Death at the Beggar's Opera (31 page)

‘For the love of God,’ the Apothecary exclaimed angrily, ‘do you not hear a word said to you? I am here to guard the life of Coralie Clive, not to indulge in passionate interludes.’

‘Except with her, I suppose.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said except with her.’

John stared at Polly incredulously, hardly able to believe the strangeness of the situation, and then, even while he gazed into her face, the most frightening thing happened. Once before, in his shop, she had transmogrified before his eyes, from frightened innocent to worldly woman, and now she changed again. Polly’s face contorted and her sensational mouth drew back into a snarl as her body jerked upright, so that she was once more standing before him.

‘You worthless bastardly gullion,’ she hissed, ‘how dare you play fast and loose with me! I know you for what you are, another Jasper Harcross no less. It’s your sport to steal a poor girl’s heart, treat her body as a bauble, then trample her in the dust. You are beneath contempt, Mr Rawlings.’

‘But it was you …’ he protested.

‘Don’t add lies to all your other calumnies! You forced your attentions upon me, dishonoured my virtue, and now you want to deny your perfidy. God’s life, but you are indeed Jasper Harcross come back to haunt us.’

‘And deserve to die like he did, no doubt?’ Abruptly, everything had become crystal clear. ‘Was that your intention when you followed me in the street that night? Could you not bear it, despite all you said, that I did not love you as you thought I should? Were you going to stab me and leave me to die like a dog in the filth of the gutters?’

The seamstress looked at him, then laughed, suddenly and shockingly, and John saw that on that most glorious of mouths, surely one of the most enchanting ever known, there was a fleck of spittle, like a slug on a rose petal. In the darkness he drew breath in horror, Polly’s fatal flaw finally telling him everything he needed to know.

‘I perfectly understand, Miss Egleton, that Jasper ruined your early life,’ he said calmly. ‘However, I think the lengths you went to in order to avenge yourself were excessive. Only a madman kills a child. But then you are very far from sane, I believe.’

She flew at him, clawing and biting, raking her nails over his skin until it bled. ‘That wasn’t a child we killed. It was his seed, his foul procreation. It had to be put down without mercy.’

‘And you did that?’

‘No, my brother was the one who saw Will out of the way.’

‘You are vile, both of you,’ John shouted furiously, then caught her wrists as her hand flew aloft, a glint of steel between her fingers. Yet despite his swift reaction, the lethally sharp scissors raked the side of his neck and he felt the hot blood spurt. And then, from the room across the corridor, Coralie screamed in terror. The Apothecary did not hesitate. Releasing one of Lucy Egleton’s hands, he swung a blow to her jaw which rendered her unconscious and, as she fell at his feet like a dead swan, stepped over her inert form and fled to the actress’s assistance.

He crossed the corridor in a single jump, at least that is how it felt to him, and went to push down the handle on Coralie’s door. It moved but did not give and then John remembered that he had told her to lock herself in.

‘Coralie,’ he shouted, ‘open the door for God’s sake. It’s John.’

There was no reply but from within could be heard the faint sounds of a struggle. Taking a few steps back, the Apothecary thrust his shoulder into the door and it was only as it swung open that he remembered he had left his pistol in the other room.

At first John could see nothing, for all the candles had blown out in the icy draught coming through the open window, clearly the means of the intruder’s entry. Then his eyes grew used to the blackness and he managed to pick out dim shapes. Coralie, in her nightgown, had been half pushed back onto the bed, out of which she had obviously jumped in alarm. A man leant over her with his hands tightly squeezed around her throat, while she flailed and struggled as helplessly as a captured bird. Wishing he were armed, John flung himself at her attacker, dragging him down towards the floor. Very remotely, he became aware of pounding feet and realised that the alarm had been raised at last.

Though he knew, because of the sampler, whom he was fighting, the Apothecary still could not see his adversary, and rolled and grappled and punched blindly, hoping that his fists would make contact with some vital part of the man’s anatomy. Then came a roar from the doorway.

‘Give yourself up or I fire.’ It was Rudge, surrounded by a group of his cohorts, several of whom held candelabra, thus brightly illuminating the scene.

But the attacker hadn’t given up the battle yet. Delivering John a blow to the guts which left him winded, he struggled up from beneath the gasping Apothecary and snatched Coralie from the bed, holding her in front of him. John saw that the man had Sir Gabriel’s duelling pistol in his hand and that he was pointing it straight at the actress’s temple.

‘One move from any of you and she gets into her coffin,’ he called. ‘Now, where’s my sister?’

John regained his breath. ‘In the other room.’

‘One of you fetch her. Then I want a carriage brought round to the front door with four strong horses in the trace.’

‘There are no animals here. Lord Delaney took them with him.’

‘Don’t give it me for nothing! I’ve been round to the mews. It’s packed with beasts.’

There was a shout from the doorway. ‘The woman in the other room is unconscious. You’d best let Mr Rawlings look at her.’

‘Is this a trick?’ snarled the intruder.

‘Come and see for yourself,’ answered Rudge, his voice full of contempt and loathing. And John thought that the situation was like tinder and just hoped that no one’s trigger finger twitched.

The attacker looked at him where he lay on the floor. ‘Get to your feet, Apothecary, and go to her. But if you harm one hair of her head I’ll blow yours clean off your neck.’

Terribly aware of his predicament, John made his way through the bunch of Runners and peachers, who parted for him like the Red Sea, and went to kneel beside Lucy Egleton’s body. Despite the blow he had given her she was breathing normally. Crossing over to the ewer and basin standing on the wash stand, John poured cold water on a towel then applied it to Lucy’s forehead, meanwhile holding his salts beneath her nose. Her eyelids flickered and opened and she gazed round her dazedly, then she saw her brother standing in the open doorway, his human shield lolling against him.

They exchanged a look then, a look which only John could see, a look so deep that he knew at once what Mrs Atkins had been talking about. They loved one another; loved with a love that far transcended that normally experienced by brother and sister. Rejected by their mother, fostered out into alien surroundings, spurned by Jasper Harcross, the Egleton children had found comfort only in each other. John supposed that, in the literal meaning of the words, they had fallen in love.

‘Are you safe?’ she said.

‘Perfectly, but what about you?’ And her brother unguardedly took a step into the room.

Everything happened. Rudge, seizing the momentary advantage, fired at the intruder who whirled and fired back, winging the Runner in the shoulder. John, seeing his pistol still lying by the chair where he had left it, lunged for it, only for Lucy to claw at him so viciously that he was unable to reach it. At this the ranks of the Runners broke and they charged her brother in a mass. There was a loud explosion followed by a scream and John saw that the man had gone down, dragging Coralie with him. Fighting his way through the heaving mass of bodies, he reached the actress’s side and lifted her high, away from all the blood and horror spilling onto the floor beside her.

‘Have they killed him?’ she whispered as John carried her to the bed.

‘Yes,’ he answered quietly.

‘Poor Dick,’ she said, ‘poor, poor Dick.’

‘Poor? The man was a ruthless killer.’

‘But if he was one of the missing Egletons, and I can only presume he must be, then his fate was decided for him, wasn’t it?’

It was no time for argument and after tucking her comfortably into bed the Apothecary momentarily left Coralie Clive while he went to examine the last mortal remains of Dick Weatherby, the wretched soul who had been born into the world George Egleton. Yet just as he bent over the body he was thrust to one side. Lucy had recovered sufficiently to stagger from the bedroom into the corridor, where her brother lay in his own blood and shattered flesh, far beyond the help she so desperately longed to give him.

She fell upon him like a figure from Greek tragedy, covering him with her body and mourning in the manner of a widow. She had put her black cloak back on and she draped it over the two of them for a funeral pall, while from deep within her throat came a sound the like of which John had never heard before. She was neither crying nor moaning but keening, lamenting her dead in a high unearthly wail.

‘God’s pity, Lucy!’ he exclaimed. ‘You mustn’t agonise like that. You’ll break your heart.’

She turned her head to look at him. ‘It is already broken, there is no hope for me.’ She gave him the faintest smile ‘Do you know, I was fond of you, Mr Rawlings.’ Then that beautiful mouth opened and she slipped the muzzle of Sir Gabriel’s pistol between her lips – and fired.

The room that John always thought of as so light and airy was snug with winter warmth. Despite the earliness of the hour a well established fire burned in the grate of Mr Fielding’s salon, in front of which stood a jug of steaming toddy, keeping hot. Seated in chairs on either side of this cheerful conflagration were the Blind Beak himself and John Rawlings who, for the second time in their acquaintanceship, had been drawn into a trail of intrigue and violence and had determinedly followed it through to its ultimate conclusion. Yet though they had been discussing all the terrible events that had taken place for over two hours, in this case there had been a certain amount of personal involvement on the Apothecary’s part. And now he needed to talk over this particular aspect with the man whose judgement he respected only second to that of his father.

Yet it was extraordinary really, John thought, looking at the Blind Beak who sat, blissfully unaware of the other’s regard, facing the fire, thrusting out his hands to the flames. For John Fielding, despite the awe in which most of society held him, was still only a few days off his thirty-third birthday, young yet to hold a position of such enormous power. However, disregarding the fact that the Magistrate was only ten years older than the Apothecary, the younger man still desperately needed his advice.

‘Sir, it is about Polly Rose, née Lucy Egleton, that I am most anxious to talk to you.’

‘I guessed as much,’ said Mr Fielding, and held out his empty mug that John might refill it with toddy.

‘But how?’

‘There was something about your voice when you mentioned her to me.’

‘Yet I mentioned a dozen other people as well.’

The Blind Beak smiled. ‘I told you once before, my friend, that when I lost my sight I gained other compensations. There is scarcely a verbal nuance that escapes me. I gathered from a certain hesitancy in your tone that you and the girl shared a
tendresse
.’

John looked at the Magistrate earnestly, forgetting for a moment that he could not see his face. ‘Mr Fielding, I know that in about an hour’s time you are due to address the company at Drury Lane and explain to them all that has happened. I also know you will be very frank. So may I just say that I would not like it made public that Lucy Egleton granted me her favours.’

‘Naturally you may rely on my discretion. But how terrible for you, my friend, that you became involved with a killer, and that she died in the way she did. It must weigh very heavily upon you.’

‘Oh it does, it does,’ the Apothecary answered sadly ‘Though to tell the truth it was only a physical infatuation on my part, in my heart I did not love her. Which makes me sound like the biggest rakehell in London, but there it is.’

Mr Fielding actually guffawed out loud. ‘My dear Mr Rawlings, you are only doing what most of your fellow humans do. You are learning about life and love. You are no nearer a rakehell than I am a highwayman.’

John sighed, not greatly comforted. ‘The puzzling thing is, though, that Lucy let me make love to her at all. I told you of the look she exchanged with her brother. I could almost swear that they regarded one another as husband and wife.’

‘Now you are being fanciful,’ answered the Blind Beak firmly. ‘For all her grievous sin, Lucy was a woman like any other and as free to give herself as the next. If she did love Dick as you say – and that is only your belief, remember – then she was amusing herself with a dalliance, as has done many a married woman before her. You must cease to dwell on it, Mr Rawlings, and realise that your relationship with her was yet another of the innumerable experiences which litter the path to maturity.’

John sighed. ‘But I cannot help mourn her.’

‘If you did not,’ Mr Fielding answered thoughtfully, ‘you would not be the young man whom I have grown to respect and trust so well. Now, drain your tankard, my friend, we are due at Drury Lane within the hour.’

It was a strange gathering, this motley collection of theatre people all come together to hear the Principal Magistrate explain to them the link between the violent deaths of Jasper Harcross and William Swithin, and the shootings that had occurred in the fashionable London house belonging to Lord Delaney. By now the fact that Dick Weatherby and Polly Rose were dead was common knowledge, though nobody seemed quite to know why or how. Rumours of foul play had been dismissed in favour of wild talk of suicide pacts, and so it was with enormous interest, if not to say prurience, that Mr Fielding’s invitation to meet him once more at Drury Lane had been accepted by all concerned.

This time, David Garrick had set a high chair, used in King Lear, on the stage, its back to the auditorium, which was shielded by the drawn curtains. Not to pass unnoticed, the actor-manager himself sat in a somewhat smaller seat, suspiciously like Macbeth’s throne of state, beside it. A semi circle of gilt chairs, taken from the boxes, faced it, extra spaces for other people being provided by the boxes themselves.