The Blue and the Grey

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Any number, I’m sure,’ Batchelor said. He thought it was time he said something in case Grand started to suspect that he was a little mentally challenged.

  ‘Then let’s find a good one,’ Grand said, slapping him on the back. He had had this man foisted on him, when the last thing he wanted was company. What he had to do needed solitude and a free hand. Still, the little journalist could perhaps be useful when it came to finding his way around. And perhaps even for finding a tall man who lurked in shadows, a man with cufflinks of red and white enamel. When he had his bearings – and it wouldn’t take him long – he could ditch him and strike out alone. ‘My treat.’

  Batchelor fell into step as best he could. The man was tall, certainly, but there was an added something about his stride which made him hard to keep up with. He seemed to cover more ground with each pace than other people, and every now and again the Englishman had to do a hop and a skip to stay abreast.

  Grand noticed and immediately slowed his progress. ‘Sorry to make you run,’ he said, good-humouredly. ‘I do walk fast. Tell me if I do it again; all my friends complain. Used to moving at the speed of the cavalry, I guess.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Batchelor said, trying to catch his breath. ‘It’s probably good for me. A sedentary life, journalism.’

  Grand looked up at the name above a window they were passing. ‘A coffee shop,’ he said. ‘Is it any good?’

  Batchelor had no idea. This was Jermyn Street. He didn’t have the kind of money, or the kind of leisure, to enjoy random cans of coffee in the day. But it looked clean enough and he had never heard anything bad about it, so he nodded and shrugged. Grand pushed open the door, and they went in.

  Both men were surprised. Grand was expecting something similar to his hotel; in Washington, the coffee houses were usually rooming houses as well, if not full blown grand hotels. Batchelor had no idea what to expect, but this slightly cleaner alehouse look was probably not it.

  A waiter, wearing a long, wraparound apron and an ingratiating expression, approached. ‘Table for two, gentlemen?’ he asked. ‘Coffee? Tea? Crumpets? Muffins?’

  The two looked at him, undecided.

  ‘Toast?’ The waiter was running out of options. ‘We don’t start meals until twelve, I’m afraid.’

  Grand was first to come to. ‘We’ll have coffee and muffins,’ he said and led the way to a table at the rear of the room, dark and private.

  Batchelor followed and hoped that Grand was serious about the treat being his. His recent brush with total destitution had made him careful. They sat down and looked around, two strangers thrown together and with little to say. Batchelor drummed his fingers on the table, in time to some tune in his head. He realized it was one of the jingles from his last visit to the Music Hall, the night he had found Effie, and he stopped himself, putting his hands on his thighs under the table. They sat like this until the coffee and food arrived.

  Grand picked up the plate and looked at it quizzically. He had definitely ordered muffins, but these were not they. He opened his mouth to call the waiter back, but was forestalled by Batchelor, who grabbed a hot muffin, dripping with butter and crispy toasted at the edges.

  ‘I haven’t had a muffin for years,’ he said. ‘They were a special treat at home when mother was baking.’ Some butter ran down his chin, and he wiped it off with the back of his hand, smiling at the memory.

  Grand stood corrected. There was a lot to learn about this country, that was for sure. He picked up one of the doughy circles and bit into it dubiously. It was good! Not a muffin, perhaps, but good all the same. He managed to eat it without the butter drool and sipped his coffee. Also good; he had not heard good things about English coffee – the country, he had heard, was obsessed with tea – but this was well up to Washington standards. Better than much of it; certainly better than that at Arlette’s house. He waited to see if his heart would do a little flip at the memory of her, but no, not a thing.

  ‘So, Mr Batchelor,’ the American began. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Batchelor asked, round a mouthful of muffin.

  ‘I gather you are preparing an article on an American in London.’ He spread his arms. ‘Well, here I sit. An American in London if ever there was one. What would you like to know?’

  Batchelor hurriedly wiped his fingers down his trousers and fished in his pocket for notebook and pencil. ‘I wonder if we could begin in Washington,’ he said, mindful that Sala wanted as much detail of the night at Ford’s as was forthcoming.

  ‘Well, I hadn’t been in Washington long before …’ Grand glanced down for a moment, composing himself. ‘Before the President was shot. I had gone to the theatre with my intended, Miss Arlette McKintyre.’

  Batchelor scribbled. This was easy.

  ‘The President was shot. Arlette and I agreed to go our separate ways. I came to London.’

  Not so easy, perhaps. This man could precis like no one Batchelor had ever met. He was a man of very few words indeed. Perhaps he could get him a job in the advertisements department.

  ‘So, you … you didn’t have any involvement in the shooting, at all?’

  Grand’s hand was inside his jacket and his face set in a snarl in less time than it would take to tell. He leaned forward and hissed at a startled Batchelor, ‘What do you mean by that, exactly, Mr Batchelor?’

  Mr Batchelor was damned if he knew, exactly. In his nervousness, he had blurted out the very question that George Sala had wanted raised. But it was too much to the point. It sounded as though Grand had fired the Derringer himself.

  ‘Er … what I meant was … what happened … er … at Ford’s?’

  Grand subsided a little, and Batchelor was relieved to see that both the man’s hands were back on the table. ‘One minute we were watching the play, the next … well, it’s a cliché, I know, but it all happened so fast. Booth appeared on the stage in front of me, maybe as close as I am to the aspidistra over there. He yelled something and ran. I followed.’

  ‘My God!’ Batchelor was impressed. While he had been attending flower shows and the opening of sewers, this man had witnessed the murder of a president and had chased his killer. ‘You didn’t catch him, I suppose?’

  ‘No.’ Grand’s face fell. ‘No. Let’s just say I bumped into a co-worker of his.’

  ‘Co-worker?’ This was not a term Batchelor knew.

  ‘Fellow conspirator,’ Grand explained.

  Batchelor had been following the American despatches avidly on this over the last week. ‘Who was that? Atzerodt? Surratt? Herold?’

  ‘None of these,’ Grand told him. ‘The man I bumped into has no name. Not, at least, that I know.’

  ‘You must be pleased, at least, that they’ve caught most of them. You’ve followed the trial?’

  Grand nodded. ‘As far as I can. The Limey take on it.’

  ‘The Limey …?’ Batchelor frowned. ‘Ah, yes, I see. Well, there you are. Here is a golden opportunity, Mr Grand, to put across the American side of things. You see, we’ve never had a president over here, and our civil war was a long time ago. Of course, madmen take potshots at the queen from time to time, but mercifully, no harm done.’

  ‘I thought you wanted my opinion of London,’ Grand said.

  ‘Oh, I do, I do, but I think our readers would like to know more about Ford’s Theatre and from a Man Who Was Actually There.’ He was writing the banner headlines in his mind now. Leigh Hunt would have to reinstate him once this was public news.

  ‘That’s off limits,’ Grand told him and watched the journalist’s crest fall. ‘But if you can help me, I can give you the story of a lifetime.’

  TWELVE

  The Great Vance strolled across the stage, twirling his gold-topped cane with one hand and his magnificent mustachios with the other. The topper was tilted at a rakish angle over one eye and the other sparkled in the limelight. He was centre stage, and the crowd roared their delight. Even those with their backs to him swivelled the
ir chairs and applauded as his dulcet tenor threatened to shatter the chandeliers.

  ‘Do you have the Music Hall back home, Captain Grand?’ Gabriel Horner leaned across the table.

  ‘I guess we do,’ Grand said, nodding. ‘Except we call it vaudeville. And that’s just plain Mr Grand, by the way.’

  James Batchelor had promised to show the American the sights, and after a turgid day at the Tower (entrance to the Armoury 6d; to the Regalia, which everyone else called the Crown Jewels, another 6d) and the Zoological Gardens (admission one shilling – Grand was paying), the Haymarket with its razzle and dazzle seemed ideal. It also gave Batchelor a chance to relive the night that still haunted him, the night that Effie had offered him her services, the night she was dead at his feet. He suddenly remembered the match girl, the one he had felt sorry for and who had vanished like a will-o’-the-wisp. What had she seen? What did she know? Why did she leave so fast, at that very hour? He made an excuse and wandered into the Haymarket night.

  ‘See her riding in the Row,’ Vance sang. ‘Such a joy from head to toe. She’s the one that I adore, I will love her ever more.’

  ‘Brings tears to your eyes, don’t it?’ Dyer chuckled, raising his champagne glass to the singer.

  Gabriel Horner shook his head. ‘Such cynicism in one so young,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll get on to the naughty stuff later, Mr Grand.’ Dyer nudged the man. ‘There’s No Shove Like the First Shove, if you catch my drift.’

  Horner chuckled. ‘The point is, Mr Grand, that in the Music Hall, nothing is quite real. Nothing is quite what it seems. Take the Great Vance up there. What do you see? A heavy swell in finely-tailored kecks with boots that would cost me a year’s pay working for the Telegraph? His name is actually Alfred Peek Stevens, and when I first met him he was a solicitor’s clerk, earning a pittance and shivering in a garret somewhere.’

  ‘Didn’t he do blackface?’ Dyer asked. ‘At the South London Palace?’

  ‘He did,’ Horner said. ‘I suppose you have plenty of those for real at home, Mr Grand?’

  Grand smiled. ‘Our blackface minstrels are as white as yours, Mr Horner,’ he said. ‘Coloureds aren’t allowed on stage, even in my particular neck of the woods.’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘You’re quiet tonight, Joe.’ Dyer half turned to Buckley, sitting beside him. ‘The Great Vance not to your liking?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Buckley muttered. ‘I was thinking about those murders.’

  ‘Ah, yes, dreadful. Did you know, Mr Grand, that an unfortunate – nay, two unfortunates – were murdered not a stone’s throw from where we are sitting?’

  ‘The last time Mr Grand was in a theatre,’ Horner murmured, ‘a president was murdered not a stone’s throw from where he was sitting.’

  ‘You seem remarkably well informed, sir.’ Grand shot him a glance that would have unnerved a more sober man.

  ‘I am a newspaperman, sir.’ Horner sat more upright. ‘It is my job to be well informed.’

  The orchestra reached a crescendo, and the Great Vance bowed and preened to his adoring audience.

  ‘Now’s the interval,’ Dyer told Grand. ‘This is where the show really starts.’ He caught the expression on Buckley’s face. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Joe, cheer up, man. Look, here’s Lily. You can have her tonight.’

  Lily was lovely. Her dark tresses tumbled over her bare shoulders, and her gown was bold even by Haymarket standards. She led a throng of similarly dressed girls through the theatre’s auditorium, and they swayed seductively past the tables. Grand noticed that they ignored any table at which a lady sat and they circled the waiters who arrived carrying trays of champagne and pails of ice.

  ‘Evening, Lily.’ Edwin Dyer leered, half-standing in a mock bow.

  She looked briefly at him, then fixed her smouldering gaze on Grand. ‘Why, Edwin, who is your handsome friend?’

  ‘Er … allow me to introduce … Matthew Grand, this is Lily.’

  The ex-Union officer rose to his feet. ‘Lily … er?’

  ‘Just Lily.’ She smiled, extending her hand for him to kiss. ‘I haven’t seen you here before,’ she said.

  ‘He’s from over the water,’ Buckley said. ‘The land of the free.’

  ‘Really?’ Lily insinuated herself next to Grand, her breasts all but tumbling out of her bodice.

  ‘Mine, I think.’ Another female voice made them all look up. ‘Hello, boys.’

  An auburn beauty stood there, a long feather boa circling her neck. Her left hip was thrust out at a provocative angle, and she too had her gaze fixed on Grand.

  ‘Piss off, Jeannie, I saw him first.’ Lily’s tones were less than velvet.

  The auburn girl looked up and down the room with its chatter, its smoke and its noise. ‘He’s my side of the fence,’ she said.

  ‘You was always boss-eyed,’ Lily said.

  ‘Well.’ Jeannie smiled at Grand. ‘Let’s let the gentleman decide for himself, shall we?’ she said, and she hauled up her elegant dress to allow Grand to assess her wares.

  ‘Good God!’ The cry came from any or all of the half dozen men around the table.

  ‘I thought she was really a redhead,’ Dyer said with a smirk, but it was the last comment he was able to make because a well-aimed kick from Jeannie saw him reeling backwards off his chair, crashing into a flunkey whose tray and glasses went everywhere.

  ‘Bitch!’ Lily snarled, and she grabbed the other girl’s hair and swung her round. The rest was shrieks and bared teeth and flying nails as the girls went at each other.

  Grand tried to separate them, but all he got for his pains was Lily’s boot in his groin. There was chaos everywhere, and the band played faster and louder to drown out the furore.

  ‘They don’t pay me enough to get my nose broken,’ Buckley shouted at Dyer, and he fought his way to the door.

  ‘That makes two of us,’ Dyer said, but his progress was slower because he had to get upright first with boots stamping all around him and furniture splintering as he rolled on the floor.

  ‘Two bob on the redhead,’ Gabriel Horner crowed, loving every minute of this but despairing of the feeble showing by the young reporters of today. Some people were keen to take his money, but the theatre’s heavies were already at work, cracking heads together and restoring order. It was all in a night’s work for them. And Matthew Grand learned a whole new vocabulary from Lily and Jeannie before they were flung out into the night.

  When all had calmed down and the furniture was righted and the champagne flowed again, the orchestra’s pace and volume lessened. Gabriel Horner waved over a waiter and ordered more champagne on the strength of his winnings. ‘You must be a little bewildered by all this, Mr Grand,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t recall it happening much in Washington,’ the man had to agree.

  ‘Oh, don’t let it go to your head … er … well-set-up sort of chap though you are. Any new face is likely to be a magnet to the Juliets of a night. No, the problem is strictly one of geography. You are sitting, technically, in Lady Eleanor’s patch. Imagine, if you will, a line between us that runs from the stage to the auditorium’s doors – a sort of Mason-Dixon line if I may so describe it. I am in the South, Auntie Bettie’s domain. You are in the North, Lady Eleanor’s. Lily is one of Bettie’s girls, so she was in the wrong to fix her colours to your mast, if I’m not mixing my metaphors there. It’s an agreement those ladies have – Eleanor and Bettie, that is. Ironically, it’s designed to avoid the kind of fun … er … unpleasantness we’ve just experienced. There will, I fear, be hell to pay for it all later. Eleanor and Bettie are not the forgiving kind.’

  ‘Did you see where Jim Batchelor went?’ Grand asked.

  ‘No, I didn’t, I’m afraid.’ Horner sipped his champagne. ‘But, like all these young whippersnappers today, no stomach for a fight.’

  Grand stood up. ‘I’ll take my leave, Mr Horner,’ he said. ‘I’ve had plenty of excitement for one day.’

 
; The little match girl was not there that night. Neither were the patrolling coppers who had laid hands on James Batchelor and taken him in for questioning the night Effie died. The usual march past marched past the journalist, and gentlemen in theatre capes and collapsible hats scurried by, avoiding his gaze. There were, after all, plain-clothes policemen about these days and private enquiry agents in the pay of suspicious wives. Batchelor went north towards Piccadilly Circus, wondering how he could tackle Auntie Bettie, whose girl Effie had been. That would have to wait for another night.

  Matthew Grand realized as soon as he was outside the theatre that he was all but lost. He had never been here before, not in this part of London, and he didn’t care for the clientele walking past him. There were roughs in threadbare bum-freezers, flat caps and scarves; heavy swells dressed like the Great Vance inside; and ladies of the night like the two who had fought over him. Not once did he see a policeman or a man of the cloth.

  A lad, perhaps sixteen, accosted him: ‘Bit o’ brown, guv’nor?’ The boy was wearing lipstick despite the rough clothes. Matthew Grand had no idea what that was and turned him down.

  ‘Get lost, Maryanne!’ a hard-faced trollop yelled at the boy. ‘Can’t you see the gentleman needs a bit of red?’ She turned her sweetest smile on him. ‘What’s your fancy, handsome?’

  After the events of the last weeks, Matthew Grand had no idea what his fancy was. Was that weeks? Or was it years? Since that flag came down at Fort Sumter, his life had been one of turmoil, march and countermarch, reveille and recall. In the watchfires of a hundred circling camps he had seen his future written in blood. And now, here he was, in an alien land that had not known war on its own soil for generations. It was a land of wealth and bustle, and this, the greatest city in the world, had no heart. It had not lost its President, had not had the soul ripped out of it.

  ‘I said,’ the girl said, ‘what’s your fancy?’

  Before Grand could answer, there was a scream, shrill and stark, one that would chill anyone’s blood. The girl backed into the shadows and disappeared as surely as Batchelor’s match girl had. No one else seemed to notice. Cries like that and screams of murder punctuated the Haymarket any night of the week. The crowds kept surging, and the carriage wheels turning. Only the ex-captain of cavalry had noticed. Only the man from Ford’s Theatre knew instinctively that something was very wrong. The sound had come out of the blackness, the alleyway next to the theatre. An alleyway that reminded him of that bad Good Friday. He half expected to see Peanut John steadying a skittish horse halfway along its length and to come face to face with a man with the devil’s face, one who said to him, ‘You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you, soldier boy? You didn’t think Johnny would come alone?’