Read The Meaning of Night Online
Authors: Michael Cox
perfectly innocent party in the business.’
‘You might say so,’ he replied, smiling. ‘I questioned him myself, of course, on
behalf of the University authorities, and could only conclude, with the police, that he had
played no part in the conspiracy.’
He smiled again, and I took my cue.
‘May I ask, then, if you entertained any personal doubts on the matter?’
‘Well now, Mr Glapthorn, it would not be right, not right at all, you know, to
bring my personal feelings into this. As I say, what I have told you is a matter of public
record. Beyond that – well, I am sure you understand. It does not signify in the least, of
course, that I am by nature of a rather doubting turn of mind. And besides, the affair did
not lay too deep a stain on Mr Pettingale’s character. After going down from here, I
believe he was called to the Bar by Gray’s-Inn.’
‘And Mr Pettingale’s friend, Mr Phoebus Daunt?’
‘There is no reason at all to believe that he was implicated in the crime in any
way. He was certainly not asked to account for himself by the police, or indeed by the
University. The only connexion I could establish, in the course of questioning Mr
Pettingale, was that he had accompanied his friend to Newmarket on several occasions.’
I thought for a moment.
‘For the conspiracy to have been brought off successfully, the criminals would
have needed to have obtained a number of the firm’s cheques, as well as a specimen of
the necessary signature. The latter could perhaps have been got from the receipt sent to
Verdant for payment of Mr Pettingale’s original loan. As for the blank cheques, was
there, perhaps, an earlier break-in?’
‘You are right,’ said Dr Maunder. ‘There had been a break-in, some weeks before
Mr Pettingale sought legal help on the matter of the outstanding debt, and, again,
suspicion fell on Verdant. But the curious thing is that, after a very thorough search by
the firm’s senior clerk, no cheques were found to be missing. How the blank cheques
were obtained, therefore, remains a mystery. Perhaps they, too, had been forged, though I
think that is rather unlikely. And now, Mr Glapthorn, if you will excuse me, I have an
appointment with the Master.’
‘I am most grateful to you for your frankness’ I said. ‘But will you allow me one
final question? You have not mentioned the name of the solicitor in the case.’
‘Ah, yes. I regret I cannot now remember, if indeed I ever knew.’
I thanked him again, and he showed me to the door.
Leaving Trinity College, I took an omnibus from the Market-square back to the
station, and had only a few minutes to wait before the next train to London. As we rattled
southwards, I felt a curious elation of spirits, as though a door – be it ever so small – had
opened an inch or so and let in a little gleam of precious light on the darkness through
which I had been wandering.
Of Mr Lewis Pettingale’s guilt in the clever conspiracy described to me by Dr
Maunder, I had not the least doubt; but it was clear he had not worked alone. This
Leonard Verdant, now: he had been a co-conspirator for sure, indicated, I thought, by his
possession of a most unlikely name, concealing – who? I had my suspicions, but they
could not yet be tested. And then there was Mr Phoebus Daunt. Ah, Phoebus, the radiant
one, unsullied and incorrupt! There he stood, as ever, whistling innocently in the
shadows. Was he as guilty as his friend Pettingale and the elusive Mr Verdant? If so,
what other iniquities did he have to his credit? At last, I began to sense that I was gaining
ground on my enemy; that I had been given something that might, perhaps, give me the
means I needed to destroy him.
I was returning to London with no more knowledge of why Mr Carteret had
written his letter to Mr Tredgold than when I had started out; and the expectations I had
cherished that the secretary might be in possession of information to support my cause
had also been shattered by his death. The only certainty I had brought back was that what
Mr Carteret knew concerning the Tansor succession had led, directly or indirectly, to this
catastrophe. I had no choice now but to lay the matter before my employer, in the hope
that he could suggest a way to inform ourselves more particularly on the nature of Mr
Carteret’s discovery.
As for me, what a change had been wrought in the matter of a few days! I had left
London convinced I was falling in love with Bella. I returned the helpless slave of
another, in whose presence I constantly burned to be, and for love of whom I must turn
my back on the certainty of happiness.
November 1853
Nothing wraps a man in such a mist of errors, as his own curiosity in searching
things beyond him.
[Owen Felltham, Resolves (1623), xxvii, ‘Of Curiosity in Knowledge’]
(
29:
Suspicio?
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On my return to London I took my supper at Quinn’s – oysters, a lobster, some
dried sprats on the side, and a bottle of the peerless Clos Vougeot. It was still early, and
the Haymarket had not yet put on its midnight face. Through the window I contemplated
the usual metropolitan bustle, the familiar panorama of unremarkable comings and goings
of the highest and the lowest, and of all stations in between, which you may see out of
any window in London at eight o’clock on a Thursday evening. But in a few hours’ time,
after the crowds had poured out of the Theatre, taken their supper at Dubourg’s or the
Café de l’Europe, and made their laughing way home to warmth and comfort, this broad
thoroughfare of shops, restaurants, and cigar-divans, nobly flanked on one side by its
theatre, and on the other by its colonnaded opera-house, would take on a very different
aspect, transformed into a heaving, swollen river of the damned and the walking dead.
What is your pleasure, sir? You may find it here, or hereabouts, with little trouble, at any
hour of the night after St Martin’s Church has tolled the final stroke of twelve. Liquor in
which to drown; tobacco and song; boys or girls, or both – the choice is yours. Ah! How
often have I thrown myself into that continually replenished stream!
Evenwood: had I dreamed thee? Here, lying at my ease once more on the scaly
back of Great Leviathan, feeling the monster’s deep, slow breath beneath me, its
rumbling pulsing heart beating in time with my own, the things I had so recently seen and
heard and touched now seemed as real in imagination, and as unreal in fact, as the palace
of Schahriar.? And had I truly breathed the same air as Miss Emily Carteret, when I had
stood so close to her that I could see the rise and fall of her breast, so close that I only had
to stretch out my fingers to stroke that pale flesh?
I loved her. That was the plain and simple truth. It had come upon me suddenly on
swift wings, pitiless as death: inescapable, and undeniable. I felt no joy at my new
condition, for how can the conquered slave be joyful? I loved her, without hope that she
would ever return my love. I loved her, and it was bitter to me that I must break my
dearest Bella’s heart. For there is no mistress like Love. And what cares she for those
who suffer when their dearest one betrays them for love of another? Love only smiles a
conqueror’s smile, to see her kingdom advanced.
A second bottle of the Clos Vougeot was perhaps a mistake, and soon after nine
o’clock I walked out into the street, a little unsteadily, with a light head and a heavy
heart. It had begun to rain and, assailed by melancholy thoughts, and feeling a great need
for company, I headed off to Leadenhall Street, in the hope of finding Le Grice taking his
usual Saturday supper in the Ship and Turtle. He had been there, as I’d expected, but I
had missed him by a matter of minutes, and no one could tell me where he had gone.
Cursing, I found myself back in the street again. Normally, in such a mood of restless
melancholy, I would have taken myself northwards, to Blithe Lodge; but I was too much
of a coward to face Bella just yet. I would need a little time, to regain some composure,
and to learn dissimulation.
Down to Trafalgar Square through the dirt and murk I wandered, and then
eastwards along the Strand – aimlessly, as I thought; but before long I had passed St
Stephen, Walbrook, and had begun to walk at a more purposeful pace.
Welcome, welcome! I had been gone too long, the opium-master said.
And so, bowing low, he led me through the kitchen, dark and vaporous, to a
truckle-bed set against a greasy, dripping wall in the far room, where, curling myself up, I
laid my head on a filthy bolster whilst the master, with many soothing words, plied me
speedily with my means of transportation.
In Bluegate-fields I had a dream. And in my dream I lay on a cold mountain, with
only the stars above me; but I could not move, for I was held down fast with heavy
chains, about my legs and feet, around my chest and arms, and in a great loop around my
neck. And I cried out for ease – from the bitter cold and from the pressing, suffocative
weight of the chains – but no help came, and no voice returned my call, until at last I
seemed to faint away.
A sleep within a sleep. A dream within a dream. I awake – from what? And my
heart leaps, for now I stand in sunshine, warm and vivifying, in a secluded courtyard,
where water plays and birds sing. ‘Is she here?’ I ask. ‘She is,’ comes the reply. And so I
turn and see her, standing by the fountain, and smiling so sweetly that I think my heart
will burst. In black mourning no more, but in a comely robe of dazzling white samite,
with her dark hair flowing free, she holds out her hand to me: ‘Will you come?’
She leads me through an arched door into a deserted candlelit ballroom; faint
echoes of a strange music reach us from some unimaginable distance. She turns to me.
‘Have you met Mr Verdant?’ And then a sudden wind extinguishes all the lights, and I
hear water lapping at my feet.
‘I do apologize,’ I hear her saying from somewhere in the darkness. ‘But I have
forgotten your name.’ She laughs. ‘A liar needs a good memory.’ And then she is gone,
and I am left alone on a drear and lonely shore. I look out to see a heaving black ocean,
with a pale yellow light suffusing the horizon. In the distance, something is bobbing on
the waves. I strain my eyes; and then, with a fearful pang, I see what it is.
A bird, stiff and dead, its wings outstretched, drifting into eternity.
Four o’clock in the morning by the carriage-clock that stands on the mantelpiece.
The room is cold, and has a strangely desolate air about it, though it is full of familiar
things: my mother’s work-table, covered in papers as usual; next to it, the cabinet with its
little drawers, full of the notes I’d made on the documents and journals she left behind;
the curtained-off area at one end containing cameras and other photographic
paraphernalia; the faded Turkey rug; the rows of books, each one a well-remembered old
friend; the charming Chippendale tripod-table on which I keep an edition of Donne’s
sermons and the copy of Les milles et une nuits that Tom Grexby had bought me for my
eighth birthday; the portrait of my mother, which used to hang over the fireplace in the
best parlour at home; and, on the mantelpiece, next to a little rosewood clock I had found
hidden away in my mother’s bedroom, the box that had once held ‘Miss Lamb’s’ two
hundred sovereigns.
I sit by the empty hearth in my coat and boots. I am troubled in spirit, and once
again, as it had done on my last night at Evenwood, the sleep my mind and body crave
flees from me, like some taunting nymph.
What is happening to me? I have no happiness, no contentment, only restiveness
and agitation. I am adrift on an ocean of mystery, like the bird in my dream – powerless,
frozen. What dark creatures inhabit the unseen deeps beneath me? What landfall awaits
me? Or is this my fate, to be forever pushed and pulled, now this way, now that, by the
winds and currents of circumstance, without respite? The goal I had once had constantly
before me – simple and supreme – of proving my claim to be the lawfully begotten son of
Lord Tansor, seemed to have become dismembered and dispersed, like a great imperial
galleon full of treasure dashed to pieces on a rocky shore.
There was a piece of paper lying on the tripod-table beside me, a stub of pencil
with it. Seizing both, I began to compose a hasty memorandum to myself, outlining the
problems confronting me that were now demanding resolution.
I read over what I had written, three, four, five times, in mounting despair. These
disjoined and yet, it seemed, inter-twined and co-essential conundrums swirled and
chattered and roared around my head like Satan’s legions, refusing utterly to coagulate
into a single reasoned conclusion, until I could stand it no more.
I stood up and was in the process of throwing off my great-coat, having resolved
to see what soaking my head in a basin of cold water would do to rid myself of these
pestering devils, when something fell out of the pocket and landed on the hearth-rug.