Berrigan drank from his tankard, then refilled it from the jug. He stared at Sandman for a few seconds, then shrugged. 'They're the Seraphim Club, Captain, so yes, they've done murder, and they've thieved, they've bribed, they've even tried highway robbery. They call them pranks. But killing the Countess? I've heard nothing.'
'Would you have heard?' Sandman asked.
'Maybe not,' Berrigan allowed. 'But we servants know most of what they do because we clean up after them.'
'Because they're being flash?' Sally sounded indignant. It was one thing for her friends at the Wheatsheaf to be criminals, but they had been born poor. 'Why the hell do they want to be flash?' she asked. 'They're rich already, ain't they?'
Berrigan looked at her, evidently liking what he saw. 'That's exactly why they do it, miss, because they are rich,' he said. 'Rich, titled and privileged, and on account of that they reckon they're better than the rest of us. And they're bored. What they want, they take and what gets in their way, they destroy.'
'Or get you to destroy it?' Sandman guessed.
Berrigan gave Sandman a very level look. 'There are thirty-eight Seraphims,' he said, 'and twenty servants, and that don't count the kitchens or the girls. And it takes all twenty of us to clean up their messes. They're rich enough so they don't have to care,' his tone suggested he was warning Sandman, 'and they're bastards, Captain, real bastards.'
'Yet you work for them,' Sandman spoke very gently.
'I'm no saint, Captain,' Berrigan said, 'and they pay me well.'
'Because they need your silence?' Sandman guessed and, when there was no reply, he pushed a little harder. 'What do they need your silence about?'
Berrigan glanced at Sally, then looked back to Sandman. 'You don't want to know,' he growled.
Sandman understood the implications of that quick glance at Sally. 'Rape?' he asked.
Berrigan nodded, but said nothing.
'Is that the purpose of the club?' Sandman asked.
'The purpose,' Berrigan said, 'is for them to do whatever they want. They're all lords or baronets or rich as hell and the rest of the world are peasants, and they reckon they have the right to do whatever they fancy. There's not a man there who shouldn't be hanged.'
'You included?' Sandman asked and, when the Sergeant did not answer, he asked another question. 'Why are you telling me all this?'
'Lord Robin Holloway,' Berrigan said, 'wants you dead because you humiliated him, but I won't stand for it, Captain, not after Waterloo. That was a—' he paused, frowning as he tried and failed to find the right word— 'I didn't think I'd live through it,' he confessed instead, 'and nothing been's the same since. We went to the gates of hell, miss,' he looked at Sally, 'and we got deep scorched, but we marched out again.' The Sergeant's voice had been hoarse with emotion and Sandman understood that. He had met many soldiers who could begin crying just thinking about their years of service, about the battles they had endured and the friends they had lost. Sam Berrigan looked as hard as a cobblestone, and undoubtedly he was, but he was also a very sentimental man. 'There's been hardly a day that I haven't seen you in my mind,' Berrigan went on, 'out on that ridge in that bloody smoke. It's what I remember about the battle, just that, and I don't know why. So I don't want you harmed by some spavined halfwit like Lord Robin Holloway.'
Sandman smiled. 'I think you're here, Sergeant, because you want to leave the Seraphim Club.'
Berrigan leant back and contemplated Sandman and then, more appreciatively, Sally. She blushed under his scrutiny, and he took a cigar from his inside pocket and struck a light with a tinder box. 'I don't intend to be any man's servant for long,' he said when the cigar was drawing, 'but when I leave, Captain, I'll set up in business.'
'Doing what?' Sandman asked.
'These,' Berrigan tapped the cigar. 'A lot of gentlemen acquired a taste for these in the Spanish war, but they're curious hard to come by. I find them for the club members and I make almost as much tin that way as I do from wages. You understand me, Captain?'
'I'm not sure I do.'
'I don't need your advice, I don't need your preaching and I don't need your help. Sam Berrigan can look after himself. I just came to warn you, nothing else. Get out of town, Captain.'
'Joy shall be in heaven,' Sandman said, 'over one sinner that repenteth.'
'Oh no. No, no, no,' Berrigan shook his head. 'I just done you a favour, Captain, and that's it!' He stood up, 'And that's all I came to do.'
Sandman smiled. 'I could do with some help, Sergeant, so when you decide to leave the club, come and find me. I'm leaving London tomorrow, but I'll be back here on Thursday afternoon.'
'You'd better bloody be,' Sally put in.
Sandman, amused, raised an eyebrow.
'It's that private performance,' Sally explained. 'You're coming to Covent Garden to cheer me, aren't you? It's Aladdin.'
'Aladdin, eh?'
'A half bloody rehearsed Aladdin. Got to be in there tomorrow morning to learn the steps. You are coming, aren't you, Captain?'
'Of course I am,' Sandman said, and looked back to Berrigan. 'So I'll be back here on Thursday and thank you for the ale, and when you decide to help me, then you know where to find me.'
Berrigan stared at him for a heartbeat, said nothing, then nodded at Sally and walked away after putting a handful of coins on the table. Sandman watched him leave. 'A very troubled young man, Sally,' he said.
'Don't look troubled to me. Good-looking though, ain't he?'
'Is he?'
'Course he is!' Sally said forcefully.
'But he's still troubled,' Sandman said. 'He wants to be good and finds it easy to be bad.'
'Welcome to life,' Sally said.
'So we're going to have to help make him good, aren't we?'
'We?' She sounded alarmed.
'I've decided I can't put the world to rights all on my own,' Sandman said. 'I need allies, my dear, and you're elected. So far there's you, someone I saw this afternoon, maybe Sergeant Berrigan and . . .' Sandman turned as a newcomer to the taproom knocked down a chair, apologised profusely, fumbled his walking stick and then struck his head on a beam. The Reverend Lord Alexander Pleydell had arrived. '… and your admirer makes four,' Sandman finished.
And maybe five, for Lord Alexander had a young man with him, a young man with an open face and a troubled expression. 'You're Captain Sandman?' The young man did not wait for an introduction, but just hurried across the room and held out his hand.
'At your service,' Sandman said cautiously.
'Thank God I've found you!' the young man said. 'My name is Carne, Christopher Carne.'
'I'm pleased to meet you,' Sandman said politely, though the name meant nothing to him and the young man's face was quite unfamiliar.
'The Countess of Avebury was my stepmother,' Carne explained. 'I am my father's only son, only child indeed, and thus heir to the earldom.'
'Ah,' Sandman said.
'We must talk,' Carne said. 'Please, we must talk.'
Lord Alexander was bowing to Sally and, at the same time, blushing deep scarlet. Sandman knew his friend would be content for a while, so he led Carne to the back of the taproom where a booth offered some privacy.
'We must talk,' Carne said again. 'Dear God, Sandman, you can prevent a great injustice and God knows you must.'
So they talked.
===OO=OOO=OO===
He was, of course, the Lord Christopher Carne. 'Call me Kit,' he said, 'please.'
Sandman was no radical. He had never shared Lord Alexander's passion to pull down a society based on
