Charles Palliser (16 page)

The lawyer nods.

“And a ’torney?” Mr Sancious nods again. “You’re the only cove o’ that name I could hear on. It was you what saved Conkey George from being marinated, wasn’t it?”

Mr Sancious nods again: “What do you want of me?”

“He was a pall o’ mine. But it’s the other way around, guv’nor. I got something what I reckons you wants.” At this he reaches into a pocket and brings out a FATHERS 69

crumpled piece of paper which seems to have been torn from a larger sheet. He holds it out for Mr Sancious to see.

“It’s upside-down,” the attorney gasps.

“Be damned to it,” mutters the other man. “ “Tis all one to me.” He turns the paper round and Mr Sancious peers at it.

“I cannot read it,” he says. “It’s not close enough.”

He reaches towards it but the other man steps quickly back: “Don’t lay a finger on it.

Can you foller it if I say it?”

“I believe so.”

The other man recites: “ ‘To kerkude, you should soon receive the play-things and books what I have arst Mr Sancious to purchase. Speaking of which cove, you will see as I ingclose another letter under cover from that genel’man. I must warn you as he has been a-tryin’ agin, in wery indireck ways, to find out from me your whereabouts and I believe he would give a great deal to know.’ ” As the stranger repeats these last words he stares intently at Mr Sancious’s face, as that gentleman peers at the letters in the dim light of the alley-way. “Well, are you in for the game?” the stranger demands folding the letter up and putting it back in his pocket.

“Possibly,” mutters Mr Sancious. “But is the direction given?”

“Oh-ho,” says the other man. “So you still want to know it, do you? Jist like it says here.”

“I’ll tell you what, my good man. I’ll give you a guinea for that letter.”

“A guinea!” the other man repeats in such a tone that Mr Sancious quickly says :

“Very well, we will discuss it. But somewhere else, for heaven’s sake.”

“The Swan-with-Two-Necks in Lad-lane?”

The attorney nods and they set off, the stranger leading the way along dark passage-ways whose walls drip water, through sunless back-courts which have no front, and along dingy side-streets, until they reach a run-down old drinking-house, with paint peeling from its front and its windows obscured by dirt. In a few minutes they are seated in a boxed-off section against the bar separated by wooden partitions from the rest of the tap-room with a glass before Mr Sancious and a tankard before his companion.

“That letter was written nearly two years ago. How came you by it and why have you taken so long to find me?” Mr Sancious asks as he drinks the brandy and water before him.

“Now that’s a story,” the stranger says, pouring half of his quart of porter down his throat. “It was the summer before last. I had reasons for getting off the stones jist then what I’m sure you won’t expeck me to go into. Now I’m a j’iner by trade, and there was a great fambly what I’d worked for in Town off and on for years and I heerd as how they was doing some work on

their country-house down in-- shire and got took on by the steward what I knowed. (Though in a general way I don’t have no fancy for the country.)”

“What is the name of the family?” asks Mr Sancious.

“In my own time and my own way, if you please, Mr Sancious. When I gived that over I set out to go on the tramp back up to Town again. Well, I didn’t have no blunt so I stopped at a crib to arst for wittles. I went up a lane off the high road. There was a young lady with a little boy in the garding.”

Mr Sancious leans forward at this.

“Well, the young lady was all right, but there was an old witch of a sarvint 70

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with her, a nuss-maid or some such. And she purwented the young lady from giving me nothin’. And she said things to me that weren’t called for, neither.” At the memory his face darkens and he mutters an oath under his breath. “And then the young ’un starts on at me, too. Shouting and bawling. So I goes back up the lane to the road and just at the corner an old file calls out: ‘What did they say to you?’ So I tells him, and it seems he’s the gardener there and has a grudge agin ’em, or agin everybody as far as I can tell. And he says: ‘Mebbe you’d like to get square with ’em and do yourself some good?’ And I says: ‘What have you got in mind?’ And he says: ‘Look where they’ve gorn and left that ladder down in that airey. That’s an invitation if ever I seen one.’ Well, I sees what he meant and lets him know it. And then he offers me a bite of supper and so 1 goes into his cottage. And he gives me a long spade for hooking the ladder up when I get over the railing, and tells me which of the upper winders is a room that nobody don’t sleep in. So that night I climbs on top of the railings and gets the ladder while he plays bo-peep.

Well, it goes all right at fust. I gets down into the airey, and then I puts the ladder agin the wall and climbs up to the winder. Well, I’ve got my kifers with me, so I gets to work on the shutters. But arter a bit I finds I can’t get them open no-how. Not without making a lot of noise, anyhow. Then I notices that the shutters of the next winder are unbarred, so I thinks: ‘Well, if I’m very quiet I can mebbe get in that way even if there is someone sleeping. Leastways, I can take a look.’ So I gets up there and I’m just openin’ the shutters to look in when I’ll be blessed if that same boy don’t wake up and start screaming fit to bring the roof down. Well, next thing, I find I can’t move the ladder

’cause it’s got jammed into the angle of the wall and the ground on account of my weight. Well, the only thing now is to get through one of the winders down there. So I breaks the shutter-clasps and then smashes through the glazing-bars. So I climbs in and jist for the sake of me own self-respeck I ketches a hold onto some candle-sticks, but they was too big to carry easy, so I drops ’em. All I takes for my pains is a letter-case. A silver ’un. So then I gets the street-door open and I jist bolts. And the old file is waiting for me up the road and he says, ‘What did you get?’ Well, I knows he could make trouble and anyways he sees the case in me pocket. So I shows it to him, then I rips the lid off of it and throws it into the ditch and runs off. And when I looks back there he is, a-grubbin’

in the weeds for it. So arter that I keeps on running the rest of the night, ready to jump off the road into the hedge if I sees or hears anything coming behind me, ’cause I knows if I’m ketched with that letter-case, it’s Botany Bay or the tree with only one leaf for me.

Well, towards dawn I makes it to a big old barn where I’d kipped on the way down on account of it being about two days’ tramp from Mumpsey-park.”

“From where?” asks Mr Sancious quickly.

“Mumpsey-park. That’s the big house what I told you of. Mumpsey’s the name of the people what owns it.”

“Mumpsey,” Mr Sancious says and shakes his head.

“Well,” the man continues, “I wraps the letter-case up in a piece of soft-leather to keep it dry, and don’t even think to open it up. Then I hides it in a hole in the wall and keeps on a-runnin’. Well, then it were more than a year a-fore I goes down there agin, but a six-month back, I goes to the barn and finds the letter-case jist as I’d left it. That’s when I opens it and finds the screeve inside. Well I was going to throw it away but then I thinks to meself ‘Well, I’ve heerd on screeves and dockyments as is worth a deal of money,’ so I decides not to.

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Now as it happens, Mr Sancious, my eddication was sorely neglected, first on account of my father being a lushington and secondly ’cause even though when I was a younker I

’tended the floating ’Cademy at Chatham, the truth is I larned more about picking oakum and gettin’ beat than about conning my books. So the long and the short of it was, I showed the screeve to my brother’s gal. She’s a sharp ’un and can read you off any amount of words faster nor a dog can trot — both writin’ and print. So that’s how I heard on a Mr Sancious as was a split-cause and was so eager to find the direction on the front of this cover. It’s taken me a deal of time and trouble since then to run you down.

So, Mr Sancious, don’t you talk to me about no guinea.”

“Well my good man, what figure would you consider appropriate?”

“Fifteen.”

“Good heavens!” exclaims the attorney. “You have a grossly inflated idea of the value of that piece of information. You don’t imagine that anyone else will offer you anything at all for it, do you?”

The other man drains his tankard and rises from his seat: “Mebbe not, but if it ain’t worth fifteen to you then no more shan’t you have it neither.”

“Stay!” As he sits down again Mr Sancious takes out his pocket-book and removes some of the bank-notes he received from Mr Barbellion. He hands them across the table while the letter is passed to him.

The man holds each of them up to the light of the oil-lamp hanging on a nail nearby and then, apparently satisfied, puts them in his pocket: “Well, it’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”

Mr Sancious glances up from the letter: “Stay a while. I may have further need of you.”

The man seats himself agreeably and watches Mr Sancious’s features while he reads.

The letter bears the heading “No. 27 Golden-square, 23rd. July”, and is signed “Martin Fortisquince”. The final paragraph reads:

“To conclude, you should soon receive the play-things and books which I have asked Mr Sancious to purchase. Speaking of whom, you will see that I enclose another letter under cover from that gentleman. I must warn you that he has been endeavouring once again, in very indirect ways, to find out from me your whereabouts and I believe he would give a great deal to know. I regret to tell you that my condition is no better and once again my beloved wife is having to write this letter at my dictation. I fear that the house is being watched and that your enemy has somehow discovered that I know your whereabouts.”

Mr Sancious turns the paper over and sees on the cover: “Mrs Mellamphy The Cottage, Mortsey-manor-farm, Melthorpe, shire”.

“Mellamphy!” he repeats softly: “So that is her real name.” He glances at the other man who is watching him curiously: “I may have need of you. Will you help me?”

“For more of this,” he replies, patting his pocket and smiling, “I’ll do anything you arst me, guv’nor.”

“Then how may I find you when I want you?”

“Leave word here.”

“What is your name?”

“ ‘Barney’ will find me.”

“Very well,” says Mr Sancious, rising to his feet and pulling his great-coat about him.

“But never come to my house or my office. Do you understand?”

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“Oh, I understand,” says Barney and briefly rises to bow as, with a curt nod, Mr Sancious goes out. He looks after him and repeats: “I understand, all right.”

Though I shall, of course, not speculate on his motives, it seems that Mr Sancious now believed that his mysterious client’s real name was Mrs Mellamphy and was intrigued by the fact that there was such interest in her and in her whereabouts. He now had the advantage that he knew her address and so, armed with this piece of knowledge, he went to the one person who (he believed) could tell him what he wished to know.

And so a few days after the incident recounted above, Mr Sancious knocks on the door of a house in Golden-square and it is opened to him by a timid servant-girl who, when he utters his name, answers: “My mistress got your letter and is a-waitin’ for you, sir.” She takes his hat and great-coat and leads him to the morning-room where a lady is seated upon an elegant ottoman.

He enters with a gracious smile upon his lips but when he sees her he stops in apparent surprise. Then he smiles again and says: “I am Mr Sancious. I believe it must be your mother that I have business with.”

“I think that unlikely, Mr Sancious,” the lady says with a faint smile. “My poor mother has been dead for twenty years. I am Mrs Fortisquince.”

“Forgive my blunder. May I say in my defence that it was entirely natural?”

Mrs Fortisquince smiles and indicates a chair near the ottoman.

“Please accept my sincerest condolences, dear lady, on the decease of your husband who was highly respected by his humbler confrères amongst whom I number myself.”

The attorney sighs as he seats himself.

“You are very kind, Mr Sancious. Very kind. But may I ask to what I owe the honour of this visit?”

“I have come on the subject we have in common.”

“I had assumed so. You mean Mrs Clothier?”

As Mr Sancious speaks he watches her face closely: “Yes, or Mrs Mary Mellamphy.”

The widow inclines her head in recognition of the name and slightly raises one eyebrow.

“I see you are surprised that I know that name,” the attorney continues, “but Mrs Mellamphy has very recently done me the honour to take me into her confidence.”

“Indeed?”

“And so,” Mr Sancious continues, “I now know that she lives in retirement with her son in a village called Melthorpe. I also now know about her difficulties with …” He hesitates and looks at her knowingly as if waiting for her to speak. She does not, so he goes on: “Well, shall we call them ‘a certain distinguished family’?”

He may call them what he likes for all the widow appears to care: “Mr Sancious, I confess to being a little surprised since I had believed that Mrs Clothier was resolved to confide her whereabouts to nobody apart from my late husband and myself. But I still cannot perceive the purpose of your visit to me.”

“It is a delicate matter, ma’am. I am seeking certain information about Mrs Mellamphy.”

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“You surprise me again, Mr Sancious. Since she has, as you say, taken you fully into her confidence, I wonder what I can help you with that she cannot tell you herself ?”

The attorney wriggles rather uncomfortably on his chair: “Well now, Mrs Fortisquince, it is sometimes the case that an attorney might wish to keep his client in ignorance of enquiries he is making on that client’s behalf.”

“You intrigue me, Mr Sancious. My late husband having been an attorney, I have acquired more than a merely superficial knowledge of legal practice, and yet I have never heard of such a thing. Under what circumstances might this be so?”