And if the weather was poor, the shops in Milsom Street offered a welcome alternative. It boasted of being the finest shopping street in England for hats and shoes, gowns and suits, furniture and ornaments, all displayed in the most luxurious surroundings, with staff who were attentive and always at pains to demonstrate due deference. Ladies and gentlemen were free to shop at leisure without the danger of coming across the milliners and cobblers, dressmakers and tailors, carpenters and potters, and all the various artisans who worked for a pittance in the filthy sweatshops, back-rooms and factories to provide for their every need.
After their morning’s excursion the gentlemen and ladies would return to the Pump Rooms for a glass of spa water to help with their digestion before lunch and to agree arrangements for the afternoon or evening. The warmth of so many bodies in the building made the large log fire almost superfluous. James knew he was accepted here by virtue of his profession and manners and clothing, and the illusion that he still had money. If rumours grew stronger about his debts, then this was the place where it would happen; where the word would spread and he would be excluded from society.
James paid for his spa water at the fountain, set in its own room-sized alcove beside the sculpted fireplace. He stared at the well waters, steaming behind the marble balustrade and surrounded by stained-glass windows; an altar to the God of perpetual youth, its busy attendants serving mass and distributing communion. The whole room gave the impression of a temple transported through time, with its lofty Doric pillars supporting a high, sculpted ceiling and triangular stone pediments above each doorway. He had often read the Greek inscription above the entrance to the rooms, ‘Water is Best’, as though all life’s ills could be cured through a glass of the ill-tasting liquid.
The water, as usual, was served up in one of a host of much used and battered pewter beakers, and as always it tasted to him as though it had been run through a mixture of sulphur and iron filings. He told himself, as everyone did, that it was good for his health, and took up his customary position beneath the oak, long-case clock, which in its turn stood beneath the statue of Beau Nash mounted high on the wall above.
James began viewing the comings and goings around him, like all the others, with a polite smile to one and a nod of the head to another. He looked up. The large chandelier in the centre of the ceiling was playing games with the rainbow light it caught from the tall windows. Its mirrored reflections flitted from one face to another, like small butterflies of light.
James picked out Frank Harcourt at almost the same moment that Frank saw him. Frank adopted a smile of acknowledgement and walked towards him through the swelling throng. As he reached out his hand in greeting James discreetly passed him the small bundle of bank notes. ‘Seventy pounds,’ he said.
Harcourt unobtrusively pocketed them, uncounted, and smiled. ‘Thank you, James. I thought it would be better to settle up before tomorrow night’s game. I trust you are not inconvenienced by the matter.’
‘Not at all,’ James replied.
‘You understand that no one can be admitted to tomorrow’s game without stake money of a hundred pounds. This is not a game for tradesmen and artisans.’
‘I understand fully and I have money already set aside,’ James said, calculating the shortfall he needed to make up. Even with the twenty he had got back from Sean, after repaying Frank, he had only eighty pounds. He still needed a further twenty pounds.
‘Do you have plans for this evening? Frank asked.
‘Yes I fear so. There is someone I need to visit.’
‘It is as well, for I also have someone I need to see this evening,’ Frank said, smiling.
❖ ❖ ❖
When James reached the home of his friends, Richard and Charlotte, he knocked loudly three times on the front door and fixed a smile to his face. He had watched the house from his window for some time, to ascertain that they had no visitors. When the maid answered the door he shot past her.
‘No need to announce me, Dorothy,’ he shouted, handing her his hat and cane and flying up the stairs. ‘Your master invited me earlier.’
‘They are in the drawing room,’ Dorothy said.
James stopped at the top of the stairs and flipped a silver thruppenny piece towards her, watching it arc through the air spinning over and over. At the bottom of the staircase, Dorothy caught it and stooped in a mock curtsey. ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said, smiling.
‘A small token of my gratitude, Dorothy.’ He bowed and paused for breath at the drawing room door. Then he knocked, and, without waiting for a response, burst into the room. Richard and Charlotte leapt to their feet in surprise.
‘Richard,’ he said. ‘Thank you for your invitation; I have come to visit you and to see your lovely wife, Charlotte, again.’ He strode across the room and, taking Charlotte’s hand, he bowed and kissed it, before stepping back.
‘I take it you would like a whisky?’ Richard said, walking over to decanters and glasses, which stood on the mirror-backed mahogany sideboard.
‘A whisky would be excellent,’ James replied.
Charlotte turned to Richard, who smiled uneasily. ‘Richard should not have invited you, James, without discussing it with me first. We are expecting guests for supper and I have not had a place set for you.’
‘I must have forgotten I invited James to visit,’ Richard said. ‘Perhaps we could set another place?’
‘The dining table is already laid,’ Charlotte said. ‘I do not believe you know our guests, James, but you are welcome to stay. There would of course be an odd number around the table,’ she added. ‘Would you like me to have the table reset, James?’
James could imagine the uproar it would cause, the maid rushing around resetting the table; Charlotte fussing with the decorations and writing out a new name card in her impeccable copper-plate writing, with its exaggerated loops and flourishes and at the end of it all, his presence would still upset her carefully arranged and ordered world. ‘It would be too much trouble,’ he said, taking the tumbler of whisky from Richard, ‘and besides I had planned only a short visit.’ Only Charlotte could make an invitation sound so firm a rejection while maintaining such a welcoming smile, he mused.
‘I understand, James,’ she said, her face relaxing. ‘You seem a little agitated, has your day been so exhilarating? You must find us very dull by comparison?’ Charlotte’s soft hazel eyes and glossy blonde hair lifted her pretty face into the realms of striking beauty. The tightly curled ringlets bunched at either side of her head framed the perfect symmetry of her face and her flawless alabaster complexion. Her tiny, perfectly formed lips opened in a smile, displaying teeth as white as milk. As James looked at Charlotte, he found it difficult to imagine anything in her life being anything other than perfect.
‘My elation began when I entered your home and not before,’ James said, with a slight tremble in his voice, entering into the spirit of Charlotte’s game. She accepted the compliment without comment. He wondered what she was thinking. Then she smiled at her reflection in the over-mantle mirror above the roaring log fire and turned towards him. ‘Do call again, James,’ Charlotte said. ‘You know you are always welcome.’
James finished the whisky. ‘I will not inconvenience you longer,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you could see me out, Richard?’
❖ ❖ ❖
As the two men walked down the stairs Richard stopped and turned to James. ‘I don’t recall inviting you this evening?’
‘I am afraid it was a subterfuge, Richard. I need to borrow twenty pounds.’
‘I take it you are gambling again?’ Richard said.
‘I simply need twenty pounds. Do you have it, and will you lend it to me?’
‘I will lend it to you on one condition. This will be the last time. Twenty pounds is a great deal of money. You may have the money, but if you take it, you give me your word, win or lose, that this is the last time you will gamble. If you go on you will be ruined and I refuse to be a part of it.’
&nbs
p; ‘I had resolved as much myself,’ James said as Richard led him into the surgery. Richard unlocked the bureau and opened one of the drawers. There was a substantial amount of money within and James watched as Richard extracted four five-pound notes. ‘This will be the last time I gamble,’ James said, as he took the money.
‘Then stop now.’ Richard said as he relocked the bureau. ‘Some of the people you mix with are dangerous. I take it that this gambling venture also involves Harcourt?’
‘Frank will be involved, as will several others.’
‘I will warn you again, to be wary of the man,’ Richard said. ‘I should not tell you this, but again, perhaps I should have told you before.’ He hesitated and his voice grew quieter. ‘I have a patient, a lady. She was until lately of very good health and one of the greatest beauties in town. Now she rarely smiles and is dependent on laudanum for her sleep. She was involved with Frank Harcourt in a far more intimate sense than she should have been and wrote several letters to the gentleman before she saw sense and broke off the relationship.’
‘Some ladies find it difficult to resist Frank.’ James smiled, hoping to break the mood.
‘This lady certainly rues the day she met him,’ Richard said. ‘She has paid Harcourt a considerable amount of money to get those letters back and as yet he still holds them all and is still threatening to take them to her husband.’
‘I will speak to him,’ James interrupted. ‘I am sure I can appeal to his better side.’
‘You will do nothing of the sort,’ Richard snapped back. ‘The man has no better side and if he discovered she has told anyone of his blackmail, there’s no telling where it would end. Just take care and don’t mention our conversation under any circumstances to anyone, and particularly not Harcourt, merely tell him that he is not welcome in this house.’
‘Let me at least give you some good news before departing,’ James said, as Richard led him to the front door. ‘I spoke to the manager of Jolly’s in Milsom Street today. It is the shop in which the wife of the suicide victim was caught shoplifting. They have agreed not to proceed against her.’
Chapter 12
The cold gloom of Avon Street was full of shadow-shapes and blackness, strange scuttlings and half-imagined whisperings. The fear which gnawed at James’ insides was as cold and empty as the alleyway in which he now found himself. Part of him felt too drunk and despairing to care what was happening, but his need to find sanctuary was strong. He struggled to piece together his memories of the evening, to restore some sort of order to his mind.
He had set off for The Pig and Whistle tavern, at the edge of Avon Street, with every penny he owned about his person, hoping, before the night was out, to be a much richer man. In the upper rooms of the tavern some of the richest men in the city were meeting to play cards and he knew he had more than enough skill to match any of them, except perhaps for Frank Harcourt.
In the beginning he had played well, even better than Frank, and been successful. But he realised now that he had stayed too long, and drunk too much, and gradually begun to believe in his own infallibility. Eventually the cards had turned against him and by the end of the evening, pushing for one more win, he had lost everything. He stayed after most of the company had left and continued drinking with Frank, who had won a great deal. Eventually they had stumbled out of the hostelry together, and he had followed Frank deeper into the Avon Street maze. Then, somehow, they had become separated and James gradually realised that he had lost his bearings.
His stomach fought desperately against the foul stench from the filth-filled gutter that meandered uninterestedly down the middle of the lane, its path dammed at intervals by rotting vegetation and faeces, forming stagnant pools that fed its onward course. When the next downpour came it would undoubtedly carry the effluent into the cellars of the hovels around, on its way to the River Avon. James tried to keep as close as possible to the edge, but the lane was narrow and his body ricocheted periodically in the soot-black darkness, from wall to wall, as he stumbled on.
His overcoat had been lost in the game, along with his gold pocket watch and silver card case. His long, black frock coat was now stained and scuffed at the shoulders and arms, and the right sleeve was torn at the elbow. His hat lay in a pigsty, some yards away, where the wind had taken it. The bottoms of his impeccably tailored trousers were drenched from unwanted excursions through the gutter and its foul contents had seeped through the stitching in his shoes and soaked his feet.
He had little idea of where he was or the direction in which he was heading, but gradually his fear was becoming his servant, rather than his master. Panic was slowly clearing the fog from his brain and restoring some semblance of co-ordination to his body and a greater degree of control to his legs. He leant against the wall of one of the tenements that lined the alleyway. The damp, oily film that met his touch repulsed him and he felt the surface crumble beneath his hand, as though it was fashioned from barely dried river mud.
James remembered some of the places he had passed, signs scratched on walls and daubed on rough boards – Lockyer’s Court, Back Street, Bull Paunch Alley, Lambs Yard, each of them more squalid than the last – all part of the Avon Street rookery, a labyrinth of back-to-back slums, boarding houses, paupers’ hovels, stables and pigsties. In his entire journey through the rookery he had seen no one, but for some time he had been conscious of footsteps echoing his own. Now, as he paused for breath, he knew he was not alone.
At the lower end of the lane he could make out the black silhouettes of three or possibly four men. They were, he estimated, about forty yards away. As he focussed on the shapes, one of the men produced a cutlass from beneath his coat and began passing it between his hands, with slow, mesmerising deliberation. James turned to look back the way he had come. The footsteps he had vaguely heard behind him had now stopped at the entrance to the alleyway. In the dull yellow candlelight that shone from a grimy, almost opaque, ground-floor window, he could see the outline of three men. Each man held a wooden stave or club.
In his mind he was already facing the prospect of receiving a bad beating and even of his life being brought to a premature end. He felt for the small raised pearl button on his sword cane with the thumb of his right hand. He pressed it and the oak wood casing slid smoothly to the ground. In its place two feet of well-polished steel blade caught what little light there was in the alleyway. He leant forward with slow deliberation and grasped the sword’s casing in his left hand.
He knew that the doors of every house in the lane would be barred against him; he had no business being here, a foreigner in a hostile land. The windows of the houses were mostly cracked or broken, the holes stuffed with filthy rags and oilskin. The doors were makeshift covers of loose boards, driftwood and packing cases, roughly nailed and tied together. It would be easy to force his way into a house, but where then? He would be trapped like a rat, waiting for the terriers.
James pressed his back lightly against one of the doors as he looked from group to group. The two bands were equidistant and neither as yet was moving. If he did nothing then both groups would advance with only one possible outcome. If he chose one group and attacked, he knew the result would probably be the same, but there would at least be an interval before the other men joined the encounter – a small chance of escape.
Moments before, his only thought had been that this was a filthy place to die. Now his own logic took him by surprise. The involuntary tremble in his hands and legs was steadying. The hollow feeling in his body had begun to recede. The inevitability of his death had brought a certain calm and resolution that he had not felt before. He saw in his mind a picture of a continuing world of everyday things in Bath, unchanged except for his eternal absence and smiled at the stupidity of it all. Had it been another night, there might have been some reason for this well contrived ambush. On another night he would have had something worth stealing and he would gladly have given it to them. They might have been satisfied with a purse of gold and t
he sight of his sword may then have held them at bay.
He briefly contemplated calling to them, explaining that he had nothing of value; but quickly dismissed the idea. Why should they believe that a gentleman would have nothing worth stealing? Why would they give him opportunity to explain? By the time they discovered the truth he would be dead, or they would kill him anyway, in their frustration, and steal his clothes. The thought of being found naked and dead in this place seemed pathetically worse than simply being found dead.
He resolved quite suddenly, but with great clarity of will, to attack the group at the top of the alleyway. He reached for the money pouch in his coat pocket. It contained only pennies and farthings, but it could still cause enough of a distraction, he thought. He threw the purse and money in the direction of the lower group, reasoning that by the time they had located the purse, they would have been delayed if only for a few seconds. As he prepared to run, he heard a soft voice at the top of the alley. It was too quiet to hear what words were spoken yet he knew it was not the voice of any of the footpads. They had each turned away to look at the speaker and James could hear them laughing.
The moment’s distraction was more than he could have asked for and at the sound of the laughter James began running, his eyes fixed on the group and his voice roaring some innate primeval battle cry. As he approached them, one of the men raised his fist, ready to strike at the unseen person. The next moment the man lay inert on the ground, though James had heard no shot fired. Within seconds he was nearing the two remaining men who seemed frozen by this surprise attack from both sides. He held out the sword in front of him, half hoping, half expecting that they would clear a path, but neither man moved. He felt the sword penetrate the taller man’s front, not knowing if it were in the chest or stomach or groin. As the sword made contact James felt the momentary resistance as it pierced the skin and flesh, then the blade made contact with bone and jarred his arm. The man toppled backwards and the sword came clear of his body.
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