by M. J. Trow
Batchelor smiled. ‘You’re right,’ he said, having to shout above the hullabaloo. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Effie,’ she said. ‘You can call me Effie.’
‘Where are you from, Effie?’
‘Paradise, ducky.’ She ran the closed fan down his waistcoat to his lap.
He gingerly removed it. ‘Well, Effie,’ he said, looking into her soft, grey eyes. ‘Flattered as I am, I’m going to have to turn you down.’
She looked at him. No, he wasn’t handsome, but there was something strangely vulnerable about his boyish face. She was usually good on ages, but she wasn’t sure about his. Was he twenty? Thirty? Effie didn’t know; but the night was young and the theatre was filling up nicely. She would have to give most of her pot to Auntie Bettie, but that still left her with a tidy sum. And tomorrow was Saturday, the best night of the week.
She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Your loss, lover,’ she said with a laugh and whirled away into the crowd.
James Batchelor took another swig of his brandy and had drained the glass. He stood up, perhaps too suddenly, and the room swayed. How many had he had? No more than two, surely? The hard stuff didn’t usually affect him like this.
He had to fight his way through to the bar that ran the length of the stalls. Furtive couples were sliding back into the shadows, the raucous music covering their grunts and groans. Where the hell were they? Batchelor had to spin a couple of revellers around, mumbling his apologies, before he found a face he knew.
‘You shit, Buckley!’ he hissed into that face. ‘When I feel in need of a girl I’ll choose my own, thanks.’
‘Oh, come on, Jim,’ Joe Buckley said. ‘You looked in need of cheering up. Effie’s a good sort.’
‘She certainly is.’ Edwin Dyer was suddenly at his elbow. ‘But if you’re determined to wallow in your sorrows, at least do it in enough liquid.’ He clicked his fingers and waved a waiter over. He haggled briefly over the price of the theatre’s cheapest champagne while Buckley clapped an arm around Batchelor and led him to the last free table in the place.
When they had all sat down and the bubbly frothed and fizzed in the glass, Dyer looked Batchelor in the face. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘if you’re not careful, you’re going to end up like old Gabriel over there.’
Old Gabriel was indeed older than the others. He had come up the hard way, from dame school to crammer to pot-boy at the Wayzegoose, that dingy little hostelry along Fleet Street where the barflies paddled in the spilled beer and lecherous old newspapermen spat in the sawdust. Gabriel Horner had been at the Telegraph since it started eight long years ago and he had seen dozens of young men like Jim Batchelor. They all wanted to change the world, to write their way into the heart of the nation, to leave their mark on the greatest Empire the world had ever known. All night he had avoided the lads, if only because he had heard their naive claptrap before. Now, though, it looked as if little Jimmy needed his words of wisdom.
‘What’s the matter, Batchelor?’ He leaned across from the next table, where a couple of tarts were enjoying his liquor. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got Crossness tomorrow!’
Batchelor looked at the old soak. ‘How did you guess?’ he said, straight-faced.
Gabriel Horner roared with laughter and thumped the table so that the glassware rattled. ‘Sorry, old man,’ he said. ‘I had no idea.’
Tomorrow, the Prince of Wales would arrive by steamer from the Palace of Westminster. His party would consist of both archbishops, two extra bishops (no one quite knew why), a couple of princes, the odd duke and earl, a cartload of Members of Parliament and most of the police force of the Metropolitan Districts of London. They would all end up at the Crossness Pumping Station on the south bank of the Thames. His Royal Highness would make a speech and cut a ribbon, and everyone would come out with boring platitudes about how marvellous Mr Bazalgette’s sewerage system was. And James Batchelor, the Telegraph’s newest reporter, would be on hand to record it all for a breathless nation.
Old Gabriel must have read James Batchelor’s mind. He leaned forward again. ‘It is newsworthy, James,’ he said, as quietly as the blasting music would let him. ‘Crossness may be miles of piss-pipes to you, but it’s living history; believe me. It shan’t be done again in our lifetime.’
Batchelor seemed unconvinced.
‘It’s what we journalists do.’ Horner spread his arms as though there was no other explanation left.
‘No.’ Joe Buckley sipped his champagne. ‘Young Jimmy here would rather be out with George Sala, wouldn’t you, Jimmy? Our man at the Front, reporting from Appomattox on that little war the Americans are having.’
‘Yes, I would,’ Batchelor said defiantly. ‘I’m tired of flower shows and the price of Smithfield pigs.’
‘George Sala?’ Horner snorted. ‘I remember him when he was scribbling drawings for Charlie Dickens.’
‘If it was action you wanted,’ Dyer said, chipping in, ‘you should have joined the army. Gone to kill a few painted Maori down under.’
‘There’s a civil war going on over there,’ Batchelor said, still mentally with Sala in the Wilderness, annoyed at himself because he was slurring a little. ‘Can you imagine what that must be like?’
‘We had a civil war once.’ Horner grimaced as the cheap champagne hit his tonsils. ‘If my old crammer history serves. The Man of Blood against old Noll Cromwell.’
Buckley nudged Dyer. ‘Did you cover that one, Gabriel?’ And they all roared with laughter. All except James Batchelor. He suddenly needed fresh air, and he stumbled out into the night, the music fading and then roaring in his ears as he went. As the door swung shut the noise ended, as though he had gone deaf, and he shook his head to clear it.
The Haymarket was bright on that April night, the gas lamps guttering in their green luminosity. The gilded carriages of the well-to-do rattled past, the glossy hacks with their high-carried tails trotting north and south. On the pavement nearest Batchelor, a little girl sat in rags, her hand out in front of her. The newspaperman ignored her at first. There were so many like her, on every street corner, in every doorway until a boot or a broom moved them on. But, three steps further on, he relented and turned back. He fumbled in his trousers’ pocket and found a sixpence. He looked down into the girl’s face, upturned to his and livid in the gas light. She may have been eight or nine; it was difficult to tell under the grime.
‘Buy a match, guv’nor,’ she said, her eyes bright when she saw his silver. There was a box of matches in her filthy hand, and the other clutched convulsively at a ragged shawl around her scrawny shoulders. Under it the thin shift was grey, crawling, like her head, with lice. In a year or two, this little waif would gravitate from selling matches to selling her body, should she live so long. If she was lucky, very lucky, she might end up like Effie.
There was a scream, short and sharp, and it was punctuated by a hideous gurgling sound and the scrape of hobnails on cobbles. Batchelor threw the coin at the child and doubled back the way he had come. One or two others passing by had heard the sound too, but they hurried on, looking neither left nor right. The journalist shook his head again to try to clear it. The combination of the drink, the noise and the heat of the theatre had slowed his responses, and the chill of the spring night air made him shiver. The scream had come from an alleyway that ran alongside the theatre. He could hear the music and the laughter from inside as his colleagues began to slide ever nearer to the floor.
It was pitch black in the alleyway, and he wished he had actually bought the girl’s match. He even half turned to retrieve it, but the child had gone as if she had never been there, a ghost in the gaslight. He groped his way forward, keeping to one side of the passageway so that what faint light there was from the street eased the gloom. Even so, his foot hit something that was in deep shadow, and he half-stumbled. He checked his pockets, in the faint hope that he already had matches there, but there was nothing. He peered down into the darkness, willing his eyes
to see something. He felt his way forward, carefully, slowly. He felt a leg first, stockinged to above the knee. The skirts and petticoats were thrown up and the thighs were smooth and bare. He used one hand to steady himself, crouching in the tight angle between the leg and the wall. With the other he fumbled for the bodice, felt naked breasts but no heartbeat. And at last he reached the neck. Its smoothness was spoilt by something jagged and tight, a ligature that bit deep into the skin. He felt his fingers wet with blood and caught his breath. He felt for a pulse, at the neck, at the wrist, smearing blood wherever he groped. He felt the face. And he pulled back. As he moved, the gaslight shone over his shoulder and his eyes had at last become acclimatized to the dark. He was staring down at a dead woman. She had been strangled, but with something that had cut as it had throttled.
It was Effie, the girl from paradise.
THREE
Matthew Grand’s boots slipped in the mud of Tenth Street. A crowd surged across the road ahead of him, everybody trying to help carry the President. The man was tall, unusually tall for the times, a target waiting to catch a bullet, head and shoulders above his fellow man. Soldiers with fixed bayonets were trying to keep the crowd back as the sad little entourage made its way to the house opposite the theatre.
A sash window flew up from the rooming house’s second storey, and Henry Safford popped his head out. All evening he had danced between the bonfires crackling and spitting across the city, leaping over the puddles of Pennsylvania Avenue. Strangers had shaken his hand and slapped his back. A girl he did not know had kissed him. The war was all but over, and the country that had for so long held its breath could breathe again.
‘What’s the matter?’ Safford tried to focus on the convoy in the half-light below him.
‘The President has been shot,’ someone called back.
Safford looked up to where the White House carriage stood outside Ford’s Theatre, the coachman like a rock on his perch, too stunned to move. ‘Bring him in here!’ he yelled and grabbed his candle before making for the stairs.
The knot of men carrying Lincoln adjusted their path, took the weight and lifted their precious load higher to negotiate the front steps.
Matthew Grand had no place there. There would be doctors, politicians, the devastated Mrs Lincoln and God knew who else. He would be redundant in whatever dying room they took him to. Suddenly, he remembered Arlette and doubled back to the theatre. Knots of the audience still stood there, shaking and crying. Actors and musicians were consoling each other, trying to come to terms with what had happened.
‘Matthew!’ The captain turned sharply at the sound of his name, though it seemed to come from a long way away, down an empty, lonely tunnel. Arlette’s uncle, Jacob McKintyre, stood there, his top hat gone, his hair awry. ‘We’ve taken Arlette home. This place is a madhouse. The carriage is outside. Come on.’
‘Later,’ Grand said. ‘I have things to do.’
The older man looked at him. ‘You’re hurt,’ he said.
For the first time, Grand realized that he was bleeding and his temple was swollen and tender. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, fishing out his handkerchief and dabbing at the blood. ‘Nothing.’
Jacob gripped his sleeve. ‘Your place is with your fiancée,’ he said. Arlette was never easy to deal with, and this evening he had come close to giving her a slap to calm her down. It was definitely time that Grand took a hand in her management.
‘No.’ Grand shook his head. ‘My place is with my President.’ And he pulled away.
If Captain Grand had not been there to save his President, he would do all he could for him now. He pushed his way through a crowd at the bottom of the stairs to the President’s box itself. The walls and carpet were a deep crimson, the Stars and Stripes half-ripped from its housings. There was blood everywhere – Lincoln’s, Rathbone’s, perhaps even Booth’s – who knew? Lincoln had gone now, along with Mary Todd, Major Rathbone and Clara Harris, and in their place a pale-faced actress knelt, her stage make-up running with the glycerine of real tears.
‘Miss Keene?’ Grand took the woman’s hand and helped her to her feet. Her once-white gloves were red, and more dripped from her ringlets.
A large florid man moved as if to get between them. ‘Who are you?’
‘Matthew Grand, Third Cavalry,’ Grand told him. ‘I was in the audience earlier. You?’
‘Gourlay. I’m stage manager here. Where’s the President?’
‘I don’t know,’ Grand said. ‘I think they’ve taken him to a house across the street.’
‘The Petersen rooming house?’ Gourlay frowned. ‘Why the Hell …? Oh, begging your pardon, Laura.’
Laura Keene was beyond the niceties of polite society now. Abraham Lincoln’s blood and brains had been seeping into her hands and dress and into the flag that Gourlay had placed beneath his head. A life ended. A candle blown out. She had not taken in the officer’s name, but she recognized the rank badges on his shoulders. ‘Captain,’ she said. ‘He’s gone, hasn’t he?’
And throughout that long April night all across the city, men came to the same realization. Honest Abe had gone to meet his maker. Lesser men would try to fill his boots.
Matthew Grand made his way down the back stairs, past soldiers who instinctively clicked to attention as the officer passed. The sulphur lights burned blue here, and Grand realized he was back in the corridor that led to the stage. The door he had crashed through half an hour before was still ajar, the cobbles of the yard glistening now in newly falling drizzle. Now that he was not chasing shadows, he could take in his surroundings. There were two stables, separated by the alleyway that ran straight and true to F Street. It was here he had caught the killer’s stirrup briefly before the man had wheeled his horse and spurred through the Washington night. There was nothing here now but mushy hoof and footprints. Nothing except …
The captain had never wished so hard that he had his revolver with him. A figure was crouching in the darkness, the almost tangible black caused by the jut of the stable to the right.
‘Who’s there?’ Grand called, hoping his voice would not betray the flutter in his heart.
‘I was just going, sir,’ a shaken voice called back. ‘I didn’t know whose horse that was.’
Grand straightened. The voice was young, little more than a boy’s. ‘Come out,’ he said. ‘Show yourself.’
A mousy kid half-stumbled into the half-light. Like Grand, he was bleeding from the head, a dark streak running from his hairline to his chin. He was shaking, his eyes wild and rolling, looking everywhere but at the captain’s face. Grand took the boy’s shoulders in both hands, forcing him to focus. He had seen this before, on too many battlefields. Boys from the farms and the hill country, covered in other men’s brains. Boys whose hearts were broken. Whose minds were gone. But he had seen this particular boy before.
‘What’s your name, son?’ Grand asked.
‘Peanut, sir,’ the boy said. ‘Peanut John.’
‘You work here, Peanut?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The boy was calmer now; now that he could hear the first coherent words in that night of madness. ‘I keep the door, sir. And I sell peanuts. That’s how come they call me Peanut John.’
‘What happened tonight, Peanut?’ Grand asked, wanting to know. Bringing the boy to the here and now made him shake again, and again Grand held the trembling shoulders.
‘I don’t rightly know, sir,’ he mumbled.
‘Peanut.’ Grand lifted the boy’s chin. ‘A terrible thing has happened. You know the President’s been shot?’
A single tear trickled the length of Peanut John’s face, tracing a groove through the grime and blood and making him look younger still. ‘Yessir,’ he said, nodding solemnly. ‘I’ve heard folks shouting it.’
‘You said,’ Grand replied, coaxing him gently, ‘you didn’t know whose horse that was.’
Peanut nodded.
‘Whose horse was it?’
For a long moment Peanut John l
ooked into Grand’s eyes. He saw nothing but kindness there. And calmness of a kind that everybody needed this night. ‘Mr Booth, sir. It was his horse.’
‘Tell me,’ the captain said, steadying the boy against the stable door. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘Well …’ Peanut John frowned, trying to focus, trying to make some sense of it all. ‘Mr Spangler done found me. Asked me to hold a horse.’
‘Mr Spangler?’
‘Edman Spangler, sir. He’s a scene-shifter here at the theatre. He said to find Johnny Debonay. He’d left the horse with him.’
‘Debonay?’
‘He’s like me, sir. Doorman and stable hand.’
‘All right. So Debonay was holding a horse.’
‘Yessir. Just along the alley. He told me to hold it ‘cos he had work to do.’
‘How did you know it was Mr Booth’s horse?’
‘I seen him riding it before, sir,’ Peanut John said, remembering. ‘A sorrel with a white blaze. Jumpy critter. I had trouble holding him.’
‘Did you see Booth go into the theatre?’
‘No, sir. I was on the front door, selling peanuts then. I didn’t see him come past me.’
‘Mr Booth’s an actor.’ Grand was thinking aloud. ‘I guess he knows this theatre pretty well.’
‘I guess he does, sir. He bought me a drink once.’
‘He did?’
‘Yes sir.’ Peanut John’s face creased into a smile. Little things made him happy. ‘Me and Mr Spangler, we were in the Star Saloon, and Mr Booth come in and treated me.’
‘What kind of man is he, Peanut?’
‘Mr Booth?’ The question had clearly confused the boy. But he gave the same answer he would have given if Grand had asked it the day before or a year ago. ‘He’s a gentleman, sir. A fine man. A gentleman of the South.’
