Free The Regency Detective by David Lassman

not see him alight with you?’ she queried.
    ‘Because he journeyed on to Bristol,’ replied Swann, deciding at present not to mention anything about the two women who were travelling with him.
    ‘Surely you must be mistaken?’ said Mary.
    ‘I am not,’ replied Swann.
    Mary was silent for another moment or two.
    ‘Then there must be a rational explanation,’ she finally said, ‘of which we do not know.’
    ‘If that is the case,’ said Swann, ‘then why did he not mention anything when he recognised me at the funeral.’
    ‘You did not mention anything, either.’
    ‘I wanted to protect you from a potentially embarrassing situation.’
    ‘Perhaps Edmund had the same idea.’
    ‘Mary, you are a strong, independent woman, and I have always admired you for that, but when it comes to matters of the heart I feel you are not so. My professional instinct tells me there is something about this man I find unsettling.’
    ‘Well, my female intuition tells me otherwise,’ said Mary, ‘although I did not foresee not being able to attend the ball.’
    They were silent for a few moments before Swann bent over and picked up the pendant from where Mary had laid it on the dressing table.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    In any account of Bath’s remarkable transformation in the eighteenth century, from mediaeval textile centre to fashionable playground of the upper classes, there are three names that need always to be included: Allen, Wood and Nash. Collectively known as the three ‘creators’ of Bath, the individual and distinctive legacies this triumvirate of self-made men left for the city, reverberated through the entire century and continued to do so at the opening of the next.
    If Ralph Allen, one-time postmaster general turned property developer who discovered, developed and supplied the Bath Stone which would give the city its worldwide fame, brought the raw materials and the elder John Wood, who laid out designs for the city that gave it an enviable reputation as an architectural marvel, supplied the architectural vision, then Richard ‘Beau’ Nash contributed the social infrastructure and modes of behaviour which made Bath as famous as its stone and building style.
    Nash was born into poverty but by sheer determination, audacity and charm rose to become one of the most powerful men in the city. He arrived in 1705, at the age of thirty-one and with his impeccable manners and affable nature swiftly made a name for himself within the burgeoning social scene. He acquired the moniker ‘Beau’ on account of his fine dressing – it was said that he would rather forgo a meal than a prized item of clothing – and on attaining the position of Master of Ceremonies, was dubbed the ‘King of Bath’.
    With the power accorded his position Nash now set about ‘cleaning’ up the city both physically, through installing proper street lighting and paved walkways, and socially, by creating the ‘Rules to be observed in Bath.’ The latter being created to combat what he saw as people behaving in a ‘rude and quarrelsome way.’ The rules were vigorously endorsed and not even the titled could escape conforming to them. Yet how ironic it should be then, that when Beau Nash died, emblazoned on his tombstone was the inscription: Beams ille qui sibi imperiosus . Happy is he who rules himself. Yet the rules he created for others during the eighteenth century still remained intact at the beginning of the nineteenth, four decades after his demise; adhered to by all and enforced by the succeeding Master of Ceremonies.
    Despite this ordered sense of regulation the previous ninety minutes had witnessed severe chaos, before a solution had been reached not long before the first guests arrived at the Upper Rooms for that evening’s one-off special Charity Ball. A runner had been dispatched earlier to the residency of the current Master of Ceremonies, Mr Richard Tyson, only to find him ill in bed and in no fit state to perform his duty. With