The Devil's Feast Page 16

  “Well, naturally, I have,” said the man, a mite huffily. “I follow happenings in India.”

  “Avery,” Jerrold ran on, “this is William Thackeray, a member of our very humble profession, that is to say, a journalist”—at this, Thackeray winced—“of considerable talent and acuity. He writes for Fraser’s Magazine and had a novel published last year, Catherine.”

  I tried to think if I had read anything from Fraser’s at all. It seemed my dinner might very well depend upon it.

  “I did enjoy Yellowplush—yes, the Yellowplush stories in Fraser’s,” I said. “Highly amusing.”

  Thackeray’s face broke into an extraordinarily attractive smile.

  “You have hit the very nail, Avery,” said Jerrold drily. “There, you will have to stand him dinner now.”

  • • •

  THE FARE WAS SIMPLER than Soyer’s dinner, but no less satisfying for that. A velvety vegetable soup, followed by three small plates of French olives, anchovy filets and crisp, bitter radishes with butter. Jerrold and Mayhew ordered roast beef served with early spring vegetables, some small potatoes basted in butter and chopped herbs, and I chose Soyer’s famous dish, lamb cutlets à la Reform, as well as a late winter salad of herbs and cress. Percy, who periodically patrolled the Coffee Room, came to carve their beef, a great roast of which rolled up on a silver platter, his knife sliding through the meat like a diver penetrating water.

  “Is everything to your liking, Captain Avery?” he said.

  Mayhew looked impressed. “Good God! Two days, and the staff are greeting you by name. And you’re a Tory. What’s the secret?”

  “Pity he was not about to face down the Coffee Room clerk,” observed Jerrold.

  We drank sherry, then an excellent claret. From time to time, Mr. Thackeray, sitting with his friends at the next table, glanced over at us.

  “Douglas says there are rumors flying round the club,” said Mayhew at last. “Come on, Avery, what’s your secret?” He chased the last morsels round his dinner plate.

  “What sort of rumors?” I said.

  “Douglas says that someone died at the club, later that night, after your dinner.”

  “For a moment I wondered if it was you!” said Jerrold waggishly. “After all, you disappeared from the dinner table and never came back. You and young Rowlands. Now, tell us how it is that you have become such a favorite at the Reform.”

  I choked and looked up from my plate guiltily. There was an awkward pause. “I cannot really—”

  “My dear fellow—” said Jerrold. Another pause. “Not Rowlands?”

  Blake always said my face was distressingly easy to read.

  “I found him collapsed on the floor.”

  “Dear me. Do you know what it was?”

  The wine had loosened my tongue. “The committee has pressed me to look into it, because everything must be perfect for their banquet, though I protested I was not really their man, and Blake is away.”

  “Was it something he ate?” Jerrold said, laughing. “It seems the club has gone from pampering Whigs to killing them off. Rather a severe sentence, would you not say?”

  “Well, it is most interesting,” said Mayhew brightly, his wineglass empty and his cheeks flushed. “Douglas says that beneath the calm surface of the Reform, a thousand feuds and rivalries lurk. Each faction vies for domination. The committee versus the members. The committee versus the kitchen. The radicals versus the Whigs. A perfect place for a murder.”

  “Why, it is a marvelous place!” said Jerrold, only half mocking. “The finest food in clubland, the most glorious building. A place that salutes talent, not birth, and takes everyone: nonconformists, Roman Catholics, Jews—and hacks! And when they put their minds to it, the members are supposed to be thinking up a program to improve the world. What could be better?” He paused. “Fewer dull Whigs, I suppose. Et voilà.”

  “So, Avery,” said Mayhew casually, “is there a story in Rowlands’s demise for us?”

  “No, not at all, and I am not supposed to have told you any of this. The committee has asked me to be discreet. But I do not believe Soyer’s table was the culprit, for here we are, and Duncombe over there, none the worse for wear. My suspicion is, Rowlands was dosing himself with arsenic and took too much. I believe the matter is more or less resolved, and tomorrow I should be on my way home.”

  “Duncombe? Does he know?” said Jerrold.

  “I had to tell him this afternoon. He was most upset.”

  “He seems quite jolly to me now,” said Jerrold tartly. Duncombe was now cheerily sharing some wine with two rather dull-looking men at another table.

  “My dear Avery, you really should be more circumspect—you are altogether too trusting. We are newspapermen—it is our job to publish what others wish kept quiet.” He hooted at my worried look. “Do not fear, we’ll keep your counsel. But, in return, you must tell us where Blake is.” His sharp little eyes gleamed.

  “Some mysterious investigation about which he will say nothing,” I mumbled. “Tell me about Mr. Thackeray. I gather it is not an easy acquaintance.”

  “We have a history,” said Jerrold. “We met in Paris in the thirties. He was busy losing a fortune, I attempting to scrape a living. He has a sharp tongue—though not quite as sharp as mine—and a satirical eye.” He grinned. “He considers himself a gentleman and feels journalism debases him and consequently looks down on the rest of us. He is rather inclined to look down in general. He thinks me lower than him because he once saw me eating my peas with a knife.”

  “Douglas makes him nervous because he is as clever as he.”

  “He has had his tragedies,” Jerrold went on. “He has a mad wife—a sad story—and two small daughters. Ran through his inheritance in a matter of years. Now he has to scramble for commissions like the rest of us to pay for his wife’s asylum bills. He is prone to moods. He can be greatly entertaining or as crotchety and rude as you like, and is a member of a great many clubs and out every night.”

  “He cannot decide if he approves of Punch or thinks it beneath him,” said Mayhew.

  “He is coming over,” said Jerrold.

  “May we join you?” said Mr. Thackeray. He had brought his chair with him, and two smiling followers. We exchanged pleasantries and they sat themselves down. Mr. Thackeray folded his considerable length into his chair and said his friends had heard of me, and he wished to learn more about the gentleman with such good taste in literature for whose dinner he had just paid. He beckoned the Coffee Room clerk and demanded a bottle of claret and some port, lit a cigar and asked me about India.

  I mumbled a vague reply. I did not want to talk about India.

  “Now, Thack,” said Mayhew, bending confidentially into the table, “you are a clubman par excellence, and you must have some excellent gossip.”

  Thackeray chuckled, looked over his spectacles and puffed on his cigar.

  It was one of his friends who answered. “Did you hear that blackguard Dr. Blackman is being forced to resign for cheating at cards?”

  “Indeed, the bugger had ten pounds off me two weeks ago,” said Thackeray.

  “I am told Worplesdon was seen voting for the Tories,” said Jerrold.

  “Ha, ha! No more Reform dinners for him!”

  “John Wilkie was found asleep in the library with his shoes off, but he is in with the committee and so may live to tell the tale.”

  “He has a new doxy and so gets no sleep these days.”

  “Who’s the lady?”

  “Mrs. Keeley, and she is no lady.”

  “Oh, the actress!” said Thackeray, delighted. “I heard said she didn’t care for ‘docking.’”

  “That is because she cannot do it in public, and she performs only for applause,” said Jerrold.

  They both grinned widely. The air began to warm up.

 
“What do you know about the committee?” said Jerrold.

  “Oh, the committee! I’m told that Charles Barry is taking them to court for his fee.”

  “I have heard it, too. I did not set too much store by it.”

  “I have it on good authority . . .”

  “But why?” said Mayhew innocently.

  “The club is in debt. All this”—Thackeray waved his cigar toward the gilded columns and the painted cornices—“costs far more than was originally estimated. Three times more, if what I’ve heard is to be believed. Barry says he is owed more for all the redesigns and extra time he spent; the committee disagrees.”

  “What if the committee will not pay?” said Mayhew.

  “Perhaps the entire club will end up in debtor’s prison,” said Thackeray. “What a thought! It might make a good squib for Punch. The members of the Reform troop into the Marshalsea one by one.”

  “From what I hear, the committee could do with a few days in the chokey,” Jerrold murmured, smiling. “What is all this about arguments with Soyer? The members would be in uproar if they were to wake up one day and discover he had left and the committee the reason for it.”

  “That’s the one thing we agree on, Douglas,” said Thackeray. “There are some fine idiots on the committee.”

  “I came across Captain Beare yesterday,” I said.

  “Beare is exactly the man,” said Thackeray.

  “He is an unimaginative little person who considers food a weakness,” said Jerrold. “He has decided his one chance to lord it over his fellow men will be as chairman of the club’s governing committee.”

  “I am sure Soyer can be a handful,” Thackeray mused. “Though I yield to no man in my admiration of his stewed rump steak with oyster sauce, and I am very fond of him. He has his moments and, for all his genius, he is, in the end, just a cook.”

  “My dear Thack, what a snob you are,” said Jerrold, not altogether warmly.

  The air began to cool again.

  “What do you make of Mr. Ellice?” I ventured.

  “Oh, Ellice!” said Thackeray. “Ellice claims he invented the club and believes it belongs to him. In truth, he fought the idea for months and now pets the child—adopted—as if begat by himself!”

  A gentleman at another table looked round at this. Jerrold smiled mischievously, leaned forward once more and lowered his voice.

  “William Molesworth, over there, founded the club.” He gestured at where Duncombe and his friends sat in their rainbow colors. “Have you not seen him flinch every time Ellice takes the credit? He persuaded Ellice to put a very considerable sum of money into setting it up; now Ellice thinks he owns it. Molesworth’s idea was to start a club that would gather together all the so-called progressives—the radicals, the religious nonconformists and dissenters, northern factory owners who favored notions of reform and progress, and the Irish members—all those who broadly call themselves liberals—along with the Whigs, to build one party to oppose the Tories. At first the Whigs’ leaders refused; they could think of nothing more demeaning than to descend to the radicals’ level. However, they were eventually brought around, not least by the Tories’ triumph at the last elections. The radicals expected that, having pulled all sides of the argument together, they would be at the helm. They would draw off the best and most progressive of the Whigs, the old party would decay and they would lead a coalition of progress and change.”

  “How wrong they have been,” said Mayhew.

  “In what way?” I said.

  “The Whigs did not fade, they have won. They have kept hold of the party,” said Thackeray nonchalantly, “while the radicals have never been a party and all wish to be leaders; moreover, their numbers were sorely reduced at the last election, not least because Whig landlords still have control over a large number of corrupt parliamentary seats, and like to put in men they regard as the ‘right sort.’ The radicals have been outnumbered by the Whigs, and their claws pulled. The forces of conservatism are in charge here—and luxury, excellent food and good company have worn down political zeal. Not that I mind excessively.” He grinned. “And, finally, the Whig leaders like Palmerston stay away—they keep to their rich aeries at Brooks’s Club and Crockford’s, where they gamble their fortunes and hatch policy, while at the Carlton the Tory leaders may be seen a dozen times a day. If I were Molesworth, it would stick in my gullet.”

  “I am amazed,” said Jerrold, thoughtfully, “that the radicals are not angrier.”

  “Some are,” said Mayhew excitedly, taking a deep swig from his glass and casting his eyes in the direction of Molesworth and Duncombe’s table. “I have heard that some are furious at the direction the club has taken. They thought they would rule the party; instead, they find their numbers depleted and the Whigs once again in the ascendant. They blame the club for promising their dominance but delivering their downfall, and for blunting political ambition by encouraging lotus-eating. I have even heard it said that some would like to see it fall, for it would leave them free again.”

  “Ah, yes.” Thackeray waved his cigar as if sketching a picture in the air. “I see it all: the radicals in their sky-blue frock coats rising up and pulling down the curtains, knocking over the portrait busts and—whisper it—pouring salt into the soup! Before repairing home to change for dinner.”

  “Not all the radicals are silly young dandies,” Jerrold said. “Not that they are likely to do anything. That is not the British way. They will mutter and complain, and that will be that.”

  “Too true,” said Thackeray. “And, for all its faults, the Reform is the queen of clubland: the fairest, the most convivial, and with the finest bill of fare. Soyer was on form tonight. I forswore the beans and bacon for once and had an excellent veal chop and œufs en gelée.”

  “There’s that banquet here in a few days,” said Mayhew unsteadily, and I saw that in the space of minutes he had slipped from sober to sozzled. “If I were an angry radical, I’d go along and upset a tureen of soup in Ibrahim Pasha’s . . . lap. I’d throw forks and bread rolls at Lord Palmerston. I should do my best to bring down the house. I’d have done for Rowlands before he did for himself!”

  It occurred to me that Mayhew’s speculations might be closer to the mark than he realized.

  “So that story is true?” said Thackeray.

  “You had heard already?” I said, alarmed.

  “He told me.” He pointed at one of his friends.

  “I was told this afternoon that he had died,” said the friend.

  “What carried him off?” Thackeray said. A smile stole across his features. “Did he expire under the weight of his gold watch chains? Was he mesmerized by one of his patterned waistcoats and walked into the road, only to be run over by a draper’s cart?”

  Jerrold shrugged, one of his crooked shoulders leaping much higher than the other, and gave me a philosophical look.

  “What does Captain Avery know about the matter?” said Thackeray, sitting up.

  “I happened to be with Mr. Rowlands, whom I hardly knew, when he was taken ill,” I said.

  “We heard it was after one of Soyer’s dinners. Fancy! The great chef’s cooking finished him off!” Thackeray clapped his hands and laughed delightedly.

  “No, sir!” said I, rather more vehemently than I had intended.

  “Oh, do not misunderstand me. I love Monsieur Soyer extremely. His culinary creations delight me, his manner and convivial habits amuse and enchant me. One day, I shall put him in a novel!”

  “Anyway,” said Mayhew indignantly, “Rowlands did not die of his dinner, he was poisoned. With arsenic. He was dosing himself.”

  “Henry,” said Jerrold, “I think we had better get you home.”

  “Arsenic, eh?” said Thackeray. He nodded knowingly. “One hears it is rather the thing in certain excitable parts of society.”

  “Real
ly?” I said.

  “I know it only on hearsay, of course. But the story is that some fashionable young bucks take a grain a day. They claim that, in the right dose, it improves the complexion and the digestion, and bestows great energy and staying power on the ingester, both outside, and—so it is said—inside, the bedroom.”

  “Good God! Is there anything in it?”

  “Damned if I know. But in Ireland once I saw a man wipe a little arsenic on a racehorse’s arse to make him run. The effect was”—Thackeray spread his arms as wide as he could—“voltaic!” He threw his head back and laughed.

  “Did he win the race?”

  “He did indeed.”

  • • •

  I RETURNED TO MY ROOM in excellent spirits. The matter of Rowlands’s death seemed resolved. Blake was snoring quietly. He would be free in the morning to go where he would. Wrapped in the sheets, he looked almost frail—and unusually at peace—his gaunt face wiped clean of frowns and questions. I wedged the occasional table against the door to prevent anyone entering, took the cast-off coverlet, wrapped myself in it and lay down next to him. As I drifted off, I recalled that I had failed to write to Helen again, as I had promised myself I would, but the thought could not keep me from sleep.

  PART THREE

  Chapter Eleven

  A dozen heavy blows, painful and insistent, penetrated my dreams. Then came the calls.

  “Captain Avery! Captain Avery! Are you there? Are you awake?”

  Blake sat up, eyes wide.

  “Into the wardrobe,” I ordered him. He looked at me askance but climbed in nevertheless.

  I went to the door and pulled the table away from it.

  “What time is it? I did request that I not be roused early this morning. Is it very late?”

  In the doorway, Mr. Scott in a bedrobe, his countenance gray with anxiety, and Mr. Percy, grave, trim, dressed, composed.

  “It is not yet five, sir. I am sorry,” said Mr. Scott, wringing his hands.

  “There has been an incident,” said Mr. Percy. “We would be grateful for your presence.”