Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [39]
‘Layabouts from the country making trouble as usual.’
From further along Oxford Street, above the grinding wheels and the swearing, came the funereal beat of a drum and voices chanting, ‘Bread. Give us bread. Bread. Give us bread.’
I went towards the sound and saw a procession of working men in brown and black jackets and caps, mufflers round their necks in spite of the warmth of the day. They were walking and chanting in perfect unison, keeping time to the beat of the drum. Some of them carried placards: No Corn Laws, Work Not Workhouse. Their faces were pinched, their boots falling apart, as if they’d come a long way. Some of the spectators looked quite sympathetic to them, but the London boys as usual were taking the opportunity to shy stones or bits of vegetable at anything that moved. Then, above the chanting, a shrill cry from one of the lads: ‘The Peelers are coming.’ A line of about a dozen Metropolitan Police came pushing past me at a run in their top hats and tail coats with double rows of gleaming brass buttons. They carried stout sticks and their treatment of political demonstrations over recent years had shown they weren’t slow to use them. Ordinarily, I’d have stayed to see what happened, but now I couldn’t afford to be caught up in a riot, so I pushed my way back through the crowd, dodged among carriage wheels and got safely into St Giles High Street. From there it was an easy journey to Covent Garden.
I reached the theatre, as I’d hoped, just before the interval. Carriages were waiting at the front of the house for fashionable people who’d decided that one act of an opera was quite enough. I went round to the stage door, confident that it would only be a matter of minutes before I met somebody I knew by sight. There was not a theatre orchestra in London without a friend of my father in it, and on such a warm night some of them would surely come out to take the air. The first were three men I didn’t recognise, making at some speed for an inn across the road, brass players, by their hot red faces. Long minutes passed and more musicians came out, but none I knew. I worried that the interval would soon be over and wondered if I dared go inside on my own. Then a group of men came out slowly, talking together. I recognised one of them and stepped in front of him, trying to drag a name up from my mind.
‘Good evening, Mr … Kennedy.’
He stopped, obviously racking his brains, then said, in a soft Irish accent, ‘Well, it’s Jacques Lane’s daughter. How are you and how is he?’
Foolishly, it hadn’t occurred to me that I should have to break the news. Because it filled my heart, I was sure the whole world knew it.
‘I’m afraid he’s dead,’ I said.
His face went blank with shock. He asked how and I told him that my father was supposed to have been shot in a duel, only I didn’t believe it. There were a lot more questions he wanted to ask, but already sounds of instruments re-tuning were coming from inside.
‘I’m hoping to send a message to Daniel Suter,’ I said. ‘He was in Paris, and I think he’s still there.’
‘I knew he was going to Paris,’ Kennedy said. ‘He disagreed with the conductor here about the tempo of the overture to The Barber and took himself off in a huff. He should be back soon though.’
‘Yes, Daniel never huffs for long, and then only about music.’
‘Will you ever come in and wait, if I find you a seat? We can talk afterwards.’
‘I’m sorry, I must go. When you see Daniel, or anybody who knows him, could you please ask him to write to me urgently at … at Mandeville Hall, near Ascot, Berkshire.’
The other men were going inside. The brass players came back, wiping their mouths.
‘You must go too,’ I said. ‘But you will ask him, if you can, won’t you?’
Kennedy’s hand went to his pocket.
‘Are you all right for …?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Friends of yours, these people at Ascot?’
I nodded. The truth was too complicated, and somebody was calling from inside for the damned fiddles to hurry up. He squeezed my hand and departed, still