Tom Wasp and the Seven Deadly Sins Read online

  ‘At least she’s showing some respect now,’ Clara muttered.

  There were few ladies here amongst the gentlemen, and the former were gathered in the rear room of the bookstore. I was surprised to see Mrs Fortescue amongst them and she came to greet Clara and Hetty, perhaps thinking that in Clara’s company Mrs Harcourt would not raise any objection to her presence. I doubted whether she would have received a formal invitation. Mrs Fortescue did not greet me, even though I swept her a lordly bow. We made a strange quartet for a business gathering; three ladies and a chimney sweep who for all his scrubbing could not disguise his trade.

  With both rooms crowded, I could see not only the seven Tarlton Ordinaries, but a great number of other booksellers from the Row, including, so Clara whispered to me, religious publishers for which trade the Row was once famous. Many of these guests were examining the shelves rather than partaking of the tea and sponge cakes that were available in this rear room, where I spotted the now repaired window. It was a quiet scene for a while as befitted the day — until Mrs Fortescue and Mrs Harcourt once again came face to face. Clara tried her best to prevent this, but we became mere bystanders in the battle.

  Mrs Harcourt bristled in her black as she loudly proclaimed for all to hear, ‘If this were not the day of my beloved husband’s funeral, I would ask you to leave, Mrs Fortescue, just as he did the day he died.’

  ‘If this were not the day of my dear employer and friend’s funeral,’ Mrs Fortescue retorted even more loudly, ‘I would be delighted to do so. However, he would have wished me to be present at such a business reception.’

  ‘You may not remain unless you disclose where my manuscript is,’ replied Mrs Harcourt adding a shriller tone to the shouting, which reduced any remaining conversation in the room to shocked silence.

  ‘It was either stolen that night or you already have it yourself,’ Mrs Fortescue screeched.

  ‘Stolen by you. You are the thief,’ boomed Mrs Harcourt.

  Guests’ cups were suspended in mid-air at this immoderate language, and then hurriedly replaced on saucers as though it were unseemly to drink tea while convention was being so flagrantly ignored. ‘Such anger between them, where once there was the voice of harmony,’ murmured an Ordinary, the plump Pickwickian gentleman whom I had seen sitting at the far side of the table at their luncheon meeting.

  ‘Upon my word, Mrs Harcourt, you choose inappropriate words for a lady in mourning,’ Mrs Fortescue replied to her adversary’s challenge — less volume was required, as an appalled silence now reigned in both rooms. ‘Would I demean myself by breaking into this bookstore at night? Why not ask the Tarlton Ordinaries where the manuscript is, if you’re so sure it existed?’ That set those gentlemen bristling.

  ‘Be certain that I will,’ Mrs Harcourt replied, ‘and I shall once again inform the City of London police that you are responsible for the theft of my property.’

  By this time, many of the guests considered that etiquette, if not their private wishes, demanded their withdrawal from the gathering and were quietly leaving the building. Our little party remained, however, augmented by one or two gentlemen publishers and all the Tarlton Ordinaries — judging by their discreetly worn badges carrying the Tarlton image. Mr Splendour, Mr Timpson and Mr Manley in particular seemed eager to continue the discussion about this missing manuscript.

  ‘Mr Harcourt definitely said he had it, Mrs Fortescue,’ Mr Manley said, bravely speaking out. ‘And I can assure you that I do not have it. Perhaps one of my friends among the other Ordinaries has it?’

  He must have realised too late that this was not likely to endear him to his friends, all six of whom broke into immediate cries of denial. Mr Timpson was the loudest in his protestations.

  ‘I most certainly do not,’ he cried indignantly.

  Mr Splendour had a different approach. ‘Nor I,’ he said stiffly. ‘Harcourt was an odd fish. It’s my opinion he was giving us gammon that evening. Of course he didn’t have the manuscript. We were wise not to believe him.’

  There was some surprise when he uttered these words, but a hasty, ‘We were indeed’ from Mr Timpson set the tone — until Mrs Harcourt had her say.

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said briskly. ‘He received it as expected on Wednesday afternoon. I received a telegram to that effect in the evening, instructing me to come to London the following morning as arranged. Given the news I then received of his death, I could not have turned to business matters immediately, but now I do. My husband would not have given me gammon, gentlemen. So where is the manuscript, and which of you?’ she demanded yet again of the Ordinaries, ‘was the cracksman?’

  The Ordinaries understandably stiffened at this insult, which had aroused great interest amongst the other publishing gentlemen, while I contemplated my own fears that Phineas was probably the cracksman — and yet would Phineas have known how to break glass in that way? He must surely have had someone with him. Someone like Slugger Joe. But here I returned to the nub of it. If he had been with Phineas, Slugger would surely have walked off with anything he’d taken at Flint’s behest, not given it to Phineas, so why was he so anxious to search Phineas’ rooms? It was a puzzle indeed.

  Another puzzle was why this manuscript should be of such importance that it was outweighing the occasion, mourning the violent murder of Mr Harcourt. That would hardly be a subject of open discussion in the presence of his widow, and so was the dissension over this manuscript masking a deeper rift amongst them? Did each of them have his own suspicions as to who had garrotted Mr Harcourt?

  The argument over the manuscript was still in progress. ‘Has a thorough search of these premises been made?’ Mr George Timpson asked pompously, looking round at the bookshelves now refilled with books crammed in at random.

  ‘It has,’ Mrs Harcourt snapped and I believed her. ‘My late husband’s safe, every drawer and every bookshelf in this establishment has been searched in vain. It has gone, and you have it, Mrs Fortescue.’

  ‘I could hardly have removed this script without Mr Harcourt noticing,’ Mrs Fortescue retaliated.

  ‘You returned to remove it the following evening then, no doubt with the help of these gentlemen.’

  The gentlemen concerned, increasingly annoyed at being cast as cracksmen, burst into furious denials regardless of funeral convention. As the noise died down, Hetty’s sweet voice rose above it:

  ‘What is this missing manuscript?’ she enquired.

  The silence that followed was eventually broken by Mr Splendour. ‘Nothing of great importance, Miss Pomfret. It’s only of interest to clubs such as our own.’

  Hetty tried to be helpful. ‘We could all help search this shop again, Mrs Harcourt.’

  ‘No!’ the Tarlton Ordinaries cried almost in unison. United they might now appear, I thought, but if there was an opportunity for any one of them to obtain this mysterious manuscript for himself then comradely feelings would not get in the way.

  Mrs Harcourt was equally unfriendly. ‘Kindly leave this matter to me, Miss Pomfret,’ she snapped. ‘I have long been aware you were spooning with my husband, upsetting not only him but myself.’

  Mr Splendour tried to calm the deteriorating situation with a loud: ‘We don’t know what this manuscript might look like so hunting for it here would avail us nothing. We only know what the content would have been.’

  ‘And what is that?’ Clara demanded, her arm round Hetty, who was in tears. The glint in Clara’s eye suggested she was holding back with difficulty.

  No one rushed to enlighten her; the Ordinaries looked very grim, as did Mrs Harcourt and Mrs Fortescue.

  It was Mrs Fortescue who broke the tense silence. ‘Tell them, Algernon,’ she said to her new employer, Mr Splendour. ‘Tell them.’

  He cleared his throat and said unhappily: ‘Richard Tarlton’s lost play of the Seven Deadly Sins.

  VIII

  Where is It?

  I watched the Tarlton Ordinaries, to see how they would react to this revelation. The
ir expressions ranged from anger to horror, but it was clearly no surprise to any of them. Mrs Harcourt was the first to speak.

  ‘Of course the manuscript is lost,’ she snapped back at Mr Splendour. ‘It was stolen last Thursday night by that woman.’ A lace-gloved finger pointed at Mrs Fortescue.

  For once Mrs Fortescue failed to rise to the challenge. ‘The old miser. He told me he was expecting only what he called a small fragment of Tarlton’s work and therefore of interest but no great importance.’

  Mrs Harcourt instantly dismissed this. ‘Nonsense. You knew full well what it was, where it was and its worth. Where is it?’

  This puzzled one of the publishing gentlemen, not of the Tarlton Ordinaries. ‘A missing play by this fellow Tarlton can hardly be said to be a catastrophe,’ he remarked. ‘I’ve heard of Tarlton of course, but there were a great many playwrights around in Elizabethan times. I can’t see that this Tarlton play is any great loss to literature or of great value.’

  ‘Hear, hear. Certainly nothing to do with our friend Harcourt’s death,’ George Timpson said hastily, waistcoat buttons straining in his effort to appear calm.

  ‘I do so agree,’ Thomas Manley remarked feebly. He gave a nervous smile, which was quickly repressed as he must have remembered where he was.

  ‘Indeed,’ Mr Splendour rapidly agreed. ‘It is of interest only to the Ordinaries.’

  ‘Unless of course —’ the plump Pickwickian Ordinary began, but I could hear no more as his voice could not be heard owing to a sudden outburst of loud conversation from his fellow members.

  ‘Mr Chalcot,’ Clara whispered to me.

  ‘Unfortunately the play was lost, Miss Pomfret,’ Mr Timpson boomed in reply to Hetty, with no regard for Mr Chalcot’s intervention. ‘Nevertheless, you will be wondering how we know it ever existed.’

  Hetty looked surprised, and I doubted very much whether such a thought had entered her mind. Nevertheless, the Tarlton Ordinaries were all suddenly anxious to inform Hetty of every detail on this subject.

  ‘Because the poet Gabriel Harvey, scholarly adviser to Sir Philip Sidney, saw the play performed in Oxford in the 1580s, no doubt with Tarlton performing as the fool. There are other references to it —’ offered Mr Timpson.

  ‘By no means is Tarlton’s play to be confused with that of the same name performed in the following decade —’ Mr Manley interrupted him.

  ‘The plot of which was discovered last century,’ Mr Splendour couldn’t wait to let us know. ‘Comedy or tragedy however? Of that we cannot be sure just as we cannot be sure whether it was later performed by Lord Strange’s Men or the Lord Chamberlain’s, of which Shakespeare —’

  That name brought a gasp from his audience, which set me thinking.

  ‘Dear Tarlton,’ Mr Manley blurted out. ‘Such an incomparable comedian. I wonder whether you have heard the jest he made about Sir Walter Raleigh before Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth —’

  ‘— Not now, Manley,’ Mr Timpson loudly reprimanded him. ‘Today of all days we should dwell on life’s tragedies.’

  It seemed that none of the Ordinaries wished to join in this discussion of life’s tragedies, at least as far as Mr Harcourt’s murder was concerned. I wondered again whether that or this play loomed largest in their minds. The name of Richard Tarlton and that of his play, however, disappeared from the conversation. They were so markedly absent that I wondered what Mr Chalcot would have said about the play’s relevance for the modern book world, if he had been allowed to continue. As it was, I saw several more of the company edging their way towards the door into the street. Clara too seemed anxious to leave, but loyally stayed as I showed no signs of leaving. I was all too aware that amongst this diminishing group there could be a murderer, and that was what loomed in my own mind, with Phineas’ life at stake.

  Mrs Fortescue and Mrs Harcourt needed very little encouragement to resume hostilities.

  ‘How much would this Tarlton play be worth?’ Mrs Harcourt asked Mr Timpson with less than genteel eagerness.

  ‘As has been indicated, dear lady, very little, save to us, the Ordinaries. Pray do not concern yourself.’

  ‘I do concern myself,’ she retorted. ‘It belongs to me, now that Mr Harcourt is no longer with us, and if it is of any value to you, gentlemen, you will naturally wish to acquire it. At a suitable price.’

  Glancing at his fellow Ordinaries, Mr Timpson took up the challenge. ‘If the play is found, we would of course evaluate it, although I fear it would bring you but scant monetary rewards, Mrs Harcourt; you would however have the honour of knowing you had contributed to the legacy of Richard Tarlton.’ He could contain himself no longer, however. ‘But I find it hard to believe it has completely disappeared. Where is it, Mrs Harcourt?’ he burst out.

  ‘Where is it, Mrs Fortescue?’ she demanded in turn, skirts rustling in indignation.

  ‘Where is it?’ Mrs Fortescue demanded of the assembled Ordinaries.

  I almost cried ‘where is it?’ myself, as this play that was apparently of little value was so much in demand.

  ‘This is like running around the Crystal Palace lakes,’ murmured Clara.

  I agreed with her and was about to suggest we left after paying our respects to Mrs Harcourt (not that she would welcome them) when the conversation took an interesting turn. Mr ‘Pickwick’ Chalcot spoke again.

  ‘What puzzles me, Mrs Harcourt, is why Mr Harcourt was so sure that manuscript was indeed the lost play. As we have just heard, there was at least one other play of the name Seven Deadly Sins in the sixteenth century and no plays were treated with the respect we give them in these modern times. Old stories were revived and used time after time, collaboration on scripts by playwrights was commonplace.’

  Mr Timpson was becoming agitated and clearly wishing to change the subject, but Mr Chalcot was warming to his theme. ‘Fortunately, as Mr Timpson has explained, we know that Tarlton did indeed write a play on the seven deadly sins. But if the script is genuine, how did Mr Harcourt find it?’

  ‘That is immaterial,’ Mrs Harcourt snapped.

  ‘I gathered,’ Mr Splendour said airily, ‘that he was keeping that a secret because it was undoubtedly genuine — or worthless.’ His last two words were accompanied by a laugh that fell short of its objective in this tense gathering.

  ‘There are other reasons for keeping silent,’ Mr Manley said shrilly. ‘We all know Mr Harcourt had connections.’

  ‘What connections?’ Mrs Harcourt asked stonily, as no one else spoke and the tension in the room grew. Even Mrs Fortescue remained silent.

  ‘Fences?’ Mr Chalcot enquired blandly, voicing what most of us already knew.

  Mr Timpson did his best to look shocked. ‘No, indeed. The Spitalfields dealer from whom Mr Harcourt obtained his stock was a reputable London trader, with access to private libraries.’

  No one queried what means of access this dealer had, but Mrs Harcourt naturally seized on this. ‘I have told you that is immaterial. My husband undoubtedly bought the Tarlton manuscript direct from such a collection and not from any such dealer.’

  ‘Whose library, however?’ Mr Timpson asked. ‘Madam, we Tarlton Ordinaries have spent much time in pursuing this question. Tarlton’s associates were hardly possessors of vast estates. Apart from the so-called adopted son referred to in his jest book, Tarlton had only one son, legitimate or otherwise, of whom there are no further records because it’s probable he died at the hands of a crooked lawyer. It is therefore clear that the manuscript came into the hands of some private gentleman after Tarlton’s death in 1588.’

  ‘And what is also clear,’ Mr Splendour quickly added, ‘is that this matter has no relevance to Mr Harcourt’s shocking murder, still under investigation by the police. No doubt the perpetrator will soon be found; he is probably one of the staff at Dolly’s, as we saw no sign of any ruffians when we left Mr Harcourt.’ I could see Clara stifling a furious response, judging by her flushed cheeks and tightly-set lips, and Hetty looked near to
tears.

  Mrs Harcourt, however, seemed determined not to let go of her current grievance. ‘The thief — for whom we need not look as far as Dolly’s — took advantage of my poor husband’s death to steal this manuscript.’

  This made it sound as though she thought the theft and the murder might not necessarily be linked, but even so where did that take me on this journey to prove Phineas’ innocence? Was the real killer present now, or was he William or Jericho? And over all these possibilities lay the shadow of Flint. I was not aware of having heard that distinctive voice here today, but the conversation was so loud and confused there had been little chance of doing so. But whatever his means, Flint would be following my every movement.

  *

  Newgate does its best to frighten you away from crime from the very moment you arrive. That great door with its formidable spikes above the huge knocker strikes fear into both innocent and guilty alike, and it’s a relief to be allowed inside, at least as far as the lodgekeeper’s office.

  Since little in the way of food is provided for those committed for trial, Clara had been sending food from Dolly’s to Phineas daily. This was not to Jericho’s pleasure, I’m sure. Hetty faithfully carried it to Newgate each day, although she had to leave it with the warders, as he was allowed no visitors yet. She’s inherited her mother’s kind heart.

  Even though I had a special authorisation from Constable Peters, the lodgekeeper was not disposed to let me in when I called on Thursday morning, but knowing me of old he relented. Even lawyers for the accused are not permitted in for the first ten days of imprisonment, let alone other visitors, so this was a great favour.

  Newgate has had modernisations in recent years and not much of the old prison still exists, when prisoners had to sleep head to toe like slaves on a ship. Now, the men’s side has four galleries full of cells, much better I have been told, where the prisoners sentenced to penal servitude can pick their oakum. But Phineas, as someone committed for trial, was on the ground floor in block A. I felt my heart thumping as I followed the warder down the long silent corridors, the only sound being the clang of the iron gates every so often as he locked them after us along the way. Silence. Not a word can pass in prisons amongst its inmates whether awaiting trial or on penal servitude.