The Frost Fair Part 3

'Your valet rushed to my house yesterday evening with news of your arrest, but they would not let me see you until this morning. I had to bribe the turnkey to be left alone with you for ten minutes.'

'This whole place is run on bribes and favours.'

'Tell me what happened,' said Christopher, shocked at his brother's condition. 'Your valet said that officers came to your house.'

Henry put a hand to his brow. 'It's been like a descent into h.e.l.l.'

'Have you been badly treated?'

'I've been everything, Christopher. Manacled, fettered, browbeaten, bullied, interrogated, humiliated and even threatened with torture. Had I not had sufficient money to buy a room of my own, they'd have tossed me in with the sweepings of London. Can you imagine that?' he asked with a flash of his old spirit. 'Me, Henry Redmayne, a man of delicate sensibilities, locked up with a seething ma.s.s of thieves, cutthroats and naughty ladies, all of them infected with maladies of some kind or another. They'd have torn me to shreds as soon as look at me.' He stared down at his stockinged feet. 'I had to give my best shoes to the prison sergeant - the ones with the silver buckles - so that he'd spare me from being chained to the wall.'

'I'll protest strongly on your behalf.'

"There's no point.'

'Even a prisoner has certain rights.'

'Not in Newgate.'

'It's not as if you're a convicted felon,' argued Christopher. 'You're simply on remand. When this whole business is cleared up, you'll be found innocent, released and able to resume your normal life.'

'Normal life!' echoed Henry gloomily. 'Those days are gone.'

'Take heart, brother.'

'How can I?'

'We'll help you through this nightmare.'

'It's too late, Christopher. The worst has already occurred. The very fact of my arrest has blackened my name and, I daresay, cost me my sinecure at the Navy Office.'

'Not if you are completely exonerated.'

'Nothing can exonerate me from the torment I've suffered so far,' moaned Henry, running his fingers through the vestigial remains of his hair. 'I was arrested in front of my valet, taken by force from my house, questioned for hours by rogues who had patterned themselves on the Spanish Inquisition, deprived of my wig and most of my apparel, then flung into this sewer. By way of a jest, the turnkeys pretended to lock me next door.'

'Next door?'

'Can you not smell that noisome reek?'

Christopher nodded. 'It's the stench of decay.'

'They made me see where it came from,' said Henry, glancing at the wall directly opposite. 'In the next cell are the quartered remains of three poor wretches who were executed earlier this week. They are being kept there until their relatives can get permission to bury what's left of them. The turnkeys took a delight in pointing out that there were no heads in the cell. They'd been parboiled by the hangman with bay-salt and c.u.mmin seed so that they would not rot. Those heads have now been set up on spikes for all London to mock.' He grabbed his brother. 'Do not let that happen to me, Christopher. Save me from that disgrace.'

'Only those found guilty of treason suffer that indignity.'

'They'll do their best to pin that crime on me as well.'

'Nonsense!'

'There's nothing they like more than to see a gentleman brought down,' wailed Henry. 'I'm like one of those bulls they had at the frost fair, a n.o.ble animal forced to its knees by a pack of sharp-toothed mongrels. I can feel the blood trickling down my back already.'

'Enough of this!' said Christopher, determined not to let his brother wallow in self-pity. 'Our main task is to get you out of here today.'

'There's no chance of that.'

'Yes, there is. I'll speak to the magistrate who committed you.'

'I'm more worried about the judge who'll condemn me.'

'The case will not even come to trial, Henry.'

'It must. The law will take its course.'

'Only if there's enough evidence against you,' argued Christopher, 'and, clearly, there is not. A gross miscarriage of justice has taken place here. You'll be able to sue for wrongful arrest.'

'Will I?'

'Yes, Henry. The charge against you is preposterous.'

'They do not seem to think so.'

'Only because they do not know you as well as I do. What better spokesman is there than a brother? You have your faults, I grant you - and I've taken you to task about them often enough - but you are no murderer, Henry. I've never seen you swat a fly, still less raise your hand against another man.' 'I do not always reign in my temper,' confessed Henry.

'All of us have lapses.'

'Not of the kind that lead to arrest.'

'I'd be surprised if you even knew the murder victim.'

'But I did, that's the rub. I knew and loathed Jeronimo Maldini.'

'Maldini? Who was he?'

'The man they found in the river.'

Christopher was startled. "The fellow they had to cut out of the ice?'

'According to report.'

'But I was there at the frost fair when the body was discovered. Good Lord! What a bizarre coincidence we have here! Is that what has brought you to this pa.s.s? I did not even realise that the man had been identified yet. It was one of Jonathan Bale's sons who actually stumbled on the corpse. The lad was frightened to death.'

'So was I when four constables came knocking at my door.'

'What was name again?'

'Maldini. Jeronimo Maldini.'

'And you disliked him?'

'I detested the greasy Italian,' said Henry petulantly. 'At one time, I made the mistake of going to him for fencing lessons but we soon fell out. Our enmity began there and grew out of all proportion.'

'You said nothing of this to me.'

'If I told you about every acquaintance of mine with whom I have a disagreement then it would take up an entire week. Life is a process of constant change, Christopher. We learn to see through people. Friends.h.i.+ps fall off, antagonism takes over.'

'How antagonistic were you towards Signor Maldini?'

'Very antagonistic.'

'Could you give me more detail?'

There was a pause. 'I'd prefer not to.'

'But this is important,' said his brother. 'If I'm to help you, I need to be in possession of all the facts. I had no idea that there was any connection between you and the man they hauled out of the Thames. When I heard that you'd been arrested, I a.s.sumed that some grotesque error had been made.'

'It has!' Henry looked up at him in dismay. 'At least, I hope that it has.' 'Why did they issue a warrant against you?'

'Judicial spite.'

'They must have had some grounds for suspicion.'

'Witnesses had come forward.'

'Witnesses?' repeated Christopher, feeling anxious. 'What sort of witnesses?'

'Ones who were there at the time.'

'At what time? There's something you're not telling me, Henry.'

'I despised Maldini. I admit that freely.'

'Did you quarrel with him?'

'Several times.'

'And did you do so in public? In front of witnesses?'

Henry bit his lip. 'Yes,' he murmured.

'What was the nature of the argument?'

'It was a heated one, Christopher.'

'Did you come to blows?'

'Almost. His insults were too much to bear.'

'And how did you respond?' Henry put his head in his hands. 'Please,' said his brother, leaning over him. 'I must know. I came to Newgate in the confident belief that some appalling mistake had been made and that, when I'd spoken up for you, I'd be in a position to take you home or, at the very least, to set your release in train. Yet now, it seems, there were grounds for suspecting you. Is that true, Henry?'

'I suppose so.'

'Heavens, man! Your life may be at stake here. We need more than supposition.'

'It's all I can offer,' bleated Henry, looking up at him once more. 'For a number of reasons, there was bad blood between Jeronimo Maldini and me. It came to a head one evening when we had a chance encounter. His language was so vile that he provoked me beyond all endurance.'

'So what did you do?'

'I expressed my anger.'

'How?'

'I said something that, on reflection, I should not perhaps have said.'

'And what was that, Henry?'

'Does it matter?'

'It matters a great deal,' insisted Christopher. 'I've known you make incautious remarks before but never ones that might land you in a prison cell. Now let's have no more prevarication, Henry. What did you say?'

'I threatened to kill him.'

Christopher was staggered. It had never occurred to him for a moment that his brother was guilty of a crime serious enough to justify arrest and imprisonment. He knew his brother's defects of character better than anyone and a homicidal impulse was certainly not among them. Or so he had always believed. Now he was forced to look at Henry through very different eyes. Strong drink could corrupt any man and few indulged as frequently as his brother. Whole weeks sometimes pa.s.sed without his managing more than a few hours of sobriety. Such a life was bound to takes its toll on Henry. The thought made Christopher put a straight question him.

'Did you murder Jeronimo Maldini?' he asked.

'I don't know,' replied Henry with a forlorn shrug. 'I may have done.'

Word of the arrest spread throughout London with remarkable speed. Within a couple of days, it was the talk of every tavern and coffee house in the city. Since she had been there when the murder victim was found, Susan Cheever took a keen interest in the case and seized on every sc.r.a.p of information related to it. She was astonished to hear that Henry Redmayne was the chief suspect. Her father, an unforgiving man, was plainly disgusted.

'He should be hanged by his scrawny neck at Tyburn,' he announced.

'But he's not been convicted yet, Father,' she reminded him.

"The fellow is guilty. Why else would they arrest him?'

'There are all kinds of reasons. Mistaken ident.i.ty is but one of them.'

'We have been the victims of that, Susan.'

'What do you mean?'

'We took the Redmayne family for honourable men,' he said, gesticulating with both arms, 'and we were most cruelly deceived.'

'Not so, Father,' she rejoined with vehemence. 'Christopher Redmayne is the most honourable man I've ever met and his brother, Henry, can be quite charming when you get to know him.'

'I've no wish to know him, Susan.'

'At least, give him the benefit of the doubt.'