The Devil in Velvet

by John Dickson Carr

  “I am not one of those idiots,” he thought, “who delight in staggering people of another age with modern inventions. Especially since this modern apparatus is more than a century old now.”

  Also, he noted, the four mastiffs were forever in the house. For the first minute when the dogs saw him, they hesitated: suspicion lurks ever in the canine soul. But, when they heard his voice, and sniffed, and he held out his hand to be licked, all suspicion vanished. The mastiffs flew at him like runaway cannon; they leaped up on him to lick his face and all but upset him; they dashed round him to the peril of all furniture; crouched down and uttered bubbling noises of joy.

  They were the old English mastiffs, the fighting watchdogs who protected the family. In contrast to their long, heavy, thick bodies they had a fine line of leg; their flopping earlaps quickened at the faintest sound, their eyes were alert over hanging dewlaps, which concealed murderous teeth.

  The highest of them stood within six inches of Fenton’s waist. In colour they ranged from fawn to brindle. Their names were Thunder, Lion, Greedy, and Bare-behind. This last-named, Bare-behind, is given here as less frankly named, in old English terms, than he really was. Sometimes it raised Fenton’s hair to hear Lydia’s sweet voice, clearly upraised, calling him from a distance by his real name.

  But it was the brindled Thunder, biggest and most powerful of the dogs, who attached himself most worshipfully to Fenton. Thunder was good to have at your side, though the most ingenious devices had to be adopted when you wanted him out of the room.

  “Dear heart,” Lydia would say, “you’ll not forget their training, now?”

  “Er—as though I could!”

  “When you but speak with someone, not even an enemy but a friend, never put right hand on sword grip or draw blade in the least. Else—” and she lifted her shoulders.

  Lydia, like so many of her Roman namesakes, was now taking more baths than she needed. She was reaching her full bloom of health; and, in his heart, Fenton swore that not a woman at court (which he had not yet seen) could touch her. There was one occasion, while he stood by to watch, that Lydia caught him off balance and tipped him fully dressed into the bath. Three doors away, where Judith Pamphlin listened with lips in a livid line, she heard the mighty splash, and Lydia’s gurgle of delight, and the string of oaths.

  Fenton did not really mind being tipped into the bath. Slowly he had all but removed the Puritan upbringing from Lydia’s mind. Though she much enjoyed undressing, she had at first a firm notion that this must be done in the dark.

  Instead he demonstrated the greater virtue of effect in full candlelight at evening, though as a concession with drawn curtains. Lydia, at first timorous, grew soon delighted with pride and pleasure and the knowledge that it pleased him. Her pink-and-white flesh, the development of her body, had aesthetic quality as well as, to Fenton, far more important considerations.

  “Stand thus!” he would say. “Your smock fallen to your hip, a trifle bent forward …”

  “Like this?” And he could hear Lydia breathe.

  “Now let the smock fall. Altogether. Move towards me.”

  “Like … this?”

  “I love you.”

  Lydia could not reply, her lips being engaged with his own, but she nodded violently to show she returned the sentiment, and made other demonstrations as well.

  He guarded over her, watched, always in attendance, especially when they took their meals at home in the long dining room which at evening became all a shining fretwork of silver. Though Lydia revelled in this, too, after the neglect or brutality of Sir Nick, she was once moved to mild protest. After every course was set before her, Fenton would eat the upper half of it. He would turn his mind on the effect of every poison then known.

  “Dear heart,” said Lydia, “I have read tales of kings in olden times who had tasters to their tables. ’Tis no wonder they are gone now. The king on his golden throne must near have died of hunger ere he tasted a mouthful, which was indeed already as cold as charity.”

  June 10th, June 10th, June 10th. Now the day was drawing ever closer, it hammered so much in his brain that his reply was slow.

  “This must be done, my dear.”

  “But who would dare try? With you so … so …”

  Lydia was about to say “much changed,” but she checked herself. The mastiffs snuffled round the room, except for Thunder, who dozed at full length across Fenton’s feet.

  “Where is danger from outside?” Lydia asked. “At night the house is locked like a fortress. The dogs are outside. Nay. You’ve guessed it. It was that … that …”

  About to say “Kitty,” Lydia again checked herself and lowered her eyes. She could not bring herself even to utter that loathed name. Then she glanced up, with an expression which would have enchanted Sir Peter Lely. The light glimmered on her hair, cut in a fringe across the forehead, and flounced out thick and soft at the sides. Without even speech, her blue eyes would have expressed what she meant.

  “Doth it indeed matter so much to you,” she asked softly, “what should happen to me?”

  “Much, Lydia. My God, too much!”

  Often they rode into the country, Lydia in sidesaddle on an easy nag, Fenton on a good high-stepping mare he had bought from George. They rode into the fields, thence up the high hills to Hampstead or even Highgate. There, in a private room of a cozy inn with drums of cheese almost as big as the ale barrels, they could eat and drink without fear of poison.

  Afterwards, lost in tenderness, they would ride back through the sweet-scented night, under a bright half-moon. Softly Lydia would hum or sing. Once, amazingly, she sang a snatch from part of a Cavalier ditty:

  “Come, fawn on disaster! Call Oliver master …!”

  But she looked sideways at Fenton, under drooping eyelids, to see whether this reminded him of Meg. If she could have got the most-loathed name of Meg from her mind, Lydia would have been utterly happy. Fenton had … had almost forgotten Meg. In any case, he was too watchful of every bush or hedgerow. Unknown to Lydia, under the right side of his blue-velvet coat there were two pistols thrust into his sword belt.

  Lydia sighed with dreamy pleasure.

  Or at evening, when everybody else had gone, they would stroll in the dimness of St. James’s Park. They would stand by the artificial lake which the King had ordered to be created there, with its ducks, its cranes, even one droopy-looking flamingo. Late one afternoon, of bad omen, he took Lydia into the City to see a playhouse.

  It was the Duke’s House, some time moved from Lincoln’s Inn Fields to a fine new building (so they said) in Dorset Gardens, Whitefriars. Fenton had no need to take Lydia through the screaming soot-blindness of Strand or City. They would go by water, the most pleasant way of travel if you had time and even small money.

  Lydia was so wildly delighted, cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling, that she must wear her very best gown of grey and blue and silver. She quivered before a mirror while Judith Pamphlin, white-faced and white-lipped with rage, assisted her.

  For she knew her mistress had intent to visit a playhouse, which was sin.

  Fenton, watching Lydia dress, leaned idly against the wall. Judith would cheerfully have murdered him without a stain on her conscience, save that she did not dare try. She and Fenton were the personification of Roundhead and Cavalier, without a single meeting place.

  Long ago Fenton would have got rid of her, except for her deep devotion to Lydia. He did not hate her as much as she hated him; only her Puritanism. When he agreed with the servants’ compromise for one bath a month, he had known Mrs. Pamphlin would not agree. She had not agreed. Carelessly he ordered Big Tom to assemble the servants as spectators, then to strip Judith and hold her under the pump until sluiced down. Judith had yielded.

  But now, with the playhouse as well as other matters poisoning her mind, Judith could not control herself.

&n
bsp; “The man of blood,” she said, nodding towards Fenton but speaking harshly to Lydia, “leadeth you still further down into lewdness.”

  Fenton waited.

  Three weeks ago Lydia would have murmured some soothing words. Now she whirled round.

  “Lewdness,” she retorted, proudly and sweetly, “is a most excellent good thing. Am I not his wife?”

  Up went Judith’s admonitory finger.

  “Wife or no, carnality for pleasure’s sake is in the eyes of the Laard …”

  “Stop,” said Fenton, not loudly, Putting his thumbs under his satin waistcoat, he hooked them in his sword-belt and strolled towards her.

  “Woman,” he continued, “some while ago I bad you use no Puritan cant in the presence of my wife. You have done so. Now depart from this room. You will never attend upon my wife again.”

  Judith Pamphlin opened her mouth to speak.

  “Go!” said Fenton.

  In her eyes, as she went out, Fenton saw that all Judith’s thoughts were whittled down to the one point of revenge against him. Not (as she would think) personal vengeance, but only the vengeance of the Lord, because only she and her Independent sect understood His will. Fenton must again look sharp for murder in any shape that crawled near.

  “’Tis strange,” muttered Lydia after the door had closed. She spoke in an astonished voice, with half-laughter under it. “I feel no pain of conscience at all.” Abruptly she swung round, radiant, and dropped Fenton a curtsey.

  “Doth—doth this mode of gown displease you?” she added. Her eyes grew desperately serious. “If it be so, I swear I will cut it to ribbons!”

  “All pleases me, Lydia.” A passion of earnestness shook his voice. “What you say, what you do, what you think, what you are! I … Well! As touches this matter of gowns—”

  “Oh?”

  “I would have you bespeak so many as would fill the house. And jewels, trinkets, watches, all you can call to mind! When next you send to your Mrs. …” he snapped his fingers to recall the name, “Mrs. Wheebler’s, at the sign of something in Covent Garden …”

  Lydia turned her head away, and gave a little shiver before she turned back.

  “I have not sent to Mrs. Wheebler’s,” she answered, with his own passionate earnestness, “for well above a fortnight. I have sent to the New Exchange, or to Madame Beautemps, at the sign of La Belle Poitrine, in Southampton Street. I—I feared she was too costly.”

  Round Lydia’s neck Fenton fastened a silver-laced cape lined in blue. Over his own left shoulder he flung a cloak, buckling it close to the neck. It could be buckled over the right shoulder as well, in foul weather; but this position left free his sword arm.

  “Take no heed to cost. And,” smiled Fenton, “we must have a belle poitrine. May I remind you, sweetest, that the play is at afternoon, not evening; and we must make haste?”

  Whitehall Stairs, descending to the riverside, were open to the public; just as were all the many water stairs, by which you could travel to so many points down the Thames. Escorting Lydia down a length of oak steps, near rotted at the end, he steadied her into a wherry where a fat, jovial waterman sat with long oars towards the stern.

  Since it was near the middle of low tide, no high splash and swirl of water drenched the occupants. Sometimes it did, but they paid scant attention. Lydia and Fenton, sitting backwards into the prow, faced the river eastwards and also faced the waterman.

  “’Tis not a bright day, nor yet a dull,” proclaimed that dignitary, who was cheerful by tradition. “I’ll bear ye well towards midstream, away from soots and smuts. I’ll give ye fair journey to …?”

  “Whitefriars Stairs.”

  The dull-grey Thames, with its smoky sparkle, was full of small craft: some of them with little whitish sails. The light breeze blew cool and clean, scarcely disturbing Lydia’s broad hat. On their left, past the heavy stone watergates of noblemen’s town houses, the tide crept up the mudbanks behind the backs of the high, huddled old buildings along the Strand and into the City, half-wrapped in smoke.

  When eventually they reached the Duke’s House, in Dorset Gardens, Fenton found much that he expected to find. He obtained a side box, which was little more than a cubicle of four bare posts against a brick wall. But the stage was of good size; and, since the death of Sir William Davenant, of Opera fame, his son maintained a splendour of background together with Betterton’s invention of movable scenery.

  Like all ladies of quality or respectability, Lydia had slipped on her dark vizard mask as soon as they entered the playhouse. It was the only thing she knew of the matter, and the mask seemed to fascinate her.

  “Shall we laugh?” she whispered eagerly, plucking at Fenton’s arm as they sat down in the side box. “Shall we laugh very much?”

  In the small, crowded, malodorous house, many dim candles touched to magnificence the gaudiness of the Oriental scenery.

  “Nay, love,” said Fenton. “This is Mr. John Dryden’s rhymed tragedy, Aurengzebe. You’ll have learned that Glorious John was but recently much stung and hurt in a witty comedy, writ by His Grace of Bucks,”—the whole Green Ribbon Club rose in his mind,—“to ridicule him.”

  “I am so ignorant!” murmured Lydia.

  When she had sat down, she had unfastened and thrown back her cloak. The fops, seated in chairs on both sides of the stage, had been listlessly combing their periwigs or crying to each other (so-called) witty remarks to impress the pit. The orange-girls, making a din as they cried their wares, moved forwards and back in so narrow an aisle between side boxes and pit benches that they almost invited pinches and certainly received them.

  But now the fops woke up. A dozen gold lorgnettes were lifted at Lydia. Men and women stood up in side boxes to peer, the women’s masks eerie in that heavy gloom. Men rose up from the pit, and almost all in the gallery. One drunk but forthright man in the gallery shouted her praises in terms sincere if bordering on the obscene.

  This pleased Lydia; who, though in confusion, openly smiled. A hum of approval went up for such condescension from an obvious lady of quality. Then all settled down, somewhat restless.

  “Now observe,” mocked Fenton, “how all share my opinion. I am most damnably jealous.”

  “Nay!” cried Lydia; then her expression changed. “Nay, you are jesting. Pray don’t. I like it not. Dear heart, you spoke of this play?”

  “Why, there’s but little. This is Mr. Dryden’s reply to His Grace of Bucks’s ridicule in The Rehearsal. Not by retort or repartee, mark that; only to show he can give of his finest. Hark; here’s the prologue!”

  The leading parts were taken by Mr. Betterton and Mrs. Betterton. Thomas Betterton, not yet middle-aged, in full strength of voice and presence, played with his audience’s emotions as a master-swordsman plays with a novice.

  “’Tis easy,” he would often say afterwards, “to rouse a house by a wild voice and mighty gesture. But to subdue it, render it so rapt and hushed you may hear a fop comb at his wig or a woman sniff at a pomander ball: this, I hold, comes closer to art.”

  And that is what he did.

  At the end of it, for several seconds the house sat silent. Most were openly weeping. Then the hum of applause grew mightily to a roar which all but split the walls of the Duke’s House.

  Fenton had already read the play. Though he was as unmoved by the tragedy as would have been you or I, he had been held by the power of words: words a-blaze like banners on the march, making Bucks’s poor footling comedy no more than a dying taper. But the tears were running down Lydia’s face; and it took long jostling out of the house, and fresh air and many words, before she regained her good spirits.

  What with the crowd outside, and the people waiting at the landing stage, darkness had fallen by the time they were being rowed back towards Whitehall Stairs. The half-moon had risen, silhouetting far ahead the half-mile straggle o
f tall roofs and peaked roofs, a-bristle with chimneys, which marked the line of Whitehall Palace.

  A fresh breeze blew in Fenton’s face, so that he drew Lydia’s cloak more tightly round her. Lights glimmered from the right-hand bank. The tide, at its full and on the turn, ran out swiftly. Far behind them, the water crashed and foamed under the piles of London Bridge.

  “Dear heart,” said Lydia in a voice he knew. Long ago she had removed her mask, but she had been looking at it thoughtfully as she turned it in her fingers.

  “Yes?” prompted Fenton.

  “Would you escort me to another place, if I desired so? I have heard report of it, but I have not been there. ’Tis called Spring Gardens.”

  For a moment Fenton moved away and looked at her.

  “You have heard report of it, you say?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “Well! At Spring Gardens, which is a vast place surrounded by a tall thick hedge on the edge of the Park, you will find other hedges, and bowers, and winding walks amid trees, like a maze gone mad. It is most discreetly lighted; in some parts, not at all.”

  “Dear Nick, I—”

  “You may take refreshment there, or hear a trio of music. But in the main, Lydia, ’tis for young satyrs to pursue masked nymphs who are fleet of foot and yet not unwilling to be captured, in some dim nook, and brought down.”

  “I shall wear a mask,” Lydia said innocently, “and my very oldest gown.”

  Fenton regarded her with mock severity.

  “Mort,” he said. “Bawd! Dell!”

  Lydia merely tossed her head and looked away.

  “No; shall I tell you what you are?” smiled Fenton. “You are a girl of the highest respectability, who longs to play at being the worst of the none-respectable. Would any in Spring Gardens think your pursuer is your husband?”