The Devil And Drusilla. Paula Marshall

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      He was late arriving at Lady Leominster’s that night. He had written to Robert, naming a date for his arrival at Tresham—‘and God help you if you have sent for me for nothing,’ he had ended.

      His speech in the Lords, asking for clemency and help for the starving Midlands framework knitters, who had recently rioted at Loughborough in Leicestershire, had created a great deal of excitement, if nothing else.

      ‘What interest do you belong to?’ one excited peer had shouted at him. ‘You’re Whig one week, and Tory the next.’

      ‘None,’ Devenish had shot back. ‘I’m my own man and you’d better not forget it.’

      ‘A loose cannon, careering round the deck then,’ his neighbour, Lord Granville, had said languidly to him. ‘Hit, miss and to the devil when anyone gets in your way.’

      His reward for this shrewd comment was a crack of laughter from Devenish. ‘By God, Granville,’ he had offered, ‘you’d be Prime Minister if you could make a speech half as incisive as your private judgements.’

      ‘Not a remark anyone would make about you,’ returned Granville, his perfect politeness of delivery robbing his words of their sting. ‘You have no private judgements. Everything you say is for public consumption. So far as that goes, you’re the most honest man in the two Houses.’

      Remembering this interchange, Devenish smiled when he saw Granville and his wife across the Leominsters’ ballroom, talking to the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth. Some devil in him, which desired confrontation today, had him walking over to them.

      Sidmouth’s response to him was all that he had expected. ‘Ah, here comes the noble advocate for the murdering Luddites I’m busy trying to control! What got into you, Devenish, to have you defending them?’

      Devenish had a sudden vision of a mean street in a Northern town where a half-starved boy and his penniless and widowed mother had eked out a poor living.

      He repressed it and said, ‘I don’t condone their violence, you know, but I do understand what causes it. Some relief, surely, could be given to those who wish to work, but who are unable to do so.’

      ‘Not Jacobin tendencies then, eh, Devenish? No feeling for revolution?’ Sidmouth said this quietly. He was a mild man. ‘No, don’t answer me, I know that on the whole you are more like friend Granville here and favour moderate and gradual change.’

      He paused, ‘Perhaps Lord and Lady Granville, you will forgive us both. Devenish is well met. I have need of a private and quiet word with him. You will both excuse us, I trust.’

      The Granvilles assured him that they would. Sidmouth led Devenish into an ante-room and shut its double doors behind them. Without preamble he said, ‘Do you intend to visit Tresham in the near future?’

      Devenish said, ‘I have thought of doing so, yes. It’s years since I was there. My agent reproaches me every month for my absence, so I have arranged to go as soon as the House rises.’

      ‘Yes, you take your duties seriously. As I take mine. I ask you because something odd has been happening there recently. The Lord Lieutenant of Surrey has brought to my notice that over the last few years two men, one a person of quality, have disappeared. The gentleman was later found murdered. Several women of the lower orders have also disappeared—one as recently as a month ago. No reason has been found for their disappearance, and apart from that of the gentleman, not one of their bodies has been recovered. He would like an enquiry made.

      ‘Now, I have the hands of myself—and the few men I have at my disposal—overfull with this business of controlling radical revolution, to say nothing of Luddite discontent. I was speaking to an old friend of mine—Wellington, to be exact—and he told me that he has reason to believe that you are a sound man in a crisis involving danger. That being so I would ask you—discreetly, mind—to investigate this sorry business and report back to me should you find anything of moment.’