The Devil in Velvet

by John Dickson Carr

  “To all but the most squeamish, ay.” George shrugged his shoulders. “My father … hem! We’ll speak no names. Yet a practice so long established, when we buy their parliament men or they buy ours even among nations, holds no deep taint. Have a tack at it, and I’ll tell you how to speak to Sir John Gilead.”

  Sir John Gilead’s place of business was in the Treasury Buildings, on the west side of King Street. In his little office at the back, Fenton could look out at the Cockpit, with its red brick and its flattened conical roof painted white, vivid against the greenery of St. James’s Park. There lived my Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Danby. It appeared, as a surprise to Fenton, that both Sir Nick’s father and Sir Nick himself had been close friends of my Lord Treasurer, a financial genius and himself a master of bribery at keeping Members of Parliament hot for the Court party.

  This, no doubt, accounted for Sir John’s great civility when he welcomed Fenton. Sir John was a bustling man with octagonal spectacles all but hidden in a great grey periwig.

  “And that is the problem,” concluded Fenton. From a big leather box on the floor he took a canvas bag full of gold pieces, tied lightly at the neck, and containing far more than enough for his project. He put down the bag carelessly on his companion’s desk.

  “Hum!” said Sir John, placing one finger solemnly on his lip. “A good plan does indeed occur to me.”

  He then outlined a scheme whereby a pipe should be run downwards under Fenton’s back garden, under the deep garden wall, so that the sewage should “seep away” under the terraces down to the Mall.

  “Now scratch me,” cried Fenton, who had picked up the term from George, “but this lacks good sense. ’Twill also seep upwards, an offence to all nostrils, in His Majesty’s own park! And what if it should reach the Mall?”

  “Questionless, there are difficulties.”

  “Now my first plan, a pipe run but three hundred yards to a main sewer …”

  “It would be costly, my dear sir. Very costly.”

  Reaching down to the box on the floor, Fenton picked up a second canvas bag, somewhat larger than the first, and set it on the desk.

  “Hem!” said Sir John, without seeming to notice. “Why, sir, after giving this matter deep thought,” he added after a time, “I am sure I can dispatch your business.” He arose and beamed through his spectacles. “And for a friend of my Lord Danby, the King’s chief minister, it shall be done speedily.”

  And it was, too, beginning next morning.

  On that same next morning, rather early, Fenton returned from Lydia’s room, wrapped in his brown bedgown with the scarlet-poppy design. His step was springy, his eyes were bright, his shoulders had the swing of confidence.

  “Hark’ee, Insolence,” he bellowed at Giles, though smiling, “from this day there is a new order in the house.”

  Giles had opened a door, almost invisible against the panelling, towards the right of the bedroom door as you faced it. This opened into a small room or dressing closet, where the suits were hung, the linen and decorations stored. Being unable to decide which clothes to choose, Giles was in an impudent mood.

  “Would move the beds, sir? ’Twould be more convenient if …”

  Fenton silenced him. Fenton explained that he must go out and find the best bathtub, even if it had to be constructed, which could be procured. It should be large, and if possible lined with porcelain. It should then be placed in any room on this floor, to be called in straightforward fashion the bathroom, and all furniture cleared away save for a chair or two.

  Giles made certain comments, and Fenton fired a heavy riding boot at his head.

  But this was not all. In some room off the kitchen, say, there should be installed a bath for the servants: only one bath a week being required. This caused a true revolt among the servants, including six whom he had never even seen.

  Here, actually, he met a generation of truly free Englishmen. In any public place—street, tavern, playhouse, cockpit, or any place that did not awe them—they considered themselves as good as any nobleman, and said so. They had no vote, but they had much indulgence because of their power to set up or pull down. They were the “mobile party,” whom my Lord Shaftesbury smilingly hoped to use against the King.

  In this battle of the bath, Fenton, who had expected opposition but not near-revolt, floundered out of his depth because he could not understand why they made such objection. Twice he sent Giles to put the question.

  “Sir, they say the practice is unclean.”

  “Unclean!”

  “I can but report what is said, sir.”

  Fenton’s countermove won them over. A good master allowed his lower servants one suit of clothes and cloak, or woman’s dress and cloak, each year. Their Sunday or best suits they acquired by various means into which we need not pry. Fenton offered two suits a year, together with a Sunday suit provided by himself. The servants, who worshipped this new Sir Nick because he would not allow them to be kicked or abused, still sent back a compromise.

  “Sir,” reported Giles, “all agree with groans to one bath a month. But, since ’tis you, they will shift their undergarments each week to the clean linen you vouchsafe to provide.”

  “I’ll accept it!” Fenton said instantly, and so, while workmen still dug up the road in front of the house, the matter was settled without report spreading even to another house. Sir Nick had few friends, since most considered him a surly and murderous dog.

  The upstairs bath was installed. Since a pump could not be managed, each day Big Tom carried up bucket after bucket of hot water.

  And as for Lydia …

  Even Lydia, at first, was disquieted by the notion of a daily bath. Fenton knew that gently, very gently, he must take from her mind the nonsense of her upbringing. Employing his knowledge of Latin authors, as well as French authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he pointed out its possibilities in ways other than washing, when two persons were present.

  She had been brought up to believe that too much washing was bad for health, as noxious as night air, and a sin because it exposed the body. But, when Fenton explained certain matters, Lydia’s feelings changed almost instantly.

  He had grown fatuous about her, as well he might. Thinking back to the night he met her, with paint raddling her face and her eyes dull because of the poison, he considered it an age ago. Each day, each week, he watched her change. The eyes were now bright blue, with luminous whites; they sparkled with mirth, or their eyelids drooped in a way he well knew.

  Her hair, with all arsenic gone from the roots, grew softer and richer, light-brown with a sheen on it. Even her moods were different, because she was happy. Her skin, instead of being white, ripened into the pink-white of flowing health.

  “I think I grow fat,” once exclaimed Lydia, who had a horror of this.

  “Not in the least degree or kind,” he assured her truthfully, “beyond what is exactly proper to you.”

  “And it’s because all arsenic hath gone from me?”

  “In part,” Fenton said gravely. “In part.”

  Meanwhile, on a clear blue afternoon when the lime trees made rich lacework in Pall Mall, Lord George Harwell and old Mr. Reeve rode up to his door on good horses. Though Fenton was no very able judge of horseflesh, he considered those he had seen for the most part as coarse-blooded, lacking line: well enough for heavy cavalry, no doubt, but not for a horse match at Newmarket.

  When the horses had been taken round to the stables, Fenton led his guests into the long dark dining room, where so many portraits of Sir Nick’s forebears were painted on wood instead of canvas. The latest to be added was a portrait of Sir Nick’s father, with his sword and half-armour slung below it according to his wish.

  Fenton thought it would please the old Cavalier, and it did. Yet, even as he stood before the portrait, taking off a very broad-brimmed hat which restored
the saint-like appearance of his long hair and bald crown, Mr. Reeve’s wheezing from his great stomach seemed a trifle worried.

  George, drawing out a chair from the long table and sitting down, went straight to business.

  “Nick,” he said, “d’ye know what day this is?”

  Fenton very well knew. Each day he marked down and crossed off in a book he kept locked away in a drawer in the study. Though he prayed that all danger had been removed from Lydia by the removal of Kitty, he felt in his heart that this could not be so. It was too simple, too easy.

  “The day,” he replied, “is the 19th May.”

  “So ’tis!” said George, and slapped the edges of his fingers against the table. “This morning my Lord Shaftesbury was contemptuously dismissed His Majesty’s council and ordered to depart from London. Exactly as you prophesied.”

  Fenton looked down at the polished table. “Well?” he said.

  “Report of it,” said George, “went like fire through every tavern and coffeehouse from the Greyhound to Garraway’s.” (One was at Charing Cross, the other off Cornhill.) “In one day, Nick! Don’t ye hear nimble tongues a-clack, many of them, and all Green Ribboners?”

  “I can conceive of it, truly. But what’s your meaning?”

  Today George was all in red: red-velvet coat and breeches, even red hat, except for yellow waistcoat with ruby buttons, and yellow hose above shoes with gold buckles. He also looked down at the table, the yellow plume astir on his red hat, while he hesitated too.

  “Nick, ye go seldom into company. Who finds you at a court ball at Whitehall, or at one of the great houses? Who finds you but at a foul boozing-ken, or among books in your study? Yet here’s your miraculous swordplay. Here are you, last November, on sudden an orator to inchant Parliament as Mr. Betterton inchants a playhouse. And here’s your prophesying­ to a very day!”

  “I repeat, George: well?”

  George gulped, with perspiration running down under his periwig.

  “Some, who are fools, call you a black-a-vised dog who hath made a compact with the devil …”

  Fenton looked at him strangely.

  “Why,” he thought with surprise, “these so-called fools are quite right. So I have. Yet I possess only ordinary knowledge.”

  “Now let’s be open!” appealed George. “Men of sense know—ay, despite Sir Matthew Hale’s hanging of poor crazed wretches at Bury St. Edmunds, because the law still runs so—men of sense know that these ghosties and witches are but our ancestors’ foolery.”

  “And if this be so?”

  “Why, scratch me, the thing’s plain! Nick, you are deep in the counsel of His Majesty; ’tis but natural you should learn beforehand.”

  “George, that is not true.”

  George gave him a brief glance. Then he brushed his leather riding glove slowly across the table, and back again. Presently he fetched up a deep sigh.

  “Some there are,” he muttered, “who say an underground tunnel runneth from your house to Whitehall Palace, and that is why no man ever sees you there. This—” George paused, and smote the table. “Nay, Nick; forgive me; I’ll not pry.”

  “You cannot pry, old friend. By God’s body I swear I have never exchanged one word with His Majesty, and I have no more power of soothsaying than yourself!”

  “Why, then,” replied George with relief, “you say it; and I consent thereunto. There’s an end to it. Besides, with my Lord Shaftesbury away from London, there can as yet be no danger to you …”

  “Danger? What danger?”

  “Oh, scratch me! There’s my clacking tongue again! —Let be: I’ll say it! Do you recall what else you prophesied before the Green Ribbon Club?”

  “Some nonsensical stuff or other! I forget.”

  “They don’t, Nick. They say ye prophesied that soon there would be a great and bloody uprising of Papists, who would cut our throats and burn London.”

  Fenton rose slowly to his feet.

  First he spat out oaths. Slightly, very slightly, the fastidious ex-don was coarsening to meet the mood of the time in which he now lived. Then he walked up and down the room, a dim cavern twinkling with silver, to quell any spring of Sir Nick.

  “I spoke no such words,” he finally said, in an even tone. “To be more exact: they quote the precise opposite of what I said. I said there would be a lie and plot against innocent Catholics, many of whom would die bloody deaths.”

  Old Mr. Reeve for the first time turned round from the portrait and the half-armour hung below it.

  Gently he had touched the breastplate, and the tassets, or thigh guards, which hung below. His bloated tippler’s face seemed grotesque against the long white hair.

  “I can testify as much,” he said. “And so can Lord George Harwell. What other man will do so?”

  Dragging a chair far from the table to accommodate his stomach, he turned his shrewd old eyes on Fenton. His long sword scabbard rattled on the floor.

  “This knowledge,” and he gestured towards George, “comes in most part from me. I am, as they call it, an ear; a hired spy, though now revealed to the Country party as such. But have you taken thought, lad, to the meaning of all this?”

  “I … I have … Nay, I …”

  The rheumy eyes were still fixed on Fenton; gently, but steadily.

  “When you spoke plain against my Lord Shaftesbury in that upstairs room,” Mr. Reeve continued, “all men were vexed to raving, and confused of mind. They recall well the ‘19th May,’ since you so often hurled it at my lord. But what else can they recall? Even the most honest, with a bemused head, is uncertain. They heard, to be short, what my lord told them they heard.

  “If you foretold a bloody Papist uprising—why, ’tis clear you must yourself be involved in it, perhaps a leader of cutthroats. Assuredly (thus spake and smiled my lord) the Duke of York must be privy to the design. Perhaps His Majesty as well? Lad, lad! If my Lord Shaftesbury were yet strong enough, which I am sure he is not, you’d ha’ opened the bottle of civil war!”

  Still Fenton paced up and down.

  “With myself,” he asked sardonically, “as the cork?”

  A look of puzzled impatience crossed Mr. Reeve’s Bacchus-like face.

  “Sir Nicholas,” he said formally, “d’ye find no import in this? D’ye not perceive the offence they say you’ve committed?” He struck his fist on the table. “Treason, no less! Would ye see the inside of the Tower?”

  Fenton stopped pacing, and turned to him.

  “I—I am not insensible of danger,” he protested. “But your news comes so amiss, so sudden and troublesome, that … that …”

  “Come, that’s better! A man would have guessed you cared not a groat.”

  “But what am I to do?”

  “Why, this!” said Mr. Reeve, smiling and softly tapping his finger on the table. “If you have told us truth this day, it becomes simple. Seek a private audience with His Majesty, which is most easily attained …”

  Here he paused slightly, wincing a little because he had never done this for himself or in his own interest. But Mr. Reeve blew it away with a puff of his lips.

  “Tell the King, if he doth not know it already, that you used your judgment and had but a stab of luck with that date of May 19th. Explain how my Lord Shaftesbury did twice have you set on by bullyrocks, and that you (good!) became bored by his attentions. Tell His Majesty what in truth you did say, pouring out moonstruck prophecies to affright my lord as though with an enorm spectre. Above all …”

  George, at the other end of the table, could fidget no longer.

  “Above all,” he burst out, “why you made the statement, as flat as a man can, that this ‘Popish plot’ would begin three years from now. The Green Ribboners would have it ‘three months’! You must say ’twas all lies.”

  Mr. Reeve silenced him with a stately wave
of the hand.

  “There is all you have to do,” smiled Mr. Reeve. “His Majesty must be well disposed towards you. He was in the Painted Chamber, I hear, when you spoke against Shaftesbury. Tell him, and he will laugh at them, as he … as he tries to laugh at all.”

  For a long time Fenton stood motionless, gripping the high back of a chair, his eyes tightly closed. So many thoughts jostled through his brain that he could not sort them out. Yet on one thing he was determined. He opened his eyes.

  “Sir,” he said to Mr. Reeve, “I cannot do this.”

  “Cannot? Wherefore not?”

  “That is what I durst not explain.”

  “Again I must softly remind you: would you see the inside of the Tower?”

  “Yes! Rather than see the inside of Bedlam amid howling madmen! That is where they would put me. Besides …”

  “We listen, Sir Nick.”

  “My heart, my life, my—my whole being has gone into naught but the study of history! Strange it may seem to you, and in truth,” said Fenton, “strange to me. But I’ll not mock or make sport of it.”

  “Sir Nick, what kind of madness is this?”

  “Every word I said to Shaftesbury was true. I don’t prophesy it; I know it! Would you hear the exact date on which first intelligence of the mythical ‘Popish plot’ will be communicated to the King? Let me tell you: it will be on August 13th, 1678.”

  George leaped to his feet, with terror showing in his face. But old Mr. Reeve sat quietly wheezing, like a patient schoolmaster, and tugged at his small white tuft of chin beard. Even his gruff cracked voice remained soft.

  “Now I suppose,” he said, “when you were good enough to show me that portrait a while ago, you never imagined I should recognize it? Save as another old Cavalier like myself?”

  “Well!” said Fenton, his wits now attacked from another side. “I remembered, certes, Meg’s house at—at Epsom,” he lied, “and your visits there. Yet, when we met that night at the King’s Head, you did not seem to know or even recognize me.”

  Mr. Reeve’s eyelids drooped.

  “Know you?” he said. “Not know you?” And his gaze wandered away. “Boy, I rode side by side with your father in Rupert’s charge against Ireton at Naseby fight.”