Death of a Radical (20 page)

“But Lady Catherine has a passion for the playhouse,” said Miss Lonsdale. Lady Catherine's pedigree was even longer than Miss Lippett's. Indeed, Lady Catherine's breeding was much too refined for her to set foot in Amelia Bedford's house (besides which, as she frequently reminded anyone who would listen, she couldn't abide fools).

“
She
has always been peculiar,” stated Miss Lippett with
the splendid intolerance of one eccentric for another. “Romish,” she added, as if that explained it all.

Miss Lonsdale closed her mouth over the retort that rose to her lips. She was very fond of Lady Catherine and her religion was nothing to do with the case. At times Josephine Lippett was a remarkably silly woman for all her extensive reading. Mr. Jarrett was watching them. His eyes met hers with a sympathetic expression. She broke the connection, feeling a little flustered.

“I confess I am eager to see
The Beggar's Opera.
I'm told it is most amusing,” she said lightly.

“Strolling players impersonating thieves and whores!” exclaimed Miss Josephine.

“Miss Lippett! Language, pray!” cried Mrs. Eustace, fanning herself with an excess of propriety. Miss Lippett threw her a contemptuous glance that amply conveyed her opinion that Mrs. Eustace was only the butcher's wife and therefore beneath her consideration.

“I speak as I find.”

“Why, Mr. Jarrett,” Miss Henrietta said, her smile leaping the barrier between them, “do come join us—we are too much women here.”

Miss Josephine Lippett stood up abruptly.

“I have a headache,” she announced. With a ghost of a nod to the ladies she stalked past Mr. Jarrett.

A gong sounded from the hall and Mr. Bedford's voice was heard announcing the departure for the theater. Jarrett blinked. Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Eustace were gazing at him in silence, as if they expected him to do something
extraordinary. Henrietta rose to her feet like a naiad arising from frozen water.

“Mr. Jarrett, may I take your arm?”

It was only as he helped Miss Lonsdale on with her cloak that Mr. Jarrett remembered his intention to make his excuses and avoid the play.

Outside in the cold night, the spy looked out from the shelter of the tollbooth. The moon was hidden behind cloud. He could just make out the pens and backs of the beasts that shifted and murmured in their sleep. At the top of the marketplace a fire flared. The watchmen guarding the cattle were clustered around a brazier. A couple of soldiers had joined them. It was early yet. He would be safe enough here. He settled himself, concealed in the shadows.

He was well paid. He made sure of that, but there was more to it. He liked the parts he played. When he assumed his part he was invisible. He could stand right next to any one of them and not one would recognize his importance. Once upon a time he had resented his anonymity, then he learned how it could be turned to his advantage. He was a valuable man. They had no idea. Some days he held their lives in his hands. He went over his part, preparing himself for the night's work.

“No madam.” The voice had a Londoner's nasal intonation overlaid with an upper servant's propriety.

“What you saying, woman?” Mrs. Eustace responded truculently. She was out of sight above. Mrs. Adams, who followed her, had stopped at the top of the short flight of stairs that led to the boxes. Henrietta craned her neck to peek around Mrs. Adams's bulk. At that angle she could just see a slice of Mrs. Eustace's head. The butcher's wife was halted halfway down the narrow walkway behind the boxes. Lady Catherine occupied the stall nearest the stage. Mrs. Eustace and Mrs. Adams were hoping to occupy the next.

“This is a private box.” The statement was made in a tone of immovable politeness. Mrs. Eustace twitched in fury and Henrietta glimpsed a sharp-faced middle-aged woman with a prominent bust. Fancy, Lady Catherine's maid. Fancy was formidable. Mrs. Eustace was red-faced but retreating.

“This box, madam, I believe is free,” the servant said firmly.

The box places were limited and the ladies of Woolbridge were competing to secure a seat. Mr. Jarrett had been shouldered aside in the rush through the door. Henrietta, pulled along in the wake of Mrs. Adams, found herself stranded there, at the bottom of the left-hand stair. The barn was chilly and damp. She pulled her velvet evening cloak around her. Men on the back row of the pit had turned round to stare. They were eating sausages and nuts and one had a cup of ale. She felt exposed and out of place. Miss Josephine, for all her excessively stiff-backed morality, was right not to come.

At a signal from the manager, the musicians to the side of the stage began the overture again. The latecomers were holding up the opera.

“Fancy, where are my guests?” Lady Catherine's patrician tones cut across the noise. Fancy appeared at the top of the stairs. She beckoned Henrietta up.

“Just here my lady.”

Relieved and a little bewildered, Henrietta followed the maid past Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Eustace, who sat like a pair of outraged hens in the back box. They turned their faces resolutely away from her polite smile.

“I wouldn't like to guess what that young woman spends on her clothes,” she heard Mrs. Eustace say. “I saw that silk velvet at twelve shillings a yard …”

In an oasis of clear space, Lady Catherine sat enveloped in an olive-green silk counterpane gorgeously
embroidered with oriental flowers and birds of paradise. She had before her a short ebony crutch with an upholstered top upon which she rested her arms to relieve the weight of her hunched back. At her feet, her white and tan terrier lay curled up on a large tasseled cushion covered in scarlet brocade. The curve of the old lady's spine was such she was forced to twist her head to the side to see out. Her expression was alive with puckish intelligence.

“Come! Come! Tell me about the Bedford woman. She has a new toy, I hear. Likes to play with soldiers, eh?”

Henrietta slid a glance to her right. Mrs. Eustace glared at her across the vacant chairs. The rest of the theater was almost full.

“I believe there are some coming in, Lady Catherine, who might be grateful for those seats,” she suggested tactfully.

“Paid the man a guinea for them,” the old lady said with supreme lack of concern. “They're for me guests.”

His foot disturbed straw. The stink of the strollers' playhouse filled his nostrils—pressed humanity mixed with turpentine, cattle and warmed animal grease. He had paid for his ticket. That didn't mean he had to use it. He'd let the rush subside, Jarrett thought to himself. Mrs. Bedford's principal guests were dividing up the stairs, left and right. The sheep and the goats. Justice Raistrick, as befitted the patron of that night's entertainment, occupied the right-hand box nearest the stage. He had Bedford
with him. And Mr. George. So the army buyer had filled his contract, had he? The groundlings were getting restless. The opera had been held up long enough. It wouldn't be long before those lads in the pit started throwing the nut shells and other debris that littered the floor. He heard Charles arguing with Grub behind him.

“So you're saying you would rather save an archbishop from the fire in preference to your mother?”

“You know my mother, cousin. Then again, I don't know any archbishops.”

“Damned puppy!” exclaimed Charles, laughing.

Jarrett grinned across at Grub, but the boy dropped his eyes.

“Excuse me,” he said and slipped away toward the right-hand stairs.

“What? Isn't Grub talking to me?”

An uneasy expression flickered across Charles's smooth face.

“Nonsense,” he said with a little too much emphasis. “It'll be the girl. You know how that goes.” Mrs. Bedford pushed past on the lieutenant's arm. “Lieutenant!” Charles hailed him. “You're settled, I see. And where are you billeted?”

A faint blush stole over the officer's smooth cheek.

“Mr. and Mrs. Bedford have been so kind as to offer me a room.”

“Silly boy! I tell him not to make so much of it. It is our duty to support our noble defenders!” Mrs. Bedford trilled with a roguish look.

“Indeed.” Charles gazed back at the pair politely.

“Thank you for your hospitality this evening, Mrs. Bedford,” Jarrett said, just to be saying something. “You do your guests proud.”

“And why wouldn't I?” the manufacturer's wife demanded. Her hand twitched the immense pearls that hung around her neck like so many beads. “Woolbridge may be far from London and other grand places but I still know how things are done!” She tugged her escort's arm and stepped up the right-hand stairs, the swing of her skirts reminiscent of an angry cat swishing its tail.

“Whatever did I do to that woman?” Jarrett inquired plaintively.

“Never gave her a second look's my guess,” said Charles.

“So why are you spared the cut direct?”

“
I'm
a marquess!” he said smugly. “Don't hit me,” he added, cheerfully. “Yes?” A middle-aged woman encased in a close-weaved wool gabardine that spoke of the well-paid servant stood at his elbow.

“Mrs. Fancy,” Jarrett greeted her, recognizing Lady Catherine's maid.

Fancy acknowledged him with an incline of her head. “My mistress asks, will you join her in her box?”

The orchestra—if a fiddle, a cello, a flute, a tabor player and a hurdy-gurdy man deserved the name—were nearing the end of the overture for the second time. Charles and Raif found Lady Catherine with Henrietta Lonsdale in the left-hand box overlooking the stage, sipping wine from crystal glasses, a large box of chocolates balanced on a chair between them.

“There you are. Lord Charles, come sit by me,” the old lady greeted them. “I want conversation. Henrietta here knows nothing of the theater. Go on girl—take that seat over there.” Lady Catherine waved to the next box. “Escort her, Mr. Jarrett; they're about to begin.”

Charles bowed to Miss Lonsdale with a rueful look, as if to say grandes dames must be obeyed. Henrietta bobbed a curtsey and removed herself to the seat on the other side of the low partition. As she gazed resolutely at the scene below she sensed Mr. Jarrett draw the seat beside her back a little. She turned to him.

“Am I blocking your view?”

“No. I am quite comfortable.” Indeed, she thought. Mr. Jarrett looked remarkably at ease. She wished she felt the same.

“I enjoy a good Macheath,” Lady Catherine remarked to Lord Charles. “Did y'ever see Kelly in the part? Too genteel by half. A dull, insipid sort of highwayman! Macheath should be a proper rogue. Fancy! Pour Lord Charles and Mr. Jarrett some wine.”

The colonel was sitting across on the other side, his lieutenant behind him and Kelso the Richmond magistrate at his side. There were soldiers in the pit and more stood along the back wall. If there were insurgents about they'd hardly be gathered in this hall. Now would be the time to make mischief elsewhere, Jarrett thought. His eyes met Raistrick's. The lawyer sat barely twenty feet away. The barn theater was an intimate space. Jarrett winced internally. When Bess stood this side of
the stage, she'd be less than three feet from him. He flashed a glance at Miss Lonsdale by his side. She was examining the scene before her with every appearance of enjoyment.

There was excitement, she reflected, in being one among so many waiting, in anticipation of being entertained. The last time Henrietta had attended a play, she had had to travel to Richmond. The shifting light of the flaring tapers threw shadows on the faces below, making the ordinary magical. For all she counted herself a rational being, Miss Lonsdale found herself caught up in the childish pleasure of it all.

A middle-aged man with a comical mobile face, dressed in the style of the previous century, walked on stage.

“Hogarth, by God!” declared Lady Catherine with relish.

“Do you have a playbill, Mr. Jarrett?” Henrietta asked. “Who is that?”

“Mr. Jefferies—I believe he was once at Astley's. He will be Mr. Peachum, the thief-taker,” Mr. Jarrett answered.

In his character as a receiver of stolen goods, the comic went through his book enumerating villains he might have hanged for a price, raising appreciative laughter in the pit by the sly insertion of worthy local names in the list. When he was joined by his playwife, Mrs. Peachum, Henrietta found herself liking despite herself the companionable couple who thought nothing of murder for self-interest. The songs, too, were good. The opera's author had turned half the familiar tunes of her childhood to his use. Then Polly Peachum appeared.

The bold redhead from Bedlington's yard was transformed. Bess Tallentyre portrayed the author's heroine with such fresh innocence Miss Lonsdale was quite bewildered. And her singing! If truth and feeling could be a sound, it was embodied in that voice. Mr. Jarrett was leaning back in his chair with an air of quizzical detachment. Polly advanced to the front of the stage. She stood barely an arm's breadth away. In the light of the oil lamps at her feet her eyes seemed huge in her white-painted face. She turned them to Mr. Jarrett.

“
But he so teased me and he so pleased me,”
she sang poignantly.

The notes undulated through the house enchanting every ear. She seemed to be singing just for him. As the lady who happened by circumstance to be sitting at the gentleman's side, Henrietta didn't know where to look.

Bess was up to her old tricks. What had he been thinking to allow himself to be trapped in such a situation! Jarrett shifted his position and looked across the audience, resolutely thinking of other things. He noted that Lieutenant Roberts was no longer sitting in his place behind the colonel. At the back of the box nearest the door, Favian wasn't paying attention to the stage at all. His eyes were fixed on the girl in peach. Jarrett thought of Grub's friends from the Red Angel. Given their interest in ballad singing, surely they would be here somewhere. He scanned the pit. Bess finished her song and was drawn into dialogue further off. He caught Miss Lonsdale's gray eyes watching him.