"No, Mr Mayhew. Not annulment."
"Then a separation, perhaps, sir - one which made some allowance for the illegitimacy of the children. At some stage, sir, when you marry again, if that ever eventuates, then the question of your heir might be raised."
"Eventually, perhaps. For the while, I wish to discover what is happening without my whereabouts, or existence even, being known."
"Two months, sir - it should require no more than that. An enquiry agent, normally a retired policeman, to visit the area and attempt to discover the location of a man known as Richard Burke, as a first step. This fellow, Burke, is thought to have been seen in the commission of crime... where now? At the Cape, perhaps... No, better still at the goldfields in Australia, the sort of place that attracts footloose drifters. You have never been to Australia, sir?"
"America only, Mr Mayhew."
"Very good, sir. If the need arises we may demonstrate mistaken identity."
"What is the point of this exercise, Mr Mayhew?"
"The local people will talk, sir. Ask them directly about Mrs Burke and they may well clam up. Give them the opportunity to rake scandal, and they will fall over each other to tell the tale!"
"Clever, sir!"
Dick made a mental note that Mr Mayhew might well be far too clever a man for his own good.
"What is the second step, by the way?"
"A quite separate gentleman who will chat with lawyers' clerks and chemists' boys and young counter assistants from the local bank, and may buy a drink or two or offer the odd sovereign to the financially stretched. Even the butcher and the baker may make deliveries to the house of Sir Godby or of Mrs Burke - and their lads may have the odd little anecdote to recount!"
"Feel free to offer more than a single sovereign, if the need arises, Mr Mayhew."
"Perhaps, sir - but paying too much tends to encourage invention in the hope of more."
"In your hands, sir."
It took just eight weeks, might have been even shorter had not Mayhew decided to double check some of the information his people dug up.
They sat in Mayhew’s office, door tight shut.
“Sir Godby Burke, sir, is a businessman of good financial standing – that being, one is given to understand, the sole ‘good’ thing about him. He is, the doctor’s man assures us, in full command of his mental faculties despite having suffered a seizure some two years since, thought to be consequent on a blow to the head. A fall one understands.”
Mayhew glanced across at Dick, his face studiously expressionless. He made no comment.
“Sir Godby walks with a cane now and his face is palsied, slightly twisted. On a somewhat distasteful note, Mr Burke – whoever fathered the child recently born to Mrs Burke, it was, in local opinion, improbable that it was him. The maidservants do talk, and he would seem to have changed his habits with them.”
Mayhew chose to make no further comment, tucking a number of close-written sheets – which presumably detailed those habits - back into a folder.
“Sir Godby attends his business daily and it thrives. Information suggests that its profits have if anything increased in the last while. His personal affairs are closed to me – he deals with a lawyer in Blandford, a very small practice and impractical of access. The managing clerk has shown himself unamenable to a bribe and the partners are of such probity that ‘pressure’ could not be applied.”
Dick raised an eyebrow at that.
“Where a respected gentleman may be demonstrated to have a weakness for little boys, for example, sir, it is often possible to come to terms with him – a small amount of information in exchange for a lot of silence!”
“Distasteful, Mr Mayhew!”
“It is indeed, sir, but remarkably effective!”
Dick shrugged – it had not happened and he had better things to do than pursue hypothetical misdeeds.
“Mrs Richard Burke, sir, is a source of scandal to the whole county, living as she does in a household containing no fewer than six indoor manservants, all of a muscular build and dark-haired - Romany some say! Speculation is rife, rampant indeed! They are reported to remain in close attendance on her at all times of day – and night!”
Mayhew tittered and displayed another folio, stuffed full of depositions.
“She has taken to drinking heavily, sir, port and brandy a favourite – ‘flesh and blood’, I believe it to be known as. The wine merchants report very substantial deliveries to the house – though no doubt some amount goes to recruit the strength of the manservants.”
Mayhew displayed a copy of an invoice.
“The son is a healthy, big lad, his blondness occasioning some comment. The little girl seems to be of a ginger complexion, which has also aroused some amusement.”
Dick laughed – she was, it would seem, wholly indiscriminate.
She would not last too many years if she was hitting the brandy bottle, but she was still an impediment.
“What of the rest of the household?”
“Of significance is the groom, who is half-witted and the bastard son of Sir Godby. He is incapable in legal terms but would have a claim to a living from the estate. There is as well a gentleman by name of ‘Sergeant Bill’, Williams, one presumes.”
Mayhew raised an eyebrow and Dick nodded – he knew of the man.
“Sergeant Bill is perhaps the sole confidant of Sir Godby, is thought of locally as a potential heir, if Mr Richard Burke should never reappear.”
“And what of Richard Burke?”
“He is ‘away’, thought to be reading at a University, or travelling for his health, perhaps. Those who will speculate offer that he has in fact committed self-murder, Sir Godby hiding the disgraceful fact from the neighbourhood. It is known that the Carterets have enquired after him on more than one occasion. On that subject of Mrs Burke’s family, sir, there is a rumour that they have sought to have her put away but that Sir Godby has refused the course as too late and liable merely to create more trouble.”
It was a very untidy situation.
Dick had not thought about the inheritance before, but his father was certainly rich and that money belonged to his son, not to some chance made military acquaintance.
Marriage with Miss Parsons, which she seemed to favour, would be a sensible move – she was rich and had the contacts in Washington that could make them a lot more money. If, however, she came into contact with another eligible young gentleman – which in the nature of things was not unlikely – then she might choose to take her wealth elsewhere. He could not keep her on a string indefinitely – she was a woman of some strength and initiative. With her brother dead she was free of restraint as well.
He must think, must seek a way out of the impossible position he had been forced into. It was not his fault that he had been legally burdened with a vicious and probably lunatic whore; why should he suffer?
Book One: The Making
of a Man Series
Chapter Nine
“Mr Mayhew, I wonder whether you might be able to perform another little commission for me?”
Mayhew was very happy to oblige; his monthly account had been paid immediately in full, and few of his clients were so very prompt.
“The fellow known as Sergeant Bill! He came into my father’s ambit some fifteen years ago, I believe, in Bristol. I do not know the story in anything other than vaguest outline, but understand he was under orders for India, with his regiment, and ran across my father in the street where he was under attack from several assailants – why I do not know. Sergeant Bill rescued my father and then became his man. He must have deserted the Colours.”
“Interesting, Mr Burke, for that is a crime without benefit of limitation. A deserter might be taken up half a century after the act and still be prosecuted and pay the penalty for it. Was his regiment under orders for battle when he ran, then he could still be shot.”
“I did not know that, Mr Mayhew. It might be very convenient then to discover all we can about the good s
ergeant. I must go to London for a few days and will then quite possibly travel to other parts of the country. A meeting at the end of next month might be convenient.”
Dick had decided that he must be seen to make some attempt to talk to people in London – the Americans must believe that he was active in Little Mac’s interest.
The problem was, of course, that he knew none of the politicians or senior officials who could have any possible influence on the Foreign Office. He believed that a number of the American newspapers retained correspondents in London; it should, he hoped, be possible to discover one or two and talk to them in confidence. They would then use the information he gave them to invent their own stories, attributing them to a ‘veteran hero of Bull Run’. When the Young Napoleon’s staff read them in Washington they would conclude that Dick was busy in England. If he was very lucky, they would send him more money.
There were two sorts of folk in London, Dick discovered – those who knew people, and the great mass who did not. ‘Insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, he supposed they could be called.
He spent a week in an expensive hotel, and during that time spoke only to the staff and to cab-drivers and shop assistants and to one of the young ladies in an exclusive house recommended him by the junior manager of the hotel. It seemed that the only way to make contact with an ‘insider’ was by introduction from another of the breed – a closed circle.
He did see the sights, and thought the Tower, for example, to be most impressive; he asked the junior manager where else he should go.
“I am a stranger to London, as you will appreciate, sir. I left for America as a very young man and have only recently returned.”
Idle conversation disclosed that Dick had fought with the Union army for one campaign before serving on the staff for a while.
The young manager was able to point Dick towards an acquaintance who worked as a very junior clerk at Horse Guards and who might be able to introduce him to an officer or two who would appreciate an eye-witness account of the disaster at Bull Run. He spent an afternoon with a pair of gentlemen just two days later.
Major Hewitt and Captain Ross were very pleased to meet Major Burke, surprising him by using his rank and saying that they had heard of him – his name had appeared in a number of British newspaper accounts of the battle and its aftermath.
“Rather surprisin’ to discover you to be English, Major Burke! The papers all had you down as one of these rootin’-tootin’ Western gun-fightin’ men!”
“The Sharps Kid, gentlemen? I did get that name – but the events were exaggerated to a significant extent.”
They looked at him with some disbelief, almost as if they expected him to have sprouted a second head.
“Ah… Well, we have met with some of these reporter chappies, you know, Major Burke. They do tend to be imaginative gentlemen!”
“They do, sir – particularly when it comes to military matters, on which they are far more expert than I.”
They nodded, having met the same thing in the Crimea and during the Mutiny, and asked him then of the battle and why the Union had suffered such a defeat.
“A complicated and professional plan, gentlemen, was placed in the hands of a simple and amateur army. From all I hear the Prussians could have carried it out to the amazement of all beholders; the Union could not.”
He outlined the diversionary assaults and the plan for a right hook to win the battle and pointed out that it required four separate brigades to be in their correct places at the right moment and to attack at the time specified.
“No staff officers to give the word; very few regular officers to carry out the orders; almost no old soldiers to set an example. My battalion was one of the best-trained in the field, and we had barely mastered the process of wheeling from column of route to line and the boys could rarely achieve three volleys in one minute.”
The English officers could hardly believe that.
“I saw one small part of the battle, on the slopes above the Bull Run Creek, gentlemen. The plan called for eight thousand men, ten battalions at full strength, to advance up the hill, simultaneously. I saw six Union battalions march up, two by two with an hour between them. I doubt the Rebels ever had more than four thousand men to oppose them. Even those six battalions, had they been together, could have won that fight, gentlemen.”
“And the rout, sir?”
“The guilty fled where no man pursued, gentlemen. The Southrons were no better organised than the Union and they were content to win the battle and then light their cook fires beside the Bull Run Creek. Had they marched they could have walked unopposed into Washington.”
“You were said to have held a line on the road from the creek, Major Burke.”
“Fewer than two hundred men in a scrape in the ground, sir. We looked like a defensive line, and none of the Confederates made the effort to discover the reality.”
“The ‘fog of war’, Major Burke. What of General McClellan?”
Dick shook his head deprecatingly.
“A brilliant engineer; an outstanding organiser; a trainer of soldiers beyond all compare – and a man who will not fight. Perhaps his army is too pretty to spoil in battle, or perhaps he lacks the depth of moral courage, but give him a Waterloo and he will demonstrate the best planned retreat in history!”
They questioned him at length, made no attempt to disguise their dismay – they had hoped to hear that the Young Napoleon was of the calibre to become Emperor of the Americas.
“He is a fine and brilliant man, gentlemen – but his flaws are also great. He lacks the capacity to be a true soldier, or leader. The Duke of Wellington could plan a battle no better than McClellan might – but the Iron Duke would fight and be there at the front of his men. McClellan will be discovered in a headquarters well-removed from the vulgar brawling of the battlefield.”
“Your words will be reported at a higher level, Major Burke. They may not be credited, of course, and they will not of themselves make policy; thrown in the scale, however, they may tip the balance towards support for the more legitimate government of the Union.”
“You have heard of the Prince de Joinville, gentlemen? I would suggest that a member of the Embassy in Washington should talk to him.”
They were happy to record that advice; words from a Prince would carry far more weight than those from an amateur major. Their thanks became far more sincere as they decided that he was acting as the Prince’s go-between.
“Would you suggest that the Prince would not view General McClellan as a worthy successor to Napoleon, sir?”
“The Prince views McClellan with amusement and some degree of affection – rather as if he were a clever dog, able to perform any number of unusual tricks – but still worthy of no more than an extra bone or two.”
“What of President Lincoln, Major Burke?”
“I have not met him, but rather wish I had. All I am told is of a man of intelligence and moral stature – and those are rare indeed.”
“Especially in the field of politics, Major Burke. Thank you for your time, sir.”
Dick left London at the end of the week, paying a hotel bill that was remarkably low, he thought.
“Compliments of Horse Guards, sir. Your words were very well-received, I understand, and it is not impossible that your assistance might be sought in future in the field of American affairs.”
The words were accompanied by a very knowing wink and a whisper.
“The Prime Minister himself heard your message, sir, and may well wish to use your clandestine services again. Fear not disclosure, sir! My lips are sealed!”
Was he to become a spy? Was that what he meant? Did they suppose that he already was an agent of some sort?
He pondered the problem all the way north to Sheffield, got off the train no wiser than he had started. He peered about him at the dirty, grime-stained brickwork; sniffed at the smoke-filled air: there was money here. He took a room in the Station Hotel, as likely as any to be the best
in town, and then ventured out in search of a modestly profitable chemist’s shop to take supplies of Elixir and Linctus and become a very prosperous establishment.
A week from town to town through the industrial north-east, the land of coal and iron and steam ships and new chemicals – and dirt and grime and wheezing chests and pallid children – and he had contracts for twice the current output of the ‘new, modern, infallible medicine’. He hurried back to Liverpool to purchase the requisite ingredients and set the medical still to twenty-four hour production and buy up an extra quantity of bottles and put on a night-shift of steady-handed sober ladies to fill and cork and label the liquid gold.
Robinson was very pleased and had set on a young man to act as under-manager, so that he himself could devote more time to the development of his next cure; he thought consumption might be a good illness to tackle, was sure that a judicious combination of morphine and coca-leaf would cause the sufferers to feel much better. Dick could not but agree – the medicine would make dying a much more comfortable affair.
Robinson was considering a wage rise for their people, had already improved their conditions.
“A number of our female employees have become purchasers of our product, Mr Burke, and I have ventured to sell to them at a discount!”
“Wise indeed, Mr Robinson – but do not permit them to consume too much, I advise!”
Mayhew had nothing to offer on Sergeant Bill – it took time to discover information from the Army.
“A start must be to find out what regiments took ship from Bristol in the middle years of the 1840s, Mr Burke. To India, but also to Africa and the West Indies, rumour being not necessarily precise. Having once narrowed the field, then it becomes far more practical to discover the names of deserters, particularly of sergeants, they being far less likely to run in the general way of things. Then there arises the question of names – are we searching for a Sergeant Williams, or for a Sergeant William Smith or Jones or whoever?”
A Victorian Gent (The Making of a Man Series, Book 1) Page 20
