Even at top volume, Miss Bascombe managed to speak in reverential tones. Her voice suggested that the activities of the National Society for Returning Young Women to their Friends in the Country were significantly more important than, say, any trifling business Mr Gladstone and his colleagues in government might currently be conducting in Westminster. ‘For all I know to the contrary, you might have designs upon Miss Delaney.’
‘Only designs for her safety and well-being, ma’am.’
Miss Bascombe made a sound somewhere between a loud snort and a horse-like neigh. It didn’t give Adam the impression that the lady was warming to him, or growing more likely to accede to his request. Silence fell as he wondered what to say next, interrupted only by stertorous breathing from the other side of the table.
‘Such a noble cause your Society serves,’ he said eventually.
Miss Bascombe, who clearly thought his statement self-evident, said nothing.
Adam stumbled on with his flattery. ‘So many young women who have been rescued from the dangers of an improvident – and, dare I say it, immoral – life in the city and re-introduced to the simpler virtues of the country. I can only congratulate you on your achievements, ma’am.’ Looking around the Society’s shabby office, he was suddenly struck with inspiration. ‘The fine work you do cries out for the support of all decent people. The moral support and, of course, the financial.’
Miss Bascombe, who had been looking distinctly bored by his words of praise, was immediately more attentive. She sat forward in her chair, her bust coming gently to rest on the table top. ‘As you say, Mr Carver, the Society proves the saviour of many a young girl whose fate would otherwise be too terrible to contemplate.’ She gazed briefly into space as if she was doing exactly that. Then she turned to stare pointedly at the young man. ‘And to save souls from the sins of the city demands the outlay of pounds, shillings and pence. For myself, the joy of setting trembling footsteps once more on the path to virtue is reward enough, but there are so many other expenses involved.’
Adam reached into his pocket. ‘Perhaps I might be allowed to make a small donation to so worthy a cause,’ he said.
Miss Bascombe bowed her head regally to indicate that he would, indeed, be so allowed.
‘A cheque drawn on my bank in Fleet Street. Would that be acceptable?’
‘Ah, Child’s of Fleet Street.’ The woman’s voice dropped to what was, by her standards, a mere whisper. She spoke as if she was naming a place of religious pilgrimage. ‘Most acceptable, most acceptable.’
‘I was thinking five guineas might be of some assistance to your Society.’ In truth, Adam was also thinking that he must be mad to offer so substantial a sum to an organization of such dubious benefit to society. Was finding Dolly Delaney so important a task to him? Was there any honourable way in which he could suggest to Sunman that the Foreign Office might reimburse him? He pushed these thoughts to the back of his mind and continued to smile amiably at the large lady on the other side of the table. ‘Or six, perhaps.’
‘Most kind, most kind.’ Miss Bascombe pushed a silver pen in Adam’s direction.
He picked it up and began to fill out one of the cheques in the book that the bank had sent him only recently. ‘I understand perfectly that you cannot divulge information about your young women to casual enquirers, ma’am. I regret that I obliged you to spell out to me what should have been immediately apparent. It was a failure of both taste and intelligence on my part.’
Miss Bascombe passed him a sheet of blotting paper. ‘You are too harsh on yourself, Mr Carver. I was, perhaps, a little hasty in my earlier remarks.’
Adam handed over the cheque.
‘It is only reasonable that the true friends of a young lady in unfortunate circumstances should be eager to hear good tidings of her,’ Miss Bascombe acknowledged.
‘They are good tidings, are they?’
‘Oh, excellent, Mr Carver, excellent.’ The cheque disappeared swiftly into a drawer in the desk. ‘The young lady in question was, as perhaps you know, eager to leave the city.’
‘I had heard as much,’ Adam admitted.
‘The Society was able to advance her the monies to achieve her ambition. I advised her to travel northwards. To York. We have an office in the capital of the north. I told her to present herself there. I wrote to our representative there, a Mr Ridgewell, to notify him of her impending arrival. He was to find employment for her with a good family, and to provide her with another ten shillings to help her in settling into her new home.’
* * * * *
As Adam emerged from the ramshackle building into the sunlight, he breathed a sigh of relief. Conversation with Miss Bascombe was a demanding activity. He felt he could congratulate himself on his success in persuading her to part with the information about Dolly Delaney, although he wondered what his banker would make of his sudden charitable interest in young women returning to their friends in the country.
Across the narrow street a man was leaning against the wall of a baker’s shop. He was dressed in a dirty grey jacket and crumpled trousers. A battered bowler hat, several sizes too small for him, was perched unsteadily on his head. He was chewing on the unlit stub of a cigar and staring balefully at the baker’s customers as they passed him and entered the shop.
Adam began to walk towards Cheapside. As he approached, the man spat out the cigar stub, pushing himself away from the wall and moving into Adam’s path. ‘You’re the son of Carver the railway builder, ain’t you?’ he said.
Adam, forced to halt, looked at the man in surprise. He did not much like what he saw.
‘My father was engaged in the financing of railway companies, yes.’
‘I thought you were. When I saw you come out of that door over there, I said to myself, “That’s Carver’s boy, that is. Bit older than when I last saw him, but definitely Carver’s boy. Who’d have thought I’d run across him again?”’
‘I make no secret of the identity of my father. My late father. Although I am struggling to understand what business it can be of yours.’ Adam smiled in an attempt to blunt the brusqueness of his words. He did not wish to antagonize the stranger unduly, but nor did he wish to prolong the conversation.
‘Been dead a few years now, ain’t he?’ The man showed no sign of moving out of Adam’s way.
‘Again you are correct, sir, but again I am at a loss as to know how it concerns you.’ The persistence of this belligerent loafer was beginning to annoy him.
‘You don’t recognize me, do you, Mister Carver?’ The man placed a hissing emphasis on the word ‘Mister’ as if there were some doubt as to Adam’s claim to the title. ‘No surprise in that. You weren’t much more than a young pup straight out of school when last we met. And I’m not the man I was. You’d scarcely believe the changes a few years living in the gutter will make.’
‘You are correct, sir. I do not recognize you. Now, if you would oblige me by standing aside, I will leave you.’
‘My name is Benskin. Job Benskin.’
Adam, who was moving to the left to evade the man and proceed on his way, stopped abruptly.
‘Ah, that’s caught your attention, ain’t it?’ Benskin said. ‘Not quite so high and mighty now, eh?’
‘I remember you. I remember your name. And your face.’ It was true. Looking again at this dishevelled and unshaven man, Adam could indeed recall him. On his occasional visits to his father’s offices in Cheapside, he had seen Benskin there. Lurking obsequiously in the background, always ready to dart forward and offer papers to sign or an appointment book to consult. Then he had been smartly dressed and well-trimmed. Charles Carver had thought highly of him, but Adam, when he had considered him at all, had disliked him. He was too oily, too insincere. ‘You were a clerk at one of my father’s companies.’
‘I wa
s. And much good it did me.’
‘I am sorry if you have found yourself fallen on hard times, Mr Benskin. But there is little I can do to help you. My father passed away several years ago and I have resigned any interest I might have had in his businesses.’
‘Don’t you go pussyfooting around with me, you young imp. “My father passed away.”’ The man mimicked Adam’s voice with bitter intensity. ‘Because Job Benskin knows. Why don’t you go ahead and say it? Charles Carver killed himself. That’s what the rumour is, isn’t it? He couldn’t face the disgrace. Another week and your precious father would have been in the Gazette, wouldn’t he? He would have been bankrupt. Or, even worse, he would have been in the courts. As he should have been. Damned rogue that he was.’
Adam flushed with anger. ‘You are impertinent, Mr Benskin. I will not listen to these slanders and calumnies. I must ask you again to step aside and allow me to pass.’
The man turned his head and spat into the gutter. ‘I ain’t stopping you, you arrogant young devil. But you’d do well to remember what I says. Job Benskin knows. He ain’t going to be fooled by all the fol-de-rol your father’s fancy friends put about. Charles Carver didn’t pass away. And he didn’t kill himself, neither.’
Adam had been staring past Benskin but, at these words, he started. He looked down and caught the man’s bloodshot eye. ‘What in heaven’s name do you mean by that?’
‘That would be telling. And I ain’t telling for nothing.’
‘If you are angling for money, I have none about my person to give you.’
The man moved back a step or two, a sneer on his face. Adam considered whether or not he should pursue the conversation. Could this broken-down scarecrow truly have important information about his father’s death? It was unlikely, he decided. Benskin would probably say anything that he thought might seize the attention. Gathering together all the dignity he could muster, Adam stepped past the man, continuing on his way towards Cheapside. But, after he had taken only a dozen paces, he heard once more the bitter voice behind him.
‘Job Benskin knows.’
* * * * *
Walter Patch’s place of business was tucked away behind St Bride’s Church. Although Adam had been told by Miss Bascombe that she had despatched Dolly to York, he had not yet decided for certain whether or not he believed the girl had actually gone. For the time being, he saw no harm in pursuing any other lines of enquiry he had. The photographer was one of these. As Adam examined the window of Patch’s premises, in which two wood and brass cameras stood on their tripods, Sir Christopher Wren’s famous steeple soared above him. Little light could reach the front of the shop, and he wondered how on earth Patch managed to take photographs there. It was not for nothing that they were often called ‘sun’ pictures. He took a step back and looked upwards. The building had three storeys and its neighbours only two; its top floor rose beyond the shadows cast by the church and had large windows facing east. Ah, he thought, that explains it.
Adam pushed open the door of the shop and entered its gloomy interior. There was a tall, well-dressed customer already in the shop. He was standing at a wooden counter, talking to a shorter man with a tobacco-stained moustache, whom Adam assumed was Walter Patch. As the customer continued to speak, Patch’s eyes drifted away from him and focused on his new visitor. Adam nodded at the photographer, who stared at him unblinkingly for a moment before returning his attention to the man in front of him.
The customer was talking of the glass plates that he needed for his camera. Patch picked up a notepad and began scribbling in it with a pencil.
‘If you could have them delivered, Patch,’ the tall man said. ‘The usual address.’ Then he turned and left the shop, raising his hat briefly to Adam as he passed him.
Patch watched him go and then turned to the young man. ‘You’re that nosey bugger Pennethorne warned me about, ain’t you?’ He spoke cheerfully enough. It seemed the photographer was likely to be less troubled by the young man’s questions than his confederate.
‘Almost certainly I am,’ Adam acknowledged.
‘The one who’s asking all the questions about the girls.’
‘One particular girl.’
‘Well, I ain’t going to be much help to you even if I wanted to be. Which I don’t. They come here, they drop their drawers, I point the camera at ’em and they goes. Simple as that. I don’t bother much with names. Most of ’em wouldn’t tip me their real moniker anyway. Who’s this one you’re interested in?’
‘Dolly Delaney.’
‘Blonde bint?’
Adam agreed that Dolly was fair-haired.
‘I remember her. Pennethorne sent her round from Wych Street. She come ’ere three or four times.’
‘And?’
Patch laughed. It wasn’t a very pleasant laugh. ‘What d’you think? We goes upstairs. She casts off ’er clobber. I set up my camera on its tripod, disappear under the cover and take pictures of ’er.’
‘Did she speak to you at all? Have you any notion why she chose to have these pictures taken?’
The photographer snorted briefly and contemptuously. ‘Why? Why d’you think? Money, of course.’ He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. ‘And she didn’t do much in the way of talking. Some of ’em tend to gab a lot beforehand and some don’t. She didn’t.’
‘And you wouldn’t want your models talking while the pictures were being taken. For fear of spoiling them.’
‘Exactly. It’s hard enough to get most of them to sit still without encouraging them to start flapping their mouths and ruining the plates that way. They ain’t cheap, you know.’
Adam did know. His own experiments in the art of the daguerreotype had been surprisingly expensive. He made to speak again, but, before he could properly begin, Patch had interrupted him.
‘Don’t go doing what you did with Pennethorne, if that was what you was planning. Trying to cod me with talk of the police. They may scare Pennethorne, but they don’t set my teeth a-trembling. I got friends who could put the fear of God up that berk Sampson fast enough.’
Adam said nothing and Patch leaned forward, baring his yellowing teeth. ‘You know who that gent is who just left?’
‘I have no notion.’
‘’E’s a magistrate, ain’t he? And I got other customers just as nobby as him. And they’re all very pally with Walter Patch. He supplies ’em with what they need in the photographic line, does Walter Patch, and they ain’t going to take too kindly to anybody who tries to stop him doing so.’
‘I am not trying to stop you dealing with your customers, Mr Patch. I am merely seeking information about one girl who visited you.’
‘I’ve told you as much as I know.’
‘Which seems to be very little.’
‘Well, maybe I know something and maybe I know nothing but, either way, I ain’t telling you any more.’
Adam was wondering how to proceed with his questioning when there was the sound of the door opening, and another customer entered the shop.
With a twist of his face, half-scowl and half-grin, in the young man’s direction, Patch crossed the room to serve him.
Adam was left to pick up and examine some of the advertising leaflets, scattered over a glass-topped cabinet, that the camera companies issued to extol their wares.
‘You know ’ow much I can charge for an ordinary portrait?’ the photographer asked, when he returned. ‘About a bob a go.’ He looked up at Adam. ‘And ’ow much do you reckon I can charge for a picture of a nice-looking woman in the buff? Go on, have a guess.’
‘I have no notion.’
‘About three times as much.’
‘A profitable business, then.’
‘Very profitable, and I ain’t going to let a smooth young gent like yourself or
an interfering buzzard like Sampson get in the way of it.’
‘And what of the young women who sit for you?’
Patch flapped his hand in exasperation. ‘Nobody’s twisting these dollymops’ arms to get ’em in front of the camera,’ he said. ‘We pay ’em and they’re glad to get the gelt. We ain’t such villains, you know.’
‘Your friend Mr Pennethorne said much the same.’
‘He ain’t my friend. He’s a business associate. But no doubt he’s right in what he said. We both are. We ain’t doing no harm. And most of the time Sampson and the other miserable bluebottles who come pestering us can’t prove we’re breaking the law.’ Here, Patch walked away from Adam to return to a position behind his wooden counter. He took a piece of cloth from underneath it and began to wipe its surface carefully. ‘So why don’t you just bugger off and leave us alone?’
* * * * *
Adam waved his hand at the waiter in the Marco Polo and indicated, by an assortment of elaborate gestures, that he would welcome another Scotch and soda. He was sitting in the club’s smoking room, a place which now always reminded him of poor Mr Moorhouse, but today he was thinking of Charles Carver.
The meeting with Benskin the previous day had unsettled Adam. He had, he realized, seen so little of his father for so many years before his death that it seemed as if it was only when he was a boy that he had known him. And in truth, even then he had seen his father infrequently; when he was not at school, he was largely entrusted to the care of servants.
The waiter returned with his drink and Adam continued to think about his father. He remembered that the old man had taken him once to Wyld’s Great Globe in Leicester Square. And they had seen a panorama of the Siege of Sebastopol later in the day. Adam thought he must have been about ten years old at the time. Further pictures from the past flashed into his mind. The two of them had been to the Zoological Gardens that same summer – the summer before they had left the house in North Moulton Street. He had liked the hippopotamus, and his father had told him that it was a gift from the Pasha of Egypt. What was the creature’s name? Obaysch, that was it. Obaysch the hippo. He was there still, as Adam remembered reading an article on the Zoo recently in The Illustrated London News. Indeed, he had been curiously moved to hear that, during all the years that he had been growing up, boarding in Shrewsbury, studying in Cambridge, travelling in Greece, the animal that had lodged in his memory had continued to live in Regent’s Park, visited by thousands of other children as delighted by the sight of it as he had been.
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