David Liss - A Spectacle Of Corruption

Rowley laughed. “They ought not to. I don’t believe he does. But Melbury has had some financial difficulties over the years, and a year ago he struck a bargain: He would link himself to the cause of King James in exchange for funds to run his campaign. I must tell you that there are those in our organization who have grown weary of paying his gambling debts, and Mr. Melbury has become something of a liability.”

“But he has power,” I noted.

“Of course. If he is elected to the House, as it seems he very well might be, he would be in a position of some influence. I could not have directly defied him when he ordered me to find you guilty, so I did what I could.”

“And now what will you do?”

He looked at me. “I think that is up to you, sir.”

“I suppose it is,” I agreed. I had not had the time to consider the consequences of my visit. I had not anticipated that Rowley would prove the cooperative informant that I now saw before me, and his cooperation made me inclined to find some solution that would not end in his execution for treason.

“I propose,” I said at last, “that you flee the country. My name, sir, will by now have been cleared owing to other activities, and I do not require a confession on your part. I cannot allow you, in good conscience, to maintain your post and exert the will of your corrupt masters, but neither would I see you die for what you have done either, for you did choose to spare my life. I believe you found yourself in a difficult position and you managed it as you thought best.”

Rowley nodded. He must have known, long before I had arrived that day, that he was defeated, for he made little complaint of what I had proposed. “And what of Mr. Melbury?”

Indeed. What of Mr. Melbury? I could not allow a man who had used me so hard to go unpunished, but neither could I countenance that Miriam should share in the ignominy of a general discovery of his treachery against the Crown. Were he arrested and tried as a traitor, the shame should destroy her.

“I shall manage Melbury,” I said.

Rowley blinked but once to show his understanding. He then asked me if I would be his guest for the night, and I thought it rude to decline. He thus indulged me in a splendid dinner and the choicest samples of his wine cellars. I departed in the morning not a little regretful that I had, in effect, exiled this man from his country. I had long thought him an unprincipled villain, but I now understood that villainy in most men is but a matter of degree.

BY THE TIME I returned to London, the papers were full of the news that I had been exonerated of any wrongdoing in the death of Walter Yate. The Tory papers blamed the Whig courts. The Whig papers blamed the Tory agitation of laborers. No one blamed me, and that was easily enough to keep me satisfied.

At Covent Garden, the violence had diminished considerably. The Whigs, understanding that they looked foolish in the revelations surrounding my name, were less willing to use such extreme methods of dissuading voters, so Dogmill ran his campaign as best he could, only to lose in the end to Melbury by fewer than two hundred votes. Wild, at least, was denied his Parliamentarian. Dogmill retired to tend his tobacco business. Hertcomb simply retired to a life of leisure.

I saw little of Miss Dogmill after my return. It was one thing for her to be seen about town with a gentleman only she knew to be Benjamin Weaver. It was another for her to be seen with Benjamin Weaver. I understood that our worlds did not touch, and I did not seek her out, though she came to me once a few months later, having lost a watch. I spent several weeks in her employ before she discovered it had fallen behind a sofa.

As for Mr. Melbury, he never took his seat in the House. The summer after his election, a great scandal was discovered in which the Bishop of Rochester, whom I had met in Melbury’s house, was revealed to be the leader of a great Jacobite conspiracy. Mr. Johnson himself, whose true named was George Kelly, was tracked down by the King’s Messengers. They burst into his rooms unannounced, where he managed to hold off half a dozen of them with a sword in one hand while, with the other, he gathered his papers and tossed them into the fire- thus concealing the identities of many of his conspirators. Nevertheless, no small number of men were arrested and disgraced, and I have little doubt that Melbury would have been among them had he lived so long.

Less than a month after the close of the polls, however, Melbury met with a terrible accident coming home late one night from a gaming house. He was found in the mud the next morning, a great wound to his head. The magistrate determined that there was no motive of robbery, as his goods had not been touched. Many men testified that he had been drinking to excess that night, so the coroner determined he might as easily have fallen to his destruction as been struck. Though his injuries had all the signs of a violence done to him, his death was ruled to be no more than an unfortunate misadventure.

I attempted to call on Mrs. Melbury to offer her my condolences, but she would not receive me. I could only presume that she held me responsible for the death of her husband, as she returned one of my notes with a quick scrawl indicating that she would never speak to me again.

Many thanks to Frank O’Groman for helping to demystify the world of eighteenth-century elections. I would also like to thank Jim Jopling and John Pipkin for their insights and suggestions on early drafts of the manuscript.

As always, I am in debt to the people at Random House, particularly Dennis Ambrose, and, once again, my editor, Jonathan Karp, whose humor, wisdom, and insights make my job so much easier. I cannot sufficiently thank my agent, Liz Darhansoff, for her guidance and friendship.

I must also put on paper my gratitude to my family, my wife, Claudia Stokes, for her help, support, and patient listening; and our daughter Eleanor, for reasons that are too obvious and silly to articulate. And as no book would be complete without thanking at least one animal, I must mention my appreciation for Tiki, who always made sure I was up for breakfast- his, not mine.

DAVID LISS is the author of A Spectacle of Corruption, The Coffee Trader, and A Conspiracy of Paper, winner of the 2000 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. He lives in San Antonio with his wife and daughter, and can be reached via his website, www.davidliss.com.