The American Boy

17th July 1775 – 25th November 1819

aet. suae 44

With his lean figure, Henry Frant had looked younger. The date of his birth stirred a memory: I recalled that according to the tablet in the church at Flaxern Parva his mother Emily had departed this life in the same year: perhaps she had died in childbirth, or from complications arising from it. I had a sudden vision, at once unexpected, intense and unwelcome, of a small boy alone among the servants in that great house at Monkshill; growing up without a mother, and with a father dedicated to dissolute pursuits that took him far away from his child; and, when Monkshill had to be sold, of a boy removed from the comfort of the familiar and sent to live among strangers in Ireland. Henry Frant was, or had been, a gentleman: but perhaps there had been little to envy in his situation.

I turned aside and paced up and down the gravel walks, the refrain of that unlovely fowl never far from my mind. A funeral procession passed me and automatically I uncovered and stood aside. Oh, the awful panoply of death! The last of the mourners went by. And there, hurrying away along a path at right angles to the procession, was the unmistakable figure of Sophie Frant. She was quite alone.

I walked rapidly in pursuit. Widow's weeds often mask their wearers with a layer of anonymity: even when the face is unveiled, one sees the widow, not the woman. There was no mistaking Sophie, though. I recognised every line of her body; I had traced in fact and in fancy the curve of her neck; I knew her posture and I knew the way she walked, with her eyes turning from side to side; for her mind was always alert, always watchful, always interested.

She heard my footsteps on the gravel behind her and stood aside to let me pass, pretending to study an inscription. I drew level and stopped. Slowly her head turned towards me.

I bowed. Neither of us spoke. There we were, four or five feet apart. I was aware of the cortege winding its way to an open grave within a stone's throw of the place dedicated to the mortal remains of Henry Frant. It was a fine afternoon, and there were others visiting the dead. Here, among the graves, a tide of living humanity ebbed and flowed around us.

She pushed the veil away from her face. It was always her eyes that drew me. I took a step nearer, then stopped as though chained to my situation like a dog in a yard. At Monkshill, seeing her every day, dining at the same table, walking in the same grounds – all this had bred a false intimacy between us, in the sense that it had seemed entirely natural for a woman in her position to treat me almost as her equal. But these last three months apart had dispelled this rosy mist of illusion: now, seeing her again, I could not help but be aware of the great chasm that lay between us: of the contrast between my shabby second-hand clothes and the dark elegance of hers. I did not recognise her cloak, or the pelisse or gown I glimpsed beneath.

"Tom," she said, "I – I must not see you."

"Then why did you not write me an answer to my note? Why leave me in suspense?"

She winced as if I had hit her. "That was not what I intended. I thought a clean, immediate break was best."

"For whom?"

She looked directly at me. "For me. And perhaps for you. Besides, further intercourse between us would not be kind to my cousin."

"To Miss Carswall? But what has she to do with it?"

"You should know that better than I, sir."

I felt myself grow warm. "Sophie – my dear, please: if you mean that last evening in Monkshill, Miss Carswall came to the schoolroom merely to wish me goodbye and to lend me some money for my journey. It was an act of kindness, nothing more."

She turned her head away, and her hat and veil obscured her face. "Even if that is true, there is another reason why I must not see you or write to you."

"Is this because of the accusation Mr Carswall has fabricated against me?"

She shook her head. "I knew that was nonsense. So did Flora."

"He had someone sew the ring into my greatcoat. I suspect it was Pratt. By great good fortune, I found it there when I reached London. I have made arrangements for it to be returned anonymously."

"I have been so anxious. I did not know where you were, or how you were." Sophie spoke more quickly now, and her face was alive with animation. "Mr Carswall changed his mind about withdrawing Charlie from Mr Bransby's. But you are no longer there, I collect?"

I nodded. "Mr Bransby and Mr Carswall came to an understanding. I resigned before I was discharged."

"How do you live?"

I saw her looking at me, and knew the figure I must cut in my battered hat and threadbare coat. "I live very well, thank you. I am not without friends."

"I am glad."

"And you?"

Her shoulders twitched. "I live with my cousins, as before. Mr Carswall sees to everything. He pays Kerridge's wages, and Mr Bransby's bills. I want for nothing."

"Sophie, there is still-"

"I am looking for Mr Frant's grave," she interrupted, and her interruption was a form of reproof. "The headstone was set up only last week. I thought I should see it."

I pointed. "It is over there."

"Mr Carswall paid for that, too."

Uninvited, I paced in silence beside her. I indicated the headstone and we stopped. Sophie stared at it for a moment, her face pale and still. I do not think there was any trace of emotion in her countenance. She might have been studying a bill of fare.

"Do you think he is at peace?" she said suddenly.

"I do not know."

"He was always restless. I think he would have liked to be at peace. To be nothing. To want nothing."

Her right hand gestured towards the grave, and the movement brought to mind the way a mourner throws a handful of earth on top of the coffin before it is covered over for ever. There was a finality about it. Without looking at me, she walked away. I replaced my hat and followed.

"Sophie," I said, because after what had happened between us I would not call her Mrs Frant. "Will you listen to me?"

"Pray do not speak." Her eyes were bright. "Please, Tom."

"I must. There may not be another opportunity. You cannot stay where you are."

"Why not? The Carswalls are my cousins."

"What will happen when Miss Carswall marries Sir George? You will be alone with that foul old man."

"That is my concern. Not yours."

"It is my concern: I cannot stand back and leave you there unprotected."

"I do not want your pity, sir."

"I do not wish to give you pity. I wish to give you love. I cannot give you much, Sophie, but I believe that I could through my exertions preserve you and Charlie from absolute want, even now. If you would let me, I would offer you my hand with all my heart."

"I cannot entertain such a proposal. It is quite out of the question."

"Then let me support you without marriage."

"As your mistress, do you mean?" she said sharply. "I had not thought you-"

"No, no. I mean as a sister, as whatever you wished. My lodgings are perfectly respectable, and I would put you under the protection of the woman of the house and move elsewhere."

"No, sir, no." Her voice had become gentler. "It cannot be."

"I know we should be poor at first, but in time I hope to earn a modest competence. I have friends, I am willing to work. I would do all in my power-"

"I do not doubt it, Tom." She touched my arm. "But it cannot be. When my year of mourning is up, I am to marry Mr Carswall."

I stared appalled at her for a moment, my mouth open like an idiot's. Then I grasped her hand and said, "Sophie, my love, no, you must not-"

"Why not?" She moved aside, pulling her hand from mine. "It is for Charlie's sake. Mr Carswall has promised to settle a considerable sum on him on the day we are married, and to provide for him in his will."

"It is damnable. Carswall is a monster. I-"

"It will be a perfectly respectable arrangement in the eyes of the world, and in the eyes of our family and friends. We are cousins. There is a disparity of age but that don't signify. I have no doubt we shall do very well. Charlie will be provided for, and I shall live in comfort. I cannot pretend these considerations mean nothing to me. And, as I have accepted Mr Carswall as my future husband, I must respect his wishes. Any acquaintance between you and me must come to an end."

I looked aghast at her pale, determined face. Something inside me shivered and broke. I turned and ran. My vision shimmered. Tears chilled my cheeks. I pushed my way through a knot of mourners who had attended the cortege and burst through the gates of the cemetery.

Drawn up outside was a row of carriages. I glimpsed a face I recognised at the window of the nearest one, a hackney. Mrs Kerridge was waiting for her mistress.

I ran on. In my mind, the cry of that damned bird ran round like a jingle.

Ayez peur, ayez peur.

73

I must have walked more than thirty miles that day, from one side of London to the other and then back in great zigzags. At nine o'clock of the evening I found myself in Seven Dials. It had come on to rain, but that did not deter the drinkers and the prostitutes, the beggars and the hawkers.

By this time, I was long past the surge of misery that had enveloped me as I left the graveyard. I was cool, entirely rational. I was no longer blind to the need for self-preservation, that most resilient of instincts. I had a firm grasp on my stick, avoided dark entries and kept a wary eye on those I met.

I had walked so far with a simple purpose in mind, that I might sleep eventually, for a weary body is the best of all soporifics. I had come to Seven Dials with a purpose, too. A drowning man will catch at a twig and hope against hope it will bear his weight.

Ayez peur, ayez peur.

I turned into Queen-street. A moment later I was strolling past Mr Theodore Iversen's shop. There was a light in the window. I crossed the road and went into an alehouse a few doors further down. I ordered a pint of porter, pushed my way through the crowd and leaned against a wall beside a grimy window that gave me a view of the other side of the street.

I drank slowly, rebuffing attempts at conversation. I was caught on the horns of a dilemma. I did not wish to make my interest in the shop too obvious, but unless I went closer, there was no possibility of my finding what I sought. It soon became apparent that there was a good deal of coming and going at Mr Iversen's – both at the shop door and at the passage leading to the backyard, where the men had attacked me. Respectability was an uncommon quality in Seven Dials, but all things are relative and I gradually came to the conclusion that those who patronised the shop were, taken as a whole, less disreputable than those who came and went by the passage.

In general, the better sort of Mr Theodore Iversen's customers emerged from the shop with a package or a bottle. Apart from the ghostly movements I sometimes discerned on the other side of the glass, all I saw clearly of the interior was revealed in the moments when the door opened. However much I peered, my vantage point would not allow me to see into the back of the establishment.

Someone touched my arm. I wheeled around, twisting my features into a scowl. For an instant I thought there was no one there. Then I lowered my gaze and saw in the dim light of the taproom what at first I took to be the pale, dirty face of a child with ragged ginger hair hanging loose to her shoulders. A moment later, I realised that the shape beneath the torn shift she wore was womanly, and almost at once I recalled her identity.

"Mary Ann," I said. "I – I hope I find you well."

The little dumb woman uttered the high, bird-like sound I recalled so well from our meeting in the yard behind Mr Iversen's house. Her face was working with fear, and perhaps anxiety. She seized the cuff of my coat with grubby hands and pulled me towards the door. For an instant I resisted, fearing that she was leading me into a trap. A ripple of notes, as pure as a chorister's, burst out of her. I allowed her to tow me into the street.

"What is it? What do you wish to show me?"

This time her cry was sharper, even with an edge of anger. She gestured vigorously with her right arm, pointing towards the end of the street, and motioning with her other hand, as if to reinforce the urgency. Then she pushed me away from her, and as she did so, her eyes slid across the road to the shop. I saw the fear in her face, this time quite unmistakable. She bunched her hands into fists and pretended to punch me in the chest again and again and again, the blows light, meant for show, not for harm: to tell me something.

"They are coming to find me?" I said. "They mean to hurt me?"

Her mouth opened into a great oval, showing the rotting teeth within. Her squeals became louder. She passed the flat of her hand across my windpipe.

Cut-throat.

"Tell me one thing before I go." I felt in my pocket for my purse. "Has Mr Iversen still got his bird? The one that says ayez peur, the one he used to keep in the shop?"

She shook her head and shooed me, as if I were a wandering chicken.

"What happened to it?" I opened the purse and showed it to her. "Where did it go?"

She spat at the purse, her spittle spraying on my hand.

I cursed myself for a fool. "I'm sorry. But when did the bird go? Within the last week?"

In the dull evening light, dusk contending with flaring lamps and torches, Mary Ann's face grew even paler and the freckles stood out like typhus spots. She was looking not at me but across the road. Two heavily built men in black coats had emerged from the passageway beside the shop. One of them glanced at me and I saw him touch his companion's arm.

At the same time, I saw something else, something so wholly unexpected I could hardly believe it. Passing in front of the two men, impeding their rush across the road at me, was a small, lopsided but intensely powerful figure. He pushed open Mr Iversen's door – by some acoustical freak I heard the jangle of the shop bell – and vanished inside. But I recognised him. It was the tooth-puller, the man called Longstaff, who lived with his mother in Lambert-place, quite a different neighbourhood from this; the man who had given me the satchel containing the severed finger.

Mary Ann screeched and ran away down the street. I walked hurriedly in the opposite direction, towards the crossroads that gives Seven Dials its name. I glanced back and saw the men plunging across the roadway, careless of the traffic. I abandoned dignity and broke into a run.

For the next quarter of an hour, we played fox and hounds, and all the time I made my way south and west. In the end I lost them by ducking into an alley off Gerrard-street and working my way along the backs of the buildings till I could emerge at the eastern end of Lisle-street. I slowed to a more comfortable walk and took my time strolling among the bright lights of Leicester-square. I did not think they would dare attack me there, even if they had been able to follow me. I made two leisurely circuits of the square, enough to convince me that I had thrown them off.

At last I made my way back to the Strand and Gaunt-court. I was exhausted, and faint with hunger for I had not eaten since long before I met Sophie. Far worse than weariness and sore feet, though, were the anxieties that weighed down my spirits.

A hackney was waiting near the entrance to Gaunt-court, its driver huddled under his greatcoat on the box. The glass was down and the smell of a cigar wafted out into the evening air, its fragrance momentarily overwhelming the smells of the street. I had a glimpse of two eyes, their whites quite startling in the half-light of the evening, and heard a deep, familiar voice.

"Well met, Mr Shield," said Salutation Harmwell.

74

At Mr Noak's lodgings in Brewer-street, Salutation Harmwell provided me with a sandwich and a glass of madeira. The refreshment was welcome, but its effect, combined with the warmth, the lateness of the hour, the softness of my chair and above all my tiredness, was my undoing. As we waited in the big, shabby room on the first floor, I fell into a profound sleep.

A rapping on the street door brought me suddenly to my senses. In that instant, poised between sleeping and waking, a bed of red roses glowed and pulsed like embers in a dying fire, and time stretched into the dark, illimitable wasteland around them. Then the roses became tufts of wool, a faded carpet shimmering in the lamplight: time was no more than the ticking of the clock above the fireplace and the expectation of the sun rising.

I heard footsteps below, the rattle of a chain and the withdrawing of a bolt. In some confusion, I sat up and cleared my throat. I had an uneasy suspicion that I had been snoring.

"I beg your pardon," I said. "I had fallen into a doze."

Salutation Harmwell, still as a hunter, silent and alert, was seated bolt upright on the other side of the fireplace. "It does not matter in the least, Mr Shield," he said, rising from his chair. "The fault is ours, for bringing you here at this hour. But now at least your wait is over."

There were footsteps on the stairs. The door opened, and Mr Noak bustled in. He advanced towards me with his hand outstretched.

"It is good of you to come, Mr Shield. I am sorry you have had such a delay. I was dining with the American Minister, and I found he had invited several gentlemen expressly to meet me. I could not with decency leave Baker-street until I had talked to them all."

I protested automatically that he had not inconvenienced me in the slightest, wondering a little at the civility he showed me. Mr Noak waved me back to my chair. He himself took the seat that Harmwell had vacated. The clerk remained standing – attentive to Mr Noak, as always, but never subservient – his dark clothes and skin blending with the shadows away from the circle of light around the fireplace.

I said, more abruptly than I had intended: "May I ask how you found my direction, sir?"

"Eh? Oh, my London lawyers recommended an inquiry agent who does that kind of work." He glanced at me over his spectacles. "You did not give him a great deal of trouble."

I fancied there was a hint of a question in his words but I chose not to hear it. I said, "When did he find me?"

"Earlier this week." After a pause, he added, his voice suddenly sharp, "Why do you ask?"

"He was noticed at the house where I lodge."

"Yes. I shall not employ him again. He was less discreet than I would have wished." Noak hesitated, and then continued, "You see, when I commissioned him to find you, I was not sure when – or even whether – I might wish to see you. But today there have been a number of events which make renewing our acquaintance a matter of urgency."

"For whom?"

"Oh, for both of us." The American sat back in his chair and a spasm of pain passed over his face. "In my opinion, that is to say. You of course must be the best judge of your own interests."

"It is difficult to be the judge of anything when one has no idea what is happening, sir."

He inclined his head, as though acknowledging the force of my argument, and said in his flat, quiet voice: "Murder, Mr Shield. That is what has happened. And now there are consequences."

"You mean Mr Frant's murder?"

Noak said: "We go too fast. I should have said: murders."

The plural form of the word filled the room with a sudden, uncomfortable silence. It is one thing to articulate a theory in the privacy of your own mind; it is quite another to hear it on the lips of someone else, particularly a man of sense.

I pretended ignorance. "I beg your pardon, sir – I do not catch your meaning."

"The man who lies in St George's burial ground had lost his face, Mr Shield. The law decided he was Mr Frant but the law may sometimes be an ass."

"If he was not Mr Frant, then who was he?"

Noak regarded me in silence for a moment. His face was perfectly impassive. At last he sighed and said, "Come, come. Let us not fence with one another. You and Harmwell found Mrs Johnson's body. Both Sir George and Mr Carswall had pressing reasons to treat her death as the accident it seemed, at least superficially, to be. But there is no reason why you or I should delude ourselves. What on earth would a gentlewoman be doing in her neighbour's ice-house in the depths of a winter night, a gentlewoman dressed in her husband's clothes? You will recall the poisoned dogs, I am sure, and the mantrap that was sprung in East Cover. I think Harmwell drew your attention to the sound of a horse when you were carrying back the boys that night. And I am sure you will recall the ring that you and he found the following morning." He gave a dry, snuffling sound which I think was a sign of mirth. "I am a tolerable judge of character, by the by. I have never credited Mr Carswall's allegations about you."

"I am heartily glad of it, sir. Surely, though – and I admit I know little or nothing of the law – even if there are two murders rather than one, and even if the victim of the first was not the man he seemed, it is not easy to change the verdict of a coroner's jury? Not, at least, without irrefutable evidence."

"Two murders?" said he, ignoring my question. "I did not say two murders. I believe there has been at least one more." Mr Noak leaned forward, his elbows on the arms of the chair, and I saw the twinge of pain once again pass like a shadow over his face. "That is the reason for my involvement. But I've already told you something of that."

He peered at me. It took a moment for his meaning to sink in. When it did, I felt an unexpected rush of pity.

"Lieutenant Saunders, sir? Your son?"

Noak stood up. He walked slowly across that red rectangle of carpet until he reached the fireplace. He put out a hand and rested it on the mantel-shelf and turned to face me. I was startled by the change in his face. Now he seemed an old, old man.

"You recall that I mentioned him at Monkshill?" he said. "It was partly to judge the effect of his name on the company when I revealed the connection. It is not generally known, even in America."

He had also told me that I resembled his son, and that the day was the anniversary of his son's birth. I remembered, too, that he had said something in my private ear about the manner of the young man's death.

"I think you told me that he died in an accident?" I said.

"Another accident." Noak gave the last word a vicious, hissing twist. "And it was clumsily done. They found him in a muddy alley at the back of a hotel that was no better than a brothel: face-down in a puddle, stinking of brandy and drowned. They even found a woman who swore he tried to lie with her. She said she had taken his money but found he was unable to fulfil his part of the bargain because he was so drunk. According to those of his fellow officers I was able to question, my son was not a brandy drinker, and he had no business in that part of Kingston. Nor was he known as a man who frequented prostitutes." He paused and looked inquiringly at me, indeed almost imploringly, which confused me.

"A young man's friends may not wish to tell the unvarnished truth about him to his father."

"I am aware of that, and have made allowance for it. But I do not believe my son died by accident. And if he did not die by accident, then how and why did he die?" Noak gestured at the shadows on the left. "Harmwell is convinced my son was killed to keep him silent."

"Sir, I regret your son's death extremely. But you will forgive me if I say that I do not understand why you have sought me out, or why you have brought me here at such a late hour."

"The link that binds us, Mr Shield, that binds my son's murder with those others, is Wavenhoe's. The bank was active in Canada during the late war. Mr Frant oversaw its operations there in person for the first year or two, until 1814. There is always money to be made in wartime, if you do not mind the risks. A contractor found himself in difficulties, and the bank came to the rescue and exacted a price for doing so. Wavenhoe's took over the firm's ownership, and Mr Frant assumed its direction. Originally the contract was for fodder for artillery horses, I believe, but Wavenhoe's expanded the sphere of operation considerably. They did very well for themselves, too. But then Mr Frant's desire for profits outran both his commercial acumen and his patriotic scruples. Many sorts of men are drawn to the army, and not all of them are averse to making a private profit, especially if it involves no more than turning a blind eye on occasion. What are they defrauding, after all? They do not think of their fellows, or any individuals, as their victims, but some faceless, formless thing such as the War Department or the government or King George. They tell themselves it is not stealing at all, simply a legitimate perquisite of their office that everyone has and no one talks about. So they sign for goods they have not received, or for damaged articles, or they contrive to lose the necessary paperwork – all of which means that the contractor has a pleasing surplus to dispose of, and in many cases – and this I know for a fact – Mr Frant found a ready market across the border, in the United States."

"But that is treason," I said.

"Profit has no nationality," Noak replied. "And it follows its own principles. I believe that once Frant had established a channel linking British North America with the United States, he discovered that it could be used for information as well as goods. Information leaves far fewer traces of its passage and it is much more lucrative."

"You have proof?"

"I know that such intelligence was received in the United States, and I am as sure as I am of my own name that Mr Frant had a hand in it." Mr Noak stopped suddenly, swung round and extended his arm at Mr Harmwell. "Were you aware that Harmwell enlisted in the Forty-First when my son was commissioned into it? That was at the start of the war, in 1812. Tell Mr Shield, Harmwell, tell him what you saw."

Harmwell stepped out of the shadows. "Lieutenant Saunders did me the honour of confiding in me," he said sonorously, as though reading a statement in a court of law; and his rich voice reduced the memory of Noak's to a thin whisper. "He believed the regimental quartermaster to be engaged in peculation in concert with a contractor. Two days before his death on the sixth of May, 1814, he took me with him as a witness to a meeting between the quartermaster and a gentleman at a coffee house. I did not learn the gentleman's name on that occasion, but I did see his face."

"You understand?" Noak cried. "The possibility of proof. Harmwell subsequently identified the man whom the quartermaster met as Henry Frant. You were present on the occasion of his identification yourself, as it happens: when we arrived from Liverpool, and called at Russell-square, and you had come to take Frant's son back to school."

"But can you prove the gentleman was involved with the fraud?" I asked.

"My son was convinced of it," Noak said. "He told Harmwell so."

I could have pointed out that hearsay fell a long way short of proof. Instead I said, "Mr Frant welcomed you. You seemed an honoured visitor."

"But why should I not be? He was not aware of my connection with Lieutenant Saunders, or of my true reason for visiting this country. A mutual acquaintance had written to advise him of my arrival. Frant knew me simply as a wealthy American with money to invest, and a number of friends who might be useful to him. I had gone to considerable pains to ensure that we would be welcome guests."

"You wrote Carswall's name on the back of your card when you sent it in to him."

Noak frowned. "You have sharp eyes. That was to give Frant an additional reason to welcome me, and to do so without delay. The coolness between the two of them was common knowledge, so I said I wished to consult him about regaining a bad debt from Carswall. A man is disposed to look favourably on one who has the same enemy as he: I have always found it a sound principle. And I may say that Harmwell recognised Frant at once."

"But Mr Harmwell's identification does not amount to proof that he was guilty of anything."

"Of course it don't," Noak said. "I will not beat about the bush, Mr Shield: I believe my son was murdered on the orders of Mr Frant, because he threatened to expose the sordid foundations of the scheme that was making him rich. But I cannot prove it."

"Surely if you approach the authorities-?"

"With what? With wild allegations supported solely by the word of a Negro? Harmwell is a most respectable man, but – well, I need say no more, I am sure. And you must bear in mind the fact that I am an American citizen. Believe me, I have tried and failed to pursue the matter by orthodox means."

Not entirely failed, I thought: for Noak's attempts had helped to float the rumours in the City that Rowsell had heard.

"However, there are other methods." He caught my look of astonishment and went on, "Always within the law, Mr Shield. I disdain to sink to their level. To put it in a nutshell, in my own mind I was perfectly certain of Mr Frant's guilt in the matter of my son's death – but wholly unable to prove it. However, my inquiries about his character and activities in England suggested that he was vulnerable in other ways, that it might be possible to bring him to justice for other offences. Moreover, I wished to come here for another reason, to establish whether Mr Frant had been acting on his own in Canada or on the orders of a more powerful patron."

There flashed before my eyes a picture of the misery that had been caused by the collapse of Wavenhoe's at the end of last year. "Am I to understand that you brought about the bank's ruin, and that of its depositors and their dependants, so that you might have a private revenge on Mr Frant?"

"I did not cause the collapse of the bank, sir," snapped Mr Noak. "That is quite inaccurate. The collapse was inevitable once Mr Carswall withdrew his capital and Henry Frant took over the direction of the bank's affairs. I merely hastened it, and made sure that Frant would be implicated in the ruin, and his embezzlement exposed."

"You bought bills at a discount and presented them for payment?"

"I find you are surprisingly well informed. Yes, that and other tactics. For example, I encouraged Mr Frant to believe I was contemplating a substantial investment in an English bank – that was what we were discussing when we dined together on the night of Mr Wavenhoe's death. The intelligence I gained was remarkably valuable. When one has a little knowledge, much can be achieved by sowing a word in the right ear. A bank is like a hot-air balloon held in the air by the gas of public confidence. If the balloon is punctured, then the machine tumbles to earth."

"And so we come to Mr Frant's murder," I said flatly.

Noak regarded me in silence for a moment. "It was very convenient, was it not? It saved him and his family the mortification of a trial, and the public hanging which would inevitably have followed. It also meant that a number of questions were left unanswered because only Henry Frant could answer them. For example, there was a considerable sum in securities that was never recovered. His confidential clerk gave me a list of the missing bills that were in the possession of Wavenhoe's Bank at the end of August."

"Arndale? Was it not he who identified his master's body at the inquest?"

"You imply that he may not be an unimpeachable source? Possibly. But I have confirmed at least some of his information elsewhere, and I am inclined to think that he no longer has any motive to conceal the truth. But to return to the securities: Frant might have gambled them away or sold them at a discount before his presumed death on the twenty-fifth of November. But I do not believe it."

"They could be turned into ready money? Even now?"

Noak nodded. "They were all negotiable by bearer. You would need to know what you were doing, and of course the transactions would leave a trace." He walked back to his chair and sat down slowly. "Two weeks ago, one of the bills on the list was presented for payment in Riga. The sum involved amounted to nearly five thousand pounds. It was not presented directly but through a local intermediary."

"It is nigh on six months since Mr Frant died," I pointed out.

"Or disappeared." Noak glanced at Harmwell, who had retreated into the shadows. "I think it likely, however, that Frant did not have the securities at his disposal until some way into January this year." He paused and looked steadily at me.

I said, "You believe he deposited them at Monkshill?"

Noak stared impassively at me.

"He knew Monkshill and its environs intimately," I continued. "As only a boy who had grown up there could have known it." I stared back at Noak, and thought I saw an almost imperceptible nod. "The recess in the ice-house sump, where Mr Harmwell and I found the ring. It is the sort of hiding place that an inquisitive little boy might have found."

"What age was Frant when he left Monkshill. Do you know?"

"Ten or eleven." I remembered Sophie telling me on the night of the ball, as we sat beside the fire at Fendall House. I yearned with sudden urgency to have her beside me now. "I have it from an unimpeachable source. Or perhaps he discovered it later. When he was at school in England, he often stayed with the Ruispidges at Clearland-court. It is no distance for an active youth. He might well have revisited the scenes of his childhood."

"Ah." Noak pulled back his lips, exposing his gums. "So – if we allow this – why should Frant have not retrieved the securities before January?"

"Because when he deposited the securities, he must have reached the sump by the drain. The ice-house was full and he could not reach it from the chamber above, could he? He could not have foreseen the accident of the autumn gales, of the landslide which blocked the shaft down to the drain."

"Quite so, Mr Shield. And why Monkshill? Why Monkshill, out of all the hiding places in the world?"

I smiled at him, for suddenly I sensed that I knew as much as he did, that for once we were on an equal footing. "Mrs Johnson."

"She was his confederate," Noak said flatly. "There is no shadow of doubt in my mind on that score."

"I saw her in London in October, hard by Russell-square. Miss Carswall glimpsed her in Pall Mall. But at Monkshill she denied having been in town."

"I believe the woman was his mistress." There was a rare note of passion in Noak's voice, as though adultery disgusted him more than theft and murder. "When Frant saw ruin staring him in the face, I suspect he set aside a collection of portable valuables and that he or Mrs Johnson hid them at Monkshill. It is possible that he entrusted her with them on the day you saw her, and that she carried them down to Monkshill. No doubt their intention was to wait until the hue and cry had died down, and then slip abroad under false names. When the blocking of the drain prevented them, they were compelled to wait until the time came to clear out the ice-house, when the sump would become accessible from the chamber itself. On the night in question, they poisoned the dogs and went to the ice-house from Grange Cottage to retrieve what they had left there. And something went wrong – a lover's quarrel that turned sour, perhaps, or even a simple accident – and Mrs Johnson died, leaving Frant with no choice but to take what he had come for and make good his escape. Either way, he would have been hanged if he was caught."

"This is speculation, sir."

"Not entirely: and what is speculation is well supported by the evidence."

I cast my mind back over the events of the last few months. "This does not explain your interest in Mr Carswall." My voice was hoarse, and I was tired and growing angry. "Nor indeed your interest in me."

"Mr Carswall." Noak's lips tightened as he gathered his thoughts. "My inquiries both here and in North America have established beyond any doubt that until a few years ago Frant was Carswall's creature. When Frant joined Wavenhoe's as a young man, he had nothing in his favour except his birth, and even that was tainted by his father's excesses. Yet he prospered, and with enormous rapidity, because he found a patron in Carswall who was then an active partner in the bank. Carswall had sold his West Indian interests just before the abolition of the Trade and invested much of his capital in the bank. George Wavenhoe, even then, was not the man he once was, though the bank's reputation still rested on the City's knowledge of his integrity, both moral and financial. In theory, it was George Wavenhoe who sent Frant to Canada during the late war, to look after and extend the bank's interests there. In practice, however, I have no doubt that it was Carswall's decision. Frant's clerk tells me he took it for granted it was so."

"Then the question must be: was Carswall fully cognisant of Frant's activities in Canada, and of the murder of Lieutenant Saunders?"

"Precisely. My investigations have pointed the finger again and again at Carswall, but I cannot prove it. And I will have justice, Mr Shield, not revenge: within the law, always within the law." The blood had rushed to his face, and his hands clutched convulsively at the arms of his chair. He said nothing for a moment and then continued in a quieter, suddenly weary voice. "You will recall that Carswall and I were negotiating over some warehouses in Liverpool. That served a double purpose. On the one hand, it gave me a reason to prolong our stay at Monkshill-park, and on the other it allowed my lawyers to examine the records at the warehouses. These are Carswall's personal property, these warehouses: and there is no doubt that goods destined for Frant's contractors in British North America went through them, and that Carswall charged a fat fee for the privilege. But of course this does not amount to proof of collusion with Frant, or even corruption. And the matter is enormously complicated by the fact that Frant and Carswall quarrelled when Carswall withdrew his capital from the bank five years ago – after Frant had returned from Canada and become a partner at Wavenhoe's. Carswall's departure made the bank's crash almost inevitable, particularly given Frant's loose, expensive way of living. Frant tried to stave off his ruin with embezzlement, but it could not answer for ever. So he and his mistress laid their desperate plan."

"If it was not Frant who was murdered at Wellington-terrace, then who was it?"

Noak shrugged. "Does it matter? Scores of men go missing in London every day. No doubt Frant found some unfortunate about the same age and build as himself, spun him a tale, and murdered him. I suspect Mrs Johnson played Lady Macbeth's part. My impression of her was of a strong-minded, ruthless woman. She would stop at nothing to get what she wanted."

It was more than plausible. But Noak still did not know everything that I knew.

"So now we come to the present," he said, and his thin voice was hoarse with tiredness and talking. "One of the missing bills has changed hands. So we may deduce that Frant is almost certainly abroad, living under a false name and moving from place to place. But Carswall is still here, and I believe him to be as responsible for my son's death as Frant, as the man who pressed his head down in the puddle. If I cannot prove his collusion in my son's murder, then I shall find something else he has done, something he cannot so easily conceal, just as I did with Frant. In these months before his daughter's marriage, his position is particularly delicate." Noak paused, his jaws moving soundlessly and methodically as though chewing the problem to digestible pulp. "And there is yet another possibility that would make his position even more precarious: if we could show that he and Frant, far from being mortal enemies, were in fact acting in concert."

"That can hardly be – they hate each other."

Noak ignored my interruption. "Even now, it is not impossible to kill two birds with one stone. What gives me hope is the bill that was changed in Riga. I have looked into the circumstances which led to its being presented for payment, how it passed from hand to hand. It is like a chain – one end attached to the bill, each link corresponding to a person through whose hands it has passed. But the chain breaks in February. The bill plunges into obscurity until it re-emerges on the schedule that Arndale prepared for me. None of those links has anything to do with Henry Frant. But one of them, a notary in Brussels, is a known associate of Stephen Carswall's."

The reasoning was too fragile for its conclusion. I concealed a yawn and said, "The inveterate hatred between Mr Carswall and Mr Frant must surely argue against it, and there are other reasons as well."

"I shall deal with those in a moment," Noak replied. "In the meantime I shall merely observe that necessity makes strange bedfellows. It would not surprise me to find that Frant found it difficult to operate with sufficient anonymity, even abroad. The money market is not a large place, you understand: it may span the globe but it presents many of the characteristics of a village."

I shook my head. "I do not see why Carswall should be content to run such enormous risks for a man he so recently loathed." A man, I thought but did not add aloud, whose wife he desires so ardently that he will overlook her lack of dowry and the crimes of her former husband.

"Ah!" Noak sprang up, as though so bursting with vitality that exercise had become essential. "That is the beauty of it. They hate each other still, I daresay. But each has something to gain from renewing the association, and each knows the other dares not betray him. Frant needs to realise his ill-gotten capital; he must find somewhere to live in safety; he must at all costs avoid the gallows that await him in England. Carswall, on the other hand, would charge handsomely for his services in converting whatever Frant saved from the wreck of Wavenhoe's into ready money. But he has no temptation to betray Frant. In the first place, he too needs the money, rich though he is. Sir George Ruispidge is a very fine catch for his bastard daughter, but a baronet like Sir George comes at a high price. In the second place, Frant would feed him the bills one by one so Carswall would have no incentive to bilk him. And in the third place, if Frant were proved to be alive, he would stand between Carswall and what I fancy he now desires most of all – and desires with all the force of an old man's obsession."

"I must beg you to enlighten me, sir," I said coldly.

"I allude, as you must know, to Mrs Frant. As far as the law is concerned, her husband is dead and she is free to marry again. Should Mr Frant choose, however, he could reverse that state of affairs with a few strokes of a pen, written from the safety of a foreign sanctuary. No – as matters stand – the whole complex business is perfectly balanced. Perfectly but precariously."

It had long since occurred to me that Mr Carswall was not the only elderly gentleman in the grip of an obsession. I said as gently as I could, "Sir, you have erected a prodigiously impressive edifice. But I am not persuaded that its foundations are firm enough to bear its weight."

Noak drew near to me in my chair, and, small though he was, towered over me. "Then help me test its strength." Such was his passion that he sprayed a few drops of moisture on my upturned face. "If my hypothesis is correct, Mr Shield, if their fears and their desires are so precariously balanced, then the smallest jar, the slightest shock, will serve to overset them. And who better than yourself to administer it?"

75

It would not be true to say that I stormed out. I was entirely civil, if a little chilly. But I did leave without further delay. I declined point-blank to hear any further proposals Mr Noak might have, or to listen while he advanced his carefully wrought reasons why I should help him. Nor would I allow Mr Harmwell to fetch me a hackney from the stand, or to accompany me on my way home.

A gentle rain was falling. I picked my way through streets still crowded with revellers and those that prey on them. Hat in hand, I paused by the workhouse at the bottom of Castle-street and stared up at where the stars would have been in another place. I felt the cool refreshment of rainwater on my cheek. It was at that moment that I at last accepted the truth which should have been evident to me since Sophie left my little chamber in Fendall House: I had lost her. Indeed, except in a narrow carnal sense, I had never possessed her, so she could not truly be said to be mine to lose. She had merely lent herself to me, for reasons of her own; and like so many loans, the transaction was for a brief, fixed period, and the rate of interest was higher than the borrower anticipated.

A few minutes later I reached the Strand. I walked slowly, so tired that I was hardly aware of fatigue, so careworn that I did not concern myself with the possibility that I might be followed. I had the illusion that I was floating above the pavement, cushioned on the pain of my swollen feet, the left one of which was wet because the sole of my boot had developed a hole.

As I walked, I turned over in my mind what had passed in Brewer-street. My thoughts had the misleading limpidity that so often accompanies fatigue. Mr Noak had been remarkably frank, I believed: which might be due to the strength of his fanatical desire to avenge his son's death, to his despair of making progress, to old age and the consequent decay of his intellectual faculties, or to any combination of these. Alternatively, every word, every hypothesis, every apparent confidence, had been carefully planned for the purpose of achieving an unknown end.

This evening's events were only the latest in a long series. From start to finish in this sorry business, I had been led by the nose – by Henry Frant, Stephen Carswall and now Mr Noak; by Flora Carswall and even, perhaps, by Sophie – though my partiality for her struggled to persuade me that she had been as much a victim as myself. It was undeniable that I had come very close to falling in with Mr Noak's proposal since it appeared to accord so well with my own wishes. But among all the drawbacks to the plan was this: I could not rid myself of the knowledge that if anyone had a motive for murdering Mr Frant, it was Mr Noak himself.

I stopped to lean against a railing. In some part of my mind I became aware that a set of footsteps behind me had also stopped. A moment later I moved on, and so too did the footsteps. I repeated the experiment and obtained the same result. London is a busy city but at night it contains pockets of silence so profound that one may hear a pin drop on the pavement. The footsteps should have put me instantly on the alert. But my body was too weary, and my mind too full of other anxious thoughts, for the possible significance of the footsteps to register as a cause for alarm.

Mr Noak's grand scheme to confound his enemies had come to this: he wanted me to spy on Sophie, and through her on Mr Carswall. Mrs Kerridge, it had appeared, was happy to oblige Mr Harmwell with information upon occasion, and she had reported my meeting with her mistress at the burying ground that afternoon. Noak had also learned from her the real reason for my departure from Monkshill-park. From this, and from his own observations, he had inferred quite correctly that I had a tenderness for Sophie Frant. He had made a further deduction at an earlier stage of my acquaintance with Mr Carswall that I had been employed by him for confidential business. That was why he had set Harmwell to follow me on the occasion of my going to Queen-street that first time, in search of the man who was either David Poe or Henry Frant. It had been fortunate for me that he had done so – Mr Harmwell had been my rescuer when Iversen's hired bullies assaulted me, and now Noak wanted me to pay a price for it.

So tonight Noak had dangled the hope of reward in front of me: if I could turn Sophie into his spy, he had hinted, I might hope to win Sophie for myself. Were Carswall disgraced, she would have no one else to turn to. Noak promised me that, if all went well, he would put me in the way of earning a competence so that I might support her. But the promises were vague and I had no guarantee that he would fulfil them. I thought he would have promised me anything if I could have ensured the downfall of Stephen Carswall and discovered the identity of the man in Wellington-terrace. In the end, I did not trust the American, which was why I had not told him of the finger I had been encouraged to find at the tooth-puller's, or of today's discovery that the tooth-puller was among Mr Iversen's customers.

With immense effort of will, I abandoned the support of the railing and staggered down the Strand. Movement had become a form of torture. Worse than the woes of my body, however, was the despair that depressed my spirits. Noak's offer had given me the possibility of regaining Sophie. It had been as alluring a temptation as any I had ever faced. I might have justified succumbing to it, too, on the grounds that it might save Sophie from Mr Carswall, whom I knew to be the worst of men.

I heard the footsteps behind me, slow and dragging like an echo of my own. Nemesis pursued me and knew she need not hurry.

The stumbling block was this: in the past six or seven months, I had learnt too well the lesson of what it felt like to be manipulated by others, to have no more control over one's destiny than Mr Punch in his puppet show. Were I to accede to Mr Noak's proposal, I would seek to make Sophie my puppet. In agreeing to marry Mr Carswall, she had. made a perfectly rational choice. He was rich and she was poor. He was old and she was young, which at least had the advantage that the marriage was unlikely to be a long one. On her side it could not be a love match. On his, I doubted that the emotions that made him desire her had much to do with love as it is generally understood; for a desire to possess, to be a person's master, is not love. But each would gain by the arrangement. Marriages have been happy without love before now, but not without money. As Flora Carswall had pointed out, love in a cottage didn't pay the bills. You cannot eat and drink love; you cannot wear it, and it will not provide for your children.

I reached the entrance into Gaunt-court. There was no gas illumination here, of course, only the fitful glow of the oil lamp on the corner. Nothing had changed, I told myself, since Sophie had given me my conge this afternoon.

At the head of the steps up to the front door of number 3 I stopped and, supporting myself on the railing, turned to look back down the court. I heard in the distance a carriage passing along the Strand, the clop of hooves, the jingle of harness and the rattle of wheels on the roadway. I did not hear the sound of footsteps. At some point in the last few minutes, they had stopped. I told myself that London is a city full of dramas played out every night, and there was no reason in the world to believe that these footsteps had belonged to my little tragi-comedy. But now the footsteps had stopped I felt inexplicably uneasy.

Ayez peur, I murmured to myself, ayez peur.

76

The following morning I left the house in search of coffee. I was unwashed and unshaven. I had slept late and my mind was still fogged with sleep.

A small, closed carriage, painted black and rather the worse for wear, was standing at the corner by the lamp-stand. As I drew near, the door opened and a swarthy man dressed in shabby black clothes leaned out and asked me the quickest way to Covent Garden.

Simultaneously, a second man, also in black, came round the back of the carriage and seized my arm. The first man grabbed my lapels. Between them, they pulled and pushed me into the carriage. The second man followed me in, shutting the door behind him. The carriage moved off with a jerk.

With three of us inside, there was barely room to move, let alone to struggle. The blinds were down and there was scarcely any light. The first man had his arm round my neck, drawing my head back. I felt the prick of a knife at my throat.

"Stay still, cully," he murmured. "Stay still or we've got a nasty accident on our hands."

As the carriage rattled and bumped through streets filled with the noise of a London morning, a ritual was acted out inside it. I use the word ritual with care. My captors knew so precisely what they were doing that there was a negligent, familiar ease about their movements. The second man tied my wrists in front of me, inserted a filthy rag in my mouth, and finally lashed my knees together.

By now I was huddled in the corner of the seat, still with the tip of a knife at my throat. Neither man spoke. The confined space was filled with the sound of our breathing and the smell of our bodies. I tried without success to bring my mind to grapple with my situation; but fear inhibits rational thought. Over and over again I cursed my own folly at remaining in the house at Gaunt-court, and not seeking refuge under another name and in another city. Once again, and in far more brutal circumstances than before, I had become a mere cypher in my own life.

We came to a halt again. I felt and heard our driver jumping down from the box, the sound of voices and of heavy gates being unbarred and drawn back. Then the horses began to move again. At that moment my head was roughly seized and a bandage placed over my eyes. The carriage door opened. A current of fresh air swept inside. One of my companions jumped down. Between them they dragged me out of the carriage. In a moment I found myself in the open air with a man on either side to hold my arms.

Owing to the bonds around my knees, I could not walk. Grunting and swearing, the men dragged me across cobbles, my boots bumping up and down, and pulled me into a place that smelled strongly of sawdust and varnish. It was at this point that my nightmare entered a still more terrible phase. Without warning my feet were lifted away from the ground and I felt myself hoisted aloft on strong arms, my body moving from the vertical to the horizontal. I was raised and then lowered. There was a glancing blow to the back of my head. It was followed by a laugh, expressive of unforced merriment and wholly unexpected in that grim setting.

"The cove's too long," someone said. "Have to cut off the feet again."

"No," said another man. "Take his boots off- that should do it."

My boots were roughly removed. I was now lying on my back, with my elbows, the crown of my head and the soles of my stockinged feet touching hard surfaces. A heavy object fell on my leg. I twitched involuntarily. Something else fell beside it and then the third item. I stretched down my bound hands and made out the shape of a boot-heel.

"Hey, lad," said the voice of the first man. "There's air holes. You can breathe. Not very big holes, though. If you was stupid enough to make a row, you'd need more air, and you couldn't get it, could you? So keep quiet as a mouse."

At first I could not understand him, for there was plenty of air, albeit laden with the scents of sawdust and varnish and an underlying tang of horse manure. Then I heard a great clatter a few inches above my head and sensed a sudden enclosing, a diminution of the light. All at once, a terrible racket broke out about me. My ears filled with the sound of hammering, so close that the nails might have been driven into me. There must have been two or three of them wielding hammers, and in that confined space, which acted like a drum, it seemed like a multitude. They were nailing me up in a box no larger than a coffin.

All at once, the terrible truth burst over me. I recalled what I knew of the dimensions of the box, and put them together with the black carriage and the rusty black clothes of the two men. I realised that the box was not like a coffin: it was a coffin.

77

I was to be buried alive. I had no doubt of it whatsoever. I faced the prospect of a lingering and horrible death.

My captors transferred me to another conveyance, probably a closed cart. We drove for what seemed like hours but might have been as many minutes. Time means very little without a way of measuring it.

I tried to struggle – of course I did. Yet the dimensions of the coffin, the presence of my boots and hat with me, the shortage of air, and above all the tightness of my bonds made it almost impossible for me to move at all. All I could manage was the faintest of whimpers from my parched throat and an ineffectual knocking of my elbows against the sides of my prison. I doubt if the sounds I made could have been heard by anyone sitting directly on the other side of the coffin, let alone by those in the street.

My intellectual faculties were equally paralysed. I wish I could say that I faced what lay before me with calmness. In the abstract, it is perfectly true that if you cannot avoid death, you might as well look it in the eye. But the needs of the moment swamped such lofty considerations. To continue to breathe – to continue to live – nothing else mattered.

We came to another halt. I half felt, half heard a great clatter and then a jolt. There was a knocking on the roof of my little prison. Someone laughed, a high sound with an edge of hysteria. The coffin swayed and bumped and banged. It tilted violently to a sharp angle. This, together with a series of irregular thuds, told me that we were mounting a flight of stairs. The coffin levelled out and a few paces later I heard a man's voice, but could not make out the words.

The coffin groaned and screeched: someone was raising the lid. Currents of air flowed around me. The tip of the crowbar came so far inside that it grazed my scalp. I felt a burst of intense happiness.

"Remove the gag," said a man whose voice was familiar. "Then the blindfold."

I retched when they pulled the rag from my parched mouth. I tried and failed to say the word "water". A hand gripped my hair and pulled up my head. Fingers tugged at the knot of the blindfold. Light flooded into my eyes, so bright that I moaned with the shock of it. I could see nothing but whiteness. I closed my eyes.

"Give him a drink," said the voice. "Then leave us."

A hand cradled the back of my head. A container made of metal rattled against my teeth. Suddenly there was water everywhere, flooding down my face, finding its way between my cravat and my neck, filling my mouth and trickling down my throat and making me gag. The mug withdrew.

"More," I croaked. "More."

The mug returned. I was so weak that I could not satisfy my thirst.

"Leave us," the man commanded.

I heard footsteps – two sets, I fancy – on a bare floor and the sound of a door opening and closing. There was water on my lashes, and I did not know whether it came from the metal cup or from my tears. My eyes were still screwed shut against the light. Slowly I opened them. All I could see was a sagging ceiling, fissured with cracks, with the lathes exposed on one side where the plaster had crumbled away.

"Sit up," said the voice.

I hooked my bound hands round the rim of the coffin and eventually managed to bring myself into a sitting position. The first thing I saw was a great, grey mass of hair below a black velvet skull cap, like a hanging judge's. I lowered my eyes to the face, which was on the level of my own. Recognition flooded into me with a sense of inevitability.

"Mr Iversen," I said. "Why have you brought me here?"

"You will be more comfortable in a moment." He leaned forward in his wheeled chair and studied my face. "Wriggle your limbs as far as you are able. Now lean back a little, now forward. Does that not feel better? Now, more water?"

I drank greedily this time. Mr Iversen refilled the mug from a jug on the table beside his chair. The cripple was attired as he had been before, in a black, flowing robe embroidered with necromantic symbols in faded yellow thread. His crutches were propped against the bottom of the coffin. On the table was a pocket pistol.

My eyes travelled on, and I discovered we were not alone. Seated by the window with his back to us was another figure in a dusty suit of brown clothes and an old-fashioned three-cornered hat.

"You're a fool," my host observed in a friendly tone. "You shouldn't have come back. You should have gone far, far away. Seven Dials is not a safe place for the inquisitive. I tried to give you the hint on your last visit. Still, one cannot expect old heads on young shoulders, I suppose."

"A hint?" Anger spurted through me. "You call those bullies of yours a hint? What do you want of me, sir?"

"The truth. Why did you come back here yesterday?"

All my words might win me was a kinder way of dying. I was tired of the lies, so I told him the truth. "I came back because of that bird of yours." I saw understanding leap into his eyes. "The one that says ayez peur."

"That damned fowl." Iversen's fingertips tapped the butt of the pistol. "I put up with it for the sake of the customers, but I could stand it no more. I hoped I had seen and heard the last of it."

"I've drawn up a memorandum," I said. "It covers all the circumstances of this business, including my visits to Queen-street, since I first met Mr Henry Frant."

"Ah yes. And you've had it witnessed by a brace of attorneys and sent a copy to the Lord Chancellor. Come, Mr Shield, don't play the fool. You would have gone to the magistrates long before this if you had intended something like that."

He was in the right of it. I had indeed begun to write such a memorandum on my last evening at Monkshill-park. But it lay unfinished in my room at Gaunt-court.

"No," Iversen went on. "I do not believe it for a moment. Not that it matters. We shall soon have the truth out of you."

Neither of us spoke for a moment. The room was heavy with a strange, sweet odour. I looked at the two figures before me, Iversen seated beside the coffin, and the old man in an elbow chair by the barred window. I heard as if at a great distance the sound of the world going about its business. There were noises in the house, too, feet on the stairs, a tapping from below and a woman singing a lullaby. There was life around me, and it was full of wonders, a sweet thing that I could not bear to part with.

"Sir," I said to the man in brown. "I appeal to you. I beg you, help me."

The old man did not reply. He gave no sign he had heard me.

"His mind is on other things," Iversen said.

I turned back to him. "If you wish me to answer your questions with any coherence, sir, you would find me in a better condition to do so if I had something to eat. And I would be obliged if I might use the necessary house."

Iversen laughed, exposing a set of false teeth made of bone or perhaps ivory, and clearly expensive; they reminded me of the tooth-puller and curious possibilities stirred once more in my mind. "You shall have your creature comforts, Mr Shield." He levered himself to the edge of his chair, thrust himself upwards by exerting pressure on the arms and in one, practised movement seized a crutch and placed it under his right shoulder. For a moment he stood there, swaying slightly, gripping the side of the coffin with his free hand, with an expression of triumph on his face. He was a big man and he loomed over me like a mountain. "But first I must relieve you of the contents of your pockets."

His big hands worked deftly and rapidly through my clothes. He removed my pocketbook, my purse, my penknife and the red-spotted handkerchief which the boys had given me on the eve of my departure from Monkshill. He gave each item a brief examination and then dropped it in the pocket of his robe. At last he was satisfied.

"I shall desire them to bring you a pot directly. And something to eat."

"They will not expect me to stay here – in this coffin?"

"I can see that would be inconvenient. There is no reason why you should not be lifted out. They will keep a watch on you, after all."

"It will not be easy for me, or for them, if they do not untie my hands," I pointed out.

"I do not think untying you will be necessary, Mr Shield. A little inconvenience to you or even to them is neither here nor there." Mr Iversen picked up the pistol from the table and dragged himself towards the door. He glanced back at me. "Until we meet again," he said with something of a flourish, a gesture that raised the ghost of a memory deep within my mind.

He dragged himself on to the landing, leaving me alone with the old man in the fading light of an April afternoon. I listened to his hirpling progress along the landing, and his clumping descent of the stairs.

"Sir," I hissed at the old man. "You cannot sit there and permit this to happen. He intends to kill me. Will you be an accessory to murder?"

There was no answer. He did not stir a muscle.

"Are you Mr Iversen's father, sir? You would not wish your son to stain his soul with the blood of a fellow human being?"

Apart from my own ragged breathing, I heard nothing. The room was suddenly brighter, for the sun had come out. Motes danced in the air before the window. The arms and rails of the chair were grey with dust. A suspicion grew in my mind and became certainty. The man in brown could help no one.

I waited for relief for well over a quarter of an hour, to judge by the distant chimes of a church clock, while my need for the chamberpot grew ever more pressing.

At length the door opened and the two men dressed in rusty black entered. They had kidnapped me today; and I believed that they had pursued me yesterday evening, though I had not seen their faces clearly so I could not be completely sure. I wondered whether they had also attacked me on my visit to Queen-street in December. The first man bore the chamber-pot, swinging it nonchalantly as he walked. The other carried a wooden platter on which was the end of a loaf, a wedge of cheese and a mug of small beer. He put the platter on the windowsill, close to the elbow of the man in the brown suit. Both men were clearly used to his silent presence, for they did not give him a second glance.

"Is that a waxwork?" I asked in a voice that trembled.

"You won't see one of them at old Ma Salmon's." The first man put the pot on the table. "That's Mr Iversen, Senior, sir, at your service."

They heaved me from the coffin, which was resting on a pair of trestles. They derived a simple and ribald pleasure from my fumbling attempt to use the pot. Fortunately, in a moment they were distracted by something they could see from the window.

"You wouldn't think she had such white skin," said one of them.

"It only looks like that because of the cuts," said the other, jingling a bunch of keys in his pocket. "If you was nearer, you'd see the blemishes, you take my word for it."

They continued discussing the subject in a detached and knowledgeable manner while I buttoned my flap as best I could with two hands tied. Their remarks were delivered with such an air of assurance that they might have been a pair of critics contemplating a portrait they did not much care for in the Exhibition Room at Somerset House. Still hobbled at the knees, I shuffled a little closer and found that, craning over their shoulders, I could look down into the yard.

There were two women below, one old, one young. The elder was tall, with a curved back like a bow. She was a grey shadow over the other, who was as small as a child, and whose gown and shift had been pulled down from her shoulders so she was naked from the waist upwards. I knew at once that she was not a child because I saw the swell of her hips and the curve of a breast. A moment later, I recognised her as Mary Ann, the dumb woman who lived in the kennel at the back of the yard.

"He did it this morning," one of the men said. "Wish I'd seen it."

"Did she faint?"

"Once: but they threw water over her until she woke and then he began again."

I found it hard to suppress a gasp of horror as I stared at the network of weals on that white back. Mary Ann winced and trembled as the other woman applied what I assumed was a healing ointment to her wounds. The back of her shift was a mass of blood, some rusty, some fresh.

"Stupid bitch," said the first man. "No better than an animal."

He rattled the window, a casement, until one leaf of it flew open. He pushed me aside as though I had been a chair and picked up the chamber-pot. The bars were fixed horizontally and there was just space between them to allow the chamber-pot to pass through. He extended it to the full length of his arm and turned it upside down.

"Gardy-loo," he cried, and he and his friend bellowed with laughter.

I was now too far back in the room to see down into the yard; and I was glad. I forced myself to pick at the bread and cheese, knowing that I needed nourishment, for I had eaten nothing since the sandwich Mr Harmwell had given me. The men stayed by the window, hooting with mirth. Gradually their laughter subsided, and I gathered the women had spoiled their sport by taking shelter in the kennel.

It had gradually been borne in upon me that both of them were very drunk. The smell of spirits filled the room, slicing through the unwholesome blend of other odours. Men such as these might always be a little drunk; but their behaviour now was clearly a long way from habitual tipsiness. One of them lowered his breeches, lifted his coat-tails and placed his posterior on the windowsill, no doubt hoping that the women below would be looking at him. But as one grew more boisterous, the other became quieter, and the colour gradually drained from his face, which was scarred with the pox. At length he murmured some excuse and bolted from the room. His colleague dragged me to the window, upsetting my beer in his hurry, and lashed my bound hands to one of the bars with a length of rope.

"Now don't run away, my pretty," he said hoarsely. "I got an errand to run, but I won't be a minute. You tell me if the ladies come back, eh?"

He clapped me across the shoulders in the most good-humoured manner imaginable and left the room, slamming the door behind him and turning the key in the lock. I waited for a moment. The yard below was empty. The door of the kennel was closed. Blank walls of smoke-stained brick reared like cliffs on every side. The man had spoken of an errand, and I thought it likely he had gone to fetch more gin, perhaps from the establishment across the road where I had waited yesterday evening.

I flexed my hands. The knots that held my wrists tied together were as firm as ever. But this latest knot, fastening the cord which passed between my wrists and round the bar of the window, was a more slapdash affair. For a start, the position was wrong, for the cord had not been drawn tight, allowing my hands at least a limited mobility. In the second place, the knot itself was far from impregnable. I contrived to curve one hand round until the fingers had a grip on part of the knot, while I tugged at another part with my teeth. With my ears straining to hear the sound of footsteps outside the door, I worried away at the coarse, tarred cord, which chafed my skin like glass-paper. The precious minutes slid away. At last the knot loosened; and a moment later I pulled my hands away from the bar.

My wrists were still bound together, so tightly that the flow of the blood was impeded, and held with a knot that I found impossible to undo with my teeth. My legs were still tied at the knees, with the knot beyond my reach at the back. I was able to move only with painful slowness, shuffling and hopping with noisy inefficiency across the floor, an inch or two at a time.

It took me an age to reach the door. I tried the handle and confirmed it was locked. I bent my head down to the keyhole and saw that my captor had withdrawn the key so there was no possibility of my pushing it through the door and somehow retrieving it from the floor of the landing. It was a stout door, too, reinforced with iron, which made me wonder whether Iversen used it as his strong-room.

I hobbled over to the window and looked out. Mary Ann had emerged from the kennel and was now huddled in the doorway with a smouldering clay pipe in her hand. The casement was still slightly ajar. I heard footsteps immediately below, which meant I dared not call out to her.

I glanced about me. There was no fireplace in the room. Apart from the two chairs, the trestles, the coffin and a large iron-bound chest, there was no furniture. My eyes came at last to the body of Mr Iversen, Senior. He sat with his legs slightly apart, his yellow, sunken face towards the window, and his gloved hands resting on his thighs. The fabric of his coat was riddled with moth-holes and both the man and his coat were covered with a fine, feathery powdering of dust. The coat was undone, revealing the waistcoat beneath. My eyes lingered on the old man's left-hand waistcoat pocket. The stub of a pencil protruded from it.

I eased the pencil gently from the pocket. There was still a point on it, albeit a blunt one. I looked wildly round the room for something to write on. My eyes returned at last to the corpse. I touched a corner of his hat gently with my finger. It did not move. I took a grip with both hands and lifted it, hoping I might find a label attached to the band. The wig rose a few inches and then parted company with the hat and fell back on to the bald skull, sending up a puff of dust. The movement dislodged a few yellow flakes which drifted down to Mr Iversen Senior's shoulders.

I glanced inside the hat and discovered that it had been wedged on to the head with scraps of paper. All were brittle, some had crumbled, but a few were still whole. I picked out the largest fragment and gently unfolded it. It was a receipted bill, attesting to the fact that Francis Corker, a butcher, had received the sum of seventeen shillings and three pence three farthings from Mr Adolphus Iversen on the 9th of June 1807. The other side of the receipt was blank.

I smoothed out the paper on the windowsill, holding down one corner with the platter and most of one side with what was left of the cheese. I would not have believed it possible to write with one's hands tied, but desperation is a fine teacher. Letter by letter, word by word, I scrawled this message:

If the bearer takes this to Air Noak or his clerk the Negro Harmwell they mill receive the sum of £5. They lodge in Brewer-st, north side, second house west from Gt Pultney-st. I am held captive at Iversen's, Queen-street, Seven Dials.

I pushed the window as wide as it would go. Mary Ann still sat smoking, her face turned away from the house. I heard voices below, though whether from the yard near the house or through an open window or door I could not tell; in any case, I dared not call out to attract her attention. I tried waving my bound arms from side to side, standing as close as I could to the window, in the hope that the movement would register at the edge of her vision. Then, to my horror, I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and approaching along the landing.

I had nothing to lose. I pushed my arms through the bars and let the note flutter from my fingers. As I did so, Mary Ann turned her head, perhaps attracted by a burst of laughter or a sudden movement from the door to the back kitchen. As she turned, she saw me and her eyes widened. The paper fluttered from my fingers and her eyes followed its fall.

The key turned in the lock. The door burst open. The man who had left me tied to the window shouldered his way into the room. His bloodshot eyes roved swiftly over the room, taking in the changes that had occurred since his departure. He lurched across the floor and gave me a backhanded blow that sent me sprawling across the coffin.

"Get back in there, you God-damned swab." The words were harsh but he spoke in a whisper, as if he were afraid of being overheard, that his dereliction of duty might be discovered. "In there, I say."

He bent down and manhandled me back into the coffin, cramming me in so I lay awkwardly on my side. He pushed my head down, catching my nose on the wood, and the blood began to flow. I heard him scurrying around the room in his heavy boots. I raised myself on an elbow. He restored the wig and the hat on to the corpse's head, sending up another cloud of dust as he did so. He did not notice the pencil. He looked out of the window, but saw nothing there to cause him anxiety.

As he turned away, however, he knocked against the outstretched left leg of the corpse. The blow dislodged the dead man's gloved hand from his thigh. There was an audible crackling sound, like tearing cloth. It was not much of a movement, but enough for the hand to hang down below the seat of the chair.

One would expect an embalmed body to be rigid. It was only some time later that I realised the significance of the movement, of the fact that it was possible when so little force had been brought to bear. The rigidity of the limb in question had already been broken. The first time, it had not been an accident.

At first, my captor did not realise what he had done. He felt the blow, of course, and turned back, looking askance at Mr Iversen, Senior as though he suspected the old man of hitting him.

The glove was slipping downwards. It was clearly much larger than the hand – perhaps the latter had shrunk – and it fell to the ground, leaving the hand beneath exposed. I saw yellowing, waxy skin, long nails, and spots of what looked like ink on the fingers. In some corner of my mind, some corner that remained remote from my present anxieties, I knew I had observed something very similar to that hand before. Then, my vision clearing, I saw with the kind of clarity which is almost like a physical pain that the top joints of the forefinger were missing. All at once I remembered the tavern in Charlotte-street, and the contents of Mr Poe's satchel on the scrubbed table top, and the maid's gasp of shock.

A rare specimen of digitus mortuus praecisus, lent me by the professor himself. Except that now it was no longer quite so rare.

78

That night the men who had brought me to Queen-street re-enacted the grim charade of the morning, this time under the supervision of Mr Iversen. His presence miraculously sobered them. As they were about to nail the lid, he waved them away from the coffin, and peered down at me.

"Pray do not disturb yourself," he said. "It is only for an hour or so. Try to rest, eh? To sleep, Mr Shield: perchance to dream, eh?"

He gave a signal, and the men nailed the coffin lid, the hammer blows pounding through me like artillery fire. They took me down the stairs and loaded the coffin on to the conveyance, presumably the one that had brought me here, waiting in the street. We drove away, moving much more quickly at this time of night, despite the darkness. At first I heard the noise of the streets, albeit very faintly, and once I distinguished the cry of a watchman calling the hour. Gradually these sounds died away, and we picked up speed.

We had two horses, I thought, and to judge by the smoothness of the ride we were travelling on a turnpike road. This suggested they were taking me either north or west because to go east or south would have meant a longer, slower journey through the streets. Sometimes the rumbling of wagons penetrated my wooden prison, and I guessed they formed part of the night-time caravans bringing food and fuel into the ever-hungry belly of the metropolis.

That journey was a form of death, a foretaste of hell. My wrists and knees were still bound; and I had been gagged again and wedged in place with my hat and boots. To be deprived of sight, of movement, of the power of action, even of grounds for hope – all this is to be reduced to a state that is very nearly that of non-existence. As I jolted along in that coffin there were times when I would have given anything, even Sophie, even my own life, to be transformed into an inanimate object like a sack of potatoes or a heap of rocks, to be incapable of feeling and fearing.

My discomfort grew worse when we left the turnpike road and jounced along rutted lanes with many sharp bends, as fast as the driver dared. At one point our conveyance lurched violently to the left and came to a sudden halt that set the unsecured coffin sliding forwards and sideways until it, too, came to a stop with an impact which left me more bruised than ever. I guessed that our nearside wheels had fallen into the ditch along the side of the road. I prayed that we had broken a wheel or an axle – anything to increase my chance of rescue. Alas, a few minutes later we were on our way again.

The first indication I had that we were nearing our journey's end came when the surface beneath the wheels changed to hard, bone-shaking cobbles. We slowed, swung to the right and stopped. The cessation of movement should have been a relief to me: instead it increased my awareness of my plight. However I tried, I could not make out what was going on around me. I grew colder and colder. My body was racked with spasms of cramp.

Desperate for air, for light, I hammered on the lid of the coffin, on the roof of my tiny cell. A memory came to my mind, of lying wounded in the dark, crushed by the weight of a dead horse, on the field of Waterloo: and I screamed as past and present glided like lovers into an indissoluble embrace. Panic was a creature in the coffin with me, an old ghost who would smother me if I let him. I fought him, forcing myself to breathe more slowly, to unclench my muscles.

There came a muffled crash, which sent a tremor through my wooden world. The coffin was dragged out of the vehicle. I heard crashes and bangs. Nausea rose in my gorge. The coffin pitched forward. I plunged feet first down a steep slope and came to rest, still at an angle, with a jolt that was worse than any I had previously experienced. But I had no time to recover, for the coffin moved again, twisting round and then descending with another shattering blow to a horizontal position.

A crowbar dug into the join between lid and coffin. The nails rose from the wood. I saw the first glimmer of light I had seen for hours. It came from a pair of flickering tallow candles yet to me, for a moment, those candles were brighter than a pair of suns. By their light, I made out two huge shadows looming over the coffin, which had been placed on the floor. Above me was a lattice-work of joists and floorboards. There was a deafening clatter as the lid was cast aside.

I tried to sit up and found my limbs would not answer. A man laughed, and the familiar smell of gin assailed my nostrils. I managed to pull myself up so my head at least was out of the coffin. I was in what seemed to be a low cellar with walls of brick. I recognised my captors as Mr Iversen's men, each with a candle in his hand. One of them stooped and picked up the crowbar. The other pulled out the gag. Then, ignoring me, they scuttled like black beetles up a steep flight of open wooden stairs to a trap-door.

"Sirs," I croaked. "I beg you, for God's sake leave me a candle. Tell me what this place is."

One of them paused, the one who had removed the gag. He glanced back. "You'll not need a candle, mate," he said. "Not where you're going."

The other laughed. A moment later the trap-door slammed down, leaving me once more alone in the darkness.

But not quite as before: I was no longer pinned motionless in a box. I could not doubt that they had brought me to this lonely spot in order to kill me. But at least I could make their job difficult.

There followed one of the most exquisitely painful experiences of my life. I threw out my hat and boots to give myself more room. Slowly I hauled myself to a sitting position. Clinging to the side of the coffin, I raised myself up to a crouch. I swayed from left to right with increasing vigour until I had achieved enough momentum to pitch myself inelegantly out of the coffin. Sobbing with pain, I lay huddled on my side on what felt like damp and filthy flagstones.

Gradually I straightened up, as uncertain as a child taking his first steps, until I attained a kneeling position. I found my boots and managed to put them on. My situation was almost as bleak as before. I feared that I had merely exchanged one prison for another, albeit a larger one. I examined it as well as I could in the darkness, which was not easy bearing in mind the fact that I was still bound at the knees and at the wrists. I paid particular attention to the stairs and to the trap-door. The latter was close-fitting but I believed I could discern a trace of light at one corner. I tried to heave it up with my shoulders but it would not budge.

When I stepped back from the stairs, I trod on something that seemed to snatch at my foot. With a muffled cry I sprang away and there was a clatter on the floor, as though there were an equally terrified animal in the cellar with me. Reason came immediately to my aid. The sole of my left boot had caught on the point of a nail protruding from the upturned lid of the coffin.

I knelt down and with cold, clumsy hands swept the floor until I found the lid. I ran my hand along its edge, touching the sharp points and the squared edges of the tapering nails. There were six of them in all. I brought my bound wrists down on the nearest one and began to saw.

I scarcely knew what drove me. In the conscious part of my mind I had already half-surrendered to whatever fate had in store for me. But there was another, deeper part of my being that continued to struggle. It was this that drove me to ignore my aching knees and my bleeding arms; to rub and hack at the cord that bound my wrists with the tips and sides of the nails.

I had no means of measuring the time. It might have been an hour before I felt the first strand part. For a time, this pushed me on to work with renewed vigour, but it was another age before I felt another strand give. I sawed the cord against the edges of the nails, I poked their iron points into the knot and worked it to and fro, and sometimes I merely snarled and tore at my bonds with my teeth, hoping if they were not vulnerable to one method then they would be to another.

I was in so much pain from the chafing of my skin and the many times I had accidentally dashed a nail against my arm rather than the cord that I barely noticed when the rope gave way. My hands flew apart. I sat back on my heels and wept, raising my arms and stretching them as far behind me as I could, as if I were arching a pair of wings. I looked up as I did so, and for the first time glimpsed a crack of light filtering between the boards. The night was ending.

I drove myself to work at the knot that bound my knees, which had been previously inaccessible to me, since it was at the back. I could not use the nails for this, and my hands were feeble. I had hardly begun when I heard footsteps above my head.

I hobbled quickly to the stairs and slumped on the floor against the wall near the foot of the stairs. A bolt was drawn. With a creak, the trap-door rose and fell back against a wall. Light flooded into the cellar. The day was more advanced than I had thought. Heavy footsteps descended the stairs.

A hand fell on my shoulder and shook me. With all the strength I was capable of, I spun round, straightening my knees, and jabbed my outstretched fingers at the face of the man looming over me. He gave a shriek, for one of my nails had caught his eye, stepped back incautiously and tripped over the coffin. I hauled myself up the stairs towards the rectangle of light with the fallen man screaming imprecations behind me.

"Mr Shield," said a rich, husky voice behind me as my head and shoulders emerged through the trap-door. "This really will not do."

I turned. Not four feet away from me Mr Iversen was seated in a chair by a table, with a pistol in his hand. He had changed his professional robe for a brown travelling coat. The crutches were propped against the table.

"Raise your hands in the air, if you please," he continued. "Climb the stairs slowly. No, no, Joseph" – he addressed the man below – "leave him alone for now."

I ascended with ungainly hops into a room fitted out as a kitchen, with a great range at one end and a dresser at the other. I struggled to my feet and looked about me. The place was indescribably dirty. I must have presented a sorry spectacle – unwashed, unshaven, with my coat torn and my cuffs and breeches bloody from my efforts to untie my hands during the night. I turned back to Mr Iversen.

He was no longer in the chair. Instead he was standing, pistol in hand, in the middle of the kitchen. The crutches were still against the table. He saw the surprise on my face and his mouth twisted into a smile.

"It is a miracle, is it not, Mr Shield? How truly edifying. You will find a pump in the yard. Joseph and I will come with you."

They took me out into a yard beyond the kitchen, watching me hop and stumble through the mud to the privy, which I was obliged to use with the door open. From the seat of ease I saw, over the roofs of the outbuildings at the far side of the yard, the chimneys of two large, modern buildings some sixty or seventy yards away. Mr Iversen noted the direction of my gaze. "No one is within earshot," he observed. "You might as well save your breath."

"Where are we?"

He shrugged, evidently deciding he had nothing to lose by answering my question. "We are to the north of the village of Kilburn, in the middle of a large tract of land set aside for building. This was once a farmhouse and in former times much of the surrounding land belonged to it. The establishment over there with the tall grey chimney-stacks is a madhouse. They are used to the sound of screams and calls for help. The building next door – you see it? with the belfry? – is the workhouse. It is a most convenient plan, I understand, for the inmates may pass from one to the other as their guardians see fit. This parish is run on the best rational lines."

I rose and buttoned my trousers. "I do not understand what you want with me. I beg of you to let me go."

He ignored these words. "They even have their private cemetery. Look through the gateway. You may catch a glimpse of its wall behind the limes over there. Madness and poverty share this characteristic, that they commonly end in death sooner rather than later. Consider the tender feelings of the village people, what is left of them; consider the inhabitants of the brave new streets and squares and crescents that one day will spring up on this spot: they would not care to await the Last Trump in the same burial ground as these unfortunates, would they? But with this private cemetery, everyone is happy, and everything is convenient. Admirable, do you not agree?"

"Why have you brought me here?"

"All in good time, Mr Shield. The burial ground has its own sexton, an admirable fellow, though not a polished one."

"And does he provide the coffins for his employers too?"

Iversen glanced at me and gave a quick, approving nod.

I said, "No doubt with the assistance of the men who brought me here?"

"You are perfectly correct. Do not judge by their appearance." He glanced at the man standing in the kitchen doorway. "Eh, Joseph? They are good-hearted men at bottom. They will even help the poor Sexton fill in a grave if he is hard pressed with other duties." He pointed at the limes. "There is a gate in the wall. The Sexton and his helpers can pass quite privately through it into the burial ground."

Iversen allowed me to use the pump, to splash water over my face and drink my fill. He had told me quite clearly, in so many words, that he had it within his power to have me interred in a cemetery for the poor and the insane, and I doubted if it would matter to him whether I were dead or alive when my coffin was lowered into the open grave.

"Sir," I said as we began our slow, halting progress back to the house. "May I speak with you in private a moment?"

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure." He stopped and motioned Joseph towards him. "Is the other horse saddled?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ride back to town. You should return with Elijah in the cart this evening, at about six of the clock. But first you will bind this young fellow's hands behind his back. Then cut his legs free."

Joseph obeyed, and I think he took a fiendish pleasure in making the cord as tight as possible. When he had left us, Iversen nudged me into the kitchen with the barrel of the pistol.

"Well? What have you to say?"

"There is much I do not understand about this whole business," I said when we were inside, my eyes flicking to and fro to find a possible weapon. "Indeed, at times I doubt I understand any of it. However, I know enough to make me wonder whether we need be on opposite sides."

He smiled at me. "That is a bold suggestion."

"If it is a matter of money-" I began.

"You have many natural advantages, Mr Shield, but I do not think possession of a fortune is one of them."

"I believe I know a man who would pay handsomely for intelligence, for the right sort of intelligence."

"The little Yankee and his tame nigger?" Iversen's vowels changed their character, became flatter and bolder. "No, I do not think it would answer." He reverted to the cultivated speech he had used before. "We are gone too far in this business. A man does not change horses in mid-stream if he has any choice in the matter." He motioned with the pistol towards the open trap-door. "I wish you to return to the cellar for a while."

I had no choice but to obey. When he had shut me up in the darkness, I tried half-heartedly to free myself, but Joseph had done his job too well. I do not know how long I sat on the lowest tread of the stairs, turning over in my mind various arguments I might advance to Iversen, only to discard each and every one of them. Footsteps moved to and fro above my head, and once Iversen sang a few lines of a sentimental ballad. On two occasions I thought I heard hooves, but I could not tell whether they were coming or going, passing or stopping.

At length there were footsteps again overhead, followed by the scrape of metal and a rapping on the trap-door.

"Mr Shield? Mr Shield?" Iversen called. "Pray answer me."

"I hear you."

"You may come slowly up the stairs. I have unbolted the trapdoor. But no rash movements, if you please."

I emerged, blinking like a mole, into a room filled with morning sunshine. Iversen was waiting at a prudent distance from the trapdoor. He required me to turn my back on him so that he could examine the cord around my wrists. Then he led me through the kitchen into a passageway and thence to a room furnished as a parlour according to the rustic taste of the last century. No sunshine penetrated here once the door was shut, for the shutters were closed and barred. Most of one wall was filled with a great fireplace where logs burned in a brazier. The only other light came from half a dozen candles.

There were two people already in the room. One was Mary Ann. She was bound to a chair. Even her mouth was gagged, the mouth that could speak no words, only trill like a bird. She stared at me with huge, unhappy eyes.

The second person, sitting with his watch in his hand on a high-backed wooden settle close to the fire, was Stephen Carswall.

79

"Ayez peur," I said, and watched a glance dart from Iversen to Carswall.

"You've taken leave of your senses, Shield," said Carswall.

Iversen pushed me to a stool opposite the settle and stationed himself by the door.

"The connection between you is known," I went on, pressing what I hoped was my advantage.

"Known by whom?" Carswall said. "Noak? A man may buy a parrot, may he not? For a boy who is about to become his stepson?" He gave the last words a peculiar emphasis and shot a look of mingled triumph and hatred at me. "Why were you pestering Mrs Frant over her husband's grave?"

"How did you know I met her there?"

"She told me." Carswall stared around the room as if the ramshackle wainscoting were an admiring audience. "She sent you off with a flea in your ear, eh?"

I shook my head. "It was Mrs Kerridge, wasn't it? She serves two masters, you and Mr Noak. And that's not all she told you. She learned where I lodged from Salutation Harmwell and passed it on: which is how Iversen's bully-backs could find me so quickly."

Carswall shrugged. "How far has Mr Noak penetrated this business?"

"I am not in his confidence."

"Let us put that assertion to the test. Have you seen a man's hand crushed in a door?"

I did not reply.

"It is not a pretty sight. It is prodigiously painful, too. Yet it is so simple. One holds the hand between the fixed edge of the door and the jamb, one finger at a time if one pleases. Then one closes the door. As any mechanic will tell you, you do not need strength if you have leverage. A child could do it, so long as there were someone present to hold the hand in the appropriate position."

"You are a monster."

Carswall said, "Necessity knows no law. Isn't that one of your tags, Mr Tutor? I take the world as I find it. You are a double threat to me: to the reputation of my affianced wife and to the success of a business transaction."

I did not speak. I clasped my bound hands and thought of the flesh, sinew and bone beneath the skin.

Carswall nodded to Iversen, who cocked his pistol and took a step towards me.

"Not him," Carswall said. "The girl first. Let him see the effect of his silence before he feels it."

Iversen nodded and untied Mary Ann's wrists. Leaving her bound around the legs, he hooked his arm through hers and dragged her towards the door. She was still gagged but she made a gargling noise in the back of her throat that was more painfully eloquent than any quantity of words.

"Stop," I said. "There is no need for the girl to be hurt."

Carswall leaned back on the settle and opened his watch. "I will give you a minute to convince me."

"Will you set her free?"

"Perhaps. It depends how honest you are."

I had no choice in the matter. I said, "Mr Noak believes that Henry Frant was responsible, directly or indirectly, for the murder of his estranged son in Canada during the late war. He believes that Lieutenant Saunders died because he threatened to expose corrupt dealings on the part of Wavenhoe's Bank, or rather on the part of Mr Henry Frant. Furthermore, he suspects but has not yet succeeded in proving that you yourself, Mr Carswall, were Frant's partner in this corruption, and are therefore, to some extent at least, a party to Lieutenant Saunders's murder."

Carswall puffed up his cheeks and blew out a gust of air. "What evidence has he?"

"Nothing that confirms your guilt. However, Mr Noak's investigation uncovered Henry Frant's embezzlement since he took over the direction of Wavenhoe's. Mr Noak took steps to hasten the collapse of the bank and Mr Frant's ruin."

"But the matter did not end there," Carswall said softly.

"No, sir, it did not. Mr Noak struck up an acquaintance with you. His negotiations over the proposed sale of the Liverpool warehouses convinced him that you had an active involvement in the Canadian operation, though it did not prove you had a hand in his son's death." I hesitated. "And then there was the business of Mrs Johnson and the ice-house."

I felt the atmosphere suddenly change in the room when I mentioned those last words. Iversen let out a tiny sigh.

"It was an accident," Carswall said with a sniff. "The Coroner said so."

"An accident, sir? But I think the Coroner was unaware that she was not alone. There was a man with her."

"I should have thought it an unlikely time and place for a romantic assignation."

"That was not their purpose. Henry Frant and Mrs Johnson had concealed certain items of value in the ice-house, in the hope that they would be able to build a new life for themselves after the bank's collapse, perhaps abroad and under assumed names."

Carswall raised his great eyebrows. "I can conceive of nothing less likely."

"They left behind the ring. Or rather he did."

"The ring? The ring you stole?"

"The ring you had a servant conceal in my coat, to give colour to the false accusation you made against me."

"False? False, you say? Then where is the ring?"

"I cannot tell you that. But I can tell you that it will soon be delivered to your house in Margaret-street. But to return to Mr Noak: he obtained a list of the securities that went missing when the bank collapsed. They included a bill that was recently cashed in Riga."

"And how does Mr Noak explain this?"

"He believes that Henry Frant contrived his own murder, and is still alive, and that you and he have come to an arrangement."

Carswall cleared the phlegm from his throat. "Pray enlighten me."

"You assist him to convert the securities and perhaps other items into ready money. Mr Frant dares not do this himself, even abroad, because not only is there the question of the embezzlement hanging over him, but also that of the identity of the man murdered in Wellington-terrace. Mr Noak has established that the bill cashed in Riga had passed through the hands of a notary in Brussels, a man you do business with."

"So do many others, no doubt. And what advantage do I derive from this ludicrous arrangement?"

"You, sir?" I said. "Why, you have a share of his profits, do you not, and the opportunity to enjoy Mr Frant's wife."

Carswall's colour, already dark, deepened still further. He studied the face of his watch, his chest heaving up and down. "I have rarely heard anything so nonsensical," he said at last.

"It has the merit of explaining why the four of us are together in this room."

Iversen coughed, reminding Carswall of his presence.

Carswall swivelled towards him and pointed at Mary Ann. "Give the drab a taste of her medicine."

"To what end, sir?" Iversen asked. "It seems to me the young gentleman is chatty enough as it is."

"What's it to you?"

"The girl's a servant of mine, sir, and wonderfully discreet on account of her affliction. If I crush her hands, she'll be no good to man nor beast."

I said – at random; urgent to distract Carswall from his purpose: "There is another question that Mr Noak would give a great deal to have answered."

"Eh?" Carswall pressed the repeater button on his watch, which emitted a minute ping. "The man is a fool: what profit does his infernal Yankee meddling bring him?"

"He wishes to know whether you realise what a laughing-stock you make of yourself when you pursue that canting hypocrite of a baronet with your bastard daughter and your ill-gotten money. Whether you know how the world sneers at you for your desire to ape the gentry. Whether you will die of natural causes, sir, or go to the gallows as you so richly deserve."

My voice rose as I spoke, as the passion welled up from a hidden recess in my being. Noak had not asked these questions: but I did, for now there was nothing to lose that was not already lost. After I had finished, a moment of complete silence descended on the frowzy room. Iversen was watching Carswall, and on his face was an expression of detachment, almost amusement. Blotches of angry pallor appeared in the old man's cheeks. I heard, quite distinctly, another tiny chime from his Breguet watch.

With a great bellow, he rose from the settle.

"You rascal! You knave! You God-damned scrub!"

"You must know that Mrs Frant hates and despises you," I said softly. "I wonder at the strength of your desire to possess her. Is it because she was the wife of Henry Frant? Did you hate him so very much? Did he make you feel he was your master? Yes, sir, your master."

Carswall shook his fist at me, the one with the watch in it. "I shall see you suffer, I assure you. You there!" He addressed Iversen now. "Hold his hand in the door, damn you. I shall break every bone in his body. I shall – I shall-"

He broke off as a great surge of passion ran like electricity through his body, making him vibrate, and jerk, and twist like a sheet in the hands of a laundry maid. His mouth opened but no sound emerged. He stared fixedly at me but there was no longer any anger in his eyes: his face was puzzled, confused, even imploring. Then he gasped, as if he felt an unexpected pinprick. His left leg gave way and he fell into the hearth, bringing down a set of fire irons in his fall with a rattle like grapeshot.

I struggled to my feet, my eyes still on the stricken man.

Iversen screamed.

I turned sharply towards the sound, almost overbalancing. As I did so, I heard a clatter. The pistol had fallen to the floor. By a miracle it had not discharged itself and was still cocked. Now silent, Iversen bent over Mary Ann and pummelled her with hands balled into fists and then wrapped his arms round her waist.

I fell to the floor, rolled and scooped up the pistol in my bound hands. Iversen threw Mary Ann across the room. She tripped over Carswall's legs and sprawled on the bare boards, giving a great cry as her back, still raw from the flogging, collided with the leg of a chair. I wrapped my hands round the pistol's butt. My finger found the trigger. Wrenching my left arm almost out of its socket, I arched my back and rested the pistol on my right hip. The muzzle pointed at Iversen.

"Stand back," I commanded. "Raise your hands in the air and move towards the corner."

For a moment he looked at me, showing no signs of panic or fear. Whatever else he was, he was never a coward. A drop of blood fell to the floorboards. I saw that he was wounded in the wrist and realised that Mary Ann had spat out her gag and bitten him there, the shock of which had caused him to drop the pistol.

"Back, sir," I repeated. "Back, I say."

Slowly he raised his arms and retreated into the corner.

The reversal was so sudden that for a moment I did not know how best to profit from it. Mary Ann showed no such hesitation. Without so much as a glance in my direction, she knelt by Carswall. Cooing and trilling, she went through his pockets, tossing the contents on the floor, turning him over this way and that as if he were nothing more than a huge baby. He was perfectly conscious, I believe, for his eyes were open and they moved and watered as she busied herself with him. Yet he could not move. He lay there, a beached whale, an island of blubber in a fine coat now smeared with the ashes of the fire.

Mary Ann found a penknife and brought it to me with an expression on her face like that of a dog who knows she has done well. While I covered Iversen with the pistol, she sawed the cords at my wrists with the little blade, taking care not to block my line of fire.

I felt a sudden increase of pain. The cord round my wrists had broken the skin in places. I took the knife from her with my left hand and cut her own bonds.

"We must summon help," I whispered. "The other men may still be here."

She shook her head.

"They have gone back to town?"

She nodded.

I thought quickly. I dared not send for a constable. One look at us, and at Mr Carswall lying in the hearth, would be enough to prejudice him against us.

I put a hand on Mary Ann's arm and felt her start. "That letter I threw down to you yesterday, when you were in the yard at Mr Iversen's, were you able to pick it up?"

She nodded vigorously, then mimed a frown, pointed first at Iversen, then at herself, and finally drew a finger across her own throat.

"You were discovered? That is the reason you were brought here? To be murdered?"

"Her wits are disordered, Mr Shield," Iversen said. "You cannot trust a word she – that is to say, what the poor girl implies."

I ignored him. "The letter was to an American gentleman residing in Brewer-street. If I gave you money, could you take another letter to him?"

Mary Ann moved away from me and crouched by the hearth. She extended the forefinger of her right hand and wrote the word NOAK in the ashes.

"Good God! You read the note! You can read and write?"

She nodded and unexpectedly grinned at me. Then she smoothed away Noak's name and wrote instead: GIG IN YARD. I DRIVE.

"You could take a letter directly to him yourself? You can manage a horse?"

She nodded and rubbed out the words. Next she wrote: WRITE LETTER SERVANT ON ERRAND.

This exchange between us was slow and awkward, not merely because of the medium she used to express herself but also because of the necessity to keep an eye on Mr Iversen in his corner. Before we went any further, I decided to move him into the cellar which had so lately served as my own prison. Mr Iversen seemed happy to oblige. First I held the pistol to his head while Mary Ann patted him to ensure he did not have another weapon concealed about his person. Then, at my signal, he preceded us out of the room, his hands raised in the air, moving slowly, just as I had requested.

"Well, well," said he as he descended the steps down from the kitchen. "So the girl is a scholar. Who would have thought it? She has been with us these six months and no one had the remotest idea. You will leave me a candle, will you not? No? Well, I suppose I should not be surprised."

"Where are we? What is the easiest way for the girl to take to town?"

"Left out of the yard, right at the crossroads, and in less than a mile you come to the high road through Kilburn to London itself."

"Whose is the gig?"

"Mr Carswall hired it from an inn – you will find the bill in his pocketbook, I believe. He drove himself, of course. If he had travelled in one of his own carriages, the whole world would have known what he was up to, and where. There are two horses in the stable, by the way – the brown mare is mine."

"You are very obliging."

"And why not, pray? You may trust my advice entirely, Mr Shield – after all, I have no reason to lie to you, not now, and everything to gain from obliging you in any way that lies within my power. Besides, I am hoping you will allow me a candle. I truly dislike the darkness."

Iversen was so determined, it seemed, to bear his misfortunes philosophically that I nearly acceded to his request. But Mary Ann spat neatly on his head as he reached the foot of the stairs, slammed the trap-door down with great force and laughed as she rammed home the bolt.

We conducted a rapid search of the premises. These consisted of a large cottage with a yard on one side containing several barns and a stable and the usual offices, most of them in a dilapidated condition. It had never been an establishment of any size, to judge by the buildings; and now the buildings were all that was left, apart from the remains of a small garden at the front, with a paddock and an overgrown orchard beyond. The land round about was used principally for rough grazing while it waited for the contractors to sow bricks and raise their crop of houses.

The kitchen and the parlour were the only partly habitable rooms. The remainder of the cottage was in a parlous state, with rotting boards spattered with bird-droppings, the plaster crumbling from the walls and, in the largest room upstairs, a place where the ceiling and part of the roof above had collapsed, giving a view of a blue sky. There were three coffins stacked up in one of the barns. Another contained the gig, and the horses were in the stable beside it.

Carswall was too heavy to move very far. Between us, Mary Ann and I dragged him away from the hearth. I loosened his breeches and his neckcloth, tied his thumbs together in case he was shamming, and covered him with a horse blanket from the stable. Among his possessions was a pocketbook and a pencil. Mary Ann tore out several leaves and put them and the pencil in the pocket of her dress.

Even then I realised she had become quite a different person – which was evident not merely from the way she behaved, but also from the way I behaved towards her. When she could express herself only in bird-like trills and primitive sign language, I had unconsciously treated her as little better than an idiot: as if her inability to talk was due to a wider intellectual deficiency. Now she had found her voice, and I realised that the deficiency had been mine rather than hers.

I sat at the table in the kitchen and dashed off a note to Mr Noak, explaining as concisely as I could the situation we were in and begging his assistance and his discretion. I helped Mary Ann harness the horse to the gig and watched her drive out of the yard.

I went back to the parlour and threw another log on the fire. Carswall was breathing heavily. His eyes were still open. Every now and then his lips would tremble, but no words emerged. His cigar case was among the heap of his possessions. I took a cigar and lit it with an ember from the grate.

I bent down and uncurled the fingers of the old man's right hand, for they were still folded round the open Breguet watch, as if time itself were the last thing he would let go. His eyes followed every movement. I put the watch to his ear and pressed the repeater button. The tiny chimes rang out.

"Ayez peur," I said aloud. I stared at the old man's fleshy and decayed face. "Can you hear me, sir?" I asked. "Can you hear the chime of the repeater?"

There was no response. His intelligence was imprisoned, as Mary Ann's had been, but unlike her he could not even write in the ashes. I closed the watch and pushed it into his waistcoat pocket. I left him to count the minutes, the hours, the days, and went back to the kitchen, where I knocked on the trap-door.

"Mr Iversen? Are you there?"

"I am indeed, my dear sir, though I cannot hear you as clearly as I would like. If you were to be so good as to open the trap-door a trifle-"

"I think not," I said.

"There has been a good deal of misunderstanding in this sad business," Mr Iversen said plaintively. "Misunderstanding piled upon misunderstanding, one might say, heaping Pelion upon Ossa as Homer so-"

"You would oblige me extremely if you would explain the misunderstandings."

"Ah, yes, Mr Shield – but would I oblige myself? In a perfect society, all men would be honest, all men would be open: but alas, we do not live in Utopia. Nevertheless, I will do my utmost. I am the soul of candour."

"You gave that parrot to Mr Carswall, I collect?"

"Indeed I did. The boy was mad for a bird, Mr Carswall said, a bird that talked, and as it happened I was able to oblige. I like to oblige, when possible."

I blew out a plume of smoke. It was at that moment that a dazzling light broke over me. As a child, I remembered, I would sometimes puzzle for minutes, even for hours, at a passage my master had set me to translate: then, with a similar shock of revelation, I would see the thread of meaning that ran through it and, following it, I would have the sense in a trice. Just so, now: the clue that resolved this whole confusing matter was this, that it was only a little leap between a parrot that talked French and a rare specimen of digitus mortuus praecisus. Did it not follow from this simple observation that Mr Iversen had been obliging not only to Mr Carswall but also to Mr Frant?

"Do I smell tobacco?" Mr Iversen inquired.

If the finger I had found in the satchel had belonged to the embalmed body of Mr Iversen, Senior, then there was no reason to suppose that the body I had seen at Wellington-terrace had been anyone other than Henry Frant. In that case, only one person truly benefited from the confusion and uncertainty.

As any actor knows, we rarely study the faces of those we encounter. We remember them by their salient features, which are often accretions, not essentials. Thus, for example, we do not have a clear mental image of a person's face: instead – for the sake of illustration – we see a tangled beard, a pair of blue spectacles, a wheeled chair and a robe embroidered with magical symbols. In my mind, I stripped away the accretions and considered what I knew of the essentials.

"I believe, sir," I said in a voice that shook, "that I have the honour of addressing Mr David Poe as well as Mr Iversen, Junior?"

I strained my ears to hear the reply. The seconds passed. Then, at last, I heard the sound of a low chuckle.

80

The whole truth about David Poe, late of Baltimore, Maryland, and Mr Iversen, Junior, late of Queen-street, Seven Dials, did not emerge on that morning. I do not suppose anyone will ever know it. Nature may have framed Mr Poe to be candid but life had taught him to dissimulate.

"What's in a name, Mr Shield? Time is not on our side at present. Let us not quibble about trifles. I have in my pocketbook a document that-"

"But you are Poe, are you not? You are Edgar's father?"

"I cannot deny either charge. Indeed, having seen the lad, I challenge you to find a prouder parent in Christendom. I do not wish to appear importunate, but-"

"Mr Poe," I interrupted, "even if Mary Ann meets no obstacles on her way, we shall be able to enjoy each other's company for hours. I think we should occupy ourselves with your story. We have nothing else to do."

"There is the matter of the document I mentioned."

"The document can wait. My curiosity about you cannot."

I sat smoking on a chair by the trap-door, and never did a cigar taste so sweet. From below my feet came David Poe's rich, drawling voice – now Irish, now American, now genteel, now Cockney, now whispering, now declaiming. Principally from that conversation, but also from later observations and information provided by others, I believe that at last I built up a tolerably accurate picture of his life, though by no means a comprehensive one. It goes without saying that he was a loose and vicious man who cared not how low he had to stoop in pursuit of his own base ends. But we are none of us made of whole cloth. Like the rest of us, he was a quilt made up of scraps from many materials, some of which sat well beside their neighbours, some of which did not.

Yes, he was cruel and dissolute and often a drunkard. He was also, I believe, a murderer, though in the case of Henry Frant he claimed to have acted in self-defence, a plea which may have some truth in it. The death of Mrs Johnson he attributed to an unlucky accident, and this I found harder to credit.

Nor do I find it likely that David Poe and Mr Carswall intended that Mary Ann and I should remain alive. Poe told me that the coffin had merely been a method to bring me discreetly from Seven Dials to this place where Stephen Carswall might interrogate me without fear of prying eyes. I believe it was to have served a further purpose. It would have been easy enough to slip another coffin or two into the private burial ground attached to the workhouse next door; the Sexton was Poe's creature, and in an establishment of that nature it is never long before there is a need for an open grave where two may lie as comfortably as one.

I have leapt ahead of myself. The point I had begun to make with my talk of quilts and cloth is simply that Mr Poe could be an agreeable companion if he wished. He was a man of parts, who had travelled the world and observed its follies and peculiarities. Of course he had every reason to make himself agreeable to me while I had him imprisoned in the cellar.

His story, in brief, was this. As a young man, his father had put him to study the law, but it had not answered and he had become an actor instead. He had married Miss Arnold, the English actress who became the mother of Edgar and of two other children. Alas, an actor's life is a precarious one, with many temptations. He had been very young, he told me, and he had quarrelled with managers and critics. He had drunk too deeply and too often. He had failed to husband his few resources.

"And I was not, perhaps, as good an actor as I thought myself. My Thespian talents do not shine at their brightest on the boards, sir: they are better suited to the wider stage of life."

The open mouths of his young family added to his cares. At length, the young man could shoulder his burden no more. At that time he and his wife were in New York. A chance-met acquaintance in a tavern offered to procure him a berth on a boat sailing for Cape Town where, he was told, there was such a hunger for dramatic entertainments that no actor worth his salt could fail to make himself a fortune within a very short time indeed. There was not a moment to be lost for the ship was to sail on the outgoing tide. According to his account, Poe had scribbled a note explaining his intended absence to his wife and had entrusted it to a friend.

"Alas! I trusted too well. My letter was never delivered. My poor Elizabeth went to her grave a few months later not knowing whether I was alive or dead, leaving my unfortunate children to depend on the charity of strangers."

David Poe's misfortunes had only just begun. The ship in which he was to work his passage to Cape Town was a merchantman sailing under British colours – at that time, our two countries were not yet at war. But the Union flag proved Mr Poe's undoing for the ship was snapped up by a French privateer out of Le Havre. Mr Poe was reticent about how he had spent the next few months, but by the summer of 1812 he had moved to London.

"I know a man of your sensibility, Mr Shield, will have no difficulty in picturing my distress when I discovered, by a circuitous route, that my beloved Elizabeth had died. My first impulse was to rush to the side of my motherless children and provide what comfort a poor widowed father might bring. But on second thoughts, I realised that I could not afford the luxury – I might say the selfishness – of indulging in my paternal sentiments, not for my own sake but for the sake of my children. To get a passage to the United States at that time would not have been easy, since Congress had declared war on Great Britain in June. I understood, too, that my children were being cared for by the most amiable of benefactors: indeed, even if I could get to the United States, their material circumstances would immediately worsen. I blush to admit it, but there had been a little temporary embarrassment just before I left New York, in the shape of unpaid debts. No, though every generous feeling urged me to rush to the side of my children, prudence restrained me." Here I imagined him on the other side of the trap-door, standing at the foot of the stairs with his hand on his heart. "A father must place his children's welfare above his own selfish desires, Mr Shield, though it break his heart to do so."

Fortunately, the grieving widower was not obliged to grieve in solitude. He had wooed and won the heart of a Miss Iversen, who lived with her father in Queen-street, Seven Dials, and assisted him in his business.

"She was not in the first flush of youth," Mr Poe told me. "But then nor was I. We were both of an age when one woos with the head as much as with the heart. Mr Iversen's health was failing and he was anxious to secure the future of his only child in the event of his death. She was a most amiable lady, with the additional attraction that she brought not only her delightful self to our connubial bower but also a means of earning my living – by honest toil, the sweat of my brow, but I did not mind that. There can be no higher calling than to heal the ills of one's fellow men. I firmly believe we have had more success in that department than the entire College of Physicians. We doctor their souls as well as their bodies."

"You tell fortunes?" I inquired. "You give them coloured water and pills made of flour and sugar? You interpret their dreams, sell them spells and help women miscarry?"

"Who is to say that is wrong, sir?" Mr Poe replied. "You would not believe the cures I have effected. You would not credit the number of sorrows I have soothed. I give them hope, sir, which is better than all the money in the world. In my way I am a philanthropist. Tell me, which is worse? To live as I do, an honest tradesman, a broker of dreams. Or to prey upon widows and hard-working men, and prise away their little fortunes and give them nothing in return. A splendid establishment and a carriage with a crest on the door are no guarantee of moral probity. I need refer you only to Mr Henry Frant and Mr Stephen Carswall as evidence of that."

I believed him – or rather, I believed some part of him meant what he said: no man is a monster to himself, not entirely. And he spoke no more than the truth: the distance between Seven Dials on the one hand, and Margaret-street and Russell-square on the other, is shorter than the world realises.

When old Mr Iversen died in 1813, his daughter had been plunged into a melancholy so profound that her doting husband had feared she would never emerge. She could not bear to be parted from her papa. In the end Mr Poe had suggested that his body be embalmed.

"It is done in the best families now. And the old man, despite his trade, was an out-and-out Rationalist. Why should he wish for the grave or the attentions of worms? And of course the solution was also eminently practicable. My patrons are, by and large, a superstitious crew. They do not care to play foolish tricks on a man whose father-in-law keeps guard for all eternity in a room above the shop. Better than a pair of mastiffs, eh? Those dogs at Monkshill were no use as guards when they were dead, but with my late wife's father being dead was in fact an advantage."

Mr Poe had taken over not only the business of the old man but also something of his identity. "Only an American, sir, can truly appreciate the value of tradition." He called himself Mr Iversen. He wore his father-in-law's professional garb – that is to say, the gown with its strange symbols and the skull cap; he even pretended to be crippled, as Mr Iversen, Senior, had been.

"There is much to be said for distinguishing one's professional activities from one's private life," Mr Poe said. "If I slip on a beard and a pair of blue spectacles I become another man altogether. People come and go in Seven Dials. In a year or two, most of them had forgotten there had ever been another Iversen, especially after my poor Polly followed her pa to the grave."

He was understandably reticent about the precise extent and nature of the business he had inherited from his father-in-law and then built up himself. I think it probable that there was a great deal more to it than quack medicines and spells for the credulous. I cannot forget the bully boys in their rusty black clothes, the firm of undertakers who worked so assiduously for him, and the tumbledown farm so close to a workhouse, a lunatic asylum and a private burial ground.

In all probability, David Poe would have continued to prosper in Queen-street if he had not learned that Mr and Mrs Allan were in London, with their foster son Edgar. Over the years he had naturally paid attention to the news from America, and in particular to Americans visiting London. According to his own explanation, he had been possessed by an overpowering desire to see his son, whom he had last laid eyes on when the boy was not much beyond two years old and still in petticoats.

I see no reason to doubt at least the partial truth of this. As I said, we are all a patchwork of emotions. Why should David Poe not have felt a sentimental attachment to the children he had seen so little of? Absence and ignorance encourage such tender feelings. But an act may have more than one motive. Knowing Mr Poe, I suspect that he may also have borne in mind the possibility of deriving pecuniary advantage from Mr Allan, for he must have known that Allan was accounted a rich man.

Whatever his purpose, Mr Poe visited Southampton-row, where I unwittingly confirmed his son's identity, and where he learned that Edgar was to be found in Stoke Newington. Later he came to the village, where he accosted the boys and had his altercation with me. He had indeed been more than a little tipsy on this occasion – "if ever a man had need of refreshment, it was I on that day." Another layer of confusion was added by the fact that Mr Poe was short-sighted, and his vision was further hampered by the blue glasses: therefore he found it hard to distinguish between Edgar Allan and Charlie Frant, which brought about the initial assumption that the object of his interest was not Edgar but Charlie. It was this misunderstanding which led, through my good offices, to his acquaintance with Mr Frant.

Frant saw what David Poe wished him to see: an Irish-American with a taste for gin and no visible means of support; no threat to Frant or to anyone else. Frant saw all this, and he also saw that David Poe was approximately the same height, weight, age and build as himself. Leaving aside the superficial dissimilarities, Poe made a perfect substitute for Henry Frant in the role of murder victim. Urged on, no doubt, by Mrs Johnson, he retained Poe's services. In the late afternoon of Wednesday 24th November, Frant lured Poe up to Wellington-terrace with the intention of murdering him.

"He told me we were to meet a gentleman there, and gave me a suit of his clothes, saying I must look the gentleman, too, or the design he had in mind would be doomed. By God, he thought me a prime flat, but in truth it was the other way about. He told me to get to Wellington-terrace early, where he would explain the design. So I walked there from the turnpike road, and he sprang on me, with a hammer in his hand." David Poe coughed. "I had been half expecting it. We had a bit of a set-to, and I happened to get hold of the hammer. I didn't mean to kill him, as God's my witness, but he would have killed me given half the chance. I must have hit him a little harder than I thought. There I was, Mr Shield, in something of a difficulty, as I think you will agree."

"You did not mean to kill him?" I cried. "Mr Poe, you forget I saw the body."

"On my honour, Mr Shield, I had no more intention of killing him than I have of killing you, as you will see when I explain those injuries. When he died, he was almost entirely unmarked, apart from the back of the head, that is. But I knew that no jury in the land would believe that my blows had been struck in self-defence, that I had not wished to kill him. While I considered what to do, I searched him, and I struck lucky with his pockets, at least. Frant planned to run away, you see, after he'd killed me. He was carrying plenty of money, a case of jewellery, and also a letter from his fancy woman down at Monkshill. Shockingly indiscreet, she was, sir, quite shocking."

"So you knew what they planned?"

"Not then. I didn't have time to read the whole, but I saw enough to discover what my part was to be, enough to realise there was plenty of money in this, far more than Mr Frant had in his pockets. I was to stand in for Frant himself – Frant as a dead man, you understand, so that he would not be pursued. Can you credit such evil ingenuity! Of course I needed time to contemplate the pros and cons. Anyway, the long and the short of it is, I decided my best course of action was to follow at least some of the design that Mr Frant had laid out for me. So I knocked his face and hands about so his own mother couldn't have been absolutely sure who he was – I had to do the hands, because of the finger – and then I slipped away. I knew there'd be questions asked, and I'd have to find a way to deal with them. With your assistance, Mr Shield, as it happened."

Mr Poe had laid the trail for an investigator to follow, the trail that led to the finger in the satchel at the dentist's. "Maria at the Fountain in St Giles is one of mine. If anyone came asking for Frant, she was to direct them to Queen-street and ensure I knew they were coming. And along you came, Mr Shield, not Mrs Johnson or a runner, as I'd been half-expecting. So we played out our charade – I thought it a neat touch to have Mary Ann give you the drawing that led you to my dentist, eh? If you had not asked to see the girl, she would have accosted you as you left. Then off you went to find the satchel with the finger."

"It was only when I saw your late father-in-law in Queen-street, when a glove fell off his left hand, that I realised what had happened."

"I needed a finger," Mr Poe said with a trace of embarrassment. "His was to hand, if you excuse the vile wordplay. I regretted the necessity of removing it, of course, but the result was so particularly ingenious that I could not resist: it suggested, did it not, that the body at Wellington-terrace was indeed mine, whoever I might be, and that Henry Frant was alive and well – and not only an embezzler but a murderer."

Having secured his own safety, as far as was possible, Mr Poe then turned his attention towards Monkshill-park. By that time he had studied Mrs Johnson's letter. She had not only made it clear that she and Mr Frant hoped to elope, and that their nest-egg was hidden somewhere in the vicinity of the ice-house at Monkshill-park and unlikely to be accessible until January: she had also dropped a broad hint about the value of the nest-egg, a sum so substantial that, as Mr Poe put it, "even the angels would have been tempted."

So Mr Poe had travelled down to Monkshill-park, arriving on St Stephen's Day. His had been the face that had peered at me through the window of Grange Cottage on the day that Edgar sprained his ankle.

"You gave me quite a fright, sir," he said reproachfully. "All in all, I did not have a happy day. You had hardly left the cottage when a chaise called for Mrs Johnson and took her away, and I knew by her luggage that she planned a visit of some length. The servant locked up and walked up to the village. I explored the garden and the outbuildings, and later I slipped into the park with the intention of discovering the ice-house. But a gamekeeper took me for a vagrant and threatened to set his dogs on me."

Later, Mr Poe learned from alehouse gossip in the village that Mrs Johnson was spending a fortnight with her cousins at Clearland, a circumstance which made a private conference with her difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Urgent business called him back to London. But after the two weeks had elapsed, he returned.

"I hired a hack in Gloucester and rode over. You will imagine how mortified I was to find the cottage quite deserted. I slipped away-"

"Not before you were seen," I said. "I came over to the cottage myself to look for traces of you."

"If only I had known," Mr Poe replied courteously. "I should have been only too glad to renew our acquaintance."

On his return to Gloucester, however, a solution to his difficulty presented itself. The assembly at the Bell was only two days away and not unnaturally it formed the principal topic of conversation at that establishment. Mr Poe supped there on the Monday evening and discovered that a party from Clearland-court was among those expected to grace the occasion. It did not take him long to establish where the Ruispidges lodged. He witnessed their arrival on Wednesday and sent up a note to Mrs Johnson, begging the favour of an interview.

"I mentioned in my letter that I had something to communicate in relation to Mr H.F. – a matter of life and death, and discretion was of the utmost importance. I ventured to suggest we met on the morrow, but in her reply she insisted on an interview that very evening, and proposed that we meet in the gazebo at the bottom of the garden of the house where the Ruispidges lodged."

Mrs Johnson had been in a pitiable state, not knowing whether Henry Frant were alive or dead. Indeed, it was by playing upon the possibility that Frant was still alive that Mr Poe was able to induce her to co-operate with him. He told her that Frant had been attacked by a ruined creditor; that Mr Poe had acted the Good Samaritan and come to his aid; that Frant was lying dangerously ill in London, unable even to write; and that he had begged Mr Poe to fetch both Mrs Johnson and what was hidden in the ice-house.

"This was cruel indeed, sir," I said. "To play upon the poor woman's weakness."

"Upon my life, sir," Mr Poe protested, "she received only what she deserved. The letter I discovered in Mr Frant's pocket enabled me to form the opinion that Mrs Johnson was the originator of the scheme to have me killed in Mr Frant's place. Both she and Frant were ruthless and reckless, sir, and as impulsive as children; but she was immeasurably the stronger character. I can safely assert that it was she who was truly to blame for those ghastly events at Wellington-terrace."

"Did you tell her who you were?"

"Indeed I did not! That would have been the height of folly. The success of my scheme depended on the lady believing that it was I, Poe, not her lover, who had been murdered, just as she had planned. I led her to understand that I was a former associate of Mr Poe's, a man who had reason to hate him, a man who could be trusted as long as he was generously rewarded."

Mrs Johnson had needed desperately to believe him because he alone offered her the hope of finding Henry Frant. She agreed to return to Grange Cottage after the ball, not to Clearland as she had previously intended; Mr Poe would join her there to retrieve what was in the ice-house. As they talked in the gazebo, however, she became much agitated, and also very cold and, according to Mr Poe, suggested they take some refreshment. Her cloak and hood granted her anonymity, and they patronised a hostelry at a distance from both the Ruispidges' lodgings and the Bell.

"But the liquor went to her head," Mr Poe cried. "She wept on my shoulder! She became quarrelsome! She led me a merry dance! And then at last you and Mrs Frant appeared and I feared that all was lost."

Fortunately for him, Mrs Johnson had kept her own counsel, and he had come to the cottage according to plan. I myself had seen him on his skewbald mare. Mrs Johnson took a daily walk to the lake to ascertain when the men began to empty the ice-house.

"Her lover had given her a key to the door, which she had concealed in a secret compartment at the bottom of a small jewel box. Now I come to a most curious circumstance, my dear sir: I had the identical twin of that box in my own possession! But I shall return to this in a moment."

All had at first run smoothly on the night of their expedition. According to Mr Poe's version of events, their difficulties had begun only after Mrs Johnson had retrieved the valuables from the sump of the ice-house. In her excitement, she had missed her footing on the ladder and fallen to her death in the pit. To add to his troubles, he had nearly perished when he blundered into a mantrap on his way back to Grange Cottage.

"What could I do?" Mr Poe cried. "I am naturally law-abiding, and my instinct was at once to lay the matter in its entirety before the nearest magistrate. But nothing could bring my charming hostess back to life. I knew that circumstances were against me. All in all – for Mrs Johnson's sake – for the reputation of the illustrious family to which she had the honour of being connected – it seemed wiser that I should slip modestly away. My presence would have served only to confuse matters." He chuckled, as though challenging me to disagree with this interpretation of events; Mr Poe was a great tease.

"I did not have an opportunity to examine what Mr Frant and Mrs Johnson had concealed in the ice-house until I returned to London. I had expected gold – I had expected banknotes – I had expected more jewellery: and in all these I was not disappointed. I had also anticipated that there would be bills and other securities, though with less interest because I knew these would not be easy for a man in my position to realise for anything like their true value. But there is a profound irony here: the most valuable item of all was already in my possession, and it had been since November. That little box I found in Mr Frant's pocket."

"Would it have been made of mahogany, by any chance?" I said, remembering something Sophie had once asked me. "Inlaid with tulip wood, and with a shell pattern on the lid?"

"My dear Mr Shield! I find you remarkably well informed! Yes, Mr Frant must have had two of them made, one for his wife and one for his mistress. I had already removed the items of jewellery that Mrs Frant's contained. But I had not suspected the existence of a secret compartment until Mrs Johnson had revealed the one in hers. If only Mr Frant had known! How delighted he would have been!"

David Poe paused and cleared his throat. He was an artist as well as a tease. He waited for me to say something, to encourage him to reveal what he had found. I tapped ash from what was left of my cigar and waited.

"The compartment held a letter," Poe said at last. "Its contents were wholly unexpected. I immediately realised it altered everything. It brought great possibilities in its train. But in order to bring those possibilities to fruition, I would have to act, and act soon. There is a tide in the affairs of men, as the Bard so aptly says, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune."

81

Life is a topsy-turvy affair at best, and David Poe's secret history was by no means life at its best. Here is the worst, and saddest, part of his narrative and mine.

You may picture me, sitting by the trap-door in the kitchen of that squalid little farmhouse with a pistol in one hand, a cigar in the other, and the acrid flavour of fear still twisting and turning in my stomach; and all the while the sound of Mr Poe's whining yet oddly mellifluous voice, as beguiling as the serpent's in Eden, was insinuating itself up through the cracks between the floorboards.

"Mr Shield," said he, "none of us can argue with the immutable decrees of Providence. Fate has put you on one side of this trap-door and me on the other. But that is no reason why we should not discuss our situation like rational beings. I have a letter in my pocket which could bring you considerable benefit. Material benefit. It is of no use to me now. You, on the other hand, might derive much advantage from it."

"I do not wish to listen to you." I rose to my feet and ground out the cigar with my heel.

"Pray, Mr Shield – this will not take a moment. You will not regret it, I promise you. I may whet your interest by revealing that the letter is addressed to Mrs Frant."

"Who was Mrs Frant's correspondent?"

"Mr Carswall's natural daughter, Miss Flora Carswall. She wrote the letter when she was little more than a child. She was then at a school in Bath whose address is at the head of the letter, as is the date, which is a circumstance of importance. October 1812. The contents of the letter suggest that during the summer she had spent several weeks with her father on a tour of various properties he owns, or owned, in Ireland."

"I fail to see the significance."

Poe's voice rose in his excitement. "The letter is not such a letter as a daughter should ever write about her father, Mr Shield. No one who reads it can doubt its meaning. I shall be blunt – this is no time for delicacy. By my computation, Miss Carswall was at the time no more than a child of fourteen or at the most fifteen. Her letter suggests strongly that, one night when her father was inebriated, he had taken a terrible advantage of her innocence – indeed, one can place no other construction on it – and as a consequence of this she feared that she was with child. The motherless girl was clearly distraught, and she had nowhere else to turn – so she sought the counsel of her friend and cousin, Mrs Frant."

For a moment I did not know where to find words to say. I felt horror, of course, and also a twisted anger towards that hulk of a man lying in the parlour next door. Most of all, though, I felt pity for Flora. For if this was true, it made clear much about her I had not understood before. I write if this was true.

"Show me the letter," I said. "You may slip it between the boards."

"Not so fast, my good friend. If I pass it to you, I pass you my sole means of negotiating. I have no wish to harm the reputation of the unfortunate lady, but you must see that I am in a difficult position myself."

"Does Carswall know you have it?"

"Of course. He has known since February."

"You were blackmailing him."

"I prefer to say that we arrived at an agreement which benefited both of us."

"It was he, perhaps, who arranged for a certain bill to be cashed in Riga?"

"Precisely."

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Why, that you should let me go free. I ask for nothing more. If you wish, we shall contrive a struggle and make it look as if you had no choice in the matter. That is entirely up to you. You give me my freedom: I give you this letter, which will enable you to make what terms you wish with Mr Carswall, if he recovers his wits and his powers of speech, or with Miss Carswall, if he doesn't."

"Why should I strike a bargain with you, Mr Poe? I have it in my power to compel you."

"With that pistol? I think not. You do not strike me as having the temperament that allows one to kill a man in cold blood."

"I would not be obliged to. Once help arrives, you can be overpowered and searched without any need to shed your blood."

Mr Poe laughed. "I see two difficulties with that plan. In the first place, if a committee searches me – yourself and Mr Noak – that nigger of his, perhaps, the slut, the constable and any Tom, Dick or Harry who happens to be in the vicinity – then the whole committee will read the letter. Miss Carswall's name will be sullied for ever and to no purpose. Is that really what you wish? In the second place, and this argument is even more cogent, if we cannot strike a bargain, I shall simply threaten to destroy the letter. It is only a sheet of paper, and not a large one. By the time you raised the trap-door and reached me, it would be in a dozen pieces and descending into my stomach."

"Perhaps that would be best for Miss Carswall."

"It would depend entirely on whether I had in fact carried out my threat. You could not be absolutely sure that I had eaten the letter without searching me, and for that you would need your friends' assistance. Also, if the letter had been destroyed, there would be no chance of your deriving any benefit from it."

"I do not understand you, sir."

"I think that you do, Mr Shield. Forgive me if I trespass in places where I have no right to be, but I do not think you have prospered of late. This letter would give you the power to change all that."

I felt light-headed, and as dry as a man in a desert, a man who sees a mirage trembling before him. "I would be a fool to let you out without seeing this letter. I have only your word that it even exists."

"Ah – spoken like a man of sense. I applaud your caution. I believe I have a suggestion that will deal with the point you raise. Suppose that I tear the letter into two pieces of unequal size. I shall push the smaller portion through the crack. It will contain enough to confirm what I have said, though for it to be of any use to you, you will also need the larger portion, which I will happily surrender up to you when you release me. You will of course have me covered with the pistol at all times, so there will be no danger to you whatsoever."

Poe's audacity astonished me. Here was a man who had kidnapped and mistreated me, who almost certainly intended to have me killed, and who now was proposing in the coolest way possible that I should set him free in return for a compromising letter which would enable me to blackmail a lady. I licked my lips and longed for a pot of strong coffee.

I said, "Very well. Let me see part of the letter." He passed a scrap of paper through to me. It was four-sided, but only one side was straight, and contained a few scrawled words, the ink blotched as if with tears.

– ut Papa flew

– he fault was mine

– be whipped for

When I read those words I abandoned prudence. I wanted the whole of that letter. At that moment, I had no thought of self-advantage. I wanted the letter so I could avert the danger of others reading it. I wanted to show it to that old man lying in the parlour and kick his helpless carcass.

I opened the trap-door. Mr Poe blinked up at me. After that, matters moved swiftly and I observed them as one in a dream. A little later, I remember how Mr Poe leaned down from the horse and shook my hand with the utmost cordiality. "God bless you, my boy," he murmured.

It cannot have been much more than twenty minutes after Mr Poe left the cellar that I found myself standing in the yard behind the farmhouse listening to a distant bell striking one o'clock in the afternoon. Nearer by far was the sound of hooves on the lane, gradually receding.

The sun came out and turned the mucky water in the horse trough and the puddles between the ruts into things of beauty. I turned and went back into the house. In the parlour, Stephen Carswall had not moved. Whistling and squeaking as the air slid in and out of his lungs, he lay on the floor near the dying fire. His eyes were open; they followed my movements. He knew what I was about.

I held up the letter so this rotting mound of flesh and bone could see it by the flickering light of the last candle. "I know," I said. "I know."

I crossed the room to the window, threw open the shutters and flung wide the casement. I looked across a little garden which had been given over to brambles, nettles and thistles. There were buds on the trees of the overgrown orchard, and somewhere a blackbird was singing.

82

April gave way to May. I remained at Mrs Jem's house in Gaunt-court. I earned enough for my keep and a little more. I should have been happy, for a great fear had been lifted from me, but I was not.

I dined once or twice with Mr Rowsell who thought he might be able to put me forward for a clerkship with a friend of his. It would be respectable employment, with the hope of something better in the long run. I saw Salutation Harmwell on several occasions – we would stroll through the parks and watch the world go by, neither of us feeling the need to speak very much.

It was Harmwell who told me that Mr Carswall's life was no longer despaired of. But the old man had not recovered the use of his limbs, and he was still unable to speak. His physicians believed it probable that the apoplexy had affected his mind as well as his body.

"He has become a great baby now," Harmwell said. "He does nothing but lie in his bedchamber. Everything is done for him."

"And Miss Carswall's marriage?"

The Negro shrugged. "She and Sir George are still willing, but it is now a question of settlements and of who is to assume the direction of Mr Carswall's affairs. A matter for the lawyers, in other words. So in the meantime Miss Carswall and Mrs Frant remain with the old man in Margaret-street. Though how long that will last for I cannot tell." He hesitated and added, "Mrs Kerridge tells me that Captain Ruispidge is in town and has called on several occasions."

The world knew nothing of what had transpired in that tumbledown farmhouse beyond Kilburn. It was given out that Mr Carswall had hired a gig and taken Mr Noak to view the building land nearby, as a prospect for a joint investment. Mr Carswall had been taken ill on the way, and the two gentlemen had found shelter in the farmhouse. No one questioned this story. No one had any reason to do so.

Early in May, Mr Noak invited me to dine with him in Fleet-street, at the Bolt-in-Tun. We ate a frugal meal of mutton chops and caper sauce, washed down with thin claret. Mr Noak looked careworn.

"There is no news of the man Poe," he said abruptly as he pushed aside his empty plate. "I have had a constant watch on the premises in Queen-street and instituted other inquiries. The place is in great confusion – the bailiffs have been in. But the man himself has vanished. I suspect he has fled abroad."

"What of the stolen bills?"

"I have found no trace of them. We must presume that Poe took them with him. None has been presented for payment since the one in Riga earlier this year. I am tolerably certain how that was managed, by the way. Carswall has – or had – a man of business in Paris. He has a clerk named Froment: and it was a Monsieur Froment who passed the bill to the notary in Brussels, who then passed it on to the others whom I had already traced. But of course Poe does not have the advantage of Carswall's commercial connections on the Continent. That is-" He leaned across the table and said in a low, urgent tone, "You are perfectly convinced as to the identity of the man in Kilburn?"

"Yes, sir." I was saddened by the desperation I detected in his voice. "There is no possible doubt. The man I talked to was David Poe, not Henry Frant."

Noak leaned back against the settle. "It is a thousand pities you allowed him to escape."

I smiled, affecting a nonchalance I did not feel. "He tricked me, sir. But perhaps it is for the best. What matters, surely, is that the finger I was encouraged to find in the satchel had been removed from the hand of the corpse of his father-in-law. There can be no doubt about that. In that case, it was simply designed to throw me off the scent, to make me believe it possible that the corpse in Wellington-terrace was not that of Henry Frant. But of course it was."

"I wish I had brought Frant to the gallows as he deserved," Noak said after a silence. "I shall regret it always. My son's murderer unpunished."

I repressed a shudder. "If you had seen Mr Frant's body, sir, you might not think him unpunished. All in all, he did not have a happy ending. He had been reduced to a bankrupt, an embezzler in fear of the gallows: and then, at the last, he lived to see his schemes confounded, and when he died he was beaten to a pulp. No, he did not die an easy death."

Noak sniffed. He took up a toothpick and toyed with it for a moment. Then he sighed. "Carswall, too: I do not think I can touch him."

"Surely Providence has already judged him? He is living imprisoned in his own body, and under sentence of death."

Mr Noak did not reply. He summoned the waiter and paid our reckoning, carefully counting out the coins. I thought I had angered him. As we were walking out into the Strand, however, he stopped and touched my arm.

"Mr Shield, I am sensible of the great service you have done me. The matter has not turned out exactly as I would have wished, but I have achieved most of what I set out to do, one way or the other. I shall return to America in a week or two. And what do you intend to do with your life?"

"I do not yet know, sir."

"You cannot afford to leave the decision too long. You are a young man of parts, and if you should find yourself in the United States, I may be able to put you in the way of something. I will write to you before we sail, and give you my direction."

I bowed and began to thank him. But he turned on his heel and without even a handshake walked rapidly away. In a moment he was lost to sight among the crowds.

83

At the end of May, after Mr Noak and Mr Harmwell had sailed from Liverpool, I presented myself at the house in Margaret-street. I was freshly shaved, my hair was trimmed, and I had bought a fine black coat in honour of the occasion.

The door was answered by Pratt. I saw doubt flare on his thin, sallow face; perhaps there was a tinge of fear, too. I took advantage of his hesitation and stepped past him into the hall. I held out my hat and gloves and, without thinking, he received them.

"Is Miss Carswall at home? Pray give her my compliments and inquire if she can spare me a moment or two."

He considered me for a moment, his eyes narrowing.

"Do not delay," I said softly, "or I will reveal to her the lengths you were prepared to go to satisfy Mr Carswall."

He dropped his eyes and showed me into the parlour where Mr Carswall had questioned me, and drunk his wine, all those months ago. Though the furnishings were unchanged, the atmosphere had altered entirely. The room was lighter and airier. The masculine paraphernalia of cigars, glasses and newspapers had been swept away and the furniture was uncluttered and freshly polished. I had not waited more than a couple of minutes when the door opened. I turned, expecting Pratt, and saw Flora Carswall.

Careless of convention, she was alone. She closed the door behind her and advanced towards me with her hand outstretched. "Mr Shield, I am rejoiced to see you. I find you well, I trust?"

We shook hands. She sat on a sofa, and patted the seat beside her. "Pray sit here, where I can see you." She was dressed soberly in grey, as befitted her situation, but there was nothing sober about her face and she had an assurance about her that was new. "Charlie is at school, of course – he will be mortified to miss you."

She did not mention Sophie.

I asked after her father, and learned that his condition was unchanged. Miss Carswall went on to volunteer the information that both Sir George's lawyers and Mr Carswall's were sanguine that the marriage would be able to proceed on the terms previously agreed.

"As for Papa," she went on with a gurgle of laughter, "I have such a delightful scheme for his welfare. When I am married, of course, I shall have to devote myself to my husband. But I have arranged for Sophie to stay with him, and play the daughter's part when I am not there." She smiled at me, and her lashes fluttered most becomingly. "Is that not a delightful plan? Poor Sophie will have a home and dear Charlie, too: and as for Papa, he always doted on Sophie." She glanced sideways at me. "After his own fashion."

I could not conceive of a scheme more calculated to bring distress to the two principal parties concerned. I said, "And Mr Carswall? Does the plan please him?"

"I do not mean to be unfeeling, Mr Shield, but I have no idea. He simply lies there, up in his chamber, without moving. Three times a day, they raise him up and give him broth or something of that nature. He can still swallow, you know. Whether he knows what – or even that - he is swallowing is another matter. It is very sad, of course, particularly when one remembers the man he was, so vigorous, so determined!" She smiled. "So amiable, too! One must make the best of it, however, must one not? But to turn to happier subjects, I am so glad that little misunderstanding of my father's concerning the mourning ring has been dealt with. He was sometimes inclined to be hasty, particularly when agitated. I know Papa felt Mrs Johnson's death keenly – as did we all, of course – and no doubt it affected his judgement."

"I saw the account of Mrs Johnson's inquest in the Morning Post," I said. "A sad accident."

"Indeed." Miss Carswall's face was suitably grave. "The family was so worried about Lieutenant Johnson – he doted on her, you know – and he was always inclined to melancholy. But Sir George made interest with the Admiralty, and soon the poor man will have a ship of his own. Quite a little one, I understand, but at least it is something, and it will take his mind off his sorrows, will it not?"

We sat in demure silence for a moment. The Ruispidges were admirably thorough. They had taken steps to ensure that Lieutenant Johnson would be accommodating about the matter of his wife's death and the verdict of the Coroner's inquest. I was not altogether surprised by Miss Carswall's next remark.

"I was saying to Sir George only the other day," she said, "that a young man of your education and character is too valuable to lose sight of. You must be sure to leave me your direction before you go." Here she edged a little closer to me on the sofa. "Sir George may be able to assist you in the world."

"Miss Carswall, may I lay a suggestion before you?"

She smiled broadly. "By all means, Mr Shield."

"It concerns Mrs Frant."

She drew herself up. "I do not think I understand. What have you to do with Mrs Frant?"

"The suggestion does not concern me, Miss Carswall. It concerns you. You will remember that in the autumn of last year I witnessed a certain codicil."

She stared at me with an expression very like her father's. "Of course I remember it."

"It occurred to me that it would be remarkably becoming if you were to resign your interest in Mr Wavenhoe's legacy in favour of Mrs Frant, who I understand was the original legatee."

"Becoming, sir, perhaps. But hardly wise."

"Why not? You are a lady of great wealth now, in all but name. Soon you will be married and you will be even wealthier. And such a gesture could not but win the world's approval. It would be generous indeed."

She snorted. "I can think of another word for it." She put her head on one side. "Why? Why do you suggest this?"

"Because I was not altogether happy with the circumstances in which that codicil was signed."

"Then you should have said so at the time."

"My situation did not make that easy. The fault was mine, I own. Still, it is not too late for me to rectify that. I know Sir George is an honourable man. Perhaps I should lay the matter before him and ask his advice."

"I am surprised at you, Mr Shield." She stood up, and I followed suit. In her anger, she had an unexpected dignity. "I must ask you to leave."

"You will not entertain the notion?"

"Pray ring the bell. A servant will show you out."

"Miss Carswall, I beg you to consider. The Gloucester property would mean nothing to you. It would be everything to Mrs Frant and Charlie."

"Very touching, I am sure." She wrinkled her little nose. "Still, you don't fool me, Mr Shield. I am sure there's advantage in this for you, as well."

"No. There is nothing whatsoever."

"You want her," she said, flushing. "Do not deny it."

"Why should she ever look at me?" I said.

"I knew it!" she cried. "You do. I knew it from the first."

"Miss Carswall, I believe it would be cruel and unfeeling to leave Mrs Frant and your father together, to leave her as nothing better than a hired nurse for him. You know that she hates him."

"Then she should fight to suppress such an unworthy notion. She is a Christian, is she not? So her duty is to nurse the sick. Besides, my father is her cousin. And you may not know that, had my father not fallen ill, the connection would have been even closer."

I ignored this flight of moral logic. "If you will not agree, Miss Carswall, you compel me to use another argument."

Her lips lifted, exposing white, sharp teeth. "Will you force me to ring the bell myself, sir?"

I interposed myself between her and the bell rope. "First hear what I have to say. I must tell you that a letter has come into my possession. I do not think that either you or Sir George would be happy to see it made public."

"Blackmail, is it? I had not thought you would stoop so low."

"You leave me no choice."

"You shall not impose on me, sir. There is no letter."

"You wrote it to Mrs Frant," I said. "You were living in Bath at the time, and she was in Russell-square. The date on the letter is the 9th of October, 1812. You were not long returned from a tour of Ireland with Mr Carswall. You referred in it to an incident that took place in Waterford."

"What are you talking about?" She spoke mechanically, in the form of a question but not in the tone of one. She went first to the door, as if to confirm that the latch had engaged, and then to stand by the window. After a moment she turned back to me. "How did you get it?" she asked in a low voice.

I ignored her questions. I said, "I do not wish to reveal the contents to anyone. I wish to give you the letter so you may destroy it."

"Then give it to me now."

"I shall give it to you when you have transferred Mr Wavenhoe's bequest to Mrs Frant. Consider: on the one hand, certain disgrace and the possibility of clinging to a little property you neither need nor deserve; and on the other, perfect peace of mind, the knowledge you have done right, the gratitude of your cousins, and the approbation of the world."

She stamped her foot. "No! You are infuriating! Do not preach to me, sir!"

I waited.

She went on, "How do I know you are telling the truth? How do I know you really have such a letter? Will you show it me?"

"No. I do not have it with me. If you wish, I will send you a copy, word for word, so you may be sure that I am speaking the truth."

She swallowed. "I – I do not think that will be necessary, upon reflection. I – I shall consider the matter, Mr Shield, and I shall write to you with my decision."

I took out my memorandum-book, scribbled Mr Rowsell's address and tore out the page. But for a moment I did not give it to her. "I have two minor conditions, which I should mention at this juncture, though I do not think either of them will be of any difficulty to you."

"It is not your place to lay down conditions," she said.

"First," I said, "I wish the deed of gift, or whatever legal instrument is necessary to transfer the property, to be drawn up by a lawyer of my choosing: he is a gentleman named Humphrey Rowsell, of Lincoln's Inn; you will find he is perfectly respectable. This is his address, and you may write to me there. In the second place, I do not wish Mrs Frant to know that I had any hand in this matter. I wish her to believe that your generous nature is the sole reason for the gift."

Flora Carswall approached me and came to a halt where our bodies were no more than a few inches apart. Her bosom rose and fell. She looked up at me, and we were so close that I felt her breath on my cheek. "I do not understand you, Mr Shield. Truly, I do not understand you at all."

"No, I do not suppose you do."

"But if you were to try to understand me – and I were to try – and if-"

Her voice seemed to wind its way into my mind like a silken snake. With an effort of will, I tore myself away from her and pulled the bell rope.

"I will look forward to hearing from you by the end of tomorrow."

"And if not?"

I smiled at her. There was a knock, and Pratt entered. I bowed over her hand and took my leave. At the door, however, I stopped.

"I had almost forgot." I took a paper sealed with a wafer from my pocketbook and laid it on a side table. "It is for you."

Her face softened. "What is it?"

"The repayment of a loan. You were so kind as to lend me five pounds when I left Monkshill."

A moment later, as I was descending the steps from the street-door to the pavement, I met Captain Jack Ruispidge, as glossy as a rich man's hunter.

"What are you doing here?" he asked abruptly, for he no longer needed to play the smooth, condescending gentleman with me.

"Is that any business of yours, sir?"

"Don't be impertinent." He stared up at me, for I was still on the steps. "Mrs Frant is not without friends, you know. If you pester her again, I shall know how to deal with you."

84

On May 23rd, I received a letter, brief to the point of rudeness, addressed to me care of Mr Rowsell and brought to me by Atkins. Mrs Frant begged to inform Mr Shield that, if the weather was fine, she usually walked in the Green Park between the hours of two o'clock and three o'clock in the afternoon. It was an invitation in the form of a statement.

I at once decided I would not meet her. If a man scratches an itching scab, the wound will reopen and start to bleed again.

Instead I snarled at Mrs Jem's children when they stumbled over their lessons. I sent away a man who would have paid me well to write a begging letter to his uncle because I thought him grasping and odious. I could not concentrate for more than a moment or two at a time on any one thing or any one person. My mind would think of nothing except the implications of that curt little note.

Shortly after midday, I went up to my room. An hour later, I left the house: I was scrubbed, scraped and polished, and looked as much the beau as my limited resources would allow. I reached the Green Park shortly before two o'clock. The Season had begun, so its walks were sprinkled with the fashionable and the not so fashionable.

I saw Mrs Frant almost at once. She was pacing slowly along the line of the reservoir at the park's northern corner, opposite Devonshire House, in the direction of the fountain at the end. She was not attended by a maid. I approached her, watching her while for a moment she was unaware she was observed. Her eyes were on the water, which flashed gold and silver in the sunlight. She was still obliged to wear mourning for Mr Frant but she had pushed aside her veil and her weeds were not at all out of place in that fashionable throng. I remember with exactitude how she looked, and how she dressed, because it showed me in an instant the chasm that lay between us, that would always lie between us.

I went up to her and bowed. She gave me her hand but did not smile. My scab was picked: my wound began to bleed once more. She suggested we walk away from the roar and rattle of Piccadilly and the crowds who promenaded at this end of the park. We paced slowly southwards. She did not take my arm. When we had gone a little way, and there was no possibility of our being overheard, she stopped and looked directly at me for the first time.

"You have not been frank with me, sir. You have worked behind my back."

I said nothing. I stared at the white skin of her arm between glove and cuff, noting the smudge of London black.

"My cousin Flora has restored my uncle Wavenhoe's legacy to me," she went on.

"I am rejoiced to hear it."

"She said she would not have done it, had it not been for you." Sophie glared up at me. "What did you do for her, pray? Flora does nothing for nothing."

"I told her I was unhappy with the circumstances in which your uncle signed the codicil. If you remember I witnessed his signature. Miss Carswall's generous nature did the rest."

She moved away and I followed her across the grass. Suddenly she stopped and turned back to me. "I am not a child to be kept in the dark," she said. "There is more to it than that. A lawyer from Lincoln's Inn called on me with the necessary documents. As he was leaving, I asked him point-blank if he knew you. He tried to avoid the question, but I pressed him, and in the end he said he did."

"I wished Mr Rowsell to deal with the transaction because I trust him implicitly. So I recommended him to Miss Carswall."

"That suggests you do not trust my cousin."

"I did not say that, ma'am. In affairs of the law, the advice of a disinterested party is always worth having."

"Oh, stuff!" She glared at me. "And how was it that you were in a position to dictate to my cousin?"

"I did not dictate to her. I merely tried to explain the desirability of following a particular course of action."

"Then why did you tell her that you did not wish it known that you had – had advised her, if that is what you call it? Come, sir, I have a right to know why you took it upon yourself to interfere in my affairs."

I turned over in my mind all the answers I might make. In the end, only the truth would do: "I did not wish you to be obliged to feel gratitude."

Her face blazed. "You are insufferable, sir."

"What would you have had me do?" I realised I had raised my voice. I took a breath and continued more quietly, "I beg your pardon. But I did not like to think of you trapped with that terrible old man."

"I am sure your concern does you credit. But you need not have worried. I will not pretend that the prospect of living with him was agreeable to me. But I would not have had to endure it long." She raised her chin. "Captain Ruispidge has done me the honour of asking me to marry him."

I turned away. I could not bear to look on her bright face any longer.

"He asked me before my cousin Flora told me of her design to transfer the Gloucester property to me. His motives were of the purest."

I glanced over my shoulder. "I do not doubt it. I hope you will be very happy. He is a worthy man, I know, and I am sure it is a most prudent course of action."

Sophie came a step nearer, forcing me to look again at her face. "I have been prudent all my life. I married Henry Frant because it was prudent. I lived in my cousin Carswall's house because it was prudent. I am sick of being prudent. It does not agree with me."

"You have not always been prudent."

We looked at each other for a moment. In my mind I saw that little room in Gloucester, I saw her dear self wantonly displayed for my delight. Her face softened momentarily. She began to turn away but stopped and glanced up at me through her lashes. A coquette might have made the same movement, but she was not a coquette. I think she was afflicted by a sudden shyness.

"I was not prudent when Captain Ruispidge asked me to be his wife," she said. "I told him I was deeply sensible of the compliment he paid me, and would always consider him my friend, but that I did not love him. He said that did not matter, and he renewed his suit. I told him I wished to have time to turn his offer over in my mind before deciding."

"So you might be prudent after all?"

"I had to think of Charlie." She hesitated. "I still do. Then Flora told me that she was going to make over the property to me and – and I wrote to Captain Ruispidge with my decision. Flora heard I was not to marry him, and that was when she told me it had been at your suggestion that she had made over the legacy to me. And you had asked her to conceal your part in the matter. I ask you again: why did you do that?"

"My answer is the same: I did not wish to put you under an obligation."

"I am under a much greater obligation to my cousin Flora."

"I do not doubt it."

"She has made over what amounts to an income of nearly two hundred and fifty pounds a year." Sophie looked up at me. "So – tell me then: why should I not be grateful to you, as well as to her?"

"I had no intention of deceiving you. I wished to help you secure an independence, nothing more. If you had felt beholden to me, if you had known that I was concerned in any way – I – I feared it might cloud your judgement."

"With regard to what?"

I did not answer. As if by common consent, we walked on, towards St James's Park, and it seemed to me that she walked a little closer to me than she had before. I could not see her face because of her bonnet, only the plumes nodding and swaying above her head. She murmured something. I was obliged to ask her to repeat it.

She stopped again and looked up at me. "I said thank you. You showed true delicacy. I would have expected no less of you. Yet there are occasions when delicacy outlives its purpose. It is a virtue, undoubtedly, but it is not always appropriate to exercise it."

I said, "In that respect, it sounds strangely like prudence."

We stood for a moment watching three magpies squabbling over a piece of bread and emitting their raucous, grating cry, like beans rattling in a gourd.

"How I detest magpies," Sophie said.

"Yes – scavengers, thieves and bullies."

"But do you know the rhyme that country people have about magpies? One for sorrow, two for mirth-"

"Three for a girl and four-"

"Three for a girl?" she interrupted. "That was not what they said when I was a child. Besides four must be boy and it would not rhyme with mirth. No, when I was a child it was always three for a marriage."

The magpies took fright and flew away.

"And four for a birth," she added in a very low voice.

"Sophie?" I said, and held out my hand to her. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," she replied, and laid her hand in mine. "Yes."