it's plain you're lying! You d-did tell him you spoke with me.'
The letter, Sandman thought, must have travelled on the same mail coach that brought him back to London. 'Your father deduced it,' Sandman explained, 'and you should have a care whom you accuse of telling lies, unless you're quite confident you are both a better shot and a better swordsman than the man you accuse.' He did not look to see the effect of his words, but instead danced two quick-steps down the pitch and drove at a delivery with all his strength. He knew the stroke was good even before the bat struck the ball, and then it shot away and the three men scything the playing wicket stared in awe as the ball streaked between them to take its first bounce just short of the uphill boundary and it still seemed to be travelling at the same speed with which it had left the bat when it vanished in the bushes at the top of the hill. It had gone like a six-pounder shot, Sandman thought, and then he heard it crack against the fence and heard a cow mooing in protest from the neighbouring meadow.
'Good God,' Lord Alexander said faintly, staring up the hill, 'good God alive.'
'I spoke hastily,' Lord Christopher said in scant apology, 'but I still don't understand why you should even need to go near Carne Manor.'
'Did you see how hard he struck that?' Lord Alexander asked.
'Why?' Lord Christopher insisted angrily.
'I told you why,' Sandman said. 'To discover whether any of your stepmother's servants had gone there.'
'Of course they wouldn't,' Lord Christopher said.
'Last time you thought it possible.'
'That's because I hadn't thought about it p-properly. Those servants must have known precisely what vile things my stepmother was doing in London and my father would hardly want them spreading such t-tales in Wiltshire.'
'True,' Sandman conceded. 'So I wasted a journey.'
'But the good news, Rider,' Lord Alexander intervened, 'is that Mister William Brown has agreed that you and I should attend on Monday!' He beamed at Sandman. 'Isn't that splendid?'
'Mister Brown?' Sandman asked.
'The Keeper of Newgate. I would have expected a man in your position to have known that.' Lord Alexander turned to a bemused Lord Christopher. 'It occurred to me, Kit, that so long as Rider was the Home Secretary's official Investigator, then he should certainly investigate the gallows. He should know exactly what awful brutality awaits people like Corday. So I wrote to the Keeper and he has very decently invited Rider and myself to breakfast. Devilled kidneys, he promises! I've always rather liked a properly devilled kidney.'
Sandman stepped away from the stumps. 'I have no wish to witness a hanging,' he said.
'It doesn't matter what you wish,' Lord Alexander said airily, 'it is a matter of duty.'
'I have no duty to witness a hanging,' Sandman insisted.
'Of course you do,' Lord Alexander said. 'I confess I am apprehensive. I do not approve of the gallows, but at the same time I discover a curiosity within me. If nothing else, Rider, it will be an educational experience.'
'Educational rubbish!' Sandman stepped back to the wicket and played a straight bat to a well-bowled ball. 'I'm not going, Alexander, and that's that. No! The answer is no!'
'I'd like to go,' Lord Christopher said in a small voice.
'Rider!' Lord Alexander expostulated.
'No!' Sandman said. 'I shall happily send the real killer to the gallows, but I'm not witnessing a Newgate circus.' He waved Hughes away. 'I've batted long enough,' he explained, then ran a hand down the face of his bat. 'You have any linseed oil, Alexander?'
'The real killer?' Lord Christopher asked. 'Do you know who that is?'
'I hope to know by this evening,' Sandman said. 'If I send for your carriage, Alexander, then you'll know I've discovered my witness. If I don't? Alas.'
'Witness?' Lord Christopher asked.
'If Rider's going to be obdurate,' Lord Alexander said to Lord Christopher, 'then perhaps you should join me for the Keeper's devilled kidneys on Monday?' He fumbled with his tinder box as he tried to light a new pipe. 'I was thinking that you really ought to join the club here, Rider. We need members.'
'I can imagine you do. Who'd join a club that plays on an imitation of an alpine meadow?'
'A perfectly good pitch,' Lord Alexander said querulously.
'Witness?' Lord Christopher broke in to ask again.
'I trust you'll send for the carriage!' Lord Alexander boomed. 'I want to see that bloody man Sidmouth confounded. Make him grant a pardon, Rider. I shall await your summons at the Wheatsheaf.'
'I'll wait with you,' Lord Christopher said, and was rewarded by a flicker of annoyance on Lord Alexander's face. Sandman, who saw the same flicker, knew that Lord Alexander did not want a rival for Sally's attention, but Lord Christopher must have taken it as an insult for his face fell.
Lord Alexander gazed at the three groundsmen, who were still leaning on their scythes and discussing Sandman's ball that had blasted through them like a roundshot. 'I have always thought,' Lord Alexander said, 'that there is a fortune to be made by a man who can invent a device for the cutting of grass.'
'It's called a sheep,' Sandman said, 'vulgarly known as a woolly bird.'
'A device that does not leave dung,' Lord Alexander said acidly, then smiled at Lord Christopher Carne. 'Of course you must spend the evening with me, my dear fellow. Perhaps you can explain this man Kant to me? Someone sent me his last book, have you seen it? I thought you would have. He seems very sound, but he was a Prussian, wasn't he? I suppose that wasn't his fault. Come and have some tea first. Rider? You'll have some tea? Of course you will. And I want you to meet Lord Frederick. You know he's our club secretary now? You really should join us. And you wanted some linseed oil for the bat? They do a very acceptable tea here.'
So Sandman went for a lordly tea.
===OO=OOO=OO===
It was a cloudy evening and the sky over London was made even darker because there was no wind and the coal smoke hung thick and still above the roofs and spires. The streets near St James's Square were quiet, for there were no businesses in these quiet houses and many of their owners were in the country. Sandman saw a watchman noting him and so he crossed to the man and said good evening and asked what regiment he had served in and the two passed the time exchanging memories of Salamanca, which Sandman thought was perhaps the most beautiful town he had ever seen. A lamplighter came round with his ladder and the new gas lights popped on one after the other, burning blue for a time and then turning whiter. 'Some of the houses here are getting gas,' the watchman said, 'indoors.'
'Indoors?'
'No good'll come of it, sir. It ain't natural, is it?' The watchman looked up at the nearest hissing lamp. 'There'll be fire and pillars of smoke, sir, like it says in the good book sir, fire and pillars of smoke. Burning like a fiery furnace, sir.'
Sandman was saved more apocalyptic prophecies when a hackney turned into the street, the sound of its horse's hooves echoing sharply from the shadowed white house fronts. It stopped close to Sandman, the door opened and Sergeant Berrigan stepped down. He tossed a coin up to the driver, then held the door open for Sally.
'You can't…' Sandman began.
'I told you he'd say that,' Berrigan boasted to Sally, 'didn't I tell you he'd say you shouldn't come?'
'Sergeant!' Sandman insisted. 'We cannot…'
'You're going for Meg, right?' Sally intervened. 'And she ain't going to take kindly to two old swoddies doing her up, is she? She needs a woman's touch.'
'I'm sure two old soldiers can gain her confidence,' Sandman said.
'Sal won't take no for an answer,' the Sergeant warned him.
'Besides,' Sandman continued, 'Meg isn't in the Seraphim Club. We're only going there to find the coachman so he can tell us where he took her.'
'Maybe he'll tell me what he won't tell you,' Sally said to Sandman with a dazzling smile, then she turned on the watchman. 'You got nothing better to do than listen to other folks chatting?'
The man looked startled, but followed the lamplighter down the street while Sergeant Berrigan fished in his coat pocket to bring out a key which he showed to Sandman. 'Back way in, Captain,' he said, then looked at Sally. 'Listen, my love, I know…'
