Some Danger Involved

20

I was at the Hammond the next morning, typing up all that had occurred so far in our investigation. Barker claimed that a dry listing of facts would be helpful in clearing his mind, but I secretly felt he was giving me busywork. I couldn't think of anyone else to interview, and, I suspected, neither could he. Was this normal, or was my employer floundering out of his depth as Nightwine had suggested? I had no way to judge; the fellow was an enigma to me, and my knowledge of detective work rudimentary at best.

Jenkins came through the room with some papers, moving as slowly and surely as a clockwork automaton. He was always this way in the mornings, half asleep, moving about like a somnambulant and propping himself against door frames for support. As the day progressed, he would become more and more animated, until he was near frantic by five o'clock, trying to get all the duties he had neglected finished.

As for Barker, he, too, was ruminating. He began in the office, pacing from the desk to the window, the window to the bookshelves, and back to the desk. Eventually, he ended up in the little outdoor court, wandering about in the cold. It didn't matter to me how mad he looked, if his thoughts were actually getting him somewhere.

Since joining Barker's employ, I had enjoyed a highly irregular schedule. Some days we ignored the office entirely, our only communication being a telephone call or a message from Jenkins. We had meals at all hours of the day and sometimes went without. Our visit to the theater the night before had been part of our investigation, and since we did not get home to Barker's ritual bath until nearly midnight, I had put in a sixteen-hour day. Not that I'm complaining, you understand. I was fortunate indeed to have an employer who liked a little flexibility in his schedule.

I had picked up The Times and was preparing to study it for the day's events. Barker felt a complete reading of the daily was essential in our work. It was nearing noon, and my employer, having completed his circuit, was back by his desk. Jenkins was lazily buzzing around the room, like a trapped bluebottle, lighting here and there. I had finished my report and placed it on Barker's desk, and he was just starting to go over it. I was a bit bored, to tell the truth, and hoped we might go back to the City after lunch, as this inactivity galled me. Those were my thoughts as I picked up the newspaper and noted the date, which was the twentieth of March.

I leapt to my feet, knocking my castered chair across the room. My heart was pumping like a thoroughbred's at Ascot, and though I reached out to the desk to steady myself, I couldn't feel the wood under my fingers.

"Good heavens, man," Barker remonstrated. "What is the matter?" He had that same look on his face his Pekingese got when its dignity was affronted.

"IЧ IЧ IЧ" I began, then tried again. "I have to leave, sir. I require the rest of the day off."

"You what?"

"I have to go, sir. Now! I'm sorry. Oh, hang it!" I ran out of the room. Jenkins was ambulating again, and I got past him just in time. If Barker tried to follow, the clerk had sealed up the doorway for a moment or two. I clattered down the front steps, too upset to even remember my hat and stick. I hurried down Whitehall toward Charing Cross, close to a dead run. I didn't care a pin about what the people who watched me pass by must think. I had more important things on my mind.

I reached Waterloo, and realizing I couldn't keep this pace up, I stopped to catch my breath, while I watched the cold gray water of the Thames pass under the bridge. My mind kept repeating the phrase: twenty March, twenty March, twenty March.

It was one year to the day since my wife's death. Her death, her illness had led to my arrest and trial, and my eight months' sentence. How had I not remembered the date until now? What kind of husband was I that I couldn't even remember the first anniversary of my wife's death? While it was true that my time had not been my own since I had been hired, I still felt a crushing weight of guilt on my chest.

I paid the tuppence toll and crossed the bridge, walking aimlessly. Jenny was her name. Memory conjured up her face before me. Her hair was soft and brown, and her large eyes hazel. I had loved the shape of her ears and the way the curls in front of them spiraled. I had loved everything about her. We had been married less than three months. The old loss came back, the loss that had made me howl in my cell, that had taken a young boy of twenty summers and turned him into an old man.

Gradually, having wandered for hours, I felt the enormity of what I had done begin to sink into my troubled brain. I had walked out on my position, after all Barker had done for me, after the expensive clothes, the room, the meals. I was a complete ingrate. I had left him much out of pocket, and now I was back against the wall again, no savings, no position, no prospects. Perhaps I would be swimming in the Thames yet. I recognized the hand of Fate by now, and her cruel little jokes.

Eventually, finding myself with nowhere else to go, I returned home. I passed a curious Mac and made my way upstairs. With a stoical sigh, I reached under the bed and pulled out my old battered suitcase, the one Barker had rescued from the dustbin. It had become my oldest friend. Inside it was the meager suit I had worn to my first interview with Barker. Had it only been a week? Somehow, it seemed longer. I changed into my old clothes again. After wearing some of the finest apparel available in London, I saw that the suit looked shabby indeed, mere refuse for the stalls in Petticoat Lane. A pity. I would have liked to own a nice suit in which to be buried.

There was a knock at the door. I was so deep in thought I didn't notice, until it came again. It startled me. Nobody in this household knocked. Barker bellowed, Maccabee barged right in, and Dummolard never came upstairs. I got up and opened the door. It was Mac.

"Mr. Llewelyn, Mr. Barker requests that you join him in the basement."

"The basement, did you say?"

"Yes, sir." He bowed and left.

So, that was it, then. I was to be dismissed in the basement, unless he intended to shoot me instead. I would have preferred the office, where it all began, but the basement was as good a place to be sacked as any.

I went down the stairs and opened the door. In the middle of the room, Barker was seated at a small deal table of indeterminate age. The table was without benefit of a tablecloth but was covered with plates of bread, cheese, and a cold joint.

"Yes, sir?" I said. "You wanted to see me?"

Barker got up and went through a door leading into the lumber room. "Have a seat. I must say, you had me going," he said, while I heard him rummaging about. "I didn't quite know what to make of it. Then I remembered. Your wife passed away a year ago today, didn't she?"

"Yes, sir. How did you know?"

"I went to Oxford that second day, while you were cramming those first books. Interesting reading. Your files, I mean." He came out again and put two pint glasses on the table. "Why didn'tЧ My word, what are those rags you're wearing?"

I looked down at my suit. He was right. Compared to what I had been wearing the last week, they were rags. "My suit, sir. The one you hired me in."

Barker seemed a bit short-tempered, as I would expect him to be under the circumstances. "I thought I told Mac to burn those. What are you wearing them for?"

"They seemed as good as any to be sacked in, sir."

"Sacked? Who said anything about being sacked? Have I told you that you are sacked?"

"No, sir." I watched him go back into the lumber room again.

"Your records at Oxford were rather vague. The charges were theft and assault, but the full particulars were mislaid. For a city the size of Oxford, I found the constabulary quite bucolic. The sentence seemed very stiff for such a small crime. According to the report, the total worth of the stolen property was exactly one sovereign. Here it is!" He came out with a small barrel, very dusty and cobwebby. "Give me a hand here, lad."

I held the barrel, while he pulled the peg and opened the spigot. A brown liquid filled the glass, producing a tan collar on top. It was porter. He transferred the tan froth to his mustache.

"Eminently drinkable," he pronounced, and poured me a glass.

"What are we doing, sir?"

"That should be obvious. We are getting drunk and hearing the story of your life. Where was I? Yes. You are not the sort to suddenly refuse to do work that is required of you. Something of immense personal import to you made you leave the office suddenly. Obviously, something that happened before your employ, unless, of course, my numerous foibles finally grew to become too great. So, come, lad. Spill it. Confession is good for the soul."

"But, sir," I protested. "I saw you sip at the stout at the pub the other day. It is evident that you dislike it."

"There you go inferring again, without evidence, Llewelyn. What you have taken for dislike is in fact an overfondness. I could pour this stuff down my throat by the gallon, and did, in fact, during my wilder days. But now I must be abstemious, save upon an extraordinary occasion such as this. Tonight we shall drink ourselves into a stupor, and tomorrow morning conduct ourselves once more as sober men, and this occasion need never be discussed again. So tell it, man, and no blubbering. I can take anything but blubbering. Good porter, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir. Excellent."

"Mac makes it himself. Never trust a butler that can't make first-rate spirits."

"I shall remember that." I was trying to put together all the disjointed thoughts in my head and to be coherent. This was a subject I had never spoken of with anyone before. I wanted to get it right.

"Well, sir, I first met my wifeЧ"

"No, no," Barker broke in. "You're making a hash of it already. Go back to the beginning, Thomas. Tell me about your family and your village."

I took another sip of the porter, then a large gulp. I'd never had the luxury of being drunk in my entire life, but this seemed as good a time as any.