Death Makes No Distinction

by Lucienne Boyce

  The two sisters looked very much alike, especially today when Eleanor’s dress was less plain than usual. The difference in their characters was apparent, though. Caroline’s clothes were more flamboyant and worn with more flair; she laughed more, talked more, flirted more. Yet Eleanor was not grave. It was only that her smiles and quieter manner were overshadowed by her elder sister’s liveliness. Caroline’s gaiety had captivated Dan when they first met, as it captivated most of the men who saw her. Like them, he had failed to appreciate Eleanor. Until it was too late.

  Dan had agreed many times since the marriage was announced that he was glad to have brought about the couple’s first meeting. Had tried to believe it too. Captain Sam Ellis worked days in his family’s carpentry business, nights in the Bow Street patrol. A couple of years ago he had called on Dan about a case they were working on and set eyes on Eleanor for the first time. Not that she had noticed him then. It was Dan who possessed her heart.

  He was a good officer, Sam. A good man. Eleanor deserved her happiness: a home of her own, children, a loving husband. Things Dan could never give her. Things she wouldn’t take off him now if he could, not since his son Alex’s birth. He and Caroline had made a peace of sorts over it, but Eleanor had felt his betrayal of her love for him too keenly. For Caroline’s sake they had resisted taking an illicit pleasure, had agreed to live with the pain of their unrequited love. Then he had gone and slept with another woman, who had died in childbed.

  He moved to his wife’s side. Caroline greeted him with, “You hold your son,” and dumped Alex into his arms. And that was all she said to him for the next two hours.

  At least Alex was happy to see him. The infant laughed and gurgled at him as he bounced him up and down. He caught sight of Nick on the edge of the group, tugging at his collar, his gaze fixed on them. The jacket was an oppressively new one; Mrs Harper had scrubbed his neck and ears and bustled him into it when he had finished his chores. Dan jerked his head. The boy’s face split into a smile and he scampered to Dan’s side.

  Noah Foster looked every inch the sporting gentleman in polished boots, best linen, expertly knotted scarf, and well-fitting jacket. He was still basking in the proud glow of standing in for Dan to walk the bride down the aisle. Paul, his old friend and assistant at the Cecil Street gym, looked equally as proud, but not so dignified. He was as well turned out as any soldier on parade, but the effect was spoiled by his hideous smile. His teeth and jaw had been broken during the siege of Quebec, a wound which in those rough and ready days had received scant medical attention on the field.

  Sam’s father and brother stood grinning awkwardly in stiff Sunday best. The mothers, Mrs Ellis and Mrs Harper, nodded their rival hats at one another, each exhibiting a forest of flowers and feathers. Before the wedding, they had entered into competition over who could produce the most food for the feast. Back at the house, the party gathered around the table to tackle the mountain of viands they had prepared. There was also wine and ale from the Red Lion along the street. Caroline’s temper improved and she forgot to be angry with Dan.

  Sam and Eleanor sat side by side. They seemed at ease with one another, Dan thought. He wondered if, living under the same roof, they had found an opportunity to pre-empt the wedding night, then pushed the thought away from him as unworthy. Eleanor caught his eye, quickly looked away again. She jumped up, smiled at Sam.

  “Can I get you some more beer, Mr Ellis?”

  Sam laughed. “You can, Mrs Ellis.”

  Paul chatted with Sam’s father and brother. Mrs Harper and Mrs Ellis threw challenges at one another in the guise of old family recipes. Nick sat next to Noah, listening to his tales of the ring and the Fancy.

  “Tell it me again, Mr Foster,” he pleaded.

  “You must have heard it a dozen times, lad.”

  “Go on. I mean, please.”

  “Very well, if you must… I first saw Dan at Blackheath when I went to see Tom Johnson against Steevy Oliver. That was long before you were born. Steevy was past his prime, but still a game ’un, and it was no shame to him to lose to the younger man. Not long after, a fight broke out between a couple of divers, by no means evenly matched, but the young one went at it like a game cock. Took a real beating from the bigger lad, but wouldn’t throw in the towel. Didn’t have a towel to throw in, mind you. Didn’t have much of anything but a foul mouth and the moves of a born athlete.”

  “He had bottom, didn’t he, Mr Foster?” Nick said. “And you took him off the streets. Like he has me. Tell me about when he fought Hen Pearce.”

  Laughingly, Noah rolled his eyes, but did not disappoint. He repeated the story of Dan’s fight with the Bristol boxer known as the Game Chicken. The Chicken, he said, was one to look out for; it would surprise no one who’d seen him if he was champion of England one day.

  “And he beat him, didn’t he?”

  Dan stopped listening, thought instead about the day when Alex would sit where Nick sat now, lapping up the same stories. He and his son would go to the gym together, watch fights together, discuss the contents of the sporting papers…

  Alex fell asleep. Dan carried him upstairs and put him in his bed, taking his time over it. In the end, though, he had to return to the party. In his absence, they had lit the candles and the men had moved the furniture to the side of the room. Mr Ellis senior had produced a violin, and Frank Ellis a flute. Dan joined in the dancing in spite of himself. Or perhaps because of himself. It was a welcome distraction to whirl first his mother-in-law and then his wife around the hot and crowded room.

  The day drew to a close at last. The flautist dried his instrument and packed it into its case. Mr Ellis wiped his violin with a soft cloth and packed cloth and instrument away. Then the family crowded into the hall to wave goodbye to the Ellises.

  Dan held out his hand. “I wish you and Eleanor every happiness, Sam.”

  The sisters embraced. “You know what to expect if you marry a police officer, Nell!” Caroline cried.

  Eleanor, her arm through Sam’s, blushed. He grinned and pulled her closer. “Your sister knows to expect the best I can give her.”

  Caroline laughed, a fragile, glassy sound. She glanced at her husband. “Oh, we all expect that. But they can’t even be in time for a wedding.”

  She had passed through the merry stage. A good thing their guests were leaving, Dan thought. At last the Ellis family were out the door, skipping and laughing along Russell Street on the short walk to their home on Long Acre.

  Dan gave his final handshakes, closed the door and turned back into the kitchen. Caroline sat by the fire, sipping wine from a brimming glass. Mrs Harper was busy conveying dishes to the sink, food to the larder, empty bottles to the hall ready to take back to the Red Lion.

  “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” Dan said, crossing the room to stand by the hearth.

  “Lord! It’s my sister’s wedding.”

  “And it’s over now. You should give your mother a hand.”

  “Where’s that useless boy? Let him do something to earn his keep. Nick!”

  The door opened and Nick hurried in carrying a pair of Dan’s boots. “I done your boots, Mr Foster.”

  “Did,” Caroline said, and muttered, “Savage.”

  Dan smiled down at the lad, took the gleaming boots from him. “You didn’t need to do that, Nick.”

  “It would have been more useful if you’d been helping Mrs Harper,” Caroline said.

  Nick’s face fell. Slump-shouldered, he moved towards the table.

  “Go to bed, Nick,” Dan said. “And thanks for the boots. They look grand.”

  Nick slept on a pallet bed in the small parlour next door. It was safe, dry and warm: things he was only just becoming accustomed to. The wild street boy had almost gone. Almost. There was something feral in the glance he gave Caroline as he left the room.

  She had already fo
rgotten about him, her attention caught by the sound that came from upstairs.

  “What now? Mother, go and see to Alex, will you?” She waved at the table. “Leave all that till the morning.”

  Mrs Harper bustled in from the larder. “Oh, is he crying? Probably all the noise woke him up, the poor love.” She hurried upstairs.

  Dan watched Caroline drink. She caught his eye, angrily lowered the empty glass. “For Christ’s sake, don’t be such a fucking Puritan.”

  “Don’t call me that,” he said mechanically. Not that it ever did any good.

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d begrudge me a drink at my sister’s wedding. It’s not something that happens every day, is it? A person can have a good time every once in a way, can’t they?”

  “I don’t begrudge you anything, but I think you’re—” He amended ‘drunk’ to ‘tired’. She was right after all. It was only once in a way. “It’s been a long day.”

  She sighed, her temper changing on a sudden in response to the conciliatory note in his voice. “Yes, I think I’ll go to bed.” She stood up, glanced at the ceiling, listening. “Alex has settled. I think we should put him in Eleanor’s bedroom now. It will be nice for him to have his own room. Are you coming up?”

  “In a moment.”

  She nodded and walked, none too steadily, out of the room. Dan sat down in the chair opposite hers, stared into the dying fire. So it was done. Sam and Eleanor were married. And so were he and Caroline, and they’d both been working hard to make a fresh start since she had agreed to bring up Alex as her own. And to give Caroline her due, that’s what she’d done. The baby had changed her life. She was happier now than he remembered seeing her in a long time. He shouldn’t blame her if occasionally she slipped back into her old habits. As she said, a wedding wasn’t something that happened every day.

  Chapter Four

  On Monday afternoon, Dan was about to leave the Bow Street office when the door opened and the chief clerk, Mr Lavender, came into the room, his arms full of papers. Tom Clifford, the young clerk known to the men as Inky Tom, jumped to his feet and went to help him.

  “Sir William wants to see you, Mr Foster,” said Lavender, handing his burden to Tom to carry into the cubbyhole that served as his office.

  Dan refrained from asking why the chief magistrate wanted him. If Lavender knew, he would not say. The chances were he did not know, for he was wearing his ‘no one tells me anything’ face. Dan straightened his scarf and jacket and went upstairs.

  He heard Sir William Addington’s voice while he was still outside the room. Whoever was in there with Sir William had set off the old man’s temper. Dan cast back in his mind over the last few days, could not remember anything he had done that might have got him into trouble. He knocked on the door. Sir William fell silent. A drawer opened and slammed shut.

  “Come in!”

  Sir William sat behind his desk. Dan flicked a glance around the chamber, which was littered with legal documents and files. There was no one else there. He kept the surprise from his face as he obeyed Sir William’s invitation to sit down. The magistrate eyed him with a baffled air, as if he had done something unexpected and prodigious. Dan, unable to account for his strange demeanour, said nothing, and wondered.

  “Well, Foster,” Sir William said at last, “I’ve got a commission for you.”

  “Sir?” Dan prompted.

  “I have received a request for a principal officer from one of the highest in the land.” Sir William folded his hands one on top of the other on the desk and leaned towards Dan. “But not just any principal officer. A particular principal officer.” Sir William’s jowls shook with emotion. “The request comes from the Prince of Wales, and the officer His Royal Highness asks for by name is you, Foster.”

  “Me, sir?” Dan gazed back at the chief magistrate in astonishment. “Why would the Prince of Wales ask for me?”

  Sir William nodded, as if to say, my thoughts exactly. “You have been recommended to him by Mr Townsend.”

  “John Townsend?”

  This was beyond astonishing. Principal Officer John Townsend was on permanent assignment as bodyguard to the royal family. He was especially close to Prince George, whom he accompanied to horse races, theatres, suppers, balls and assemblies.

  Townsend and Dan did not have much to do with one another as a rule. Recently, though, they had both been involved in the arrest of a radical anti-monarchist group calling themselves the United Patriots. Dan had infiltrated the organisation and exposed their plot to overthrow the government with the aid of the French, who were itching to invade England. While in no doubt that the United Patriots’ actions were criminal, Dan had realised that they were nothing more than a bunch of deluded men whose gimcrack revolution could never have succeeded. What was more, he also had a sneaking sympathy for some of their views, for he was not blind to the corruption and injustice that had goaded them into unwise courses. Which was why Townsend had openly accused Dan of ‘having caught the levelling contagion’. Since then he had regarded Dan as only one step removed from the detested radicals himself. Yet now he was asking for him to work for a member of the royal family.

  “Mr Townsend wants you with him on a case of personal interest to the Prince. You’ve heard of Louise Parmeter?”

  “No, sir.”

  “She was a celebrity in her day. The most beautiful woman in the land. She caught that ass Sheridan’s eye when she was a girl and was all set for a promising career at Drury Lane Theatre, but she gave it up to be the Prince’s lover. That was before George came of age. He was a flighty young man and soon moved on to someone new. They parted amicably and he gave her a generous settlement which meant that she did not have to tread the boards again. A pity, as she was glorious. Especially in breeches parts.” Sir William’s thoughts drifted off for a moment, came back with a jolt. “And now she’s been murdered and His Highness wants the killer brought to justice. You will assist Townsend in his investigation of her death.”

  Things were getting worse by the minute. Assist John Townsend!

  “But I am already working on a case. A woman found murdered at Holborn.”

  “Yes, yes, I know all about that. You haven’t time to go grubbing about in the murder of an unknown whore in the backyard of a tavern. I want your every working hour spent on this.”

  “I don’t think she was a whore, sir. Even if she was, someone killed her and that someone should be brought to justice.”

  “Pull yourself together, Foster. You are off that case with immediate effect. The Home Secretary has his eye on the Parmeter affair and no effort is to be spared. The Duke of Portland’s relationship with the Prince is a delicate one. They were friends once, before His Grace defected from the opposition party and accepted Pitt’s offer to head the Home Department. Politicians come and go, but George will be king one day and the Duke is anxious to avoid causing further offence. So, since it’s you His Highness has asked for, it’s you His Highness gets.”

  “But, sir, I need to speak to the Tewkesbury carrier. He’s due back on Thursday. In the meantime, I’ve got the names of some of the men who were drinking in the Feathers on the night of the murder.”

  “With immediate effect, Foster. Believe me, you are not the man I would have picked for this job. You’re a good enough investigator, but at times you have a cavalier manner and I advise you to rein it in. I’m warning you that if you are in any way a discredit to me, you’ll be back in the foot patrol before you can say Jack Robinson. Do I make myself clear?”

  “You do, sir.”

  Chapter Five

  Odd, thought Dan, how dressing up murder in silks and satins instead of cheap cotton prints made it less acceptable. As he strode away from Bow Street, he vowed that he would not drop his case. He would find out who murdered the nameless woman at the Feathers. And if she had been a whore, well there was not much to choose
between her and a demirep dead in a mansion in Mayfair.

  Behind all that lay the nagging question: why had John Townsend asked for him, when he could have picked any one of the principal officers?

  Less than half an hour later, he passed Devonshire House, turned into Berkeley Street and entered Berkeley Square. Louise Parmeter’s house was on the west side overlooking the gardens where the young plane trees were beginning to show signs of regrowth after the winter. A couple of constables from the Great Marlborough Street police office stood outside the front door, warily eyeing the crowd on the pavement below. These cheerful idlers kept up the strength for their vigil by frequent forays to the Three Chairmen, a public house on the corner of Hay Hill.

  Dan’s arrival caused a buzz of excited speculation, with some of those within earshot declaring he was a Runner, and others suggesting he had come to take measurements for the coffin. He pushed his way through the gossips and ran up the stone steps between the spiked railings. One of the men knocked on the door, which was opened after much turning of locks and drawing back of bolts by a constable in the hall. Dan slipped through while the gawpers craned forward for a glimpse inside.

  “Mr Townsend is in the study, sir.” The officer pointed to a half-open door.

  Dan crossed a hallway as big as his parlour and filled with a bewildering array of flowers, vases and mirrors. He saw Townsend moving about inside the room, stopping to fiddle with an ornament here, peer at a clock there, prod a cushion or curtain with his cane. Every now and again he nodded in the direction of an unseen witness.