by David Liss
“If there is anything I can do to aid you, sir,” I said, “do not hesitate to call upon me.”
“No one can aid me now,” he lamented. “I am a clerk without a position. I am like a ghost, sir. A living ghost, left to wander the earth without purpose or pleasure.”
I had no response to this so I left him, struggling to replace my feelings of guilt with feelings of rage. I will not blame myself, I vowed, but Cobb. Cobb will answer.
AT MY HOME THAT NIGHT I found that Devout Hale had returned my messages, and I could think of no better way to occupy my time in the service of making Cobb answer than to pay Hale a visit. He had informed me I might find him that very night at one of the Spitalfields coffeehouses, and so, after a brief visit to my aunt, I took myself thither. I arrived on time, and Hale put his arm around me and took me to a secluded spot. “So, what is so urgent, then?” he asked. He looked more wretched than the last time I saw him, as though his scrofula had progressed with my own troubles at Craven House. He folded his reddened hands one on the other and stared at me with veined and deep-set eyes. “You left messages everywhere, and you have the appearance of alarm upon you. Have you some news about the king?”
“I have been unable to make progress on that score,” I said. “I am sorry, Devout, but I told you I am not so well affixed as you think and I have been consumed with my East India troubles.”
“As have we all. Well, for the moment I will only ask you to keep your promise in your mind. Now, tell me what you need of me.”
“I must ask you about someone. Have you ever heard the name Absalom Pepper?”
“Course I have.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair, and an alarming cluster of it came out on his fingers. “He was one of my men. He worked the loom.”
I paused to consider this confirmation. “Did he have, to the best of your recollection, any dealings with the East India Company?”
“Him? Hardly. He wasn’t built for it, you know. He was a slight fellow, small and pale, more of a girl than a man to my mind. Pretty as a girl, too. Now, women of a certain type like a man with feminine beauty, but I’m always a bit suspicious of the type, if you take my meaning. As to your question, he wasn’t one for Craven House dealings. The rest of us would go to tear up the evil place, and he’d send us his good wishes but no more than that. Still, he was quick with the loom, that one, and very clever. The most clever of us all, I thought, though you’d hardly know. He kept his own council, and in his free time he’d always be writing this or that in his little book. Most of the boys here, you know, can’t read or write, so they just looked at him like he was the very devil himself, and he would sniff right back at them with the devil’s own contempt.”
“What was he writing in this book of his?” I asked.
Hale shook his head. “He never told me and I never cared enough to ask, to tell you the truth of it. He wasn’t my friend, and I wasn’t his. Not enemies, mind you, but not friends either. He did his work and was more than worth the space he took, but I didn’t much care for the airs he put on. That’s fine for a worker, but it don’t answer in a friend.”
“And when he died, did you offer any compensation to his widow?”
“Compensation? Ha! That’s a mighty good one. Sometimes when a fellow dies, there will be a contribution of some sort, but that’s usually when a fellow perishes in some accident related to the work. Or, at the very least, when it’s a fellow the boys like. But Pepper—I heard he got drunk and drowned in the river one night. Just as like made to fall, I would think, with his lordly disposition and all. He might have pushed some rough too hard, and—well, that rough pushed back, so to speak.”
“So, there is no way that you and your combination pay an annuity to his widow?”
“An annuity? That’s a right fine joke. You know full well we can barely pay the baker. An annuity indeed. Like I said, we take care of our own. Last year, when Jeremiah Carter died of the rot after an accident that took his fingers, we collected more than two pounds for his widow, but Jeremiah was always very popular, and his wife was left with three little ones.”
I made no comment on that sum and the small fortune provided by the Company for Pepper’s childless widow.
“So, I’ve been forthcoming, and I reckon it’s your turn, Weaver. What’s this about?”
The truth was, I did not know. “It is too soon to say.” I formed my words slowly, still attempting to decide how much information I could safely pass along. The great danger that loomed above me and my friends made me reluctant to speak at all, but I also knew that Hale had been kind to me and trustworthy—and, perhaps more important, there might be more information unearthed by informing him of what little I knew. I therefore swore him to secrecy and proceeded to tell him what I thought safe.
“What it’s about I don’t know,” I said. “I do know that the East India Company has contrived to pay his widow an annuity of a considerable sum and then credit some sort of fictional silk weavers’ guild with the generosity.”
“A considerable sum, my arse!” Hale cried. “Why, the poor girl is living in squalor.”
“I think you must be misinformed. I have been to Twickenham and saw the lady lives remarkable well for a silk worker’s widow—or anyone’s widow, for that matter.”
“Weaver, I should never have taken you for so great a dunce. His widow don’t live in Twickenham. She’ll never dream of living in Twickenham. She’s in a run-down old house off Little Tower Hill, and I can promise you she ain’t got no annuity of any sort. What she’s got is gin, and counts herself lucky when she’s got a great quantity of it.”
There was some more back and forth of this sort, but once we established the credentials of both ladies, it became increasingly clear to me that Mr. Absalom Pepper may well have been guilty of that crime, too common among the lower order of men, of being married to two women at the same time. For that reason, and many more, he was beginning to strike me as a very interesting personage indeed.
IN THE HACKNEY on the way to the second Widow Pepper’s house, Hale mused incessantly. “There’s something amiss here,” he said, with a low growl. He sounded like a dog perceiving footsteps on the outer boundary of its hearing. “There’s never been a more heartless or penny-pinching bunch of thieves in all the world than the East India Company. They are for nothing but their own profit, and if they are paying this alleged Pepper widow money, it is to buy her silence. They have done something despicable. Indeed, they have taken his life, you may depend upon it. How much do they pay her?”
Against my better judgment, I informed him of the sum.
“By Christ,” he swore, “that’s blood money if I ever heard of it. It’s absurd that they should pay so much, and its absurd that she should believe the money comes from us. It makes no sense, Weaver.”
He was right, of course. Elias and I had already arrived at the same conclusion. The sum drew attention to itself, and it was no sound part of an effort to conceal a crime.
“The lady I spoke to told us that Pepper was always taking notes upon things. Did he leave any of his writings about with you?”
“I have other things to concern me than idle scribblings.”
“Did you ever chance to observe what he wrote?”
“As a matter of fact, I did, but it didn’t much answer, as I never learned my letters.” Seeing my eyes widen and then a crestfallen expression overtake me, Hale hurried to add a further detail. “I can’t read, it’s true, but I know what letters look like, at least, and Pepper’s writings were not made of them entire.”
“Not made of letters?”
“Well, there were some, but there were drawings too. Pictures of things.”
“What sort of things?”
“It was hard to say, given that I only caught a glimpse. When Pepper saw me gazing at his papers, he snatched them away and glared at me something fierce. I tried to laugh it off, pointing out I could no more read what he’d written than the newspaper, but his mood didn’t light
en none. Said I was trying to steal from him. I told him I had no interest in stealing his papers and no notion of who should want them.”
“But what did the drawings contain?” I asked again.
“From the quick look he afforded me,” Hale said, “it looked like he was drawing pictures of us.”
“The silk weavers?”
“Not the men themselves, but the room and the equipment, the looms. Like I told you, it was only a quick glance, but that was the impression I got. Though I couldn’t guess why someone should care to steal a picture of a bunch of silk workers and their things. Who could care to look at something of so little import?”
The only answer that came to my mind was an organization that had been harmed by the will of the silk weavers: the East India Company.
Hale told the hackney man where to stop. I jumped out and offered my ill friend a hand, but he shook his head. “I took you here, Weaver, but that’s as far as I go. I knew poor Jane Pepper when she was a girl, and I’ve no heart to see her as she is now. Her father, rest his soul, was a friend of mine, and it burns me up to think he saved his whole life to put together twenty pounds dowry on his little girl. At the time I thought he was throwing away the money, letting her marry Pepper, and now I know it.” He shook his head again. “There’s some things I cannot choose to see.”
I understood this reluctance only too well. I never wanted to be in St. Giles after dark, and after Hale’s ominous warning I wanted it even less. Nevertheless, I followed his directions and soon found the house to which he had directed me. My knock was answered by a very old woman wearing a dress in a very poor state of repair. When I told her I wished to speak with Mrs. Jane Pepper, she let out a sigh of exasperation, or perhaps sadness, and directed me up the stairs.
Mrs. Pepper met me at the door in such a state of undress that it was no longer possible to pretend I did not suspect that her place in the world had fallen considerably since her husband’s death. She wore her hair and her gown loose, with the better part of her ample bosoms exposed. And she smelled of gin. Indeed, I could see, in the hard lines around her eyes and the way in which her cheekbones jutted out against the tight skin of her face, that in defiance of natural order it was the drink that owned the drinker. And yet, under the hard crust of misery and desperation, I could see the remnants of a lovely creature. There could be no doubt that Absalom Pepper had an eye for beauty.
“Hello, my dear,” she said to me. “Please come in.”
I accepted her invitation and took a seat, without waiting to be asked, in the room’s only chair. She sat across from me on her bed. “What’s it to be tonight, then, dearie?”
I reached into my purse and retrieved a shilling, which I handed her. “Some questions, only. That’s for your time.”
She snatched up the coin the way I’ve seen monkeys snatch at sugar plums meted out by their masters. “My time,” she told me in a steady voice, “is worth three shillings.”
I could little credit that she had ever been paid so well for any favor, let alone one as gentle as that I sought, but I hadn’t the spirit to argue with the poor creature, and I provided the coin she required.
“I wish to ask you of your late husband.”
“Oh, my Absalom,” she said. Her eyes became moist, and some of her icy hardness appeared to melt. “Was there ever a dearer man?”
I was struck at once by such similarity of devotion in the two Mrs. Peppers. I knew not how the late Mr. Pepper had so charmed the ladies, but I could only wish I knew a small fraction of his secrets.
“He was a good husband, then?”
“He was a good man, sir. The best of men. And it is often true that a good man does not always have the leisure to be a good husband.”
Particularly if he is busy being someone else’s good husband, I thought, though I would not dream of giving voice to such a comment. “What can you tell me of him?”
“Oh, he was good to me, sir, very good to me. When he was with me, I should have never suspected there were even other women in the world, for he only thought of me, only saw me when we walked down the street together. We could be in St. James’s with the fanciest folk in the metropolis, and he would not notice a one of them. And he would—” She stopped herself now and gave me a critical glance. “Why is it you wish to know? Who are you?”
“I do beg your pardon, madam. My name is Benjamin Weaver, and I have been charged to inquire into the affairs of your husband in order to determine if he may have been owed some money prior to his death.”
It was a cruel trick and I knew it, but there was little I could do to aid this Mrs. Pepper, and much I would have to do to aid those who depended upon my labors. Besides, a little hope might, in her case, be more of a kindness than a cruelty.
“Money? Who from? How much?”
I held up my hands, as if to say, How can such powerless people as ourselves fathom the ways of the great? “Indeed, I cannot say how much, nor exactly who from. I have been hired by a group of men inclined to invest in projects, and they have asked me to inquire into Mr. Pepper’s affairs. I know nothing beyond that.”
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “he had more going on than silk weaving, I can tell you that. He always had money in his pocket, which none of the other silk weavers did. And I wasn’t to say anything to Hale and the others about it neither, because they wasn’t to know about it. On account they would be jealous of Absalom, what with his being so very clever and handsome.”
“And what did he have going on, other than silk work?”
She shook her head. “He would never tell me. Said I shouldn’t concern myself with such dry matters as that. But he swore we would be rich one day soon. And then he died, all tragic like, falling into the river. It was a cruel thing for fate to leave me so, alone and penniless.”
She leaned forward in her distress, and this gesture further exposed the barely hidden swell of her breast. I could not fail to understand her meaning, though I was determined to pretend to misunderstand it just the same. She was a beautiful woman, but a hardened one, a destroyed one, and I could not so debase myself by taking advantage of her misery. I might be tempted, but I would not do it.
“It is very important,” I said. “Did Mr. Pepper ever tell you anything of his aspirations? Did he mention names, places, anything of that sort, which could help me to figure out what it was he worked upon?”
“No, he never did.” She stopped still for a moment and then looked hard upon me. “Do you mean to steal his ideas, the things he wrote down in books?”
I smiled at her question, as though it were the silliest thing in the world. “I have no interest in stealing anything, madam. And I promise you, upon my honor, if I discover that your husband stumbled upon something of note, I will make certain you receive what is yours. It is not my task to take anything from you, only to learn and, if possible, restore to your family something that may have been lost.”
My words so succeeded in assuaging her concerns that she rose and rested a hand upon my shoulder with a gentleness I would not have expected from a woman to which the world had not been gentle at all. She looked at me in such a way that let me know in no uncertain terms she wished for me to kiss her. I confess I was flattered, and it is a testament to her charms that I was, for why, my perceptive reader will wonder, should I be flattered by the willingness of a whore to whom I had already given money and made a vague promise of future wealth? Nevertheless, I felt my previous resolve begin to dissipate. I cannot say with any certainty what would have transpired had not something most unexpected happened.
The Widow Pepper began to move her fingers to my face, but I held up a hand in a halting gesture and raised a finger to my lips to signal silence. As quietly as I could manage, I moved over to the door of her chamber. Alas, ever mindful of her safety, Mrs. Pepper had locked it, which would detract precious seconds from the advantage of surprise, but it was what I had been given, so, quickly as I could, I turned the key in the lock and flung the do
or open.
As I had feared, whoever had been lurking outside had determined my movements sooner than I would have liked, but I caught the glimpse of a man running, nearly falling, down the stairs, and at once I charged after him. I lacked my quarry’s grace, I suppose, because the stairs took me more time than they did him, and by the time I reached the ground floor, he had already flung wide the front door and was out upon the street.
I followed hard behind him, and when I came out of Mrs. Pepper’s house, I saw the figure heading down the Tower Hill Pass toward East Smithfield. He moved swiftly, but without the disadvantage of stairs I could hope at least to match his pace, and I had a great deal of faith in my endurance. One thing a man who has fought in the ring must know is how to continue to exert himself even when his stores of energy feel depleted. Even if I could not overtake him at first, I reasoned, if I could but keep pace, I should catch him in the end.
As it happened, the grace he had shown upon the stairs did not manifest itself in the dark of the streets. He stumbled in a slick pool of dark filth and went sprawling forward. But as quickly as he went down, he was up again, springing to his feet with the alacrity of an Italian acrobat. He then made a quick turn down one of the dark alleys for which St. Giles is duly notorious. These streets are winding labyrinths without lights, and unless one knows his way, he may well depend on losing it. I, however, did not even have that opportunity, for I lost my man first. Once I rounded the first corner, I was met only with the distant patting of footsteps, but from which direction and to what direction I could not say.
I had no choice but to abandon pursuit. And though I regarded this decision with the melancholy that comes with failure, I attempted to comfort myself by saying that I could have done little had I actually captured him. Besides possessing an unexpected quickness, the man was larger and almost certainly stronger than myself. Overtaking him might have been more dangerous than informative. Besides, in the moment he stumbled, I was able to observe his form with a flash of clarity. I could not be entirely certain, and I would have been hesitant to swear in court to his identity. Nevertheless, I was near certain.