Carver's Quest (21 page)

‘And yet you will admit that it may be difficult to prove your case against the man you’ve got?’

‘Not in the slightest, sir. We’ll put an end to Stirk, don’t you worry about that. We’ll have the drop creaking under his feet before the month is out. And before he
goes, he’ll tell us who sent him out to put the threateners on poor Mr Creech.’

T
he following day, Adam took lunch in a chophouse he knew off the Strand. He sat alone at one of the tables in the rear of the restaurant. Few
other customers were there. A mournful-looking man dressed in black was at the next table, eating his meal as if doing so was more of a penance than a pleasure. Adam’s mind was no more on his
food than his neighbour’s. The steak with oyster sauce, which in normal times he would have relished, he scarcely tasted. The piece of Stilton he left largely untouched on the plate. The
waiter, clearing the table, scowled as if personally affronted by Adam’s poor appetite. Adam hardly noticed. He was thinking about all that had happened in the last two weeks. At the
beginning of the month, he’d had no more pressing concerns than his growing debt to his tailors. Now there were a dozen unanswered questions and more to plague him. Some were related to the
death of Creech and the mysteries that still surrounded it. Others forced him to think uncomfortably about the whole course of his young life. Adam mostly considered himself a contented man. It was
true that his career at Cambridge had unexpectedly left the rails when Charles Carver had put an end to his life. Adam had been obliged to face up not only to the loss of his father but to the
sudden ruination of all his plans for the future. Gone were any dreams of academic glory. Gone was even the chance of finishing his degree. No money had been left to support him. Yet he had, he
thought, coped admirably. Professor Fields had, of course, come to the rescue with his invitation to accompany him to European Turkey, but it was Adam himself who had made the most of the
opportunities the adventure offered. It was Adam who had responded so wholeheartedly to their travels and had even recorded them in a book, which had earned him a certain, albeit fleeting,
celebrity. Since his return to London, he had cultivated his new interest in photography and had found much fulfilment in his self-imposed task of recording the buildings that were so swiftly
vanishing from the city.

And yet at times – and this was one such occasion – the young man found himself curiously dissatisfied with his lot. For all his inability to make significant progress with his
portrait of King Pellinore, and for all his mounting debts too, his friend Cosmo Jardine at least knew what he was: a painter, for better or worse. But what was he himself, Adam Carver? What was he
to do with the rest of his life? He may have lacked the entrepreneurial and commercial skills of his father, but he had his own talents, he knew. Where, though, did any of them lead? How could he
make the best of them? Should he determine to travel again? To visit more unfamiliar and unexplored locations than European Turkey? Could he make a more concerted effort to earn money from his
abilities as a photographer or writer? Perhaps, he thought, half smiling at the idea despite his present glumness, he should follow the example of Jinkinson. Could he be, he wondered, some sort of
enquiry agent
manqué
? He had certainly enjoyed the drama and the excitement of the last fortnight. He felt flattered that Sunman had asked him to look into the circumstances of
Creech’s demise, just as he was fascinated by the murder itself. And there was the enticing prospect, too, of discovering the real identity of Emily Maitland, who was clearly not all she
seemed.

As always, Adam concluded this examination of his own character by drawing no conclusions beyond the decision that he would continue on his current road and attempt to resolve the present
mystery. What an intriguing mystery it was! There was the matter of Creech and the secrets of which he had spoken. Why had the man been so eager to meet him? Why had he approached Jar-dine under an
alias? Could Creech have been nothing more than a deluded obsessive? Or had he been a genuine scholar who had truly stumbled across something remarkable? No, Creech had been no scholar. Adam
remembered the man’s puzzlement when he had quoted one of the most familiar of all Homer’s phrases to him. And did scholars pay private enquiry agents to follow Members of Parliament in
pursuit of information with which to blackmail them? It seemed unlikely.

The waiter, while clearing the evidence of the earlier course, had left the plate with the cheese on the table. Adam picked up the knife and cut a sliver of Stilton. He ate it absentmindedly,
still mulling over the questions which troubled him. Would Creech have been killed if there had not been something in his story? Or did his talk of secrets in the Macedonian hills have nothing to
do with his death? His apparent activities as a blackmailer offered a more likely motive for murder than enigmatic talk of a mystery hidden in an ancient manuscript. And yet surely it was too much
to believe, as the police seemed to, that his death was the result of a botched burglary? Unless Stirk had been hired by one of Creech’s victims to break into the house and steal some
incriminating evidence the blackmailer possessed, and had killed the man when he confronted him. Pulverbatch seemed to believe in some such sequence of events, but Adam found it difficult to agree
with the inspector’s version of what had happened. Who in their right minds would employ a simpleton like Stirk to undertake such a task?

Then there was the distracting puzzle of Emily Maitland. She was a beautiful woman. Adam was disinclined to admit, even to himself, how much time he had spent in picturing her in the days since
she had so unexpectedly visited his rooms. Her trim figure flitted regularly through his imagination. Her Titian hair and dancing green eyes were rarely far from his thoughts. He was therefore
delighted that she had asked to see him once more. But behind the pleasure he gained from recalling her visit, there were nagging questions about the young woman. What had been the true reason for
her visit to Doughty Street? And was Mrs Gaffery correct in saying that Emily had been there not once but twice? Perhaps he would have answers when he met her again, in Cremorne Gardens.

Adam pushed aside the cheese plate. He rested his head in his hands. So many riddles already and now there was another one. What had happened to Jinkinson? Was the enquiry agent’s
disappearance significant? Men and women vanished into the vast, anonymous sprawl of London every day of the year. Many did so of their own volition. Jinkinson himself had done so in the past.
Perhaps the plump and dilapidated dandy was merely in flight from some pressing creditor or overly importunate client. The boy Simpkins had said that his employer had a history of temporarily
vanishing when trouble came knocking on the door of 12 Poulter’s Court. Even now, as Adam stared at the crumbling Stilton in front of him, Jinkinson might be drinking cheerfully in some
out-of-the-way haunt and regaling his fellow topers with tall tales.

The mournful man on the neighbouring table had reached the end of his penitential meal. His plate was empty. He paid the waiter and left. On his table Adam saw a copy of the morning newspaper
which had been forgotten. He thought briefly of calling after the man but decided against it. He stretched his arm across to the table and picked up the newspaper. He began to turn the pages, his
eyes flickering idly from column to column. The news today, he thought, was little different from the news of a week ago, the last time he had bothered to look at a newspaper. Prussian and French
politicians were still squabbling over who should sit on the Spanish throne. As if it was of any real concern to either of them. It would presumably not be long before one side or the other found
the pretext for war. The pages were also full of tributes to Dickens, who had recently died, worn out by his creative exertions, at the age of fifty-eight. Adam, who had never forgotten the sheer
joy of reading Pickwick and
David Copperfield
when he was no more than a boy, had been saddened when Jardine had told him of the author’s death a few days earlier. But now he could
not concentrate on all the columns of praise for the great humorist’s genius. Instead, his eye was drawn to a few short paragraphs at the bottom of a page that were headed: ‘Outrage in
Herne Hill’.

‘We are given to understand,’ the article began, ‘that a man well known to Scotland Yard as a most audacious villain has lately been apprehended in reference to the brutal
murder which was committed in Herne Hill earlier this month.’ Adam read the rest of the piece and threw the newspaper to one side in exasperation. What did these scribblers know of what they
wrote? How wonderfully they combined ignorance with arrogance in their presumption that they knew more than they truly did. In his indignation, he forgot altogether that, on his return from
European Turkey, he had himself earned sums of money as a newspaper scribbler and that he continued to place articles in the press from time to time. One not so long ago in the very newspaper he
had just cast aside. He picked it up again and looked at the article for a second time: ‘That renowned and perspicacious agent of the law Inspector James Pulverbatch…’ He could
not continue. Perhaps Pulverbatch did merit the adjective ‘perspicacious’ but what did he know of this case? How could he believe that the half-witted Stirk could be the perpetrator of
the crime at Herne Hill?

* * * * *

‘’Ere, mister.’

Adam looked down at the ragamuffin standing by the entrance to the Marco Polo. The boy was dressed in jacket and trousers of threadbare black cloth and wore a look of scowling concentration on
his face. Adam was surprised that Gilzean, the Crimean veteran who was the club’s doorman, hadn’t moved the child on, but there was no sign of the old soldier.

‘The other gent told me to give you this.’

‘What other gent?’

‘And you’d give me another sixpence.’

‘Who said this?’

‘On top of the sixpence he give me.’

‘Who was the gentleman who told you this?’

‘He says to say Quint and you’d know him.’ The boy was holding a grubby scrap of paper. Adam took it from him and looked at it. Quint was not the best penman in London but he
was able to scrawl enough words to convey his meaning. ‘Charing X Otel. 8 oclock. See yew ther. Owtside.’

‘You was to give me a sixpence, he says.’

‘Did the gentleman named Quint say no more?’

‘Just to give me a sixpence.’ The boy was single-minded in his pursuit of his earnings, Adam thought, as he reached in his pocket.

‘Here,’ he said, holding out a shilling. ‘Take this. I haven’t a sixpence about me.’

‘Thanks, mister.’ The boy looked at the more valuable coin. He seized it and then turned and ran off as quickly as he could, probably terrified that Adam might change his mind and
demand the money back.

W
as you in search
of poses plastiques,
gentlemen? Very voluptuous ladies, sirs, but entirely artistic. Only poses from the Greek and
Roman. This way, if you please, gentlemen.’ The speaker was short and fat, flesh pouring into the inadequate container of a corduroy suit and spilling over its confines. He had red eyes, a
bulbous nose and a mouth from which vile exhalations of poorly digested meat, gin and tobacco issued forth to assail passers-by as relentlessly as his patter. He gestured leeringly towards a
darkened doorway behind him. ‘Beauties fresh from the bagnios of Paris, sir. All as nature intended them to be.’

Quint took Adam’s arm. The young man looked too much like what he was, an innocently basking dolphin amid a sea of sharks. His manservant manoeuvred him past the foul-breathed tout.

Evening was falling and the two men were making their way through a warren of narrow streets and ill-lit alleyways off the Strand. Unaccustomed to this secret London behind the façade of
the better-regulated streets and squares he usually frequented, Adam was lost. They had entered the maze soon after he had descended from a cab outside the new Charing Cross Hotel and found Quint
waiting for him there. Quint had said little in greeting but beckoned him to follow. Almost immediately, Adam had lost track of where he was, rapidly resigning himself simply to continuing on the
twisting and turning route on which his manservant led him. Other than the belief, founded more on faith than evidence, that the Strand was somewhere to his right and Covent Garden somewhere to his
left, he had no idea where he was. Slightly to his surprise, he found the sensation of being so lost in London exciting rather than disconcerting.

They may have been striking out beyond Adam’s beaten path but, for others, this was clearly home territory. The streets were crowded. Men, women and children, nearly all poorly dressed,
hastened along them. Shops were still open. Suits of clothes, like emaciated corpses on a gallows, hung from a rail above one of them. Further along the narrow street, a butcher had removed the
burners from his gas lamps in search of brighter illumination for his premises and great tongues of flame shot into the air. Glistening pigs’ heads revolved in the light he had created, which
also shone on the sides of beef and mutton lying on his stall, revealing every vein and lump of fat in them. Next door to the butcher’s was a bookmaker’s whose shopfront was lit with
almost equal brilliance. A blind beggar stood outside it, as if bathing his body in the light he could not see. Somewhere an unseen street organ was playing and its jingling music could just be
heard above the constant roar of the crowds.

People were intent on their own business and swarmed purposefully through the streets. On several occasions, Adam was obliged to move swiftly to avoid collisions. The barker for the
poses
plastiques
was not alone. Others of his ilk begged and cajoled the crowds to enter the halls of entertainment that employed them. On one particularly squalid lane, a series of luridly coloured
posters invited passers-by to enter a cheap theatre and enjoy performances of ‘Red-Handed Ralph, the Fiend of Shoreditch’. On its corner, where it crossed another alley, a family of
street acrobats was performing its routine. Paterfamilias, dressed in an outfit reminiscent of a pantomime harlequin, held a long wooden pole upright, its base lodged firmly in his waistband.
Perched precariously near its top, his two small children, a girl and a boy, adopted a series of poses and attitudes. All three wore expressions of extreme ennui on their faces. Few passers-by had
stopped to watch and those that had seemed as bored as the performers. Amidst the swirling crowds, Adam,