The American Boy (51 page)

“Well met, Mr Shield,” said Salutation Harmwell.

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?”