Beau Death

4

Paloma had called Diamond and set up a lunch meeting with a Miss Estella Rockingham, who was researching Beau Nash for a biography.

‘Old-fashioned name,’ he said, picturing a silver-haired lady with half-glasses.

‘She’s a young and extremely clever West Indian who won an award to fund the project. I’m sure the book will win more prizes.’

‘Is it written?’

‘In outline, I believe. She’s constantly going back to original sources. Her research is amazing. She came to me looking for portraits that haven’t been used and her knowledge about eighteenth-century costume is awesome.’

‘Were you able to help?’

Paloma nodded. Her collection of historic illustrations was the best outside the V&A and the British Library.

‘Pictures of Beau Nash?’

‘And that was a challenge. She wanted him young. The ones you see most often are of a pudgy-faced guy in middle age. Calling him “Beau” is laughable. But the early ones — drawings, mostly — give some idea why so many women adored him. It takes an exceptional man to look sexy in lace.’

‘You found what Estella wanted, then?’

‘Yes, and she knew exactly which magazines to search. That was over a year ago. Since then she’s been admitted to the Beau Nash Society.’

‘There’s a society?’

‘Here in Bath. Haven’t you heard of it? Everyone who is anyone is a member. They meet in rooms in the Circus and you can only join by invitation. Estella gave a talk last winter and got the nod — which is more than I did. I talked to them about eighteenth-century costume and all I got for my troubles was a bottle of plonk.’

‘She probably knows more than they do.’

‘So do I, but not about Mr. Nash. To be serious, Estella will get invitations from across the world when she publishes her book. She must have found out heaps more about him since. But your discovery is going to amaze her, him being hidden in some attic all these years.’

‘I don’t want to start with that stuff,’ Diamond said. ‘We don’t know for certain if it’s him. You haven’t told her what this is about, I hope.’

‘All she knows is that you’re a detective on some kind of investigation that touches on Beau Nash. She’ll be so excited.’

‘Let’s soft-pedal on the skeleton in the loft,’ he said. ‘Before we reveal any of that I’d rather get her take on where he ended up.’

‘Do it your way, then. I’ll never understand the finer points of interviewing witnesses.’

Estella liked Mexican, so the meeting had been set up for Las Iguanas in the courtyard in Seven Dials, reached through a passageway from Westgate Street. Paloma and Diamond got there early and found a table close to the window.

‘Are you okay with Mexican food?’ Paloma said.

‘Now you ask.’

‘Actually I asked Estella and she suggested here. It’s not exclusively Mexican. I’d call it Latin American really.’

‘Fair enough.’ Diamond was more of a pub food man: pie and chips. ‘I’m sure I’ll survive. What’s that monstrosity in the yard?’

‘The fountain?’

Whether the rather odd cast-iron structure they could see from the window deserved to be called a fountain any longer was arguable. There was no water spurting from it. The top tier had been adapted for growing plants that overhung three sad black wading birds standing in a stone surround with more vegetation.

‘Little egrets?’ Diamond said from his limited knowledge of ornithology.

‘Glossy ibises, I was told.’

‘Do they have some significance here?’

‘Not to my knowledge. I believe when the developers were creating the yard in the late 1980s they found the piece at Walcot Reclamation and decided it would make a centrepiece. A talking point, if nothing else.’

‘Why — because it ain’t a fountain any longer?’

‘Because of all the actors.’

‘I see no actors.’

‘Come outside and I’ll show you.’

They got up from the table with their wine glasses and he was shown a feature he’d never noticed before, Bath’s mini version of the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood — sixteen sets of handprints and signatures cast in bronze and cemented to the top of the low wall around the fountain.

‘They all appeared at the Theatre Royal,’ Paloma said.

He circled it slowly. Derek Jacobi, Peter Ustinov, Susan Hampshire, Edward Fox and twelve others were immortalised there. ‘Joan Collins — what was she in?’

‘Private Lives. They all had to press their palms into some orange gunk to make the moulds. It must have seemed a good idea at the time.’

‘It’s a bit lost here.’

Paloma’s eyes were elsewhere. A young black woman in a pale blue coat with silver frogging had clattered into the yard on the highest heels Diamond had seen in years. ‘Here’s someone who certainly isn’t lost. Estella, meet my friend, Peter.’

It was the kind of meeting that made him wish he’d chosen a better tie, and, on second thoughts, a better shirt, suit and shoes as well. She was immaculate. They shook hands and she said, ‘I’m extremely curious to know what you want from me.’

‘It’s no great mystery,’ he said.

‘I thought mystery was your thing. Aren’t you in criminal investigation?’

Paloma said, ‘Peter’s head of the murder squad.’

Estella’s eyes widened. ‘Murder?’

‘And other local pastimes like armed robbery and abduction,’ he added.

‘And you think I can help?’

‘Shall we go inside and get you a drink first?’

‘A strong one, I think.’

In the restaurant, Diamond tried to lower expectations. He hadn’t planned to start like this. ‘You’re writing a book about Beau Nash, I’m told.’

‘And you think he might have murdered someone — my dear old Beau?’

‘No, no, not at all. Can we rewind and delete all mention of murder?’

She flashed her small, neat teeth. ‘You’re saving that up for the climax, when you assemble us all in the library and tell us whodunit.’

She was being playful when he wanted to get serious. ‘It doesn’t work that way in CID. I borrowed a couple of books about Nash from Paloma. Nicely written, but thin on facts. I gather yours will be more substantial.’

‘More words for sure. That isn’t always a recommendation.’

‘New material?’

‘Every bit I can find. I don’t want to pad it out.’

‘How many biographies are there?’

‘Of Beau Nash? I know of seven. The first, and most useful, appeared only a year after his death. That was by Oliver Goldsmith.’

‘Seven is a lot, but Richard Nash is a fascinating subject, isn’t he?’ Diamond said, wanting to let her know he’d mastered the basics. ‘Welsh boy comes from humble origins and survives a series of setbacks to conquer Bath by force of personality.’

‘His family weren’t all that humble,’ Estella said. ‘They could afford to send him to Oxford University.’

‘But he ended up a pauper, didn’t he, after becoming one of the most famous men in the land? That’s the real fascination for me.’ It wasn’t, but now that they’d started on Beau Nash he was keen to get to the topic of the funeral and what happened after.

Paloma said, ‘Peter’s getting hooked on eighteenth-century history. He’d be enrolling at the university if he wasn’t a policeman keeping us safe in our beds.’

‘Your beds are outside my beat,’ Diamond said.

‘Don’t disillusion us, or we won’t sleep at nights,’ Estella said with a smile at Paloma.

The waitress arrived and the next minutes were taken up pointing at things on the menu. They agreed on tapas for starters but the two women’s choice of a dish called blazing bird flavoured with flaming hot habañero sauce was a step too far for Diamond. He settled for a Cuban sandwich and asked for a large jug of water and three glasses.

More smiles.

‘I don’t suppose Beau Nash ever tasted Mexican,’ he said.

‘Boiled chicken and roast mutton were his favourites,’ Estella said. ‘They ate mainly meat and not many vegetables. He was partial to potatoes and called them English pineapples and used to eat them on their own as a separate course. But please let’s get to the reason we’re here. What is it about the Beau? What do you want to ask me?’

Put suddenly on the spot, Diamond came out with the question he’d planned to slip into the conversation with more subtlety. ‘Where did he end up?’

‘After his death, you mean?’ she said. ‘It’s far from certain. Goldsmith doesn’t say and everyone since has either ducked the issue or admitted it’s a mystery.’

‘You must have researched it.’

She smiled. ‘Tell me about it! As you probably know, he lay in state for four days and then there was a funeral fit for the King of Bath, with a procession through the streets from his house to the Abbey. It’s been assumed by some, including the Dictionary of Welsh Biography and the Oxford DNB, that he was buried there, but like most of his biographers I’m unconvinced. There’s a persistent story that he was buried in a pauper’s grave.’

‘That’s the one we heard.’

She nodded. ‘He was, of course, massively overspent. Debts of over £1200. Let’s say £200,000 in modern currency. So technically, yes, he was a pauper. We know the name of his would-be heir and executor, his nephew, Charles Young, but the disposal of the estate was handled by an agent called Scott.’

‘Who wanted paying, presumably?’

‘Without a doubt. Goldsmith’s book tells us the few pathetic items that were left to dispose of: a few books, some family pictures and miniatures, two gold snuffboxes, one presented to him by the Prince of Wales and the other by the dowager princess. They didn’t fetch much. The pictures were advertised for sale at five pounds each but finally went for half that amount, and the miniatures as a job lot for three guineas. I’m not sure about the snuffboxes. And of course there were papers, a number of letters and his unfinished manuscript.’

‘A book?’ Paloma said.

‘Some pages of a book. A money-making venture that he used to attract subscribers at two guineas a time. The title was A History of Bath and Tunbridge for these last forty years by Richard Nash, Esquire, with an apology for the Author’s Life. It was nowhere near written. A sprat to catch a mackerel. While he was still alive he hinted that all sorts of secrets would come out — more about other people’s private lives than his own. It brought in some funds. Even the city corporation coughed up for twenty-five copies.’

‘All on spec?’ Diamond said.

‘A few ineptly written sheets were found after his death and Goldsmith made the best use he could of them. The nephew wasn’t happy and complained that Scott had hatched some kind of underhand deal in return for a cut of the profits in Goldsmith’s Life of Beau Nash.’

‘Was he right?’

‘He probably was. Nash’s scribblings had some value and should have formed part of the estate.’

‘Did the book sell well?’ Diamond asked.

‘Goldsmith’s? Spectacularly well.’

‘To all the people fearful of how much would be revealed?’

‘Let’s be generous. Nash’s fame was huge. The first printing sold out in four days.’

Paloma said, ‘Top of the Sunday Times bestseller list?’

‘Easily. You have to know that Goldsmith was an unknown Irish writer at the start of his career — a hack, really — who in time became one of the greats of English literature, so they did well to get him. It’s a fine book and the prime source for us biographers, but Nash’s name sold it. A lot of people made themselves rich out of the Beau after his death, selling portraits and poems and tributes, but I don’t think his creditors got much.’

‘Wasn’t the house sold?’

‘That isn’t mentioned in Scott’s papers. Almost certainly he’d mortgaged it before his death to offset his debts. He’d sold his coach, his horses, his rings, his watches. He was living off the ten guineas a month voted by the corporation in recognition of his services in better times.’

Diamond steered the conversation back towards the matter that interested him most. ‘But at least he wasn’t living alone in those last years.’

‘No, he had a companion.’

‘Juliana Popjoy?’ A chance to show he’d done his homework.

‘Papjoy.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Papjoy was the name she used. Victorian prudes altered it, thinking it was vulgar.’

‘Why?’

‘Pap,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t be asking if you lived in those times. It was a word for a breast, like boob, or tit.’

‘Got you,’ he said, trying to think in historical terms. ‘Papjoy.’

‘Well’ — Estella spread her hands — ‘I may be out on a limb here, but I’m of the opinion it was a name she took on. She was a courtesan when he first met her and slept with her. To me, Papjoy is just too suggestive to be real. It’s in keeping with the names the Restoration comedy writers were using, like Lady Wishfort.’

He had to think for a moment. She’d tossed in the name as a scholarly point without a hint of a smile. ‘Right. Understood.’

‘And the men’s names were just as suggestive,’ Estella added. ‘Horner, Pinchwife.’

‘Coupler,’ Paloma put in.

‘Really?’

‘You’ve heard of The Country Wife?’ Paloma said to help him out. ‘The Relapse? The National brought The Beaux’ Stratagem to Bath a year or two ago.’

He shook his head. He knew as much about drama as he did about knitting socks.

‘Lady Fidget?’ Estella said.

‘Mrs. Friendall,’ Paloma said.

‘Lovemore? Lady Teazle?’

The two women were definitely enjoying this now.

Estella made an effort to be serious. ‘It doesn’t really matter to you if it wasn’t the name she was born with, does it?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘In fact, it matters even less than you think.’

‘Why?’

‘You were saying Juliana was with the Beau at the end but I have to tell you this is untrue.’

Frowning, he said, ‘The books I’ve been reading claim she was there for him, nursing him through his last illness.’

‘I know,’ Estella said. ‘I’ve read them. They’re wrong.’

‘Really?’ Paloma said. ‘It’s such a nice rounding off, back with his old love.’

‘Cue the violins,’ Estella said. ‘Sorry, guys, but Goldsmith says nothing about Juliana. I don’t think he mentions her anywhere in his book, and he’s the prime source.’

Diamond’s best theory about the skeleton and how it came to be hidden in Twerton had just been blown away.

There was a short hiatus while the tapas were put in front of them. Paloma and Estella made noises of appreciation, but Diamond couldn’t raise any enthusiasm, even after taking his first bite.

‘Are you telling us Juliana Papjoy didn’t exist?’ he said to Estella, beginning to feel this meeting had been a waste of time. She didn’t seem as charming as he’d first thought.

‘Not at all. She existed. She was one of a string of mistresses. He was an old goat if you ask me. He once said that wit, flattery and fine clothes were enough to debauch a nunnery. There’s independent evidence that Juliana lived with him for some years when they were younger. He bought her a dapple-grey horse and allowed her to have a personal servant and dress in all the latest fashions. She was often seen riding about the streets of Bath and using a distinctive whip like a birch. In fact she was jokingly known as Lady Betty Besom.’

Diamond missed the point again. ‘Besom — another word for breast?’

Paloma laughed. ‘Who’s got a one-track mind round here? It’s one of those brooms made of twigs.’

Estella said, ‘In the year of her death a rather cruel cartoon appeared of her on horseback brandishing a besom and wearing one of those enormous Marie-Antoinette-style wigs as she jumps the horse over a barrier labelled the Sacred Boundary of Discretion.’

The satire was lost on Diamond. He was trying to pin down the facts that mattered. ‘If the books have got it wrong about Miss Papjoy, what’s the true story?’

‘They parted,’ she said. ‘Everyone agrees on that.’

‘Because of the court case, when his income dried up?’

Paloma said, ‘He couldn’t keep her in the style he felt she was entitled to, so he asked her to leave, and she did, for a number of years.’

Estella smiled and shook her head. ‘And came back to nurse him when he was old? That’s a sentimental myth invented by the Victorians.’

Paloma said with a cry of disappointment. ‘Are you sure? You know it to be untrue?’

‘I’ve gone into this as deeply as I can. None of the contemporary reports of her death say anything about a reconciliation. I’ve looked at them all, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, the Universal Magazine and the Annual Register, you name it. The break-up devastated her. She returned to her place of birth, a village called Bishopstrow, just outside Warminster, and vowed she would never again sleep in a bed. And she kept to it. That’s how bitter — or heartbroken — she was. She took up residence in the hollowed-out trunk of a huge oak tree and slept on a bale of straw until her death in 1777. Even when she ventured out and visited friends, she’d insist on sleeping rough in some outhouse on straw.’

‘Poor soul,’ Paloma murmured. ‘I did hear this story, but I thought there was a happier ending.’

‘How long did she live like this?’ Diamond asked.

‘Thirty or forty years according to the obituaries. If true, that ties in with her relationship with the Beau breaking up sometime between 1737 and 1747, when he was in his prime — socially speaking.’

‘What year was the court case he lost?’

‘1757. Do the maths. She was living in the tree by then.’

‘And remained there,’ Paloma said, shaking her head in sympathy.

‘So we can’t blame the break-up on the litigation,’ Estella said. ‘It was something else, a personal issue, I guess. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?’

She fixed them in turn with eyes demanding agreement and Diamond made it appear that he, for one, had been there many times, wherever it was. No use being faint-hearted with this young woman.

‘For me as his latest biographer, it opened exciting new possibilities,’ she added. ‘Have another of the calamares. They’re moreish, aren’t they?’

‘In that case was he alone at the end?’ Diamond asked, trying not to sound as deflated as he felt. With Juliana ruled out, his best theory was kiboshed.

Estella shook her head. ‘He couldn’t have coped. He’d lived to a great age, but he was a wreck by then, in a wheelchair, suffering from gout and leg ulcers. He had intermittent fits and he didn’t have a tooth in his head.’

A scrap of consolation: the last part checked with the state of the Twerton skeleton.

‘Somebody must have acted as carer, then.’

‘Yes, he had a carer.’ Her eyes slid upwards. ‘If you could call her that.’

‘A woman?’

‘Her name emerged in George Scott’s correspondence, which only came to light a few years ago in the British Library archive.’

‘Scott? You mentioned him earlier, the man who administered the estate?’

‘Yes. He had all kinds of problems dealing with the creditors and the most persistent and unpleasant was a Mrs. Hill. She really got up his nose.’

‘He said this?’

‘Not in those words. He said it more eloquently, but his anger comes through in letters to a doctor friend written in the year of the Beau’s death. This is so crucial to my book that I can quote the exact words Scott used: “She was of such a fierce disposition that poor Nash had no small degree of punishment in living with this termagant woman. Solomon could not describe a worse.”’

‘Solomon?’

‘King Solomon. He famously mediated in a quarrel between two women.’

‘He definitely says Mrs. Hill was living with Nash?’

‘For the last twenty years of his life.’

‘Wow.’

‘Exactly my reaction, except I said something stronger when I read the letter. I don’t know what the readers around me in the BL thought.’

‘So this Mrs. Hill gave George Scott a hard time? Why?’

‘She was in possession of a bond for £250 given to her by Nash.’

‘Big money.’

‘Mega big.’

‘A bond being security for a debt?’

Estella nodded. ‘Nash had no business arranging a bond of that size. He colluded with her to obtain a court judgement for it.’

‘Who was pulling the strings here — Mrs. Hill?’

‘George Scott seemed to think so, and of course after Nash’s death the woman was fierce in her demands. He relates in another letter how he was having a conversation with the wife of Charles Young’s attorney when Mrs. Hill came in and created a scene. In his words, she “appeared in full character.” He goes on to say, “From such a tongue may I ever be delivered. She used me very cruelly.”’

Paloma said, ‘He sounds paranoid about this woman. What was she on about? She must have known there was no money left in the pot.’

‘She complained that Nash’s possessions had been “sold for nothing” and should never have been auctioned.’

‘Hell-bent on getting her £250,’ Diamond said. ‘Do you think she treated Nash the same way?’

‘Scott said so. It’s possible he was biased, but whatever she was like she’s gold dust for me. None of the early biographers knew she existed.’

‘Goldsmith must have known,’ Paloma said.

‘Goldsmith was discreet. He says at one point he could fill a book with anecdotes of the Beau’s amours, but he doesn’t.’

‘These days he would,’ Paloma said. ‘The first duty of a biographer is to dish the dirt.’

‘Cynical, Paloma,’ Estella said with mock reproach.

‘Do you want examples?’

‘Spare us that. We heard you.’

Diamond’s spirits had bounced back, his brain fizzing with new possibilities. ‘I want to know more about Mrs. Hill. What’s her first name?’

‘I’m still working on that,’ Estella said. ‘She’s elusive. If I can trace the court documents, I’ll find it.’

‘Any idea where she lived after Nash died?’

‘Somewhere in Bath, I expect, at least while she felt her claim ought to be met.’

‘You don’t know much else? Was there a Mr. Hill?’

‘There must have been at one stage, but I can’t believe he was still around if she’d moved in with the Beau in the 1740s. Have I got you interested?’

A pause, a glance between Diamond and Paloma and then he decided it was time to tell Estella about the skeleton.

She caught her breath a couple of times while he was going over the brain-banging facts. She took a gulp of wine and then another. Paloma reached for the bottle and refilled the glass.

When Diamond finished, Estella stared at him in awed silence.

Paloma said, ‘Bombshell, isn’t it?’

‘Nuclear,’ Estella said. ‘I’m going to have to rewrite my book.’

Another pause to absorb the prospect.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said. ‘I’m not ungrateful. It’s a scoop. If this really is the Beau, I don’t know what the academic world is going to make of it.’

Stuff the academic world, Diamond thought.

‘Will it get into the media?’ she asked.

He vibrated his lips. ‘I don’t see how we can avoid it, much as I’d like to. They already plastered my picture over the front pages nose-to-nose with the skull, but they haven’t yet cottoned on to the fact that it could be Beau Nash. Someone is going to make the connection soon.’

‘I don’t bother with newspapers,’ Estella said. ‘I’m mentally stuck in the eighteenth century. Missed that picture altogether. What’s the evidence for this being him? The hat, the wig and the absence of teeth?’

‘The clothes he’s wearing are right for 1761,’ Paloma said. ‘They’ve deteriorated badly, as you’d expect.’

‘Can I see them? Did you take a picture?’

‘The police photographer did,’ Diamond said. ‘He took plenty, but I don’t have them on my phone, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘Peter’s phone is used for phoning and nothing else,’ Paloma said.

‘Could I get to see the clothes? Where are they now?’

‘In a lab with the bones,’ Diamond said. ‘A forensic anthropologist is doing the autopsy.’

‘Right now, as we speak?’

‘In his own good time. He’s in no hurry.’

‘I’d love to get some pictures for the book.’ Understandably she was already thinking ahead.

‘I expect it can be arranged after the inquest.’

‘When will that be?’

‘Can’t answer that. It’s up to the coroner. I’m not deliberately putting barriers in your way, Estella. You’ve been helpful to us and I’d like to return the compliment. It’s just that we have to go through the legal hoops.’

‘How could he possibly have ended up there?’ she said, still grappling with what she’d heard. ‘I’ll have to come up with a theory.’

‘You and me both,’ Diamond said. ‘I thought of one just now when you were talking about the Papjoy woman. It almost made sense of her refusing to sleep in a bed all those years.’ He outlined the substitution trick with the body to save Beau Nash from being buried as a pauper. ‘She hid the corpse in Twerton and couldn’t find a way to give him a decent burial, so she vowed to sleep on straw as long as he remained above ground. Plausible?’

‘Barely,’ Paloma said.

‘Like a penance.’

‘I know what you mean, but it’s unlikely and anyway we know it didn’t happen. The woman who was there at the death was a different character altogether.’

‘The terrifying Mrs. Hill?’

‘You need a whole new theory for her.’

‘More’s the pity.’

The main course was put in front of them. Suspicious of what he was about to eat, Diamond prised the Cuban sandwich open and discovered layers of ham and roast pork, mustard and pickles in a goo of cooked cheese that formed strings.

‘Wishing you’d ordered the blazing bird?’ Paloma said.

‘This’ll see me right.’ He reached for the jug, his thoughts cascading like the water filling his glass. ‘How about this for Mrs. Hill? We know the estate owed her money and she wasn’t likely to get any preference over all the other creditors. She decided on extreme measures.’

Paloma was quick to see the point. ‘Holding the executors to ransom? She was in a position to do it, I’ll grant you.’

‘The body was lying in state in the house four days,’ Diamond went on, liking this better than his Papjoy theory, ‘so she had time to plan. On the evening before the funeral she removed the corpse from where it had been on view and paid a carter to transport it to the secret address at Twerton. She told George Scott she wanted a written undertaking that the £250 bond would be honoured in full or the grand funeral wouldn’t take place. She was banking on him paying up to avoid a scandal. But he called her bluff and refused, figuring that she wouldn’t want to be exposed as the grasping woman she was. He arranged for the empty coffin to be filled with sand and driven in state to the Abbey.’

‘So poor Beau Nash was left to rot in the Twerton house?’ Paloma said. ‘This is more believable.’

‘It would explain why Scott despised her so much,’ Diamond said. ‘What do you think, Estella?’

‘I’m still coming to terms with the idea that he wasn’t buried,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you how shocked I am. Years of researching and writing a biography brings you close to your subject and you get emotionally attached to them — even someone as flawed as the Beau.’

‘He’ll be given a decent burial now,’ Diamond said.

‘He would have hated being exposed by the media as some kind of relic. I know I must use the images and publish them, but it feels awfully like a betrayal.’

‘It’s your duty to tell it as it is,’ Paloma said.

‘If it is,’ Diamond said.