The Hogarth Conspiracy

The

Hogarth
Conspiracy

A NOVEL

ALEX CONNOR

SILVEROAK BOOKS is a trademark of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

© 2012 by Alex Connor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978–1-4027–9018-8

Originally published in 2011 in Great Britain as
Legacy of Blood
.
First published by Sterling Publishing, Co., Inc., 2012

Cover design: Tal Goretsky
Cover image: David Garrick as Richard III by
William Hogarth; © The Bridgeman Art
Library/Getty Images

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… from all the deceits of the world, the flesh,
and the devil, spare us….

—T
HE
B
OOK OF
C
OMMON
P
RAYER

I have endeavoured to treat my subject as a dramatic writer;
my picture is my stage.

—W
ILLIAM
H
OGARTH ON HIS WORK

I remember the time when I have gone moping
into the city, with scarce a shilling in my pocket …
but as soon as I had received ten guineas … sallied
out again with all the confidence of a man with ten thousand
pounds….

—W
ILLIAM
H
OGARTH

Prologue

Under the whorehouses and the taverns lie London's dead. Beneath cobbles and alleyways, within the hearing of the molly houses and the sodomisers, cheek by jowl with the shadow of St Paul's, and within the summer stink of the Thames. Under flagstones and feet, under weather and sewage, lay the passageway I hurried towards. Shaken, I looked back many times to see if I was being followed—but there was only the creak of a dozen inn signs and the sound of a startled horse whinnying shrilly in Drury Lane.

Mischief made mumbles in the night, and my hands were sweating as I reached the entrance of the narrow alleyway. Expecting me, a guard, silent and surly, stood back to let me enter, handing me a rush light, and then moved into the street above. As the iron gate slammed to a close, I stared into the dank open womb of the chamber below. I could see shadows of two other men, distorted into ghouls, and placed my foot gingerly on the next step. God! My mouth was thick with panic, my pulse speeding up, blood yammering like a lunatic in my veins. Turning at a bend, I stumbled, and the buckle of my shoe struck the stone wall, gouging a white scar into the brickwork.

Hearing my approach, the men turned. One, a priest, a handkerchief held over his nose, a sprig of rosemary pinned to his vestments, regarded me with indifference. Obviously, he had been to an earlier funeral where the mourners would have handed out the nosegays—rosemary for remembrance. The other man, a doctor, stood in his brocade coat, blood stiffening his waistcoat; ladybird splashes on the gilded buttons. Corpulent, he made an awkward gesture towards the back of the room as I passed under an arch into a shadowed area beyond. For an instant I could see nothing, then raised the light I was holding and watched the shallow underground room shudder in the smoking flame.

I had known her living. Polly Gunnell, one of Mrs Needham's whores, from the best brothel in London. Pretty and plump enough for the bankers, the businessmen, the theatregoers; fresh enough not to have to work out of a room in Drury Lane; sweet enough to avoid the streets. And quick and clever enough for royalty—or so she had bragged to me as she coiled a sliver of dark hair around her index finger and bit her bottom lip into a bud with her small teeth.

‘Sit for me,' I had said a while ago, and I had drawn an engraving of her
—Courtesan at Her Toilette—
which had proved popular enough to earn me money, and Polly Gunnell fame. Encouraged, my imagination had found much room for Polly Gunnell, willing board and lodging for her knowing appeal. Inspired, I had constructed a morality tale, using her as the model, and called it
The Harlot's Progress.

But Polly Gunnell was no longer sleeping or breathing or biting her lip. She was lying on a stone table, next to a pile of beer barrels stacked up against the wall like a dunghill. Apart from her shoes, laced with two ivory ribbons, the heels sullied with London mud, she was naked. Slowly my gaze travelled upwards. Both thighs had been slashed from the knees to the groin, and around her vagina were numerous tiny mutilations, much blood bearing witness to the ferocity of the attack. Dry-mouthed, I attempted to swallow and tried to look away, but instead I looked at the rest of her body: Polly Gunnell's nipples had been cut off, and a knife slash ran from her throat down to her pubic bone.

And within her corpse a terrible emptiness where once her womb, now torn out of her, had lain.

Unnerved, I turned to look at the others. The doctor was winding his fob watch, and the priest's straight dark hair framed an expression of dissolute indifference. Nothing was said to me as I turned back to the body. Overhead, I could hear someone rolling barrels on the floor, a door slamming closed. My lamp spluttered as I turned back to the corpse. Polly Gunnell's face—once pert with cleverness, soft with eroticism, a perfect countenance for longing—had been disfigured by a blatantly vicious criss-crossing of cuts, laced like the pastry topping of a pie. The muscles were exposed, the eyelids cut away, the nose severed. Blood, drying thick and dark, crusted the open wounds. Not an inch of Polly Gunnell's pretty face remained. Not a millimetre of the countenance which had smiled out from the canvas and the printed page.

I had known Polly Gunnel's face as well as I knew my own: had drawn it, painted it, engraved it. I had chosen her as the heroine of my morality tale, out to tender for the populace, plying her trade from the canvas and the metal plate, willingly whoring for me—the painter—William Hogarth. Whoring for me as she had done for the pimp and the procuress, clicking her fingers at the world as she swung her leg at the stupidity of men. She had laughed at the fate of the girl in the picture without ever realising it was her own future, a prophecy she could never deflect.

Turning away at last, I tasted the vomit in my throat and swallowed hard. The rush light I held momentarily illuminated a bunch of rags in a corner. Curious, I moved over and bent down, lifting a corner to reveal a dead newborn infant, its limbs white, its lips dark.

Shaken, my voice faltered. “Was this her child? Did they cut the baby from her whilst she was still alive?” I asked of the doctor and the priest, who were now moving towards the stone steps. Towards the street. “Sweet Christ, what did they do to her?”

The doctor shrugged.

I knew what he was thinking as he looked at me, a small, stocky man, standing in front of him. William Hogarth, satirist, vicious and sentimental by turns, and now obviously sickened and trying not to vomit.

“Look,” the doctor said curtly, “The priest's a witness. I'm following orders, that's all. I was told to fetch you here and to pay you for your trouble. You're to see to this.” He jerked his head to where the monstrously mutilated body lay. “I don't know why they killed the woman; I don't want to know.”

“But I do,” I countered, persistently,“Who did this?”

“I've told you, I don't know!” The doctor answered vehemently, straightening his wig, his fleshy hands shaking. “I was only ordered to bring you here.”

“By whom?”

The doctor shrugged again, feigning ignorance.

“I was sent a message; that was all.” Rattled, he reached into his waistcoat pocket, feeling around urgently, then took a snort of tobacco. When he sneezed, he wiped the snot off his nose with the sleeve of his jacket. “When I got here, I was too late. I couldn't do anything for either of them.”

I nodded. “Very well … I'll see to it.”

“You made her famous.” The doctor assumed a mock sympathetic expression. “Everyone in London fell in love with Polly Gunnell, but no one would know her now. Just another dead hack.” Straightening up, he looked back at me. “Mind you don't end up the same way, Master Hogarth.”

Sighing, he pulled on his hat and followed the priest up the steps into the alley beyond. I heard the dull iron thud of the gate echoing behind them as they left. I was now alone with the dead body of Polly Gunnell and her child. I took off my coat and laid it over her face, then touched the top of her head and felt the spring of hair under my fingers. I knew why she had been killed. Hadn't my own safety been threatened when
The Harlot's Progress
was published?

I had known at the time that the potency of the series would be given an added frisson if the public could identify some of the models in the paintings. How scandalous to depict Mrs. Needham, the infamous procuress, and how titillating to recognise Colonel Charteris, a rake so dissolute that England had nicknamed him the Rape-Master General. I flinched at the recollection. If only I had stopped there, but unable to resist another jibe, I had gone too far, satirised the wrong person. Depicted with Polly Gunnell a man as her lover. An important, familiar man, a man known to everyone in Europe—Frederick, Prince of Wales.

When the painting was viewed, I at once realised my mistake, but it was too late. Manhandled and threatened in my own home, I was ordered to alter the features of the courtesan's lover. And so the man in the picture was emasculated by paint, turned from a hero into a vacant fool with a few deft brushstrokes.

But of course I could not vandalize my masterpiece. I had simply made a copy and hidden the original. The famous image still existed, the wicked satire hidden but not destroyed. I relied on the fact that a painter admired by King George II and feted across Europe had redoubtable allies. Polly Gunnell might have had no power to protect herself, but the fame of William Hogarth sheltered me.

But only so far.

Of course they would summon me to see to the body of Polly Gunnell and her dead child. What better way to send me a warning? Secure my silence? To make me realise that any threat to the throne would be ruthlessly obliterated. My arrogance had blinded me, but from that moment on fear would ensure my compliance.

I bent down again to the dead infant. Not wanting to leave its corpse for the rats to rip apart, I gently lifted it from the floor. I would lay it by its mother, have them buried together. But as I held the little body, I noticed a muted flutter and touched the child's neck, where I felt the faint beating of a thready pulse.

“Jesus,” I exclaimed, panicking and looking round. “Holy God.”