‘What police?’ Leaman said.
‘They had watchmen and constables, didn’t they?’
‘Are you thinking Nash had something to do with it?’ Paul Gilbert said.
‘Don’t you know anything about duelling?’ Leaman said. ‘They always brought along friends as seconds. Nash was Webster’s ADC, so it’s more than likely he was involved. Webster was a military man and ought to have known how to use a sword, but he was killed. Did Nash have anything to do with it? You bet he did.’
‘Pure speculation,’ Halliwell said.
‘And we’re getting sidetracked,’ Diamond said, increasingly irritated by all the sniping. He gave Ingeborg the cue to go on. ‘He gets to be master of ceremonies.’
‘The king, it says here,’ she said. ‘He was known as the King of Bath, and now he was in his element. Under Captain Webster, the management had been slack. Public rooms a disgrace, people drinking to excess and arguments breaking out. The gamblers carried swords for protection and no one could feel safe because there would always be losers. The swords were often drawn as a threat and tore the women’s gowns. There were card sharps in plenty, prostitutes, beggars and the rooms stayed open all night. Beau Nash used his authority to change all that. The carrying of swords was banned. Duelling was suppressed. The wearing of riding boots in the public rooms had to stop and women were forbidden from wearing white aprons.’
‘White aprons?’ Leaman said.
‘Why?’ Diamond asked.
‘I’m not sure. Let me read on a bit.’ She dragged the text down with her finger. ‘Ah, according to Goldsmith, only Abigails were clothed in aprons.’
‘Say that again.’
‘Historical slang for a lady’s maid. The aprons were a fashion item our man disapproved of. He once found the Duchess of Queensberry wearing one — a very smart apron made of Brussels lace — in the Assembly Rooms and snatched it from her and threw it to her ladies-in-waiting. He was just as strict with the men. If one appeared in top-boots, the Beau would march up to him and ask him archly if he had “forgot his horse.”’
‘And they tolerated this?’ Diamond said.
‘From him, yes. He sounds like a tyrant over the dress code, but he was mostly good-humoured, it says here. That duchess made no fuss. People felt safer after he insisted all dancing should end at eleven. He brought in rules that changed the way everyone behaved, and they were widely agreed to be sensible and needed. The city’s reputation improved out of all recognition and there was hardly a VIP in the land who didn’t visit. The Prince of Wales, dukes and duchesses, prime ministers, poets and novelists. And they all had to obey the rules. Even when the King’s daughter, the young Princess Amelia, only seventeen, pleaded for one more dance after the official closing of a ball at eleven p.m., Nash wouldn’t bend his rules. “But I’m a princess,” she told him. “Yes, madam,” he answered, “but I reign here.”’
‘Sounds a real bundle of joy,’ Halliwell said.
‘Actually he was admired for it. As time went on and his influence increased, he was more like a mayor than a master of ceremonies. With his young friends Ralph Allen and John Wood he transformed Bath into one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Many of the great buildings went up during his reign as MC.’
‘He was the King of Bath,’ Halliwell said. ‘We got that. Can we cut to the chase — his sad end?’
‘In Twerton,’ Leaman said with scorn. ‘I don’t think so.’
Diamond gave them both a glare and told Ingeborg to keep going.
‘He ran into financial problems. He’d never drawn any kind of salary as master of ceremonies. He made his living out of the gaming, which was pretty smart considering how many were unsuccessful at it. He’d been living in style in a large Baroque-style house he’d had built in St. John’s Court that’s basically still there as the Garrick’s Head.’
‘We’ve all been there,’ Leaman said with what sounded like a yawn. ‘Remember when Georgina insisted we watched her in Sweeney Todd and bought the tickets? We all needed a drink after that.’
Ingeborg smiled at the memory. ‘Back to Beau Nash. He dressed in expensive clothes, including a distinctive white three-cornered hat. And when he visited Tunbridge Wells to play the tables he’d travel in a carriage pulled by six greys and surrounded by footmen, outriders and French horn players. He appointed himself master of ceremonies in Tunbridge as well as Bath. His reputation was huge. When the Prince of Wales visited Bath in 1738, it was Nash who acted as host and put up the obelisk in Queen Square to mark the royal visit.’
‘That whacking great column in the middle?’ Gilbert said. ‘He paid for that?’
‘It was even higher originally and surrounded by a pool.’
‘You were telling us what went wrong,’ Halliwell reminded her.
She read on. ‘The rot set in with the government bringing in gaming laws banning some of the most lucrative games like Hazard, Ace of Hearts and Faro.’
‘This is when?’ Diamond asked.
‘1739. But the gambling industry hit back. New games were introduced and one of these was EO.’
‘Say that again.’
‘EO. The letters E and O, standing for Evens and Odds.’
‘Do we have to go into all this?’ Leaman asked, looking round. There were definite stirrings of impatience.
‘Hold on. I must get this right.’ She switched to another website. ‘A simple idea that eventually was later developed into Roly Poly, or roulette.’
‘Roly Poly,’ Diamond said to lighten the mood. ‘Love it.’
‘EO is played with a wheel with forty sections marked even and odd. The wheel is turned and the punters place their bets and win or lose according to which section the ball ends up in. Get the picture, everyone?’ She swiped back to the main story. ‘Nash saw the game being played at Tunbridge Wells and cleverly decided it was the coming thing. It was going to be huge, and he was right. He decided to invest. He made an agreement with the inventor to bring EO to Bath in return for a percentage of the profits. But he soon suspected something was wrong and that the Tunbridge Wells guy had cheated him. He brought a court action, but lost the case. That was bad enough. Worse, he was forced to admit in court that he’d made his living for years by taking a cut from the professional gaming managers.’
‘Like a protection racket?’
‘There was no threat of violence.’
‘Extortion, then?’
‘I suppose you could call it that. He vetted everyone who played at the tables and ruled whether they were suitable. The gambling bosses couldn’t stay in business without his support.’
‘And nobody else knew?’
‘It was a massive scandal when the news broke. I don’t know where the public thought he got his fortune from, but his reputation went into free fall and so did his income. Eventually he was forced to exist on a handout of ten guineas a month from city funds.’
Diamond interrupted again. ‘Exist where? Where was he living?’
Ingeborg had been speed-reading from some website, summing up the key facts for the others. She was as eager as they were to discover how the story turned out.
‘According to this,’ she said, ‘he was forced to sell the large house he’d had built for himself in St. John’s Court and move into a smaller place nearby in Sawclose. And that’s where he’ — she clapped her hand to her mouth — ‘where he died.’
An awkward silence followed.
John Leaman didn’t hold back for long. ‘What a fucking letdown. We’ve listened to you rabbiting on for the past twenty minutes for this? He can’t be the skeleton in the loft if he died in Sawclose.’
‘Hang on a bit, John,’ Diamond was quick to say. ‘You can lay off Inge. I was the one who asked her to give us the facts.’