The American Boy

by Andrew Taylor

  I looked aghast at her pale, determined face. Something inside me shivered and broke. I turned and ran. My vision shimmered. Tears chilled my cheeks. I pushed my way through a knot of mourners who had attended the cortège and burst through the gates of the cemetery.

  Drawn up outside was a row of carriages. I glimpsed a face I recognised at the window of the nearest one, a hackney. Mrs Kerridge was waiting for her mistress.

  I ran on. In my mind, the cry of that damned bird ran round like a jingle.

  Ayez peur, ayez peur.

  73

  I must have walked more than thirty miles that day, from one side of London to the other and then back in great zigzags. At nine o’clock of the evening I found myself in Seven Dials. It had come on to rain, but that did not deter the drinkers and the prostitutes, the beggars and the hawkers.

  By this time, I was long past the surge of misery that had enveloped me as I left the graveyard. I was cool, entirely rational. I was no longer blind to the need for self-preservation, that most resilient of instincts. I had a firm grasp on my stick, avoided dark entries and kept a wary eye on those I met.

  I had walked so far with a simple purpose in mind, that I might sleep eventually, for a weary body is the best of all soporifics. I had come to Seven Dials with a purpose, too. A drowning man will catch at a twig and hope against hope it will bear his weight.

  Ayez peur, ayez peur.

  I turned into Queen-street. A moment later I was strolling past Mr Theodore Iversen’s shop. There was a light in the window. I crossed the road and went into an alehouse a few doors further down. I ordered a pint of porter, pushed my way through the crowd and leaned against a wall beside a grimy window that gave me a view of the other side of the street.

  I drank slowly, rebuffing attempts at conversation. I was caught on the horns of a dilemma. I did not wish to make my interest in the shop too obvious, but unless I went closer, there was no possibility of my finding what I sought. It soon became apparent that there was a good deal of coming and going at Mr Iversen’s – both at the shop door and at the passage leading to the backyard, where the men had attacked me. Respectability was an uncommon quality in Seven Dials, but all things are relative and I gradually came to the conclusion that those who patronised the shop were, taken as a whole, less disreputable than those who came and went by the passage.

  In general, the better sort of Mr Theodore Iversen’s customers emerged from the shop with a package or a bottle. Apart from the ghostly movements I sometimes discerned on the other side of the glass, all I saw clearly of the interior was revealed in the moments when the door opened. However much I peered, my vantage point would not allow me to see into the back of the establishment.

  Someone touched my arm. I wheeled around, twisting my features into a scowl. For an instant I thought there was no one there. Then I lowered my gaze and saw in the dim light of the taproom what at first I took to be the pale, dirty face of a child with ragged ginger hair hanging loose to her shoulders. A moment later, I realised that the shape beneath the torn shift she wore was womanly, and almost at once I recalled her identity.

  “Mary Ann,” I said. “I – I hope I find you well.”

  The little dumb woman uttered the high, bird-like sound I recalled so well from our meeting in the yard behind Mr Iversen’s house. Her face was working with fear, and perhaps anxiety. She seized the cuff of my coat with grubby hands and pulled me towards the door. For an instant I resisted, fearing that she was leading me into a trap. A ripple of notes, as pure as a chorister’s, burst out of her. I allowed her to tow me into the street.

  “What is it? What do you wish to show me?”

  This time her cry was sharper, even with an edge of anger. She gestured vigorously with her right arm, pointing towards the end of the street, and motioning with her other hand, as if to reinforce the urgency. Then she pushed me away from her, and as she did so, her eyes slid across the road to the shop. I saw the fear in her face, this time quite unmistakable. She bunched her hands into fists and pretended to punch me in the chest again and again and again, the blows light, meant for show, not for harm: to tell me something.

  “They are coming to find me?” I said. “They mean to hurt me?”

  Her mouth opened into a great oval, showing the rotting teeth within. Her squeals became louder. She passed the flat of her hand across my windpipe.

  Cut-throat.

  “Tell me one thing before I go.” I felt in my pocket for my purse. “Has Mr Iversen still got his bird? The one that says ayez peur, the one he used to keep in the shop?”

  She shook her head and shooed me, as if I were a wandering chicken.

  “What happened to it?” I opened the purse and showed it to her. “Where did it go?”

  She spat at the purse, her spittle spraying on my hand.

  I cursed myself for a fool. “I’m sorry. But when did the bird go? Within the last week?”

  In the dull evening light, dusk contending with flaring lamps and torches, Mary Ann’s face grew even paler and the freckles stood out like typhus spots. She was looking not at me but across the road. Two heavily built men in black coats had emerged from the passageway beside the shop. One of them glanced at me and I saw him touch his companion’s arm.

  At the same time, I saw something else, something so wholly unexpected I could hardly believe it. Passing in front of the two men, impeding their rush across the road at me, was a small, lopsided but intensely powerful figure. He pushed open Mr Iversen’s door – by some acoustical freak I heard the jangle of the shop bell – and vanished inside. But I recognised him. It was the tooth-puller, the man called Longstaff, who lived with his mother in Lambert-place, quite a different neighbourhood from this; the man who had given me the satchel containing the severed finger.

  Mary Ann screeched and ran away down the street. I walked hurriedly in the opposite direction, towards the crossroads that gives Seven Dials its name. I glanced back and saw the men plunging across the roadway, careless of the traffic. I abandoned dignity and broke into a run.

  For the next quarter of an hour, we played fox and hounds, and all the time I made my way south and west. In the end I lost them by ducking into an alley off Gerrard-street and working my way along the backs of the buildings till I could emerge at the eastern end of Lisle-street. I slowed to a more comfortable walk and took my time strolling among the bright lights of Leicester-square. I did not think they would dare attack me there, even if they had been able to follow me. I made two leisurely circuits of the square, enough to convince me that I had thrown them off.

  At last I made my way back to the Strand and Gaunt-court. I was exhausted, and faint with hunger for I had not eaten since long before I met Sophie. Far worse than weariness and sore feet, though, were the anxieties that weighed down my spirits.

  A hackney was waiting near the entrance to Gaunt-court, its driver huddled under his greatcoat on the box. The glass was down and the smell of a cigar wafted out into the evening air, its fragrance momentarily overwhelming the smells of the street. I had a glimpse of two eyes, their whites quite startling in the half-light of the evening, and heard a deep, familiar voice.

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

  74

  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.”