The Blighted Cliffs (30 page)

Still
unconvinced, I mounted the twisting stairs, trying to shrink from the
loud creak of my every footstep. They led higher than I had expected,
two storeys at least, and ended not on a landing or at a door, but by
emerging suddenly into a bright, exposed room. I blinked, and looked
around as my head rose into it, for it seemed I had entered the
summit of a lighthouse rather than a banker's office: the room was
round, and constructed entirely of large glass panels set in a thin
white frame. There was an uninterrupted view through these windows,
of the thickly clustered roofs and smoking chimneys of the town in
some directions, of the jumbled masts and spars of the harbour in
another. It was like some hothouse, or orangery, and despite the
coolness of the day outside, all was warmth within. This, I realized,
must be what I had taken for a belfry atop the building.

Bringing
my gaze back within the confines of the glass room, I saw the twin
mahogany pillars of a large desk to my left, and a pair of daintily
shod feet crossed between them. As I mounted the final steps and
raised myself into the chamber, my eyes followed the line of the
legs, up over silken calves, carefully tailored white breeches, and
then, above the desk, to a slender, almost feminine body dressed in
the lace cuffs and angular coat of the French style.

'Mr
Jerrold.' His voice was deeper than I'd expected, and quite thick.
'Henry Mazard.' He did not rise, nor did he offer me a chair.

I
looked into the face: a broad oval, with features that seemed almost
flat against the smooth expanse of skin. His eyes were wide and lazy,
with a bored emptiness that could in no way be mistaken for dullness.
I thought I detected a trace of a foreign declension in his words, as
well as hauteur. I returned his cool stare with what I hoped was a
nonchalance of my own.

'I
am grateful to you for receiving me so promptly.'

'My
clerk tells me you have come on a matter of importance.'

'Indeed.'
I tried to arrange myself into a more commanding posture. 'A matter
of the greatest importance. It concerns--'

'The
dead man you found at the cliff? Mr Vitos?' Mazard widened his eyes
into a look of artificial concern. I tried not to display my
irritation at his interruption.

'Mr
Vitos, exactly. And his companion, a Mr Laminak. Laminak,' I
repeated, my words garbling themselves as I found myself unable to
reciprocate the composure that met me. 'Did you know him?'

Mazard's
teeth flashed like knives. 'I did not. My good friend Sir Lawrence
Cunningham apprised me of the details of his misfortune. And your
part in it.'

'They
are alleged to have been your customers.'

He
twitched his head. 'Sadly, Mr Jerrold, I can only repeat what my
clerk has already told you. We have no customers by those names.'

'They
said they were coming here,' I persisted. 'Last Sunday. Their
landlady remembers them saying--'

'On
a Sunday?' Mazard gave an amused giggle. 'Please, Mr Jerrold, we are
not Jews here. I was in church, naturally. Your landlady is
mistaken.'

'Which
church?' His words were too well oiled for me to credit them; I would
not let him glide away from my enquiries without some attempt to pin
him down.

'I
have a private chapel at my home.' He lifted his hands an inch off
the table, and seemed to study his knuckles.

'I
may have mistaken the date,' I allowed, retreating a little to give
myself room. 'Or the landlady herself may have misremembered.'

Though
I suspected Mrs Pring's memory would be quite as tight as her bodice.

'Unless
you have also mistaken their names, the date is of little
consequence. We pride ourselves on the intimate service we provide
our clients, Mr Jerrold - they are all well known to us. And yet...'

He
held up an indulgent hand to stem my inevitable contradiction. 'If it
will satisfy your curiosity, Mr Jerrold, as an officer of the navy
which we all hold in such irreproachable esteem, I will do my utmost
to put your fears to rest.'

I
did not see where his hand went, but from down below I heard the
delicate chimes of the little bell. Almost immediately, Fichet's head
appeared by my foot, staring up from the stairwell.

'The
ledger, Mr Fichet,' said Mazard. He folded his hands together as the
obedient head vanished. 'I shall open my books to you, Mr Jerrold. As
you may know, a banker may as well open his soul.'

'Which
yields the higher return?'

A
tolerably awkward silence ensued, during which Mazard's flat face
showed not a twitch of emotion, while I dropped my hands into my
pockets and looked self-consciously out through the surrounding
windows. A large frigate, not unlike
Lancelot
-
though at this distance it really could have been any frigate - was
beating slowly down the Channel; nearer to shore, dozens of light
vessels - snows, pinks, sloops, hoys - swarmed across the fractured
waves, tossing precipitously in the squally conditions. Many of them,
I guessed, would be heading round the headlands and up to provision
the squadron at Deal.

'It
is an indisputable advantage being able to survey my little fleet
from this eyrie,' said Mazard, breaking the silence. 'My crews know
that they are always watched by a higher authority.'

I
turned my gaze on to the docks below us, where a handsome new
brigantine was taking on a sizeable cargo.

'Your
merchantman?' I asked, pointing.

'Indeed,
her too,' said Mazard. 'But equally the lighter vessels over there,
carrying beer and bread to your fellow sailors in the Downs.' My face
must have registered its confusion openly.

'The
navy has granted me the contract to transport their local supplies.
In partnership with the noble Sir Lawrence Cunningham, of course.'

I
would have been curious to learn what other businesses he and
Cunningham had contrived together, but before I could form any more
questions a dusty Mr Fichet re-emerged from below, staggering under
the weight of the enormous book he carried. I was impressed he had
managed to negotiate the stairs with it, for even Mazard's stout desk
shuddered as he put it down. As he stepped aside, I saw him gingerly
sucking on a finger that had been under the book.

With
some effort, Mazard turned the ledger around so that it faced me, and
prised open the leather-bound cover. The paper was very thin, and it
took him some while to flick through the pages and find the place he
sought.

'Voilá
,'
he said with a broad, inviting smile. 'Our transactions for the last
week but one. Naturally, you will find none on the Sunday. And I do
not think your Mr Vitos was in a condition to be banking after that,
as you will appreciate. But if it will satisfy you, you may inspect
our records as your conscience demands.'

I
bent forward and squinted at the narrow writing, the cascading
columns of times and dates and names and amounts. Naturally, I did
not expect to find anything pertaining to Vitos or Laminak - I quite
believed that Mazard knew his customers well enough not to reveal it
if they had banked there - but I was willing to play along with this
charade of co-operation. And I was intrigued by the sums of money
which seemed to run through his hands as a matter of course. Many of
the entries were for amounts in excess of a hundred pounds, and a few
even required a fourth figure to be squeezed into the confines of the
credit column, though most of the names meant nothing to me. With a
single, notable exception.

'Caleb
Drake?' I read the name aloud. 'An extraordinary man indeed, if he is
in a position to be taking eighteen pounds a month so long after his
death.'

'The
estate of Caleb Drake. The upkeep of his memorial, which requires
some care.' Mazard's face resumed its habitual set. 'But if you have
nothing more to do than idly pry into the business of my honest
customers, whose privacy and discretion are their greatest assets,
then I will ask you to finish your examination of the book.'

'I
see "you have many customers abroad.' I ignored his invitation
to leave. 'None of them in France, I trust?'

'These
are turbulent times for the citizens of the continent, particularly
those of wealth and position. A sound bank is to them the gravest
necessity. I doubt they would be amused if they knew an upstart
officer, one with the most slanderous stains on his reputation, had
tried to involve himself in their private affairs.'

I
lifted the book's cover and let it drop shut. I took satisfaction
from seeing the glass walls shiver with the bang it made.

Much
though I enjoyed irritating Mazard, I was relieved to escape his high
nest unscathed. For all his smiles and courtesy, there was an
uncomfortable chill about him that made me uneasy, made me feel glad
to have passed the door without having my limbs ripped off for my
impertinence. He was that sort of man.

He
was also the sort of man to whom dissembling would come easy, I
guessed, although with such a skill it was inevitable that I would be
unable to tell. Certainly it was entirely possible that Vitos had
been trailing a herring across his tracks when he mentioned Mazard's
Bank, but if he had gone on the Sunday morning then he ought to be
the sort of customer Mazard, or at the very least his clerk, would
know. The ledger was an irrelevance: although I presumed that every
transaction would be entered somewhere, I had no illusions that the
book he had shown me had been exhaustive. Of course, he might have
been an honest citizen extending me complete co-operation - that too
would have explained his every action, and in a flawless light. But
that would make him unique among my acquaintances in Dover, and I
very, much doubted a banker would take that honour. None of which
inclined me to trust him for a second, but short of trying to break
into that miniature fortress when he was away, I had little prospect
of proving my suspicions well founded or otherwise.

It
was still well before noon when I regained the street, and I doubted
that there had yet been time for Crawley's temper to cool. Rather
than risk returning to
Orestes
,
I loitered among the shops and stalls of the town, enquiring where I
could whether anyone had seen Vitos or Laminak the previous Sunday.
It was something I had thus far resisted doing, on the principle that
it was unlikely to turn up anything novel, and my prediction proved
depressingly accurate.

The
shops, of course, had all been shut, and could tell me nothing,
though few let me escape without bombarding me instead with
endorsements for their produce, their prices, their 'what-I-could-do
for-a-naval-gentleman-like-yourself' offers. Once I saw Stubb walking
along the far side of the street - not nearly far enough, in a town
like Dover- but he ostentatiously ignored me. Perhaps he had some
urgent paving to attend to. And so, after a fruitless hour and the
dozenth offer of a pair of patent mittens, I ambled back to the
harbour.

Snargate
Street seemed busier as I reached its western end. Perhaps it was
just the bustle of midday business, but I felt a definite current in
the crowd that seemed to be pulling towards the docks. My impression
was confirmed as I emerged onto the wharf where
Orestes
was moored: here there were scores of people, hemmed around the walls
of the battery and spilling over onto the shingle beach; others lined
the rope walk beyond. All had their backs to the town, and stared
intently out to sea. From their appearance I could see that although
their ranks were peppered with tars and stevedores, many of them were
the ordinary folk of the town. What spectacle could have drawn them
here?