Blood & Sugar

by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

  ‘What about the brand? The design is quite distinctive, wouldn’t you say?’

  Brabazon had his back to us, tidying away some apparatus. Now he turned. ‘Oh, there are countless old slave brands to be found around Deptford, sir. I wouldn’t set too much store by it.’

  ‘The way I see it,’ Child said, ‘your friend picked an argument over slavery with the wrong man. He was followed to some quiet place where the killer overpowered him. The villain had his sport –’ Child grasped his index finger and made a violent, wrenching motion – ‘and once he got bored, he cut Mr Archer’s throat.’

  ‘You cannot think he was tortured to death merely over a political disagreement?’

  ‘What else could it be?’

  A curious stillness had descended over the room. Both men turned, waiting for my answer.

  ‘Mr Archer told his sister that people had been following him. He said that someone in Deptford had tried to kill him. Perhaps that’s why he used a false name – because he feared for his life?’

  ‘Did he say anything else about this person who tried to kill him?’

  ‘Only that his enemies were powerful. Slave merchants, I think. Archer was mixed up in some sort of scheme to bring an end to the African trade.’ It sounded so foolish, and yet I couldn’t escape the evidence of my eyes. Tad had said that people wanted him dead, and now he was.

  Child raised his eyebrows. ‘End slavery, sir? How exactly did he propose to do that?’

  I frowned, trying to remember what Amelia had told me. I needed to talk to her again. ‘He said he was coming here to collect something that his enemies would want.’

  Again I sensed their interest. ‘What sort of something?’ Child said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I found nothing out of the ordinary in his room at the Noah’s Ark.’

  ‘Where are his things? I’d like to examine them myself.’

  Child hesitated. ‘They’re at the mayor’s house.’

  ‘Why would the mayor have them?’

  ‘A gentleman was murdered in his town. Mr Stokes takes an interest.’

  ‘Then I’ll need to see Mr Stokes.’

  ‘If you think it necessary. I don’t hold with conspiracies myself. Ockham’s Razor is my watchword. Lex Parsimoniae. Give me two explanations, one simple, one complicated, and I’ll take the straightforward answer every time.’ Child gestured at the corpse. ‘Cover him up, will you, Brabazon? We’re done.’

  My eyes pricking, I stared into the bright shaft of sunlight that penetrated through the open window. I was no longer in that room, no longer in the presence of the ravaged corpse upon the table. I was walking along the banks of the Cherwell on a bright September morning twelve years earlier. I turned a bend in the river and there he was.

  We had never spoken before, though I had often seen him around Wadham College, where he was already accounted quite the eccentric. A small, slight young man, I guessed he weighed significantly less than the large sack he was struggling to lift. He was dressed all in black, and he wore no hat or wig. Later I discovered that he’d mislaid the former in a gin shop, and that he never wore wigs because he considered them undemocratic. His hair was tied back into a queue, one black forelock tumbling over an eye. Prominent cheekbones, pale skin, a wide mouth and large grey eyes. Less a student of law than a romantic poet come to duel.

  He thrust his arms into the sack, bringing out handfuls of white powder, which he cast into the water like a farmer from a parable. This action he repeated several times, and I divined that he was trying to lighten the sack so that he could lift it. I stood watching, shielding my eyes against the glare of the sun on the water, until he happened to glance up and notice me.

  ‘West Indian sugar,’ he cried, by way of explanation. ‘They ground the loaves for the month yesterday. I stole it from the college kitchens last night – for it is polluted with the blood of African slaves.’

  ‘Then the river is the best place for it.’ I grinned, and he grinned back.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ I said, as he cast more sugar into the water. ‘Those things you said about slavery in the refectory last night. I agreed with every word. The trade in Africans is an abomination, a canker on the body politic.’

  His expression grew more sombre. ‘That slave merchant on the dean’s table left without making a donation. I fear the provost means to send me down.’

  My voice rose, as my courage mounted. ‘I’ll stand with you, if you like, against the dean and the provost. They can’t send us both down just for having an opinion.’

  He paused to catch his breath, looking me up and down, and his face lit up again with that broad smile. ‘It seems the Lord has sent me a Heracles to help me lift this sack. Don’t just stand there staring, sir. Come and help.’

  That was the beginning. Just as this was the end.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Brabazon walked us down the stairs to the street. My chest hurt, as it hadn’t since the day my mother died. I wanted the years back. All that time in America, when I’d put an ocean between us. The London years, when we’d lived so near, yet strangers.

  Brabazon drew back the bolts and opened the door to let us out, but pulled back with an exclamation of annoyance.

  ‘Forgive me, gentlemen, there is a dead bird outside my door. Take care to step over it.’

  We did as he advised, and I saw that the bird was a white dove, its wings outstretched as if in posthumous flight. The belly had been slit open, and the innards were spread around the carcass, almost in a circle. Even to my distracted eye, the bird did not look as if it had been placed there by some furred or feathered predator, but rather by human hand.

  Child and Brabazon exchanged a glance, and they looked up and down the street. A boy was herding geese along with a stick. Three young ladies were giggling over a bonnet outside a shop window. A pair of black footmen walked past, deep in conversation. Brabazon kicked the bird aside and called for his manservant to come and clean it up. He apologized again, we exchanged bows, and made our departure.

  My carriage was idling outside the coaching inn, where Sam had doubtless slaked his thirst once more. Child gave him directions to the mayor’s house and we climbed inside. I watched from the carriage window, as the world without Tad passed by.

  *

  The mayor lived on the outskirts of Deptford Broadway, in a white, Italianate villa surrounded by lush gardens. A white-haired African porter opened the gates for us, and the horses crunched up the drive to a turning circle with a fountain in front of the house.

  A black manservant in footman’s livery met us at the door. A tall, thickset fellow with protruding eyes and a squashed nose, he seemed to know Child well. After a short wait in an anteroom, we were shown into a spacious parlour with large glazed doors opening onto the gardens. Chinoiserie cabinets displayed collections of ivory and jade, and yet it was the elaborate plasterwork that held my attention. Instead of the usual key motif or acanthus leaves, the cornicing was embellished with the sculpted heads of submissive Africans.

  Child made the introductions. The mayor, Lucius Stokes, was a man of my father’s generation, and in many respects he resembled him, too. Tall, with a strong chin and patrician good looks, his black velvet coat was embroidered with silver thread, and his indigo cravat carelessly knotted. He wore his own hair short and powdered, with side-whiskers over the ears – a young man’s fashion. Unlike Father, whose trembling handshake had betrayed his dissolution, Stokes had a firm grip and a politician’s smile. Sitting on the sofa by his side was a very beautiful mulatto woman.

  ‘Tea, gentlemen? See to it, Abraham.’

  I bowed to the woman, unsure of her position in the household. Her glossy black hair was piled and pinned in imitation of an English lady. She was dressed like one too, in a close-fitted gown of canary-yellow silk, cut low in the bodice. My bow elicited a faint smile from Mayor Stokes.

  ‘Captain Corsham is here about Valentine’s murder,’ Child said
.

  I sensed movement across the parlour, and for the first time I noticed another African, sitting writing at a secretary desk in a corner of the room. He was dressed as a gentleman, wearing a periwig. I judged him to be about my own age. His quill had frozen on the page, and he was gazing at me with a peculiar intensity.

  Child explained to Stokes that the man who had come to Deptford calling himself Valentine had been identified as a London barrister named Thaddeus Archer. ‘Captain Corsham was a friend of his.’ He handed Stokes my card.

  ‘A distressing business.’ Stokes gave a regretful smile. A gentle aroma of civet scent and Virginia tobacco surrounded him. ‘Some said when Valentine first came here, that I should have had him run out of town. Perhaps, all things considered, that might have been best. Yet I pride myself that Deptford is a liberal, tolerant place. Every man has a right to speak his mind here, even an abolitionist.’

  ‘Evidently not everyone felt the same way,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed, and I regret it most profoundly. Yet your friend – Mr Archer, was it? – bears some responsibility for what occurred. Just as a wise man does not walk into a bear’s cave and poke him with a stick, nor does he stride into a slaving town crying liberty. Mr Child did try to warn him, the first time he encountered trouble here. Had he listened, he might be alive today.’

  ‘What trouble was this?’

  I sensed Child’s reluctance to speak of the incident. ‘About a month or so back, Archer had a fracas with a slave ship sailor down at the dock.’

  ‘This could be the attempt on his life that he spoke about.’

  Child waved a dismissive hand. ‘A bout of fisticuffs, that’s all.’

  ‘Is this sailor a suspect?’

  ‘He had an alibi. A good one. I checked.’

  The woman rose from the sofa and crossed the room to look out at the garden. Every man present, even the black gentleman at the desk, turned to follow her progress. She was much younger than I had first realized, perhaps sixteen years old. Her skin was the colour of honey, her features a glorious marriage of the European and the black. When she moved, it was like watching sunlight glide across the parquet floor.

  Abraham, the thickset footman, returned with the tea tray, and I smiled my thanks as he poured me a bowl. His eyes met mine, blank and hostile. I couldn’t bring myself to add sugar – the memory of Tad on the river lay too nearly upon me – and the bitterness of the leaves was a fitting companion for the grief and the guilt confounding my thoughts.

  ‘Mr Stokes, perhaps we might talk about Mr Child’s investigation.’ Or lack of it, I thought grimly. ‘I cannot help thinking that a more active inquiry, one less reliant upon rewards for information, would be more likely to apprehend the killer.’

  ‘Mr Child does not have the resources available to magistrates of the London bench,’ Stokes said firmly. ‘I am quite sure he is doing his best under the circumstances.’

  ‘He needs to do more. This is no ordinary murder, sir. The torture. The brand. Archer told his sister that he had made powerful enemies in your town. I think he meant slave merchants. He was frightened for his safety, and I imagine that was why he used an assumed name. This was not some argument over abolition gone too far.’

  ‘Captain Corsham has a theory about the murder,’ Child said. ‘He believes Archer was killed because he’d found the means to end slavery.’

  ‘Does he, by Jove?’

  ‘I am aware that it sounds foolish,’ I said, ‘but that’s what he told his sister. However unlikely, if this scheme is what brought him here to town, then it is surely pertinent. Archer said he was coming here to collect something that his enemies would want. If we can find out what it was, then it might shed some light upon his murder.’

  ‘End slavery,’ Stokes mused. ‘I’m struggling to think. A genie’s lamp? A magic wand? Forgive my bluntness, sir, but you’d need to work a spell upon the English people if you ever hoped to end slavery. They like cheap sugar in their tea and cheap tobacco in their pipes. No amount of handwringing will ever change that.’

  ‘I’ve told Captain Corsham that we found nothing out of the ordinary in Archer’s room at the inn, yet he feels the need to examine his effects for himself.’ Child gave Stokes a pointed glance.

  ‘I’d like to take his things with me.’ I didn’t want to examine them here under Child’s beady eye. ‘Mr Archer’s sister will want to have them. I am on my way there now to break the news.’

  ‘I don’t see why not. By rights they belong to his kin. Mr Child?’

  The magistrate shrugged.

  Stokes turned to the African at the desk. ‘Scipio, there is a black valise in the closet of my bedroom. Go and get it.’

  Why were Tad’s things even here in the first place? I recalled that he had told Amelia that the Deptford authorities were in league with the slavers. I thought it likely that Mayor Stokes was a slave trader himself. As for Mr Child, I had met Covent Garden cardsharps I trusted better. There had to be more to Tad’s murder than these men claimed.

  ‘Are there many slave merchants living here in Deptford?’ I asked, while we waited for Scipio to return.

  ‘Several dozen,’ Stokes said. ‘This town was built upon the African trade. This country too, in many respects. I tried to help Mr Archer understand this, but he had a child’s way of looking at the world. He refused to acknowledge our contribution to the nation’s finances, or the history of slavery in Africa itself, or the civilizing effect European slavery has on the blacks themselves. He had a lot to say about profiting from human misery, but had he troubled to take a proper look around this town, he would have discovered the profits of slavery for himself. Philanthropic enterprise, schools for the poor, donations to the church.’

  So Stokes had met Tad too. ‘What is the name of the slave merchant Archer stood accused of harassing?’

  Child frowned. ‘I don’t see the relevance, sir.’

  ‘Isn’t it possible he was one of the enemies Archer mentioned?’

  ‘There is no evidence of wrongdoing on the merchant’s part. On the contrary, Archer made several unwanted visits to his home and pestered his wife and servants in the street. The merchant was the victim of the piece, not Mr Archer.’

  ‘The merchant is not the one on Brabazon’s table. Why did Archer single out this particular man for special attention? We must understand his purpose in coming here to Deptford.’

  The girl had walked back across the room to retake her seat next to Stokes on the sofa. This time we’d been too busy looking at one another to look at her. Now she leaned forward in a waft of rose perfume.

  ‘He came here to see his dark angel,’ she said.

  Her accent was faint, her English precise. Stokes glanced at her, and then struck her very hard across the face. She fell sideways onto the sofa with a faint cry.

  I was already halfway out of my chair, ready to intervene, but the girl caught my eye, and gave a swift shake of her head. Not wanting to make things worse for her, I kept my seat.

  Scipio came through the door with the bag in his hand, and seemed to take in the situation at a glance. He shot his master a malevolent look.

  Child stared out of the window. Abraham took up the teapot and refilled his master’s bowl. I studied the mark Stokes’s hand had left on the girl’s skin and fought the urge to take him by the lapels and throw him through one of his glazed garden doors.

  ‘There now.’ Stokes massaged his hand. ‘All your bowing and scraping has made my pretty nigger forget her place.’ He smiled to rob his words of offence.

  I had no desire to share such a joke with him. ‘A gentleman does not strike a lady, sir.’

  ‘Miss Cinnamon is my property,’ Stokes said mildly. ‘I can see you own no Africans yourself. They need a firm hand, especially when one dresses them up like this. Now is there anything else that I can help you with, Captain Corsham?’

  I could see there was little more to be gained here. For all his urbane manners, Stokes was as obdurat
e as the magistrate, Child. The girl was holding her face, gazing blankly at the floor. As I took the bag from Scipio, I shot her a last look of concern. He came here to see his dark angel. I only wished that I could ask her what she’d meant.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Amelia Bradstreet lived only five miles from Deptford, but north of the river. It consequently took us over two hours to drive there, crossing the Thames by means of the horseferry at Rotherhithe. The hamlet of Bethnal Green was a jumble of dilapidated houses and pig farms, surrounded by moorland and beanfields. A lunatic asylum loomed, grey and forbidding, over the green. Unkind voices – Caro’s friends in the Mayfair salons – said that Amelia Bradstreet must fit in rather well.

  I followed the directions she had given me, discovering that her cottage lay a few streets back from the green. It had a sagging, thatched roof covered in bird droppings and appeared to have been built on the garden of a much larger house. A sow was suckling her piglets in an adjoining vegetable patch, and the air was rich with the yeasty tang of a brewery.

  An elderly Indian maidservant answered my knock. She gazed at me blankly while I explained my business, but Amelia called indistinctly from some other part of the house and the maid stood back to let me enter. She showed me into a tiny parlour where Amelia, pale and pensive, came forward to greet me.

  She saw I was alone and her expression fell. ‘I so hoped you would find him.’

  I struggled to find the right words – could there be any right words? ‘Please, Mrs Bradstreet, won’t you sit down?’

  She read my expression. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

  I made a hopeless gesture. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  I was ready to catch her if she swooned, but she only sat down on the sofa and raised a hand to her temple. I admired her fortitude. She had lost three children in the cholera epidemic that had also claimed her husband. Now she had no one.

  I drew up one of the battered armchairs. The room was cramped and cold, with whitewashed walls. The furniture was old and riddled with worm. A faded carpet of Indian design covered the bare boards, and a few pieces of painted oriental porcelain were the only ornaments of note.