by Steven Price
He took from his coat the sealed envelope for Farquhar and propped it conspicuously upright against the desk lamp. From an interior pocket he withdrew a soft lump of wax and kneaded it with his hands to warm it until it was suitably pliable and this he split into several smaller lumps and folded them carefully into his handkerchief. He opened the drawers of the desk one after another but he did not find the man’s keys. In a locked drawer at the bottom of the desk he found a loaded revolver and he held this in his hand a moment feeling the cold weight of the thing and then set it back and locked the drawer. He lifted the papers on the desk and shifted the dossiers but the keys were not there. He checked the cabinet, he ran his fingers lightly along the bookshelves. Then he saw the man’s chesterfield hanging from a hook on the back of the door. He crossed the room quickly. Reached in.
And pulled from the folds of the pocket a ring of heavy iron keys.
Three minutes later he was slipping sideways from the gallerist’s study and shutting the door with both hands behind him lest it make some sound and creeping noiselessly towards the stairs. Folded into the handkerchief in his pocket lay the soft wax impresses of each of the man’s keys. The hallway was empty, the stairs bright after the gloom of the study. He could hear the muffled sound of the party far below, the low tidal rumble of conversation.
All this time, said a voice near him, you were lying.
Foole froze.
Pinkerton stood in the shadow of the landing, watching him. He came forward with his arms folded at his chest and his dark face melancholy and wrathful. Hello, Edward, he said.
Foole held his hands loose and easy at his sides. And for the first time in twenty years he nodded to that name. I did not think to see you here, he said.
Pinkerton smiled a bitter smile. I’m sure that’s the truth.
The truth is not as complicated as you imagine it.
I imagine it to be very simple, Mr. Shade.
Foole observed the man’s suppressed fury and thought of the party below and how alone he was with this man. Then he nodded. If you’ll excuse me, William. I’m expected back.
He started towards the railing.
What I don’t understand, Pinkerton called to him, is the why. Why risk it? Why come to me, of all people? A man like you must have dozens of contacts. Any of them could’ve traced her killer. He stood very still. Did you want to be caught?
Foole paused, turned. You flatter yourself. You’ve caught nothing.
No? Your man Fludd was released from prison in December. Your Mr. Utterson is the representing attorney for Martin Reckitt. You went to see Mr. Reckitt at Millbank in disguise.
What of it?
You’re flash. Through and through.
Whatever you think you know, Foole said, you’re mistaken. A name is of no importance.
A man can change, is that it?
Martin Reckitt’s a friend.
Curious friendship.
Foole smiled a cold smile. Aren’t they all?
Pinkerton took a step forward. I’ve informed Mr. Shore about you. I’ll let the flash world know my interest in you. The Yard will call for you on every damned investigation from here to Edinburgh. In America my Agency has already flagged you and your man Fludd. I’ll ruin you.
Foole shook his head. I live an honest life.
Something hardened in Pinkerton’s face. His eyes shifted, took in the door to the study. You have an interesting sense of direction. Are those Mr. Farquhar’s private rooms?
Foole wet his lips.
Pinkerton stepped closer. What would happen if I were to turn out your pockets? What would I find?
Foole could feel the wax impressions of the keys, huge, heavy, dragging at his side. You came to my house, he said abruptly, changing the subject. You harassed and threatened my serving girl. The child has been terrified. You should be ashamed.
Pinkerton met his eye, his gaze fierce. I know about the war, he said. I know what you did for my father. What you did to him.
Foole stared. I never did anything to your father.
Pinkerton loomed within reach and Foole was aware of the enormous bulk of the man, the thickness of his chest, the sour wine on his breath. Downstairs a click and scrape of cutlery on china, the muffled thrum of all those voices speaking at once. He made to push past but Pinkerton grabbed at his arm and his grip was iron-like and brutal.
You gave up my father’s operative to the Confederates, he whispered angrily. A man died because of you. A man my father trusted.
I never betrayed anyone.
You as good as killed him.
Foole shook himself free. As good as? he hissed, suddenly angry. There was the roar of the dinner party as a door opened downstairs and then closed and Foole could hear the slow click of heels in the stairwell. Didn’t you ever wonder why your father told you nothing about it? He looked at Pinkerton and a long-dampened hatred began to rise. He said, very softly: Spaar came after me, he betrayed me. I had no choice. He was shaking and he started to go and then he turned back. I shot the bastard twice to make sure, he said.
And then he pushed past and went back down.
THIRTY-TWO
After dinner in the whorl of chair legs scraping back and napkins collapsing William lost sight of Foole and of the Colonel and when he turned in his seat his big thighs straining he could see nothing but movement and drift. He kept turning over in his mind the thief’s words from upstairs. Earlier he had watched Foole stand and walk to the Colonel’s seat and speak some emphatic message and Vail had glanced uneasily around then shaken the small thief’s hand in reply. William could not think what Foole might be up to but he did not like any of it. He glimpsed Mrs. Shore gliding towards him and he turned at once and crossed the hall and ascended the stairs without looking back and in the shadows of the small landing he found, smoking a cigar and staring out of the darkness at the guests below, the Colonel himself. Coat standing open, face drawn. He was quite alone.
Forgive me, William said. I didn’t mean to intrude.
Vail’s eyes glinted obsidian in the half-light.
You are William Pinkerton, are you not? the Colonel said after a moment. You look as uncomfortable as I feel, sir.
I wish I felt as comfortable as you look.
Vail turned and peered back down at the guests. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a second cigar but William waved his hand no. There was a low green divan on the landing but neither man sat.
Look at them, he said. I was recalled here to be at the very centre of the empire, Mr. Pinkerton. And do you know what I have found?
No, sir.
I have found there is no centre. They are the centre. He gestured with his cigar. Them.
I’ve always supposed the British Empire wasn’t really a place, William said.
Then you are a wiser man than I.
William cleared his throat. He glanced quickly along the room but saw no sign of Foole.
London is not really a place either, Vail said. I shall be relieved to be gone from it. I think Gordon was relieved as well. He looked at William sharply. I did know the man, he said. General Gordon. It is not such a large empire that one can avoid such meetings.
You said you never met him.
The Colonel shrugged. It was a damned foolish spot of nonsense, sending him down to the Sudan. It was bound to end in disaster. I wonder sometimes who makes these decisions. Do they even trouble to think about it?
It was not William’s empire nor was it of interest and Gordon to him remained only a man taken apart in warfare and he had seen his share of that kind of suffering. He knew what the flesh was worth.
The Colonel shifted a stiff shoulder in his dress regimentals. He said after a moment, The man made it perfectly clear how he would conduct the campaign even a year ago. He said he was in favour of vigorous military action. Vigorous. That was the word. Retreat was never on his mind. Maybe he’ll be proved right, a man can never tell. He said there would be no way to protect Egypt against this M
ahdi if Khartoum fell. You can’t fortify the south of that country, it can’t be done. He said, and I remember it well, You might as well fortify against a fever. He believed if the Mahdi took back all of the Sudan his followers would spread throughout the region. But he was like that. He was a born fighter. He never was a statesman.
Sometimes a man can surprise you, William said. Sometimes he can be two people.
The Colonel grunted. Gordon? There was never a man more completely himself. Stand him at the head of an army and he could march it anywhere. But task him with the delicate problems of statesmanship and he’d look at you in confusion. The Colonel shook his head. He was very Old Testament in that way. Never mind the paradoxes of the Gospels. For Gordon it was always wrath and fate and might. All that slavery business last March is where he went wrong.
We’ve had our own problems with that.
Vail nodded. Your father was an abolitionist, I understand.
William was surprised the Colonel had heard of it.
I’ll miss him, said Vail, and for a long confusing moment William thought he was referring to his father. But then the Colonel added, He thought the Sudan could be civilized. He thought the slavery question could be strangled in its sleep. He was a strong, amazing, foolish man.
William felt a growing discomfort. He glanced at the room below but could see neither Foole nor Shore among the guests. The servants were rearranging chairs in their rows and shifting the settees and plush sofas into position for the evening’s entertainments.
You have just come from Afghanistan, Colonel?
Indeed. With the Amir there. And it was bloody cold, I can tell you that. I’ll be glad to get down to the Congo in the spring. At least until the flies start biting.
A lady in green silk shrieked with laughter. A glass shattered.
You’ll be needed down there for your demonstration, Vail said.
I guess so.
They stood awhile then in the darkness and a figure came halfway up the stairs and stopped with a hand on the balustrade as if trying to determine who they were before turning and going back down.
I was in Alexandria six years ago, the Colonel said. They wanted me for the Sudan post but I was already promised for an expedition in the Cape of Good Hope, I had to decline. I take some comfort in the fact that fifteen years from now all of us will likely be in our graves and none of this will matter at all. It will not matter that Gordon has arrived there first.
Fifteen years? William said with a slight smile.
Too brief?
Too long.
The Colonel smiled. They were quiet for a moment and then Vail said, We have only one task on this earth, sir. And that is to live a just life.
Who can say what that is?
Indeed. It’s different for each of us. But always it is the surrendering of one’s fate to God’s will. I think of dinners such as this with a kind of horror. I understand the honour but it makes so little sense. Why do they not throw dinners for those who need the food? The Colonel tilted his face, the greying hairs at his temple in their tufts. He looked again out at the ladies in their taffeta mingling below, the gentlemen wheeling and drifting past. The gaslights in their sconces glittered up off the marble floor like port lights reflected in a harbour. All of this is meaningless, this—he stretched his hand the length of his body in a strangely effeminate gesture—is all just transitory and passing. Our bodies will age and die but we shall not. They call it courage, what men like us have. It is not. It is simply a different perspective.
William said nothing. The sound of a viola tuning up could be heard drifting up from the low platform in the corner of the great room. The Colonel turned then and gripped his shoulder, a sharp strong bruising grip.
There, said Vail. That’s flesh. That’s what I hate.
William gave him a hard surprised look. You did not seem to hate it so at dinner.
That man you saw tonight, at dinner. That is the man I wish to be rid of.
They were silent then and William felt a strong affinity for the man, an affection, rising. He saw in him something of his brother Robert, something of his father. The goodness sometimes found in physical strength. The directness of it.
I wanted to ask you, sir, he said.
Vail’s pale eyes studied him.
That gentleman you were speaking to earlier, at dinner. Mr. Foole. What did he say to you?
The Colonel frowned. I beg your pardon, he said. I don’t know any Mr. Foole.
Adam Foole. You do. I saw you together.
Vail shook his head.
A small man, William prompted. Silver hair. Very startling eyes, almost purple.
Ah, Vail smiled. Yes. He didn’t give his name.
What did he want?
Oh, nothing from me, Vail said with a puzzled laugh. He was asking after Mr. Farquhar.
The entertainments began. A soprano just arrived from Finland rose wraithlike and pale and stood like a white flame in that vast room. She sang unaccompanied and William who had been lurking at the far side of the hall seeking some glimpse of Foole found himself instead arrested by her. He could not discern any language in what she sang but there was Margaret combing her long hair before bed and he went to her and held the brush and their eyes met in the mirror and then he was back in London, listening, his eyes were wet.
Then the girl finished and the room stood as one and applauded. He moved grimly and quickly along the rows. He found Shore and his wife seated near the front on a green velvet settee and the chief inspector shifted his bulk and the springs creaked under him and then his wife leaned across the man’s lap to tap William on the thigh with her closed fan and give him a watery smile.
Where’s Foole? he whispered to Shore.
But he was thinking of Farquhar and of what the Colonel had said. He knew the gallerist a wealthy man and much in the news of late with his valuable painting The Emma. He thought of Foole’s presence in the upper study and of the huge manservant meeting with Farquhar in the park and he understood this evening must be, for Foole, part of some design. Nothing else made any sense. He tried to put all of it together but he could not. Not yet, he told himself.
He felt an elbow in his ribs.
At least try to look interested, Shore hissed.
A man limped slowly down the rows to stand before the guests, his gait stiff as if from some old wound in the hip. He wore thick drooping moustaches and a purple waistcoat like a gypsy bandit from some hill country and he stood with his long white fingers twitching and introduced himself. He had come with a rare and wondrous device he called a zoltascope which presented the most marvellous of images. Paintings in light, he exclaimed. Images of a world which is not. As he spoke two assistants in white suits erected a tall white sheet at the front of the room and drew it taut and stepped back to one side.
It is not a trick, he said, it is not witchcraft. Though there are those who have condemned it as such. It is an example of the wonders of science. What you shall see, ladies and gentlemen, you shall not believe.
William leaned over to Shore and murmured, Foole’s been working. I followed him up to Farquhar’s study during dinner. I don’t know what he was up to.
Shore twisted his chin slightly and nodded behind him. He’s watching you now.
Where?
Back of the room. Had an eye on you since you sat down. What did you say to him?
The gypsy was calling for the lights to be dimmed and his assistants were going from sconce to sconce in the great room and the gaslights one by one were sinking into blackness.
I’ve seen that look before, Shore whispered. There’s murder in it.
A beam of light appeared. Smoke folded eerily through it. The white sheet burned there in the darkness like a beacon. William had seen such a device twice before and both times it had struck him as a faintly sulphuric and unnatural display. The first time had been at a conference on charlatans in San Antonio and the magician displaying the machinery had explained that they had
once been used to conjure devils and to display the faces of the dead.
The room held its breath. Through the drifting smoke appeared an eerily lit village, a river threading slowly between its winter streets. There was a bridge, a church steeple, a woman peering into a shop window. A house at the edge of the village with one light on.
And then it began to snow.
He heard a gasp and Mrs. Shore shrugged up her shoulders and glanced above as if to check for snow there. Shore’s thick hand fumbled out, grasped hers.
It was a thick snow, a soft snow, it came down fast but did not thicken on the ground. A line of geese appeared and flew slowly past the church tower. A horse and cart appeared and crossed over the bridge and left the village. All of this in absolute silence. A shepherd appeared in the foreground and drove a flock of sheep across a hill and out of sight and then the image of the village went dark.
He could hear the guests around him murmuring uneasily and then before them glowed the image of a man, bearded, wearing a red cap and with a thick grey beard. He looked vicious, a kind of mountain bandolero. And all at once his eyes shifted, rolled back in his head, rolled forward until he was staring with fierce contempt at the room. His eyes rolled again.
Nobody moved. All held their breath. William could feel the alarm and tension in the bodies around him, the tautness of the legs, the fright corded in the throats of the ladies.