The Bride of Newgate

by John Dickson Carr

  “Give me a back up,” he pleaded. “I can jump and catch the lower ledge of the second box tier. And I can climb up from there to box forty-five.”

  “For God’s sake, why?”

  “The coachman wants my neck. I want his. That’s where he’s headed now: box forty-five! Don’t you understand?”

  “Yes, and with more of his prize fighters. He’s paid ’em.”

  “Well?”

  “You did it once,” Alvanley told him quietly. “You can’t do it again. They’ll pin you in a corner and crush you.”

  “Will you give me a back up?”

  “I rather think he won’t,” struck in a new voice.

  Long and sinewy fingers fastened round Darwent’s left arm. Up over the crowd loomed the wide-toothed smile of the Hon. Edward Firebrace, formerly of the 10th Hussars. Though his jaw was discolored and his evening wear torn, Firebrace’s coil of reddish hair gleamed untouched. In his own way he was as irresistible as Jack Buckstone.

  “This is Lord Darwent, I think,” said Firebrace. “And he won’t get away from me until we have a small discussion.”

  Darwent, who had no notion who he was, looked him up and down with detached coolness.

  “Your manners are damned familiar, sir,” Darwent observed politely—and flung the contents of the pepper tin straight into Firebrace’s eyes.

  At the same time some middle-aged man who might have been a carpenter (God knows on which side he thought he was fighting) went for Firebrace’s throat with both hands. Both Firebrace and his attacker were drawn backwards out of sight in the crowd; irresistibly, as though by suction,

  “Will you give me a back up?”

  “Very well,” sighed Alvanley, who had seen his fill of lunatics. “Steady, now!”

  The most difficult part was climbing to Alvanley’s shoulders, while neither lost his balance. The crowd surged, forward this time, with the heave of a giant’s buckler.

  But Darwent leaped, caught his fingers round the ledge, and began to climb.

  Chapter XVIII

  Describes Caroline in the Paneled Room—

  “EASY!” SHOUTED PATRICK, THE driver of the red berline, as it came spanking down the Haymarket for the turn into Pall Mall. “Mind your swingle bar! (No danger, m’lady.) Mind!”

  Caroline, sitting alone in the carriage with her head back and her eyes closed, did not even hear him.

  To Caroline it had seemed several hours, and was actually more than thirty-five minutes, before she could get away from the crush outside the Italian opera. As one difficulty, the carriages were supposed to be summoned in exact order of social precedence, which they were not; it confused even the godlike voice of the carriage caller.

  “Her grace the Countess of Bessborough.”

  “Prinny’s mistress,” hissed an irate female voice. “Lor, another grandmother. That foul old woman’s not called ‘Her Grace,’ and anyway she has no precedence over …”

  There was a hair-pulling match between the wife of the Prussian ambassador and the wife of the Russian ambassador, whose names had been mixed up; but, since these ladies were considered little better than savages, it made small matter.

  Caroline, numb with fear for Darwent, had been swept along in the press spreading against shop fronts up toward Cranbourne Street. Horsehoofs skittered in mud; link lights dazzled; a street organ kept up incessant tinkling.

  “Where is he?” she kept on asking strange faces; and nobody answered.

  The fire had been quenched. The Hon. Berkeley Craven, slogging toe to toe on a smoke-blotted stage with Dan Sparkler, had won three rounds over the Sparkler—a round was a knock-down or a fall, whether it took two seconds or ten minutes—before somebody laid out Mr. Craven with a length of gas pipe.

  Crash went the glass of a window on the third box tier. A dark figure pitched through, with link flames pressing back against silhouetted hats and bonnets; and Caroline’s heart seemed to stop beating.

  “Only a prize fighter with a sword thrust through him,” somebody called.

  Caroline fought her way out to the edge of the pavement and into the gutter, edging down toward the foyer doors. Rolling carriage wheels towered up menacingly in spatters of mud. But she was half-hysterical; she kept on; there must be news.

  The crowd parted, setting up a cheer, as a platoon of Grenadier Guards poured into the theater with muskets clubbed. Half a dozen Bow Street men, red waistcoats conspicuous under baggy wide-pocketed coats, followed them with batons.

  But still the minutes ticked on; the carriages rumbled to cries of the caller; and Caroline heard nothing until, in the literal sense, she caught hold of a chimney sweep.

  The boy, chosen for his very small size though he must have been over seventeen, had a startlingly clean face except for black lines round the eyes and a dark neck shading into Stygian clothes.

  Caroline took money from her reticule, pressed it on him, and poured out the question.

  “Up there?” demanded the chimney Sweep, his grown-up voice issuing from a three-foot stature. He pointed to the shattered window. “Up there?”

  “Yes!”

  “Quoz!” the boy laughed scornfully. “That’s all over, miss.”

  “All over?”

  “It was Darwent as done it.” The boy spoke like one who takes pride in his own achievements. “Him, and good old Will Alvanley. Stick me in a narrow flue, but they made the Fancy run like scalded cats!”

  “Then Lord Darwent—isn’t hurt?’“

  “Quoz!” jeered the boy, which meant in general, “Come off it!” And, at the same time, a godlike voice rose aloft:

  “The Most Honorable Marquess and Marchioness of Darwent!”

  As Caroline was assisted into the carriage—it didn’t matter that Dick was not there; he would see her later—she sank back against the cushions in a half-stupor. Patrick’s whip cracked; soothingly the carriage rolled.

  It was all over. Dick was safe.

  Fortunately for Caroline, she failed to learn that it was not all over; that, only a few minutes before, there had been disaster.

  Whatever spiteful powers govern the world, this is their trick of management; this is their sleight of hand. It is hope before despair, a tinted-gauze vision hung over the entrance to the cell. Only in storybooks is the hangman too late.

  Caroline’s head and heart were full of memories which now seemed almost comic, yet which to her were inexpressibly dear. As Will Alvanley had swung her out into the throng shuffling past the box door, she remembered calling out to Darwent, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” in the presence of several astounded acquaintances who would have been surprised to hear her speak more than coolly of anything.

  Caroline smiled as she closed her eyes. She would not have changed that for the world.

  Only one cracked edge marred the sum of her happiness. That was Dolly Spencer.

  It would be true to say that, up to this night, she had not even disliked the girl. But it had changed now. Dick was impetuous, but he was wonderfully gentle. He had wisdom, yet he was incredibly foolish. He must not let this stupid, odious, idiotic quixotry (thus Caroline arranged adjectives and noun in her mind) make him think he owed anything to Dolly Spencer.

  The girl’s morals? Damn her morals! It was not that; it was simply that Dolly was not his counterpart. She, Caroline, would prevent it as she had sworn to do. For the first time in her life Caroline realized, with a start, that fiercely she hated some person rather than some abstract idea.

  “I loathe her,” she whispered.

  That was why Caroline, as the red berline rattled down the Haymarket, did not even observe the black-and-silver coach.

  The black-and-silver coach smashed at full gallop eastward along Pall Mall—on the wrong side of the road, a four-in-hand team stung by the whip—just as Patrick swung the berline for a wide, westward turn.

  “Easy!” shouted Patrick. “Mind your swingle bar!” (No danger, m’lady.) Mind!”

  The driver of
the black-and-silver giant, with the reins laced through the fingers of his left hand while he plied his whip with the right, threw away the whip and seized with both hands a fraction too late. The two vehicles sideswiped with a crash, upsetting the berline on its right side. One horse was down, the other struggling.

  “On His Majesty’s service!” bawled a voice.

  “And are ye, now?” bitterly roared Patrick’s voice, as though from a distance away. “Then where’s your so-and-so royal arms?”

  Caroline suffered no injury, not even a bruise. Afterward she could not even remember what happened. At one moment she was sitting in the carriage. Ahead of her the feeble gas lamps seemed to crumple and blue.

  Then, without any apparent change, she found herself sitting in the thick mud of the road, one hand out on either side of her, and a faintly dazed sense that something must have happened.

  Reaching up one hand, with a touch of mud against the bright brown curls, she discovered that her hat had gone. Or perhaps she had left it behind at the theater, as she had been compelled to leave her cloak.

  Beside her spoke the voice of a middle-aged man, gruff and yet very courteous.

  “May I venture to offer you my assistance, madam?”

  “If … if you will have the goodness, sir.”

  As he helped her to her feet, she noticed-that he wore a military busby and cloak. A withered face and sandy side whiskers showed under the busby. He escorted her to the pavement on the opposite side, while many round, flaring, yellow eyes of carriage lamps looked at them. “Huddup!” growled a voice: and the stream of vehicles flowed on.

  Over and over, in a quiet steady voice, Caroline assured her companion she was not hurt.

  “No!” he said with some curtness, as she abruptly turned to go back. “Your driver will inquire what happened, and see to the carriage. I believe I have the honor of addressing Lady Darwent?”

  “Y-yes?” Caroline spoke on a rising inflection.

  “I am Major Sharpe, of the 7th Hussars.”

  “Major …!”

  Under the feeble street lamp gleamed a wintry smile.

  “Doubtless you heard this afternoon, Lady Darwent, that any fancied differences of opinion I might have had with your husband no longer exist. Lord Alvanley told me much of what your husband told him. I admire him greatly. May I summon a hackney coach for you?”

  “No! That is: you are very kind. But for some odd reason I … I am afraid to ride in one. It is not too great a sensibility; it’s nothing! The distance is short; I prefer to walk.”

  “May I accompany you?”

  “Of c-course.”

  Not a word was spoken until they reached the Square. Even then Caroline stopped some distance from her front door.

  “I must leave you here, Major Sharpe. I am afraid,”—with repulsion she indicated her muddied costume—“I won’t allow the servants to see me in this state. I can go in by the back door through the mews. Good night, sir.”

  “Good night, Lady Darwent.” He bowed. “One more word,” Major Sharpe added with subdued ferocity, into the collar of his cloak.

  “Your husband,” he said, “fights a corrupt and evil force. When a man of quality turns moneylender; when another man of quality joins the partnership, even as coachman; then we have …”

  Major Sharpe’s Hessian boot, with the gold trimming, stamped hard into the mud which covered every street after a rainfall. The mud spattered wide.

  “Can Lord Darwent clear away that? I doubt it! But this particular partnership he may smash.”

  “He will!” Caroline cried. She was crying, again like one of (hose women she thought she despised. She told herself that she must hurry, hurry, hurry!

  A few minutes later she was entering the unlocked mews. Even with the inheritance of her grandfather’s money, she had not yet bought carriage or horses because she had only just returned from Brighton; Dick should choose them now. The back door of the house (always unlocked at this comparatively early hour) opened softly.

  Tiptoeing across the housekeeper’s now-deserted sitting room, where a rushlight burned, Caroline just as softly opened the door giving on the back of the main hall.

  There lay the hall, rather narrow and deserted, stretching to the street door, with a few candles left burning against her return from the opera. It should be easy to slip away unheard up the stairs; only Meg, her maid, would be waiting.

  She had taken one soft step forward, when even in her mood of shaken nerves she noticed a circumstance more than odd.

  The door of the dining room, which was the front room and in her present position some distance ahead to her right, appeared to be wide open. From the doorway issued a flood of gentle yellow light.

  Whereupon, as startling as a ghost, the voice of an old man—she had never heard it before—rose up clearly from inside the dining room.

  “Gummy! You mean there’s a-going to be a duel here to-night?”

  Caroline stopped short.

  Clearly, too, and using informal idiom, rose the voice of Alfred, the first footman.

  “Well!” said Alfred. “You know what you told us, Mr. Townsend.”

  “Ah!” rose the richly cryptic inflection of the old man called Mr. Townsend.

  “The governor,” pursued Alfred, as though with a pounce, “knows ’oo this coachman really is. Leastways, Mr. Townsend, you proved it for him.”

  “All in the game, lad!” chuckled the benevolent old man’s voice.

  “The governor,” insisted Alfred, “wants to catch old graveyard at the opera and unwrap him, like. But he knows old graveyard won’t fight in the open, with saber or barker. If he don’t catch graveyard at the opera, he’ll lure him back here and finish the business here behind a locked door.

  “That’s why,” Alfred added, and there was a rattle as though steel rattled in a box, “the governor told me to get all this stuff for choice of weapons. Don’t you think, Mr. Townsend,” he asked very respectfully, “the lower part of this sideboard was the best place to hide it?”

  “Here, stop a bit!” interposed the nervous voice of Thomas, the second footman.

  “Easy, Tommy!”

  “Ah; you may say so! But hadn’t we better douse the glim and close the door and make off before they come back from the opera?”

  “Quoz!” observed Alfred, horribly as though the chimney sweep spoke again. “It’s on the quarter to midnight. Nobody’ll be here for another hour at least.”

  “Ah,” persisted Thomas. “But what’ll her ladyship say?”

  There was a silence.

  “Tommy, I dunno,” Alfred admitted frankly.

  Caroline’s knees were trembling so much that she was obliged to lean one hand against the wall. Her earlier nerve storm, not quietened by that fall from the carriage, plucked at her body as though with a physical touch.

  She was not angry. After all, Caroline was of her generation. If Dick must do this, then he must. But for how long? Each time they turned kindly toward each other, each time they might have been in each other’s arms night and day, day and night, then death and danger came to tear them apart as visibly as with a saber cut or the impact of a pistol bullet.

  No longer was she conscious of her white-satin gown mud-stained at the back from hem to shoulder blade, of her elbow-length white-lace gloves crumpled and muddy, of her thin shoes and stockings as black as the skirt and petticoat.

  She walked swiftly down the hall and faced in at the dining-room door: regally, her eyes seeming pale blue instead of dark.

  “What is happening here?” she asked.

  Three men faced round from the sideboard, two with their mouths open.

  Curtains were drawn on the two tall windows facing St. James’s Square. Twenty candles burned in the glass chandelier, brightly lighting a dining room whose floor was bare and scrubbed as though for a dance. All the furniture had been piled against the wall facing the front windows, and the carpet rolled up with it.

  Beside the sideboard s
tood Alfred, formerly of the Heavy Dragoons, with a straight light-cavalry saber in his hands. Near him was Thomas, holding an open rosewood box of pistols. Their companion was a little stout old man, whose paunch seemed endless in a long red waistcoat, and whose baggy coat stretched well down his high-held white trousers.

  “What is happening here?” Caroline repeated. She was breathing so hard it was difficult to speak coolly. But her brief glance traveled without sight over the little fat man. “And who, if you please, is that person?”

  “My lady …” Alfred began.

  But out stepped the little old man with the long red-clad paunch. His heavy white hair was fashionably curled, above hard eyes which yet seemed to exude benevolence. “Me? Would I hurt a fly?” they seemed to ask.

  “Begging pardon, m’lady,” he said, thrusting forward his paunch and seeming to speak over the listener’s head in so easy a way that it robbed the words of insolence, “but if your ladyship don’t know who I am—why, the Prince Regent does. I carry his purse, m’lady, when he goes out junketing o’ nights.”

  “Indeed.”

  The benevolent old man proceeded to quote dialogue.

  “‘Well, but, Townsend,’ says he, taking out a purse stuffed with fifty or sixty pounds, ‘you must leave me something to spend, you know.’ Til have your Royal Highness’s purse and watch, says I firmlikc, ’afore some flash Knuckle gets ’em ten steps inside St. Giles’s.’”

  Having concluded this anecdote, the red paunch drew itself up with real dignity.

  “John Townsend, m’lady,” he introduced himself. “Forty year in the runners. Served under blind old Sir John Fielding, almost afore there was runners. Confident o’ Royalty. And the best thieftaker, not even bar Sayre …”

  “Thieftaker! Runners!”

  “That’s it, m’lady.”

  “Then it must have been you who sent that note to Lord Darwent today?”

  “Ah!” replied Townsend, with benevolent slyness. “Can’t say it wasn’t.”

  “Why did you send it?”

  “We-el, m’lady! It may ha’ been becos his lordship wrote to me, late last night, and asked me to search somebody’s lodgings for evidence.”