The Bride of Newgate

by John Dickson Carr

  Jemmy Fletcher was almost hopping with discomfort. “Dick! Hang it, man! Don’t stare!”

  “Why not?” asked Darwent, making sure his voice would carry. “They’re staring, aren’t they?”

  “But, dash it, dear boy, that’s their privilege.”

  “Where’s Sir John Buckstone? Is he here?”

  “Yes, yes,” Jemmy soothed him in a low voice, “since you’re so dashed anxious to make friends with him. Here; give me your arm; I’ll take you in.”

  The interior was gloomy, with an atmosphere of starched linen and brushed clothes, threaded through by a whiff of cookery and a fainter whiff of the stable. Darwent, ten seconds after he had entered, received a shock for which he could not account.

  Someone, a man of about his own age, crossed Darwent’s line of vision and disappeared through a doorway in singularly ghostly fashion.

  Now the man was no ghost; the sound of his top boots moved firmly on oak boards. But there was about him something so very familiar that Darwent almost spoke out and addressed him. The same notion must have occurred to the other man, since he glanced round briefly before he vanished.

  Distantly, presumably from upstairs, floated the noise of arguing voices.

  “What’s the good callin’ for the betting book?” somebody demanded. “I won’t make a wager on that. Ask anybody: what’s the filthiest, scurviest trade there is?”

  “Moneylender!” Many voices answered him.

  “We’re all in debt to one of ’em or the other, though there’s not a man here who’d admit it. Wager, damme? D’ye think I’m green?”

  Darwent disengaged his arm from Jemmy’s.

  “Wasn’t that Buckstone’s voice?” he asked

  “No, no, no!” Jemmy assured him truthfully. “Come with me.”.

  He led his companion towards the back of the premises, and opened the door of what was then a small parlor seldom used.

  The room was paneled with white-painted wood, and a small bow window looked out on a board fence. A thin carpet patterned the middle of the floor with red and green. Against the right-hand wall, ahead of them, stood a writing desk of grained mahogany inlaid with gilt. Seated at the desk, his back toward them but seen partly in profile, Sir John Buckstone was writing a letter.

  Darwent drew a deep breath.

  “Ah, how do you do, my dear Jack!” sang out Jemmy’s thin, cheerful voice. It was as though he waved his hand to Buckstone from a great distance. “Hope I’m not disturbing you, am I?”

  Buckstone, though exasperated, consented to glance over his shoulder.

  “Yes. ’Fraid you are.”

  But the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed young man was impervious.

  “Sorry to hear that, dear boy,” he sang. “I must, positively must, make you acquainted with our newest member. Dick loves the pictures on cards, you know. Whist, piquet, écarté, macao: curse me, Jack, he’s your man!”

  This seemed to alter matters. Buckstone looked at the letter in front of him, and slowly put down the writing quill while he adjusted his ruddy face into an expression of pleasantness. He got up from the chair, and turned round. But carefully, as a matter of principle, he remained by the desk: letting the others approach him rather than taking a step toward them.

  “Why he’s …” Buckstone began; and stopped.

  Darwent saw him exactly as Buckstone had been at Newgate: his hat on the back of his head, wearing a striped waistcoat, but with an attempt at joviality now. It was clear, too, that Buckstone did not recognize the former felon.

  When last he had seen Darwent, a dirt coating, thick beard stubble and long hair (which seemed black rather than short-cut brown) had formed a gallows mask. Yet Buckstone’s eyes narrowed.

  “No, you’re not Lewis,” he corrected himself. “For a second I thought you were. Here, haven’t we met before?”

  “We have.”

  “By Jove, I knew it! Where did we meet?”

  “Permit me to remind you,” Darwent said politely.

  His right hand slipped inside the grey cape over his left shoulder. From a deep pocket, where it had lain coiled, Darwent took out a riding crop with a long sharp whip end. He slashed it with pent-up viciousness across the left side of Buckstone’s face. Instantly, back-handed, he drove it at the right side of the face with such power that the whip seemed to sing before it struck and drew blood.

  “That will remind you,” said Darwent.

  The stunned silence, a hot heavy quiet of incredulity, seemed to stretch out unendurably. Not one of them moved.

  “No!” Jemmy cried out suddenly, with a womanish kind of cry. “He didn’t mean it, Jack. I take my oath he didn’t mean it. Dick’s had rather a rough life, d’ye see? He don’t understand gentlemen. He …”

  Not a muscle moved in Buckstone’s face, though a thin trickle of blood ran from his right cheekbone halfway down his face. But his eyes showed he was very much alive, and very much reminded now.

  “Who is this …” Buckstone began violently; and checked himself. “Present him to me, Jemmy.”

  The newest member of White’s spoke in a voice which made Jemmy shy back.

  “I am the Marquess of Darwent,” he said. “By virtue of my rank, sir, he will present you to me.”

  “Sailed in a ship for America,” Jemmy was bleating. “Ship with ammunition when we fought ’em in ’12. Wrecked, Jack! Rough life. Ship was wrecked; only three survivors. Place called Crosstree Island. Wasn’t it, Dick?”

  “Present him to me!” replied Darwent.

  Faltering, Jemmy did so.

  Buckstone and Darwent looked at each other without speaking. Buckstone moistened his lips, his little black eyes straying to the exact center of Darwent’s forehead. Buckstone’s right hand, hanging at his side, moved as though his finger curled round the trigger of a pistol.

  “Jemmy,” he said, “ring the bell.”

  The bell cord hung near the desk, easily within Buckstone’s reach. But it was not his habit to do menial service. Jemmy flew at the bell.

  “My compliments to Major Sharpe,” Buckstone said rather hoarsely, to the impassive waiter who opened the door and did not seem to notice Buckstone’s slashed face. “Ask Major Sharpe if he can find it convenient to see me here, as soon as possible.”

  When the waiter had gone, not a word was spoken until Major Sharpe arrived. All three assumed careless attitudes. Yet in that white-painted room, with the red-and-green carpet, hatred sang like a wasp. It could not have gone on for long, or Buckstone and Darwent would have been at each other’s throats.

  “No!” Jemmy’s mouth framed the word silently. “No!”

  But the door banged open.

  Major Anthony Sharpe, 7th Hussars, had left the green-baize table and was still scowling at an open fan of cards as he strode into the room. But he closed up the cards, glancing at Buckstone’s face as impassively as the waiter.

  “Yes?” he asked, rather impatiently.

  Major Sharpe, an upright spare-built martinet of fifty, looked frostily from under reddish eyebrows, past a long nose framed by wiry reddish side whiskers. He was very punctilious, very correct. His Hussar tunic, dark blue with horizontal lines of gold braid, ended in tight-fitting blue breeches and gold-edged Hessian boots. From his left shoulder swung the short fur-lined pelisse, though he had discarded his sword and the scarlet busby with the white plume.

  “Lord Darwent.” He jerked his head as Jemmy made the introduction. “Yes. I see. Well?”

  “A little dispute,” Buckstone told him, in a bored voice. “You’ll act for me, of course?”

  Major Sharpe’s thumb rippled the cards in his other hand.

  “Made you lose your temper, has he?” inquired the Major, forgetting his correct attitude. “Gad, I didn’t think it was possible.”

  Buckstone was rather white in the face. “You’ll act for me? You’ll call on …?”

  Darwent turned to Jemmy. “And you, Mr. Fletcher, will act for me?”

  Bucksto
ne seemed on the point of roaring with laughter. But there was more to Jemmy than butterfly wing and sawdust.

  “Yes,” he said simply. “Got no choice.”

  “Good!” agreed Major Sharpe. He looked at Jemmy. “Please be in the cardroom, for me to call on you, in half an hour.” Something intensely human, even if satiric, peered out from under his reddish eyebrows. “Shouldn’t have brought these with me,” he added, rippling the cards again. “Nobody’d look at my hand, of course. No, no! Still—! Jack Buckstone sends the challenge, eh? Pray excuse me, gentlemen.”

  And he strode out of the room.

  Darwent looked at Buckstone without appearing to see him, glanced in a satisfied way at the riding crop, and put the riding crop inside his cloak. Then he followed Major Sharpe.

  Darwent’s step was springy, his heart almost serene. Ever since the lash had whipped across Buckstone, two blows returned for two blows given, he felt a lessening of the tension which had cost him his peace of mind and his sense of humor. Once he met Buckstone in the field, with fair green turf and no favor, he would feel better still.

  In this mood, a sort of reversed loving kindness, he suddenly discovered that he had walked all the way to the front door. He stopped in the doorway, with a noise of wheeled vehicles in his ears, and Jemmy Fletcher chasing him.

  Though Jemmy’s walk was a saunter, his face wore a wild look.

  “You did it a-purpose!” he accused Darwent in a low voice. “You involved me, curse you!” Sheer bewilderment seemed to flood out every other feeling. “Dick, what’s your game! Are you mad? Why did you do it?”

  “Why not?”

  “He’ll kill you,” Jemmy explained comprehensively.

  Whereupon, to Jemmy’s stupefaction, Darwent beamed at him.

  “I’m in two minds about that,” Darwent told him, because he had two plans concerning Buckstone. “If you should want me in the next two hours (which you will, since you’re to meet Major Sharpe in half an hour), you’ll find me at home.”

  “Stephen’s Hotel, you mean?”

  “Well—no. I made reference to my own home, and that of my devoted new wife, at number thirty-eight St. James’s Square. I am going there to greet her now. Meanwhile, let me give you your instructions.”

  “Instructions, old boy?”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, Jemmy, you’re to be my second in a duel.” Darwent considered. “Now let’s make sure we have fair play. Buckstone, I daresay, has some knowledge of the sword?”

  Jemmy blinked, and half-lifted the quizzing glass on the cord round his neck.

  “At exercise, Dick? Lord, yes. Jack’s a capital hand with the foil.”

  “Is he also acquainted with the use of the saber?”

  “Why, Dick, he’s better with the saber than with the foil. He half-split the skull of some dashed Austrian with a wooden saber; made us all near to burst with laughing.”

  “Good!” said Darwent, and meant it. “Now as the challenged party, Jemmy, I believe I have the choice of weapons?”

  “Naturally, old boy. But of course you’ll choose—”

  Jemmy stopped. Sudden consternation crept into his face.

  “The place,” Darwent told him, “may be where you like. The time: when you like, but as soon as possible. The weapons: sabers. Good evening to you, my boy.”

  And he lifted his hat and stepped briskly out into the street.

  Behind him Jemmy was bleating some words which he did not hear and chose not to hear. A handsome vis-à-vis carriage, its hammer-cloth rich with heraldic designs, its body lacquered black and white with yellow wheels, came spanking down St. James’s Street on its way back from the park.

  Darwent had to jump to avoid it. But the vis-à-vis contained two very pretty, coy and soulful-eyed ladies, in large bonnets with plumes. Though he had no idea who they were, Darwent bowed and smiled. The ladies answered him, one of them turning round, with two languishing smiles (which vanished instantly, as though their faces swam amid the seraphim) before the carriage swung left into Pall Mall.

  Taking the same direction, Darwent walked eastward into

  Pall Mall along the left-hand side. He had now to deal with another handsome lady, Caroline Ross.

  It was as well, he thought as he strode along, that he had in some measure recovered his ability to see things in their proper light. He must not appear to treat Caroline too seriously, or he would lose the game.

  At this time, a month after he had met Caroline, he did not detest her because she had married a doomed man to get a fortune. After all, what was the world now but a market where harpy mothers clawed and flapped at their daughters to push them into marriage, any marriage, provided the man had money? In most cases the daughter herself, though she might blush and lower her eyes, was in spirit a Roman retiarius with a net to throw and a trident to pin down: vi, he thought, et armis.

  No. He did not blame Caroline for a cruder method.

  But he detested her because she seemed as cold as a snake, and because of that happy insolence and arrogance which characterized her tribe.

  Caroline’s image rose in his mind, her blue eyes looking sideways past brown curls. If he had met her under other circumstances, he admitted to himself, she might have a good deal of fascination. Also …

  Since he had been put under arrest on the morning of May 6th, he had led a life of enforced celibacy which all but maddened him. If Dolly had been well (though, thank the Padres God, her illness was not serious), Dolly would have arranged the matter with almost startling haste.

  Stop these thoughts? But why should he? Sometimes, when the nerves twitched, it was cold comfort to press vengeance to yourself when you might have pressed living flesh. Nevertheless, Darwent began to think on the situation which—in his own impetuousness—he had brought about.

  Caroline Ross and Dolly Spencer were now, or shortly would be, under the same roof.

  This would infuriate Caroline as an insult, which was good. But it would also infuriate Dolly who, for all her laughter, was fiercely jealous and had made scenes he preferred to forget.

  “What the devil have I done?” he demanded aloud: absent-mindedly, but straight into the face of a bishop who, in full panoply of white wig and shovel hat and black apron, was marching toward him in Pall Mall.

  “I ask your pardon, my lord bishop,” said Darwent, waking up suddenly as the other stopped short. “But I was thinking deeply on the question.”

  The bishop, who had a gloomy eye, spoke in a deep port-wine voice.

  “Whatever the question, sir, it is a matter for your own conscience.”

  “My lord bishop, what is your opinion of holy matrimony?”

  “Sir,” replied the bishop, “it is the only happy estate.”

  And the bishop marched onward, to be lost among the passers-by. Darwent, roused from abstraction, realized that he had passed the turning into St. James’s Square and was walking in the direction of the Haymarket.

  Southward across Pall Mall, now sheltered by funereal foliage and backed by deep gardens, rose the round fat pillars of Carlton House, home of the Prince Regent. It was an immense blowsy place, always in need of a coat of limewash or stuck over with ladders for new repairs.

  As far as repairs were concerned, he could see enough of them by looking toward his left. For two years’ time, up the hill north of the thoroughfare, they had been hacking out a new wide street which they would call Regent Street if they ever finished it.

  At this time it was still a covered way, whose houses had been stealthily taken over by gambling rooms and by a more genteel class of prostitutes than you might find in Leicester Square. Its roofs and chimney stacks stood out dark against a smoky golden sky.

  Gambling room. Prostitute …

  Turning round sharply, Darwent walked back in the other direction.

  In a few minutes he was standing in St. James’s Square, looking up at the stone steps and the three aloof red-brick floors, topped by an attic floor, of number thirty-eight.
He smiled again, because his plan was now complete.

  The door was opened by Alfred, the first footman, whom Darwent had met here during his brief visit in the afternoon.

  “My lord,” said the footman, taking Darwent’s hat and cape with deep respect in his feelings as well as his voice.

  Darwent, though still a trifle surprised when someone addressed him as “my lord,” nevertheless was richly and easily at home.

  “Has my wife returned from Brighton?”

  “Yes, my lord. Her ladyship returned not an hour ago.”

  “Ah! As to our arrangement,” Darwent meant their financial arrangement, “I trust my wife does not yet know that I intend to call on her?”

  Inwardly Alfred felt gleeful. Like almost everyone else, he and the other nine servants knew very little of the facts; he believed The Icicle’s sudden marriage to have been a romantic love match.

  “No, my lord,” he replied, without even a hairline of a smile. “Your lordship will find the secret well kept.”

  “Good. Where is my wife now?”

  “I believe her ladyship is abovestairs, my lord. Shall I …?”

  “No, no! Thank you. I wish to go up and surprise her.”

  “Very good, my lord.”

  Darwent went to the staircase, and carefully took four steps up before turning round as though he had forgotten something.

  “By the by,” he said. “Has the other lady arrived?”

  “The other lady, my lord?”

  “Yes. Miss Dorothy Spencer. I expected her here, together with a Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh and a Mr. Hereford, before I arrived myself.”

  “I believe there have been no callers, my lord.”

  Darwent was only faintly disquieted. Though he had been surprised not to see his carriage outside the door, he need not have expected the guests so soon.

  “When the lady does arrive,” he said, “please arrange for her to occupy whatever may be the best guest room. Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh are to be similarly installed. The other gentleman will not remain.”

  “Very good, my lord.”

  “Er—I forgot to inquire whether my wife is served by a personal maid?”