Charles Palliser (150 page)

“I thought it might be on business, you see, or I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Private business,” his employer returns, less affably. “And nothing important.”

“Indeed? And yet it’s such a nasty foggy night to be out in.”

“You’re blessed inquisitive all of a sudden!” the old gentleman cries. Suddenly he changes his tone: “Pray be seated. There’s something I have to tell you. Old friend.” He stops and then after a pause goes on: “How long have you worked for me?”

“Man and boy, Mr Clothier, upwards of thirty years.”

“And have you ever been in doubt about my good intentions towards you?”

Mr Vulliamy eyes him closely and says: “Not for the last few years, no. No doubt at all, sir.”

“Very good,” the old gentleman says, looking at his clerk rather uncertainly. “Now you remember the Pimlico and Westminster Land Company?”

Mr Vulliamy nods.

“Of which I made you nominal owner. (See how much I’ve always trusted you!) Well, the truth is … The fact of the matter … The company’s unfortunate speculation …

That is to say …”

“You mean, Mr Clothier, that I may be taken up on a warrant for debt to answer for your losses on the money-market?”

“Why do you have to make it sound so bad?” the old gentleman exclaims indignantly.

“The truth is, if it comes to the very worst, the very worst, mark you, why, you may be in the fleet for a month or two.”

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“And if I refuse to take the penalties on your behalf ?”

“Refuse?” the old gentleman cries, his affability forgotten. “Why, then I have those bonds of yours and can send you there on my own account for much longer!” Then he recollects himself and says sweetly: “But I know you won’t refuse. For if you agree to do this for me, then I will look after your family most generously while you are detained.”

“I am sure I can rely on you for that,” his managing-clerk replies so meaningfully that the old gentleman is quite taken aback.

At that moment there is a hammering at the street-door.

A minute later the boy, pale-faced, opens the door into the inner closet without knocking and says: “Sheriff’s officers, Mr Clothier, sir.”

Leaving his employer sitting in surprise, Mr Vulliamy briskly gets up and walks into the outer office where he says: “Good evening, gentlemen. I believe it is I whom you are seeking.”

“Why, that’s wery pleasant of you, sir.” the sheriff says. “I wish all our customers was eq’ally obleeging.”

While Mr Clothier stands at the door to his inner sanctum, Mr Vulliamy places himself in the custody of the officers and is led away so very calmly and looking at his benefactor so very strangely as he goes, that he leaves the old gentleman quite pale with astonishment and unease.

Shortly before ten o’clock Henry rose and said: “We should go now or we’ll be late.”

He went to one of the windows and pulled back the shutters: “I can’t see a blessed thing,” he announced. “The fog has closed down.”

“Can we not put it off until tomorrow?” asked Mr Pamplin.

“By no means,” Henry replied firmly.

“But the hackney-coach will take hours, if we can even succeed in engaging a driver who will venture out.”

“Precisely,” Henry said. “So it will be much quicker and more certain to go on foot.”

“What!” Mr Pamplin cried. “You’re out of your senses. I would not dream of walking so far on such a night.”

“Nevertheless, that is what must be. I know the way and could find the street if I were blind-folded.”

“Oh very well,” said the clergyman ungraciously, and he poured himself another glass from the decanter, draining it as he got to his feet.

Henry took up and lighted a lanthorn. Then he passed a great-coat to me and when we were all wrapped up against the weather we set off.

The bitter choking air that we encountered as we went from the bottom of the staircase into the courtyard made me gasp. It tasted so powerfully of smoking coal fires that it was like being in a room in which the smoke is blowing back down the chimney.

We could see only a few paces ahead and as we left the inn the noise of what little traffic there was seemed muffled. Because of the density of the fog the lanthorn cast only a dim light.

“I’ll go ahead,” Henry said as we reached the street. “We shall march like CAUGHT IN THE WEB

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Roman legionaries,
hæret pede pes
, each one’s foot sticking to the other’s. You keep behind me, John, for as Ovid says
‘medio tutissimus ibis’
— it is safest in the middle.”

“I say, it’s too beastly cold for Latin, Bellringer.”

“And as for you, Charles, I think you’d be happiest keeping up the rear.”

Mr Pamplin snorted and we set off. Though I quickly lost all sense of direction, Henry clearly knew exactly where we were and kept striding purposefully ahead.

We had been walking for some time through almost deserted streets when, as we were descending a long narrow lane I fancied I heard another party ahead of us.

I asked Henry to stop and we paused to listen.

“Deuce take it, Bellringer,” Mr Pamplin said, “we could be murdered. It was a damnably foolish idea to come on foot.”

“Hold your tongue,” his friend ordered.

We strained our ears but heard nothing.

“It’s your fancy, John,” Henry said, and we walked on.

However, just before we reached the mouth of the lane several figures suddenly emerged from the fog behind us and in an instant a strong hand was placed across my mouth and my arms were gripped so that it was painful for me to move. In the darkness and fog I could make out little of what was happening, but I heard sounds indicating that Henry was fighting back and saw the lanthorn fall as someone grappled with him.

Then I thought I saw him knocked to the ground. Mr Pamplin had disappeared into the fog at the moment that Henry and I were attacked. I tried to struggle but was punched hard in the ribs and rendered breathless.

A voice from nearby that I thought I had heard before said: “Search him. Quickly.”

A hand rifled my pockets and found nothing. In the midst of all this, I congratulated myself for my forethought in concealing the precious document around my neck.

The man holding me cried in a voice that was also horribly familiar: “I can’t find nothing!”

Then I was bodily dragged down the lane to the entrance towards which we had been making our way so that it occurred to me even at that moment that we had walked into an elaborate ambuscade. Here I was suddenly lifted up and caught a glimpse of a coach-door before I was thrown onto the straw of the floor. I found myself sprawling at the feet of a man who was already in the coach who spoke from the darkness:

“Excellent work!”

My assailant knelt upon my back still holding a hand over my mouth while the third man boarded the coach, slamming the door and calling out to the driver as the vehicle moved off. I was in despair for by now I had recognised both my assailants and the man who had been waiting in the coach : they were Dr Alabaster and his assistants, Hinxman and Rookyard.

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As I lay on the floor of the rocking coach with Hinxman’s weight still upon me, I wept with vexation, not for the danger to myself so much as the fact that after all that I had endured in order to obtain the will it was going to be taken from me, and whatever happened I would lose my chance of regaining my rights and obtaining justice against those who had wronged my mother. But how had it happened that I found myself once again in the power of my enemies? How had they known where to find me?

As for my fate, I expected to be taken back to the madhouse and there to be imprisoned for the remainder of my life — however long or short that might be, for I could not expect another opportunity to escape. There was no point in struggling or trying to scream. And so, as the coach moved at barely walking-pace through the dense fog, I gave way to tears of rage and misery.

However, it seemed that my surmise about our destination was wrong for after only some ten or twenty minutes, the vehicle came almost to a halt in order to make a sharp turn and then it very slowly descended a steep slope. I knew that must mean we were approaching the river and indeed I could smell its salt-stale fragrance mingled with the fog. Now the coach came to a complete stop. I was carried out, still gripped in such a way that I could not struggle or cry out, taken through a door and then flung onto the ground. For a few moments I was dazzled by the bright gas-lights above me.

Then I looked up and found myself gazing into the face of a little old man who was smiling down at me with the most curiously intense expression. I had seen him before.

But where? And when was it? He was pale and skinny and, with his legs encased in tight pantaloons which emphasized this, his bulging paunch was all the more obvious. All of his costume — the fly-blown and powdered perruque like a black cauliflower perched on his balding scull, his torn and dirty frock-coat, his neckerchief of yellowing cambric, his black finger-gloves, his green horn-rimmed spectacles, and his salt-and-pepper breeches — seemed appropriate to an earlier age.

“Good work,” he said to Alabaster with a smile — if it can be called that, for his mouth merely opened slightly while his tongue licked his upper lip. “You’ll be well paid.

Tie him up and take him down.”

Hinxman secured my hands and he and Rookyard carried me down two flights of steps into a dank cellar lined with ancient hogsheads and empty casks. The smell was more than mere dampness; it was a sharp rivery smell.

They threw me on the ground near an open trap-door that was like the top of a well, and then went away leaving me in darkness. After a few minutes the old man came down carrying a lanthorn and approached me, walking with a curious crab-like sideways motion. As if I were nothing more than a parcel, he reached down, tore open my coat and felt for the cord around my neck. As his hands groped for it I wondered how he could have known to look there. He removed it and tore it open. Holding it near to the lanthorn, he read it avidly while the light cast a huge flickering shadow on the damp wall behind him. Then he folded it, opened the lanthorn, stuck the document into the flame and held it as it burned.

After all I had gone through! After all that Great-aunt Lydia had endured and died for! To lose all hope of restoring my family’s fortunes, of achieving Justice to redress the balance for their sufferings!

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He held it the other way around until it was completely burnt and then broke it up and scattered the ashes down the trap-door.

Now that he turned and looked down at me thoughtfully, his face illuminated from below by the lanthorn so that it threw shadows across his face, I found the solution to what had been troubling my memory: “I saw you that time I was ill at Daniel Porteous’s house!” I cried.

He was the old man I had seen during my fever and not known when I awoke if I had seen him in my dreams or in reality.

He looked at me as if surprised that I could speak.

“You’re Daniel Porteous’s father!” I exclaimed. Then the further implications of this struck me: “You’re Peter Clothier’s father! In that case, you’re my …”

His countenance darkened as I broke off. So this was my mother’s and my Enemy and the prime mover of all my and my family’s woes!

He stared at me piercingly.

“Your nothing,” he said. “I’m the father of the unfortunate husband of your mother.”

He said something further about her and then reached into his pocket and pulled a small object out and thrust it at me, holding the lanthorn for me to see it by. “This woman,” he said.

What he was holding was the locket that my mother had prized so highly and whose loss had saddened her so much. It still had the circlet made of two intertwined locks of hair.

“It was this that led me to your precious mother,” he said. “For one of my pledge-takers recognised my son.”

As he spoke he held it for a moment over the trap-door and then dropped it. There was a brief silence and then I thought I heard a faint splash. Was the river beneath us? I recalled the occasion when Joey and I had escaped from the rising tide through the vaults of a warehouse and wondered if I were once again near the fleet-market.

“Why did you hound her to her death?” I demanded. “Why do you hate her?”

“What a lot of questions!” he said with that sinister smile that was no smile.

“Tell me! Tell me the truth!”

“Why, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” he said, still smiling. “It can’t hurt now and we’ve a little time, for the tide is low.”

What did he mean? Was he planning to ship me abroad? The sight of the locket had awakened painful memories and made me reckless of my own safety. I had to complete the pattern, whatever my fate was to be.

“Was it you who had my grandfather murdered?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“It
was
you,” I insisted. “You paid a man called Barney Digweed.”

“Never heard of him,” he answered.

Could that be the truth? That my surmise that Barney had been involved was quite wide of the mark? It was true that I had only inferential evidence.

Then as if suddenly angry the old man shouted: “I’ll tell you the truth, but you won’t want to hear it. Your mother drove Peter to it. The fact is, he thought himself too fine a gentleman to have an honest money-lender for his dad. He was happy enough to take my money though he professed to be horrified to find out what kind of hard work had paid for his fine manners and his book-learning. I had such hopes for him. But he didn’t love me enough to justify the money I spent on him.”

While he was speaking he attached a stout rope to an iron ring in the wall: 696 THE

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“Then he met your mother and she and her father turned him against me. Poor lad, they pulled him in so many directions there’s no wonder that his wits addled. Mind you, he had good cause to make an end of Huffam for he stood to gain by his death. Just as she did.”

“That’s not true! She wasn’t like you say!”