowed from me previously, and never paid back. It was urgent I saw him, if only to recover that money.

  And perhaps a little bit more to help me in clearing at least some of my debts. I mean, if you can’t borrow from friends, who should you borrow from?

  So, now that the news of Colonel Peel’s default had been confirmed, miserable, and never averse to avoiding late hours poring over Blackstone’s Commentaries, that gloomy evening I finished my brandy and water, slung an old roquelaire cloak over my shoulders and made my way out of my chambers.

  There were various options open to me: Evans’s (also known as the Caves of Harmony), the Albert Saloon, and other night houses available for carousing and song-singing but I decided against them. The Cider Cellars, I thought to myself: the Cider Cellars, that’s where I’ll find some congenial company tonight. And with luck, Lester Grenwood among them.

  I hailed a hansom cab in Fleet Street; we rattled along the damp, foggy cobbled streets until the driver deposited me near the stage door of the Adelphi in Maiden Lane. The gaslights were still blazing outside the main entrance to the theatre, holding at bay the thin, yellow, whispery mist that scraped at your lungs, and there was the usual scattering of weary whores wandering up and down the road, footsore and limping, in various degrees of faded finery. That’s the worst thing about their profession, I’ve often heard them claim: it’s hard on the feet.

  I’d always thought it’d be the bedsores.

  ‘Hey, chuck, you want a quick one?’

  I’ve no doubt that, as a sea-going lad, you’ll know the alley-cats who throng the bordellos of the seaports well: it’s a damned sight worse in Maiden Lane than Marseilles, I assure you, my boy. They emerged with the fading of the afternoon light: gaudy and exhausted, gay and weary, painted, faded, and brazen, thronging the street, offering their wares to all.

  I ignored the lascivious ladies of the night on this occasion, of course. I was on a mission.

  The house next door to the Adelphi, the Cider Cellars, was well known in those days, throughout the city and beyond: it drew a considerable number of tradesmen and farmers up from the country who would be seen there, involving themselves in the singing and consuming large quantities of made dishes – a roast, a bird, a plate of cheese all washed down with numerous pints of beer or porter, or glasses of gin or brandy. But it was not their exclusive preserve: the clientele was wide-ranging. It included rakish young medical students and bra
ying heirs to family fortunes, young university layabouts, guardsmen, hussars, and florid bucks from the clubs of St James’s. I’d seen Thackeray there often enough, and young Tony Trollope was sometimes ambling about, while Dickens occasionally poked his inquisitive nose in. I must tell you about Charlie Dickens some time, and the way he lampooned me so unfairly in A Tale of Two Cities….

  Anyway, the Cider Cellars was also a haunt of lawyers as well as literary men, along with politicians and judges and smartly attired members of the swell mob. When I shouldered my way into the crowded room that evening I was met with the familiar gusty rush of warm, fetid air, the smell of beer and wine and cigar smoke, and my ears were assailed by a roaring chorus of the favourite bawdy ballad of the day. You might have heard it yourself, along the waterfronts …

  Oh, my name is Samuel Small, Samuel Small,

  And I’ve only got one ball, just one ball,

  Yes, my name is Samuel Small

  And I’ve only got one ball,

  But it’s better than none at all,

  Damn your eyes, blast your soul….

  I had hardly entered the crowded room when a heavy hand clamped on my shoulder and a beery breath engulfed me. ‘Edwin James, my friend, is it not a matter for public amazement that they should all still be singing about a murderous chimney sweep whom we rightly sent to the gallows from the Old Bailey last year?’

  I turned in the crush of cheering, singing bodies to see a face I knew: Charlie Wilkins, stocky, pot-bellied, with muscular arms, wild staring eyes and generous mutton-chop whiskers. His waistcoat bulged uncomfortably under his dark coat, showing an expanse of sweat-stained shirt, and I suspected he had come straight to the Cider Cellars from a late sitting of the court. His pudgy fingers dug into my neck. ‘Come on, James, I’ve got a table in the corner – been out to relieve myself and the buggers had better have kept me seat till my return.’

  Reluctantly, I allowed himself to be dragged by Serjeant Wilkins through the crowd, half-deafened by the Sam Small chorus. I glanced back to see the man leading the singing: he was dressed in a loose, dirty smock and seated across a rickety chair, his face made up to a ghastly prison pallor with white chalk and rouged lips, and dark-ringed eyes.

  He was waving his arms violently as he shouted out the refrain, an empty pint pot in his hand, but I felt there was something familiar about him. Then he was lost to sight as I was pulled across to a table near the stairs and room was made for me and Wilkins by the three men seated there.

  I knew them vaguely: they were undistinguished members of the Bar, middle-aged, relatively unsuccessful but regular denizens of the West End entertainment palaces. They were laughing loudly, howling with drunken laughter, beating the table with their fists as the final words of Sam Small crashed out in a last triumphant chorus. There was a bout of wild cheering and the crowd began to break up, some fighting over tables, others starting to drift towards the doors, many calling for more service. In the milling pandemonium several chairs were overturned and one of the waiters stood on a table and appealed in a loud voice for order.

  The cry was taken up in mockery by the drunken revellers: ‘Or-dar! Or-dar!’ until it took on a rhythmic, thunderous beat. The barristers whom I had joined began to thump their pint pots on the table in unison, and the noise was deafening. Wilkins caught my still sober, disapproving eye. He winked, nodded towards another table that had just been vacated, located near the stairs which led to above-stairs accommodation occasionally frequented by clients and their companions. He led me away from his erstwhile company. ‘I’m not as young as I used to be,’ Wilkins remarked, panting and shaking his head as he lowered himself onto the bench seat.

  ‘You never were,’ I replied.

  You wouldn’t know about Charlie Wilkins, my boy. He was reckoned to be the illegitimate son of that holier-than-thou, do-gooding hypocrite Lord Shaftesbury. In his youth Charlie’d earned a living for a while as a commercial traveller, sang and told bawdy jokes in alehouses, was once a member of a group of strolling players, even did a stint in a circus as a clown – in other words had just the right training for a successful career at the Bar.

  The judges liked him for his dramatic gestures and declamations. Clients liked him for his enthusiastic championing of their causes, successful or not. They felt they got a handsome return for their money. I’d learned a lot from watching his histrionics in the courtroom.

  Charlie and I were good companions in those days. He died of drink, some years ago, while I was still struggling to make a new career for myself in New York, as a lawyer and a newspaperman. I regretted his passing. But there you are … I hear he had a proper send off, in one of Mr Shillibear’s patent hearses drawn by black-plumed horses, decked out in the appropriate grim paraphernalia of woe….

  ‘Aaaargh!’ The apparition that suddenly appeared in front of me, I tell you, it made my heart leap in panic. The hollow, blackened eyes, the ghastly white, chalky face of the man who had performed Sam Small was thrust before me, grimacing and mouthing wildly. For a moment I was taken aback, half rising to my feet, and then I realized who it was. ‘Grenwood! That was you leading the singing?’

  ‘None other!’ the Honourable Lester Grenwood said cheerfully. He mopped his brow: he was sweating freely and the chalk on his handsome features was streaked and dirty. ‘What did you think of it?’

  ‘Loud enough for sure,’ I replied.

  Charlie Wilkins leaned forward, grinning. ‘But don’t try to make a living at it, my friend. The money’s not good enough.’

  Grenwood laughed. ‘I’ve no such intention. I just wanted to see how I could handle a mob – and I wanted to collect a wager.’

  ‘Talking of which—’ I began, seeing my opportunity, and always quick to jump in where money was concerned.

  ‘Keep a place for me at the table,’ Grenwood interrupted. ‘And I need a pint of porter. Just give me time to wash this lot off.’

  He thrust his way through the milling crowd, enduring much backslapping and catcalling congratulations. Wilkins watched him go. He pulled a face. ‘Friend of yours?’

  ‘An acquaintance,’ I admitted.

  ‘Wealthy?’

  ‘His father is. Lord Havermere.’

  ‘That bloody skinflint.’ Wilkins shrugged and inserted a probing finger into one hairy ear. ‘I acted for Havermere some years back. Had more than a little difficulty prising my fees out of the old bugger. I warn you, your friend will hardly be kept in the ready money by that tight-clawed old buzzard.’

  He paused, eyed me reflectively with his sad, wise eyes, and shook his head. ‘Talking of which, I hear you’ve been facing some difficulties recently.’

  I sniffed carelessly. ‘Let’s just say I’m keeping close to the Temple these days.’

  Wilkins caressed his muttonchop whiskers with thoughtful fingers. He nodded. ‘Right. Sensible behaviour. Can’t get you there, damned tradesmen.’ He hiccupped loudly and took a long swig at his porter. ‘Though it’s said about the Inn that most of your debts are due to your activity at the gaming tables.’

  I could tell from the tone of his voice that Charlie was about to give me sound advice. I’d had more than enough of that from my penny-pinching father. It was cash I needed, not homilies. Another song had started up. ‘There were three whores from Mexico and they went out to dine …’ I turned away from Charlie, and beat my hand on the table to the rhythm. Charlie took the hint, and devoted his full attention to his pot before joining in with the roaring chorus.

  By the end of the numerous, sometimes repeatedly bawled verses, Lester Grenwood had returned. He had washed his face, removed the dirty smock, and looked reasonably presentable again in his well-cut, high-collared coat and somewhat wine-stained satin shirt. His face was still flushed with excitement and drink, however, as he took his seat and gestured to the pint pot. ‘This mine?’

  I nodded, and watched as Grenwood drained it. He turned in his seat and bawled at the waiter, who came hurrying across. Wilkins ac
cepted the offer of another pint pot with alacrity; I settled for a brandy and water. When I heard Grenwood order three more drinks I raised my eyebrows.

  Grenwood winked at me. ‘Some people joining us. Crosier Hilliard’s due here – with some company he’s collecting for us.’

  I stared at him. I knew Hilliard slightly: a moneyed man-about-town who had purchased a commission in the Hussars … not that he’d ever stir himself to fight for Queen and Country…. He was an assiduous frequenter of low night haunts. I didn’t much care for him: he was little more than a loud-mouthed bully who enjoyed swaggering around town in his uniform, in my view. And while I was never a saint myself, there was one thing about Hilliard that disgusted me: it was his incontinent pursuit of pleasure. It marked him out as an appropriate companion if you were roaring drunk yourself and inclined to disregard flea-bitten hovels and penny a pinch whores. But on no other occasions. Even so, I needed to talk to Grenwood, so it seemed I would have to put up with Hilliard’s company. A few moments later I caught sight of the moustachioed military man swaying his way through the milling crowd, with a young woman clutching each arm. He was drunk. Inevitably. And the women were free souls.

  ‘Grenwood,’ I began urgently, ‘if we could have a word before—’

  ‘Dollymops,’ Grenwood chuckled amorously, eyeing the girls on Hilliard’s arm. ‘Out for a night on the town with the gennlemen. Lieutenant Hilliard … ladies … we would be delighted that you are able to join us.’

  He stood up, attempting a low, exaggerated bow but staggered, laughed loudly and then pushed me along the bench to make way for the two gaudily dressed women. They were young, I observed, not yet twenty: they wore pork-pie hats with waving feathers, silk paletots, wide skirts. They had Irish accents, were giggly, foolish, and slightly drunk. They would not be Haymarket professionals, they’d have no pimps, probably be milliners, I surmized, or seamstresses, picked up outside the Adelphi, and out for a good time. There had been occasions, I admit, when I had taken some such back to the security of my chambers late at night, but of recent months I had become bored with that game. Couldn’t afford it, either. Even dollymops came at a price.