“No,” Erryn said sharply.
“What did you say, Shaw?”
“I said … Damn it to hell, sir, we can’t just quit. Not until we know for sure there’s nothing here.”
“There is nothing here.”
“We don’t know that, sir. All we know is there aren’t any of the things we were expecting. There might be something else. Janes never told me what was in the trunks. We just guessed. Obviously we guessed wrong—”
“Obviously.”
“We have to search everything, piece by piece—”
“Looking for what, Erryn?” Matt asked. His voice was quiet, almost gentle. He wasn’t challenging, just asking.
“I don’t know. Messages. Stuff that’s valuable but small—medicines, maybe. An ounce of morphine’s worth a fortune in the Confederacy.”
“These aren’t going to the Confederacy, remember?”
“Bloody damned hell, let’s just look, all right?”
“All right,” Matt said. “One pile apiece, mates.” He took off his jacket, hung it over a chair, and carefully rolled up his sleeves. “When I get home, I’m going to take a bath in Madeira.”
“Calverley, there’s no point in this—”
“We don’t know that yet. What I mean is, sir, I think Mr. Shaw is right. We haven’t really looked at this … stuff. We just tossed it aside looking for weapons. God knows what might be inside linings and hems, or slipped in the pages of that bible there.”
The colonel glared at him.
“If I might say something, sir,” Erryn put in. “I spent a lot of time with Maury Janes. He’s been working on this project for months. He sent a man to the States to find just the right spots for his bloody trunks. He waited here for weeks for the ship to arrive. Janes isn’t crazy, colonel. Or God knows, maybe he is crazy, but he isn’t stupid. He didn’t do all that for a pile of blankets and underwear.”
“Maybe he did it for a ruse,” Matt suggested.
“What?”
“Maybe it’s a sham. A ruse for the Yankee agents … and for us. Maybe what he’s really doing, and really waiting for, is something else.”
Oh, shit … ! Erryn rubbed his forehead with his palm. “I never thought of that,” he admitted.
“So what do we do?”
“We search.”
What followed was barely endurable. He picked up one dreary item after another, studied them inch by inch until his eyes burned; noticed a small rent in one, a stain in the other; ran each hem carefully between his thumb and forefinger; laid the bed jackets carefully over his lap and patted every inch of lining. Several times he thought he had found something: a lump in a pocket that became a shilling wrapped in a handkerchief; a piece of paper carefully tucked away that, when unfolded, said only Saturday. Buy fish. He sliced open the rag doll, but there was only cotton inside. He turned every page of the bible. He read the five brief pages written in the diary, a young girl’s chatter about friends, about a boy who walked her home from the market. The last entry read: Susan came to visit me this afternoon. Mother is sick today so we couldn’t play the piano or sing. Tomorrow is Susan’s birthday and she will have a big party.
That was all. Just bits and pieces of other people’s lives, small and passing and innocent. Just things they sold or gave away or left behind. No things of war at all.
His head hurt. He leaned it against his hands for a bit, trying to think, and trying not to think—trying most especially not to think about his growing certainty that he would find nothing, either because there was nothing to find and he had made an idiot of himself or, worse, that he would not find it because it was so small, so cunning, so hidden he would never notice it, and they would pack it all up again and give it back to Maury Janes, and he would do … what? Oh, God damn bloody hell, what?
“Have you finished, Mr. Shaw?”
“What?” He looked up. The others had gone through everything they had. The colonel was pulling on his jacket again. “Yes, I’ve finished.”
“Well, that’s it, then,” Matt said.
Erryn spoke without thinking, the idea already in words before it took proper shape in his brain. “No, it isn’t. We switch piles.”
They stared at him as though he were completely insane. Quite possibly they were right.
“Maybe one of us will notice something the other didn’t. We switch piles.”
“Erryn—”
“Another hour, that’s all I’m asking. I’ve been following this son of a bitch around for months. Just give me another bloody hour, all right?”
“You were taken in, Mr. Shaw. Admit it, and call it a day. That’s an order.”
“Don’t do that, sir,” Matt murmured.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t do it. Shaw’s good at this work. If he wants us to stand on our heads here, we owe it to him. Once, anyway.”
Thanks, Matt.
“I’m not going to argue about it. This operation is over.”
“Well, there’s the rub, sir,” Matt said calmly. “It may be over for your department; I respect that. But then there’s the Halifax constabulary, which at the moment is me, and that’s another matter. Until I’m satisfied there’s no crime intended here, this investigation damn well stays open. We’ll do one more search, just the two of us. But I’m asking you to stick around, sir. If Erryn’s right, and we find something, it would be best if you were here. And if he’s wrong, well, he’s buying us the best dinner in town, and all the good liquor we can drink.”
There was a long silence. The colonel pulled out his watch, examined it, and replaced it wearily. “Very well. One hour. I’ll wait for you outside.”
It was, if possible, worse than before. Erryn shoved the colonel’s pile and Matt’s together with a few kicks of his boot, folded one of the heavier blankets into a small cushion, and sat down. Began again.
You never know when to quit.
He could hear his father’s voice as though the man were right here, sitting just across this pile of discarded belongings. A man who’d fought in imperialist scraps over half the known world, his hard body marked up like a chopping block, his bony face tired and cold. A father of the old school, a lord of the lordliest manor, an earl to the marrow of his bones. You never know when to quit.
Of course, it was what they taught him, all of them, right from the nursery. He was English, and the English were the lords of the earth, the builders of its greatest empire, God’s finest handiwork of man. He was privileged, and in return for privilege it was his duty never to quit—to be stronger, smarter, braver than anyone else.
To win every time.
Nobody ever explained how one could win every time and still know when to quit, except by being omniscient, no longer God’s finest handiwork but God almighty himself. When he walked away from contests he considered stupid, he was reminded of his rank, his place, his duty. When he remained in others—always the wrong ones, of course, always for the wrong reasons—he was a fool, a romantic, a man who never knew when to quit. Thus he ended in the colonies, living on a borrowed name and seventy pounds a year …
Well, he thought, nothing so drastic could happen to him now. At worst, the colonel would write to Governor Monck and suggest he be dismissed as a hare-brained idiot … and God knew the colonel might very well be right.
Slowly, more carefully even than before, he went through the items piece by piece. Different things, and yet maddeningly the same. He had no idea how much time was passing, but he did not hurry. He picked each item up gently, searched it, put it aside. A fine linen shirt with a monogram, JLR. A soiled, empty bag. A nightgown, ragged and worn, with a dark stain near the top and down the sleeve, as though someone had taken coffee lying in bed and spilt it. Sweat ran into his eyes. He wiped it away, aware that he was growing numb with frustration, with the mindless sameness of it; aware also of something else, of a growing sense of monstrous incongruity, something absurd, something that made no sense because the rules of ordinary rat
ionality no longer held. The goods themselves made no sense—some items of the finest quality, almost new; others worn to shreds; all of them jumbled together, all half spoiled, as though they had been left in a mouldering warehouse for weeks. To what end?
A ruse. More and more he began to think Matt was right. It was a ruse. And somewhere the Confederates sat drinking mint juleps and laughing their heads off at this pack of dumb colonials hunkered down for hours over a pile of dirty underwear.
There was, however, nothing to be done about it except continue, item by dreary item, all the time thinking that perhaps it was a ruse, and thinking it was a damned expensive ruse, and thinking also of Maury Janes, Janes like an incubus beside him, grinning and brazen and yet always so vague around the edges, talking of the coming victory, of his early fortune—almost bursting with it sometimes—holding it secret only because he had to, because otherwise he would lose it. But sure of it. Always so sure.
Everything about this smelled of a ruse. Nothing about Maury Janes smelled of a ruse maker. Janes believed in it; this Erryn would have sworn to. He believed in it, and he wasn’t crazy; therefore there was something here.
Eton logic, Erryn. Marvellous stuff on paper, but the world isn’t logical. You learned that years ago; the world is quite insane.
It was all mechanical now; he would finish because he had begun; he was a man who did not know when to quit. He looked at everything, because everything was equally perilous or equally trifling. He picked up yet another bible, opened it where the satin marker was placed: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil … He read the family history, the marriage of Albert James Connors and Mary Ann Bedard by Reverend Tobias Damler, May 17, 1834, the children, Albert James Jr., David, Robert, Edwin. He thought, More cannon fodder for the empire, and then he felt ashamed; those were someone’s beloved children, after all. He picked up a book of Mrs. Browning’s sonnets, battered and sorry-looking, as though it had passed through innumerable hands. He leafed through the pages, glanced at the inside cover: To my dear aunt Frances, with all my love, Sylvie.
He was so spent, he had already closed the book and was laying it aside when he realized what he had read. He opened it again, read it again, and a great chaos of things rolled across his mind at once, like tumbling cargo after a train wreck—Nassau and the Irish Stone and General Amherst and Maury Janes’s impossible victory and what did the man want with three ordinary shopkeepers in three Northern cities, questions without answers and answers that no longer needed questions. The meaning of it swept through him unresisted; he was utterly beyond resistance.
“Oh, sweet Jesus!”
He stumbled to his feet, took two or three clumsy steps, and doubled over, rigid, fighting the nausea spilling up into his throat. He tried to speak, but could not. He was barely aware of Matt’s reaching arm, Matt’s voice, gutter harsh the way it got when he was really angry or really scared. “What is it, mate, what’s wrong, damn bloody hell, talk to me, what’s wrong?”
He tried to steady himself, groping for a handkerchief to press against his face.
“Outside.” His voice was little more than a whisper, harsh and choked. “Leave everything. Come outside.”
Matt did not argue. He opened the door. Outside, the sun had slid from sight beyond Citadel Hill. The colonel sat on a rock, quietly smoking. He saw them and got to his feet.
“Well, I take it you’ve finally had enough?”
Erryn stood a moment, drawing deep gulps of air. Then he held up the book. “This belonged to Frances Harris.”
“Oh, shit,” Matt said softly.
Erryn stared at him. Matt still did not see it. Or rather, he was seeing something quite peripheral—how sad for Erryn Shaw, to stumble over this memento of his beloved’s grief. Matt’s face was full of sympathy. Not fear, just sympathy.
“And who is Frances Harris?” the colonel demanded.
“A woman who died of yellow fever. In Nassau. Where these trunks came from.”
“So what—”
Erryn overrode him as though he had not opened his mouth. “Trunks full of bedding and nightclothes—oh, and a few trifles, a rag doll, a couple of bibles—things people might cling to in their sickbeds. God almighty, don’t you see? This stuff is from people who died! It’s contaminated! Matt, you remember Amherst, you told me the story yourself, General Amherst and the Mi’kmaq? His easy, bloodless victory with a cartload of blankets? All those people dead just for taking a gift? That’s what Maury Janes is after, don’t you see? That’s what somebody in Nassau gathered up and sent him! These are … they’re plague trunks, Matt!”
Very little could turn Matt Calverley pale. He was white as paper now.
“Erryn, don’t jump me for this, friend, but aren’t you … isn’t that a little bit over the edge?”
“Is it? Think about it. Where did this stuff come from? If people were just emptying out their closets, where are the shoes, the frock coats, the hats? I never saw one.”
Erryn was speaking fiercely, desperately, sorting it and linking it even as he spoke—all the absurdities, the questions that never quite took shape, the constant niggles of discontent, something doesn’t make sense, all making sense at once now, ugly and horrible, hammered out like blows.
“Why just bedclothes, mostly? Bedclothes that stink, and not just from being used and stored away, but way worse—they stink like sickness. They’re stained. People with yellow fever vomit bile. I’m told the odour is ungodly. And who was Janes sending it to, in the States? Not just anybody. Two merchants and an auctioneer, who would sell it all willy-nilly!”
“But those are just front men!” the colonel protested. “They’re just bodies to claim the cargo at the other end!”
“And if they’re not?” Erryn demanded. He heard Matt suck in his breath, and went on: “Maybe they’re exactly who the stuff is intended for—then what? Consider the destinations: Philadelphia, the second-largest city in the United States. Baltimore, strategic port, to say nothing of being a Southern city that didn’t turn Rebel. New Bern, headquarters and launch point of the Atlantic Blockading Squadron. If I were a Confederate, I’d be hard pressed to find a better place to start a plague myself.”
There was a long, painful silence. After a time the colonel said, very quietly, “We’ve been handling that stuff ourselves. For hours.”
“Yes.” Handling it with a vengeance. Rolling up our sleeves, pawing it, groping in it, breathing its stench. All of us. Me. The poor old colonel, who just wanted to call it a bad idea and go home. My dear, dear Matt…
“I’m sorry,” Erryn said wretchedly. “I didn’t … I never dreamt…”
“Who the hell could?” Matt paced, kicked rubbish, paced some more. Finally he stopped. “Look, it’s a good theory, and you mostly know what you’re doing, so you’re probably right. But the fact is, we have to find out for sure.”
“We can’t find out for sure. Except by dying.”
“Easy, mate,” Matt said gently. “Not everybody who gets the yellow jack dies of it. That’s the first thing. And the second thing is, I damn well mean to find out. I’m going to haul that son of a bitch down here and set him to packing his trunks.”
It was dusk. A single lamp spilled a yellow glare through the ordnance shed. Janes took one step inside the door and stood frozen. From his hiding place in the adjoining room, Erryn could not read the expression on his face, but the shocked rigidity of the man’s body confirmed all his fears. Janes looked from one man to the other, and back to the scattered clothing again.
Oh, my God! He did not say the words, but he might as well have done so. Oh my god oh my god oh my god … !
It took a long time for him to find his voice. By then he had managed a degree of calm, even of pretended arrogance.
“What the devil is going on here, constable?”
“Just a routine search,” Matt said amiably. “When I thought you were robbing Mr. Shaw last night, I had a look in your pock
ets, and found your letter and stuff. And then when Mr. Shaw woke up and told us you really were attacked, well, those papers started to look real suspicious. I thought like as not the villains were after whatever you were smuggling in those trunks.”
“That’s ridiculous! I wasn’t smuggling anything in those trunks!”
“So we’ve discovered.” Matt straightened his jacket a bit, as if the discussion were over and he were about to leave. “Sorry for the trouble, mate. You’re free to pack your things and go.”
“I’m free to pack them? You throw my property all over this dungheap of a shed, and I’m supposed to pack it up again? This is outrageous!”
“This is customs and excise. Same all over. Don’t tell me you’ve never been searched before.”
Janes started to speak and then paused, as if changing direction. “Gentlemen, for God’s sake, I was attacked last night and beaten. I was thrown in jail for no reason. The least you can do is give my property back in the same condition as you took it.”
“I’m sorry, Janes,” Matt said. “But it ain’t our job, see.”
“All right, I can pay you to do it. I’ll pay you decent—more’n you’re used to, I expect.”
Hawkins turned on him sharply. “A man who packs another man’s trunks is his servant, Mr. Janes. Is that what officers in Her Majesty’s service look like to you?”
“I didn’t mean—oh, Christ, never mind. I’ll go find someone on the street—”
“You can’t do that,” Matt said.
“What the devil do you mean, I can’t do that?”
“It’s too late. I’m going off duty, and we have to get this shed all cleaned and locked up before we leave. It’s Her Majesty’s property, you know.”
“God damn it, constable, I can get a man back here in twenty minutes!”
“Maybe you can. Then again, maybe you’ll just climb on one of those fancy blockade-runners and leave your rubbish behind. I mean, it ain’t exactly worth much—”
The Halifax Connection Page 44