Death of a Dancer

CARO PEACOCK

Death of a Dancer

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

Neither of us knew the rate for bribing a gaoler at the Old Bailey. My friend Daniel Suter was two steps below me on the way down to the cells. He’d fought his way through the crowd to get there, pushing aside men twice his weight with bruiser’s faces, ignoring jeers and curses. In those two steps he’d crossed the boundary between the civilised modern building of the Central Criminal Court and the centuries-old misery of the passageway connecting it to Newgate Prison next door. Freshly plastered walls gave way to damp brick and a smell of choked drains.

‘I want to see her,’ Daniel said to the gaoler’s broad back.

He looked terribly out of place there, a slim and elegant figure, top hat in hand. That was one of the reasons they were jeering at him.

‘How much?’ said the gaoler, half turning.

The gaoler had hair cropped like a scrubbing brush, a wart on his chin the size of a coat button. Even from yards away, I could smell the onion and tobacco on his breath.

‘Very much.’

Seeing Daniel’s confusion, I whispered, ‘He means money.’

Daniel’s hand went to his pocket. His arm was shaking. I knew he never carried much money because he never had much to carry and we’d already had to pay to get into the spectators’ enclosure in court. The gaoler walked down a couple of steps, slowly. From the top of the staircase, the crowd went on jeering at Daniel.

‘Your fancy, is she? Look out she doesn’t poison you, like she did Columbine.’

Daniel turned to me, all the world’s misery on his face, holding out a handful of coins. A gold sovereign and a half-sovereign, two half-crowns, a silver sixpence and three pennies. It might have been enough if she’d been an ordinary prisoner, like a pickpocket condemned to transportation, but when the judge had put that square of black silk on his wig five minutes ago, her value had gone up.

I felt in the pocket under the waistband of my skirt and found a sovereign. It was payment that I’d managed to extract from a client some time ago for music lessons, but with everything else happening I’d forgotten about it till then. I took a step down and added it to the coins in Daniel’s palm. The clink of it made the gaoler stop and turn round.

‘Is it enough?’ Daniel said, holding out the handful.

‘It’s all we’ve got anyway,’ I said.

The man bit each sovereign in turn, nodding reluctantly as his teeth closed on the soft gold, then continued on down the steps into a narrow opening between stone walls. Daniel went after him and I followed. Down there, the clamour of the courtrooms upstairs was muffled but the wagons outside in Newgate, grinding over the paving slabs on their way from Smithfield market, made a constant vibration you could feel in your stomach. The smell and dampness seemed to cling to your face, as if you were trying to breathe through a wet dish rag. The gaoler stopped and gave an echoing slap with the flat of his hand on a heavy door. A voice from inside said something I didn’t catch.

‘Gentleman to see the prisoner,’ the gaoler announced.

A man’s hand came out and some of the coins were passed over, then the door was opened from the inside just enough to let Daniel in. I followed before the gaoler realised I was there. He pulled the door shut behind us and I suppose stood guard in the passage.

It was a big, cold room – far too big for the figure that sat in a rough wooden chair against the wall, with a plump gaoler on one side and a middle-aged woman on the other. Jenny had always been slim but after the weeks in prison she seemed to be on the point of disappearing altogether. The sleeves of her rough grey dress flopped around arms that looked no thicker than withy twigs. Only the jut of a badly fitting corset gave any shape to her upper body. Her red-brown hair that had floated like autumn leaves in the wind when she danced was streaked with black dye and dull from lack of washing, twisted into a knot that seemed to stretch her pale skin painfully tight over her cheekbones. Her big grey eyes had been one of her best features but now they were frightening. They were as large as ever, larger if anything, but blank as slate, as if the world had ceased to exist. Even when Daniel was only two steps away from her, their focus didn’t change and she didn’t seem to see him.

‘Jenny.’

The way Daniel said it was closer to a groan than a name. It was enough though. Something sparked in her eyes and suddenly she was on her feet, flinging herself at him. Before the gaoler could move she had her arms wrapped round Daniel, her head against his chest. She was a dancer, after all; still quick on her feet even when nothing else survived.

‘No touching,’ the gaoler barked, lumbering towards them. I stood in his way.

‘Why, is that extra?’

He stared at me as if the question puzzled him. I think he was at least half drunk. Surprisingly, the woman took my side. I didn’t know if she was a gaoler too or another prisoner.

‘You leave them be. It’s not for long.’

She’d probably taken a drink or two as well, but it must have brought out her sentimental side.

Jenny was talking as she clung to Daniel, low urgent words into his chest. He had his head bent to hear them.

‘… help me. You’re the only one who can help me. There’s not much time … they haven’t told me when …’

That went to my heart for Daniel’s sake as much as hers. Here she was, believing that one man without power, money or influence could somehow halt the millstones of justice that were grinding on in the courtrooms over our heads.

‘… choking there for half an hour. They had to pull on one woman’s feet to strangle her and make her die. I can ’t…’

Murderers were hanged outside Newgate Prison, just next door to the court house. She’d have heard all of the stories in prison. I was glad I couldn’t see Daniel’s face.

‘…in my basket … you could get it from them … done up in brown paper. I don’t mind how much it hurts. Promise you’ll send it. Today or tomorrow, if you can.’

There was a double slap on the door from outside. The plump gaoler had retreated to lean against the wall, but now he sprang upright.

‘Keeper’s coming. Get them out.’

He took Daniel by the shoulder and the woman, alarmed now, caught hold of Jenny round the waist and tore her away. As the gaoler tried to hustle him towards the door, Daniel planted his feet and resisted. The man growled and tightened his grip.

‘Do you want me to lose my job for you?’

‘To hell with your job. I’m not –’

The man gave a whistle and the first gaoler came in from the passage. They each took an arm and dragged Daniel along in the opposite direction from the way we’d come. I followed, terrified that they were going to throw him into a cell. It was a relief when one of them opened a narrow door on to the grey March daylight and the other gave him a push. He went sprawling on slippery wooden paving slabs and the door slammed behind us. I helped him up. Daniel was so tense with anger that it was like propping up a log of wood. There were people shouting and laughing all around, but this time it had nothing to do with us. It seemed that a man had been found not guilty of some crime in the other courtroom and he and his friends had come outside to celebrate and shout.

‘Higgins not guilty. Three cheers for Higgins. For he’s a jolly good fellow …’

They drank wine straight from the bottle, splashing it on the pavement, and sang loudly and so off-key that it would have caused intolerable pain to Daniel in normal times. As it was, I don’t think he heard. Even when one of the revellers urinated against the wall and some of it splashed on to Daniel’s boots, I had to nudge him to move aside. He looked at me.

‘Did you hear, Liberty?’

‘Let’s get away from here. If we cross the road we can find …’

‘Did you hear what she was asking me?’

‘Did she want you to help her escape?’

‘No. Not in that way, at any rate. She wants me to send poison in to her so that she can … can kill herself before they …’

The friends of Higgins had managed to hoist him on to their shoulders, after a struggle; he was as big and unwieldy as an ox carcass.

‘Three cheers for English justice. Good old English justice.’

Daniel drew back his arm, clenched his fist and swung with all his might at the stone wall of the Old Bailey. If I hadn’t managed to grab his sleeve I think the contact would have broken bones. Even as it was, the skin of his knuckles was shredded and blood ran down his fingers. He stood, looking at the blood, then at me.

‘Daniel, please come home. This won’t help her.’

‘What will then? What will?’

I couldn’t answer.

CHAPTER TWO

The case of Columbine’s murder started, as far as I was concerned, on a February Saturday morning in Hyde Park, just as the sun was rising, turning the mist to a silver haze. At that point, Columbine still had two and a half days to live. Frost was on the grass, beads of moisture on the sleeve of my riding jacket. I was riding my horse Rancie, one of the finest mares in London, with the blood of Derby winners in her veins and the sweetest temperament – if you treated her kindly – of any horse ever foaled. Amos Legge rode beside me on a powerful but clumsy-looking grey called Bishop. We’d come in from Park Lane through the Grosvenor Gate and cantered northwards along the carriage drive. This early, there were no fashionable riders out, only soldiers from the barracks or grooms exercising horses from livery stables. We slowed to a walk near the point where the carriage drive turned westwards. Bishop jibbed, planting his feet and shaking his head from side to side, although there was nothing visible to account for his alarm. Rancie rarely jibbed at anything, so I gave them a lead and Bishop followed reluctantly, walking sideways and snorting. Within a few paces, he went as calmly as if nothing had happened.

‘Horses know,’ Amos said.

It was the site of Tyburn tree, where the gallows had stood for hundreds of years, from the time when London was no more than a village. The gallows had been taken down fifty years before, because respectable people who’d moved to new houses by the park didn’t care for hangings on their doorstep. Still, as Amos said, horses knew. As we turned back down the drive a couple of grooms on matched dark bays came out of the mist. Amos knew them and called out a cheerful insult about carriage nags. I looked ahead, conscious of their curious glances. Rancie was worth looking at and my outfit respectable enough not to disgrace her. My riding jacket was the most fashionable garment I owned, fine black wool with leg-of-mutton sleeves tapering to tight cuffs, rows of silk-covered buttons decorating the wide lapels and a peplum at the back that flared out elegantly over the saddle. It was a bargain from a second-hand clothes shop, almost new. One of the advantages of living in Mayfair is the quality of second-hand clothes shops. The black skirt and top hat, from the same source, were passable but no more. Most of the nap had been rubbed off the hat, but I concealed it as best I could by tying a piece of black muslin round it as a scarf that flew out on the breeze.

‘Get a lot of questions about you, I do, miss,’ Amos said.

‘What sort of questions?’

‘We’ve been noticed, going out early like we do. People want to know who the mystery lady is.’

‘I’m no mystery.’

‘They think so. Riding the way you do on a mare worth a small fortune, they reckon you’re a rich lady with her own reasons for not wanting to be seen.’

‘If they only knew! What do you tell them?’

‘Me, I don’t tell ’em anything. I just listen to what they say.’

‘Oh? And what do they say?’

‘There’s some think you’ve run away from a husband that ill-treated you. Some reckon you’re secretly married to a duke, and another one offered to bet me you’re a Russian princess, in London for your health.’

I almost fell out of the saddle from laughing. I knew Amos well enough to be sure that when he said he hadn’t told the inquirers anything he’d spoken the literal truth. But he had a way of not saying anything that was as good as a nod and a wink, and I could just imagine the glint in his eye as he let every one of them believe that his particular ludicrous guess was on target.

‘Who’s this coming?’ I said.

Even through the haze, the horse and rider coming towards us didn’t have the air of a barracks or livery stables. They were moving at an easy canter, horse’s tail streaming out like a banner, the rider upright but relaxed. As they came closer, we could see that the horse was a bright bay, Arab or part Arab. The rider’s tall top hat gleamed as brightly as the hide of his horse, with dark curls flying from underneath it. He rode with the reins in one hand and an air about him that suggested he should be carrying a lance or sword in the other. Altogether, they looked as if they’d be more at home galloping across some desert wasteland than in Hyde Park. I was about to say something along those lines to Amos when I realised I knew the man. Before I could gather my wits he’d reached us, brought the mare from a canter to a walk and turned her deftly so that he was walking alongside us. He raised his hat.

‘Good morning, Miss Lane. Are you enjoying your ride?’

I managed an answer of some kind, probably looking as surprised as I felt.

‘You ride early,’ he said.

‘It seems you do, too, Mr Disraeli.’

Now that I was recovering from my surprise, I had to fight an urge to laugh with delight at the beauty and unexpectedness of him and the horse. This was only the third time in my life that I’d met him, and on the first two occasions the circumstances had been so strange that they might have happened in a dream. From the first I’d sensed a quality in him that made the world an exciting place, full of possibilities that most people couldn’t imagine. I wasn’t even sure that I liked him. For one thing, he was far too pleased with himself. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament and my political sympathies were quite the other way. There was, too, an edge of mockery in the way he looked and spoke, as if he couldn’t take anybody except himself quite seriously. Although he’d given me no reason for mistrust, I did not quite trust him. Still, being in his company was like breathing mountain air.

‘It seems as if a man has to get up early if he wants to talk to you, Miss Lane.’

On the face of it, this was ridiculous flattery. Granted, he’d only been a Member of Parliament for a few months and a notoriously unsuccessful one until now, but he had influential friends and was so far removed from my world that he shouldn’t have known or cared if I rode in Hyde Park or on the surface of the moon.

‘To talk to me?’

He moved even closer, so that his stirrup iron was almost touching Rancie’s side.

‘When we last met, Miss Lane, I made you a promise. I have done my best to keep it.’

I nodded, unable to think of anything to say.

‘A certain person who did you a wrong has retired to his estates in Ireland. He no longer appears in the House of Lords and he most assuredly will not be received at Court.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Did you know that?’

‘I had heard, yes.’

I’d met Mr Disraeli the summer before. My father had been murdered and my whole world whirled apart as if by a hurricane. Through no fault of his own, my unconventional and good-natured father had become tangled in affairs of state that reached all the way up to the throne. Mr Disraeli and I shared knowledge of events that might have disturbed the peace of the country had they become public at the time. But that was all over now, so why was Mr Disraeli suddenly seeking me out to tell me he’d honoured a promise?

Amos Legge had drawn back and was riding behind us, as if he really were just a groom instead of a friend. I was grateful for his presence. The conventional world would know exactly what to say about a lady who permitted a gentleman to approach her in the park, before most people were up and about. I was some distance outside the conventional world, but not as far as all that.

‘How are you liking life in London?’

He asked it almost as if we were meeting over the teacups, but there was an edge to his question.

‘Well enough, thank you.’

‘Perhaps time is heavy on your hands.’

‘Far from it. I work for my living. I give music lessons.’

My voice sounded sharp to me, but I didn’t want him to be under any illusions.

‘You’re a versatile lady, Miss Lane.’

Certainly a hint of satire in his voice. When we’d last met, I was posing as a governess. I said nothing. His mare, impatient at our slow pace, tossed her head, flecking Rancie’s withers with foam from her bit.

‘I wonder whether you might consider doing a service for a friend of mine,’ he said.

‘Does he need music lessons?’

He frowned, knowing that I was teasing him. When he spoke, his voice was harder.

‘I understand you have connections in the theatre world.’

I bit my tongue to stop myself from asking how in the world he knew that. My father had loved music and the theatre, and many of his friends were musicians or writers. So were some of my best friends.

‘Do you happen to have heard of a dancer who calls herself Columbine?’ he said.

I was about to say no, when something stirred in my mind.

‘Wasn’t she quite famous about ten years ago?’

Ten years ago, I was twelve years old, trying to make sense of the adult world from hints and half-understandings. Disraeli laughed.

‘Heaven help us all, if fame lasts no more than ten years. I think the word you are looking for is “notorious”.’

‘Better known for her diamonds than her dancing,’ I said. The phrase came back to me suddenly in the voice of one of my father’s friends, surrounded by male laughter.

‘Yes. She must have used up all the diamonds, because she’s still dancing. I understand she’s heading the bill at the Augustus Theatre. It opens tonight, as it happens.’

I was on the brink of saying that here was a coincidence, because a good friend of mine was directing music at the Augustus. I stopped myself because, glancing at Disraeli’s face, I thought perhaps he knew that already. We were nearly back at the Grosvenor Gate now, where Amos and I should be turning out of the park.

‘So, what of her?’ I said.

He hesitated a moment then spoke, quickly and softly.

‘She’s done some damage to a friend of mine. We’re concerned because that may not be the end of it.’

‘What kind of damage? And who are “we”?’

‘People who care for the good order of society.’

‘Politicians?’

‘You sound sceptical,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten you were such a radical.’

I was sure he never forgot anything.

‘You don’t need to be a radical to be sceptical about politicians.’

‘Believe me, this goes beyond party politics.’

‘Are you implying that this Columbine is a danger to society? She must be a formidable femme fatale.’

‘A somewhat faded one by now. That’s not where her danger lies.’

‘Why is she dangerous, then?’

‘In all honesty, I don’t know. I only suspect certain things which I’d rather not talk about at present. If you should happen to pick up any backstage gossip about the woman, I’d be grateful to hear about it. Particularly any gentlemen she’s associating with.’

I knew what my answer should be. A cold, ‘Do you take me for a spy, sir?’ Followed by a sharp turn of the back and rapid canter away. Rancie would go straight from a walk to a canter at one twitch of my heel. My heel didn’t twitch. The trouble was, on the previous occasions when we’d met, a spy was precisely what I had been.

‘We should be very happy to pay any expenses you might incur,’ he said. ‘You can always send a note to me at the House.’

‘I must wish you good morning,’ I said. ‘We turn off here.’

In spite of his slow pace, we’d come to Grosvenor Gate. I nodded and Amos picked up the signal and came alongside me, cutting out Mr Disraeli with the precision of a cavalry manoeuvre. I didn’t look back as we went through the gate and into Park Lane.

‘He’s thinking of buying that mare,’ Amos commented. ‘They’re asking twenty guineas too much for her and she’s a devil to shoe.’

He led the way across Park Lane, going carefully because at this time of the morning carts came in with vegetables for Covent Garden from the farms north of the park, their drivers still half asleep. As we rode along Mount Street, Amos carried on talking about Mr Disraeli, not put out by my silence.

‘They say he’s got a mountain of debts already, and he’s looking for a rich widow to marry.’

Was that intended as a warning to me? If so, Amos was a long way off the mark for once. He was usually a totally reliable source of gossip. His success in adapting to life in London astounded me. A year ago, he’d never set foot outside his home county of Herefordshire, far away to the west, and he still spoke with an accent that carried hayfields and apple orchards in every syllable. He’d been caught in the same hurricane that had blown me into the life I was leading. When Rancie and I came to London he’d talked about staying a day or two to see us settled. Days had turned to weeks, weeks to months, and here he still was. With his strength and knowledge of horses, it was no surprise when he found work at a livery stables on the Bayswater Road, the northern edge of Hyde Park. He even solved for me the problem of how I was to keep Rancie (or Esperance, to give her her proper name), my father’s last gift to me. She was given board and lodging at the livery stables, in return for being ridden by some of the more skilful and light-handed lady clients. What was surprising was the extent to which this country giant, standing some six and a half feet in his riding boots, had become a source of knowledge about fashionable London life, all without the slightest hint of snobbery, more the way a boy might study the habits of birds or animals.

At first I wondered how he came by this gossip; then one day when I happened to be crossing the park on foot I saw him, though he didn’t see me. He was riding out behind a well-dressed and beautiful lady. His boots and the cob he was riding shone like mahogany, he wore a black hat with a silver lace cockade on his light brown hair and his blue eyes gleamed with good humour. I saw the glances he was getting from riders with less impressive grooms and the complacent smile on the face of his own lady, and could hardly keep from laughing out loud. I’d heard since that he was so popular with lady customers that his stables had to increase his wages to stop him being poached by rivals.

We turned into South Audley Street, nearly home. It was almost full light now.

‘I’ll come for you on Monday then, shall I?’ Amos said.

‘Yes please.’

Most mornings of the week I rode out on Rancie with Amos. Even on days when I didn’t see them, the thought of them less than a mile away across the park was enough to raise my spirits.

He rode in front of me into Adam’s Mews, then through the opening into a kind of appendix to the mews called Abel Yard. At the mounting block by the open gates he slid off Bishop to help me down, then, taking Rancie’s reins, vaulted back into his saddle. He touched his crop to his hat brim as they rode away, Rancie letting herself be led as quietly as a children’s pony.

There was a cow on our doorstep, a Guernsey, being milked into a quart jug.

‘Hello, Martha. Hello, Mr Colley,’ I said.

The cowman looked up from Martha’s stomach and grinned a hello at me, baring a set of toothless gums. He and Martha, along with his three other Guernsey cows, a dozen chickens and one cockerel, inhabited the end of the cul-de-sac that was Abel Yard. Mr Colley, his wife, daughter, daughter’s baby and daughter’s bone-idle husband lived above the cow barn. If I woke early enough, I could look out of the window and see Mr Colley leading his first cow of the day out by lamplight on the start of his milk round. He sometimes took the cows to graze on the long grass of the burying ground behind Grosvenor Chapel round the corner near the workhouse. The authorities tried to stop him and it was a frequent sight to see Mr Colley sprinting along the mews, a cow trotting beside him and the parish beadle uttering threats as he puffed along behind.