by Steven Price
The next morning was Sunday and it brought a knock at the door. He opened it in his shirt sleeves and saw John Shore bareheaded picking at his hat and the chief glanced up and said, There’s something you should know.
Shouldn’t you be at church?
Shore smiled tiredly. He handed across a small slip of paper with an address scrawled upon it in brown ink.
William glanced at it. What’s this?
It’s in the southwest. Out past Sands End. I had Mr. Blackwell make some inquiries.
William stood perplexed and neither man spoke for a long moment and then Shore said, gruffly, It seems she isn’t dead after all.
And he gripped William’s shoulder and there was kindness in it and even a little pity and then he set his hat back on his head and went.
He did not go to Scotland. That afternoon he took passage on a crowded passenger steamer at Waterloo Pier and journeyed upriver through the noise and he disembarked at Pimlico Pier watching the sky for rain. There he hired an ancient rowboat oared by an old man with a single yellow tooth standing up from his lower gums. The man’s accent was thick and William could not understand him. They rowed slowly on west, passing under the dripping arches of Battersea Bridge and wending uneasily in the shallows past the low-set colliers moored at the mouth of Chelsea Basin where the gasworks lay. The sky darkened. A stretch of meagre brown meadow came into view on the north bank and the old man in his oilskin rowed in silence his eyes on William’s face. The river traffic thinned. At last they reached Broomhouse Dock and William got out his legs stiff and he set off walking up the lane past the estates there until he reached Fulham Road. The air was crisp, clean, trees and fenced-in fields lining the roads. He turned north again towards Walham Green and it started to rain and he drew his hat low but did not seek shelter. The rain was not heavy. He had to stop and ask directions as he could see no street signs but at last he found the low stone walls of Westminster Cemetery and her small cottage set within sight of the fields of the dead.
He scraped his shoes on the iron scraper, stamped them twice for good measure. Then he knocked and waited what seemed a long time while the rain dripped from the eaves. A bolt rasped in its draw. The door opened.
Standing there was an old woman, leaning stoutly in her rags like a melted candle. One gnarled hand trembled on the edge of the door. William was shaking his head and staring and she was squinting back from the fog of her failing eyesight like a woman confronting a ghost.
You don’t got no sense at all, do you? she said at last. And waved a gruff hand, her voice dry. She kept clearing her throat and flaring her nostrils as if struggling for breath, some low flicker of something in her cloudy eyes.
Sally Porter, he said. Holding his hat in his hands, water streaming down his face. Sally Porter.
The cottage was small but warm for a wood fire burned in the grate. On the mantel fastened in its own wax and leaning at a crazy angle stood the stub of a red candle. William sat in his wet clothes on a dirty sofa. There was no carpet over the bare planks and the boards were coming loose in their nails and creaked under his weight. It was a square room and he saw at a glance the stained wallpaper some twenty years out of fashion and under it in places the crumbling plaster. She shuffled slowly at her tasks and her hands shook and she kept her eyes downcast. He did not take off his coat. On the table in the corner stood an elegant, seven-branched silver candlestick with a vine carved into its stalks. He did not need to look closer to know its origin.
I ain’t goin to ask how you found me, she said.
He shrugged. John Shore.
Ha. That John Shore never tracked nothin in his life.
But now that he had come he felt an overwhelming sadness and suddenly wished he had not found her. He gestured halfheartedly with his hat and said, It’s nicer than the last. I like the candlestick. Is it Jewish?
She grunted. We put some money aside.
I got your letter.
I know you did.
What happened to California?
Sally gave him a quick sharp look. She sat in a high-backed rocking chair and a white cat unfurled from under the window and padded over to her and leaped into her lap. She combed her knuckles through the cat’s fur. It all felt suddenly mean and heavy to William, the shock of seeing her beginning to dissipate. He said, directly: Edward Shade is gone.
She inclined her head yes. Her face was hard, there was no apology in it.
I came here to ask for the truth, Sally.
I know you did.
His lips were dry, his tongue thick as cotton webbing in his mouth. He was thinking about her letter and Edward Shade and struggling to put it together but something was not right and he could not do so. Will you tell me about it? he said gently. Will you tell me how it happened?
You ain’t likely to understand it, she said. But she paused and some uncertainty twisted in her face and then she said, He always was a good boy. Or near enough to one, Billy. Like you was. An he grown up to be a fine man despite it all.
You can’t mean Shade.
All right.
You’ve been in contact with him all this time?
Not like you mean it.
He shook his head. Shade betrayed my father, he said softly. He lied to him, humiliated him. My father trusted you.
Stop all that now. Ain’t no understandin a cat by skinnin it.
He watched the old woman’s cat lift its face and stare into the corner then rise like smoke and vanish into the gloom. He got to his feet, crossed to the dirty window. He felt huge, and dark, a wrath rising. What would Ben have said? he muttered.
Sally looked away. Her gnarled hands locked and rigid in her lap like twists of driftwood.
Then William understood. Ben was a part of it too? You and Ben both? Lying to my father all these years.
Don’t you talk like that.
And to me. You must have been terrified. You must have thought I was there to—
No.
And all that in the letter, the things you sent me. He gave those to you. Shade did.
Billy.
I was such a fool, he said bitterly.
You ain’t goin to understand it. You father he loved that poor boy like he were a son to him. Like he were you or Robert either one. I reckon it were his worst grief. I ain’t sayin it to hurt you.
The hell he did.
She gave him a long slow measured look and it seemed to William he was being seen through, stared into, as if she had lost one kind of vision for some other, a way of seeing that would cut her off from this world of the human and the hidden. She said, My Mister Porter found him, six years ago now. He were workin deliveries an followed some dipper not hardly more than a child up out of Bermondsey and she led him right down to a park an who do you reckon was standin there but Edward hisself. Edward didn’t hardly hesitate. Just walked right up to Ben an put his arms round him and give him a hug like to take the life out of him.
He knew he was being hunted.
I reckon he known it for always. You father, bless his heart, he was wantin for somethin, some notion of rightness, I reckon you know that better than most.
Something turned over in William’s stomach, some foreboding.
After the war ended Edward went up to Chicago to find him, Sally said. She was peering in his direction with her vague eyes and when he said nothing she said, You father he done just returned from the Mireau Gang Murder out of Texas. Young Edward broke into you father’s study with a knife and a pistol.
He did not interrupt but still she raised a hand as if to stay his questions. Edward waited for you father with the express purpose of shooting him dead, she said. Nodding and nodding as she spoke. That boy was all of eighteen years old and he carried nothin but murder in his heart. He sat behind you father’s desk an he listened to you folks talk out in the hallway. He known what had been done, see. He’d had four years to think it through and he come to the conclusion that you father sent Ignatius Spaar into Richmond to tie up hi
s loose ends. He supposed you father and General McClellan come under scrutiny and no further embarrassments after Lewis and Scully and poor Timothy Webster was to be risked. He were just cleanin house, is how he put it.
Sally worked her lips as if rubbing some oil into them and then she lifted her face. The one thing young Edward weren’t never able to understand was just how the Confederate Secret Service got to him so quick. They was there outside his door almost before Spaar come at him. He fought off Spaar and killed him in the fight and they was in the room quick as sugar on a finger.
She took a long slow rattling breath and then she sat a moment in the gathering gloom as if she had lost the thread and then she nodded in his direction. Spaar done turned, she said. An assassination, is what it was. But who had ordered it?
Not my father.
Or not only him, Sally said quietly. Truth was, Spaar was taken by the Confederates his second day in Richmond and made a deal for his life. O he had Confederate fingers in his pocket, no mistake. And if he’d succeeded, if he’d killed Edward? Then the Confederates would have taken him into custody just the same and hanged him just the same. Like they done to Webster.
Why would they do that?
She shrugged. Everyone was betraying everybody.
Except my father.
Except you father. And Edward.
A log collapsed in the hearth. William scoffed. How do you know all this?
But she didn’t answer. Instead she said, Young Edward didn’t know none of this either when he gone to you father’s study that night. He meant to kill you father dead and when you father come in and seen Edward he knowed it also. He told me once, he said, the boy’s eyes wasn’t even human that night. It frightened him, it did. They didn’t light no candles but the one, they sat in the near darkness, the house goin about its ordinary nighttime business, the maid goin up and down them stairs. But now Edward didn’t shoot. There were somethin in you father’s face that give him pause. What do you suppose that was?
William sat quiet, listening. The rain had stopped.
You father he was crying. That were what stayed Edward’s hand. He made no sound but he were crying and Edward tried to hold on to his spite and he told him what he’d come to do and what he held you father accountable for. You father just looked at young Edward and said that was okay except he didn’t want you mother to find his body. Then he said he’d searched for Edward after the war and did the boy know about it. He said he’d resigned from the service in sixty-two in part because the government had refused to negotiate Edward’s release. He said ever man has something he has to do in his life to learn what he is capable of and to understand the past can’t be altered none nor corrected and he said if killing him could not be avoided then it were best it were done quickly and Edward got himself gone. And then he did one thing that left the boy more confused than ever. He stood up and he come round the desk and he pulled him towards him and he held him.
Shade never shot at him.
Edward said he always figured you father wanted him to.
They sat like that a long moment.
Why didn’t you tell me about this before? he asked. Why did you lie to me?
Some truths ain’t ours to do with as we’d wish, Billy. You got to let some things go, if you goin to find happiness. You father he ain’t never understood this.
My father.
Now you listen, she said sharply. I loved you father. An my Mister Porter did too. Weren’t nothin we wouldn’t of done for him. That’s God’s own truth.
He looked at her without anger but she flinched all the same. He pulled his wet hat low and went to the door and started to go but then he paused. Where is he? he said. Where did he go?
I ain’t never known that, she said gruffly.
Where is he, Sally?
She wet her cracked lips, glared across at him. Don’t you leave here pretending like I ain’t got no notion of how things was. You father could be right mean and difficult and about as forgiving as a hole in a boat. I known how it was between you. I ain’t the one tryin to forget it. Her voice was creaking and she fell silent then as if out of breath. A shadow like a great wing passed over the far wall.
Where is he? he said a third time.
Aw now, Billy, she said. Her face twisted into a mask of grief. He’s gone on ahead to Argentina. He’s gone. You best to let it lie.
Argentina, he said. He looked at her as if for the last time. Is there more?
She peered up at him through milky eyes. Not that I can tell to you.
He opened the door of the cottage, his back to her. You should thank god my father’s dead, he said. You’d have broke his damn heart.
There was only one liner leaving direct for Buenos Aires and it did not depart Liverpool until that Saturday. All week William slept late and ate heavily and settled his affairs at Scotland Yard and said nothing of Sally’s information to Shore or Blackwell. His anger again cooled. He turned over Sally’s account in his mind trying to make sense of it but he could not do so. On Friday evening he took an overnight train to Liverpool and in the morning walked out of the railway station and down to the riverfront pier with a red sun low in the sky at his back. He descended a rattling wood quay. Walked through a crowd of strangers weeping into their hands, his own gloved fists curled like great brown spiders. The pain in his ribs was at last beginning to subside. The dark liner loomed at its moorings and he walked its length. On board was a coffin holding a young actress bound for New York but this meant nothing to him. He waded through the curious and the grieving a head taller than most and his tall silk hat taller yet. He wore black like a figure out of nightmare and his eyes were cold and his moustaches thick and no man who met his eye held it for long. He spoke to no one, he carried no luggage, he trudged up the gangway with his thick shoulders turned and he went through and in. It was the last day of February, 1885.
He was thinking about the minutiae of a life. What a person was and was not. He was not given by nature to philosophical problems and felt largely that the thing in front of him was mostly what it looked like, and felt like, though this too, he knew, was a kind of philosophy. He had wept for his father after the funeral but it had been a strange furtive kind of grief and what he felt now, pressing past the figures with their waving handkerchiefs and their clutter of luggage, was not the same but something very close.
He made his way below decks in the first-class area to the second largest of the staterooms and fumbled in his pockets but they were empty and when he tried the door he found it unlocked.
There were several trunks and suitcases on the floor beside the bedding alcove. They had not yet been stowed for the passage and he glanced at them and then glanced away. He could hear ladies laughing in the hallway beyond and he shut the door with a clang and walked to the small sofa under the porthole. He sat, he stood, he paced. On the narrow desk was a morning edition looking unread and William picked it up and studied the headlines. It was seven days old and the front page was covered with articles about the stolen painting’s return and notions about the men responsible and the motives behind it. William had heard rumours that Farquhar had engineered the entire thing for the publicity. One politician had suggested the Russians were responsible. The world of men was, he thought, ridiculous. Then there was a low scraping at the door and then the handle punched down and Edward Shade stepped through.
He saw William at once but only nodded and took off his hat and smoothed down his white hair. If he was astonished to see the detective he gave no sign. He smiled a wry smile and crossed to the cupboard of the stateroom and returned with a bottle of port and two glasses hung upside down from between his knuckles.
I was hoping you would show, he said.
Upending the glasses with a clink on the desk and unstoppering the bottle.
William smiled cautiously.
We never said a proper farewell. Isn’t it strange, how some things come full circle?
There were gulls crying in the morni
ng sky outside and William watched Shade pass across a glass then sit with his legs crossed at the knee.
You’re alone? Shade said.
William inclined his head.
Shade shrugged but there was a weariness to it. My excellent Mr. Fludd is here with me somewhere. As you will have gathered. A little bored and looking for excitement.
His face?
Well. His career on the stage will be ruined.
William furrowed his brow. And the girl?
Molly.
She’s all right?
She doesn’t take a knock without wanting to give one back.
William nodded. I didn’t come here to do violence, he said.
I should be disappointed if you had. The thief was wearing a fine striped suit cut for warmer weather. He sipped his port and William watched the morning light flare and fracture in the cut glass but he himself did not drink and he held the delicate glass between his thick fingers feeling rough and tired. His eyes were sore.
Shade waited.
At last William shifted in his seat and let his frock coat fall open to reveal the Colt at his side and he ran his tongue along his gums and grimaced and said, I brought you something.
Shade furrowed his brow. He was holding his walking stick loose across his knees as if to ward off some sudden movement.
William fumbled in his frock coat and withdrew the folded photograph from Sally Porter. He opened it and studied the muddy camp at Cumberland, the operatives in their cool horror, his younger father chewing on his cigar, his hard Scottish eyes black as obsidian. The blur of the bad capture of the boy Shade had been. He passed it across and Shade took it and stared at it and then he murmured, That was another lifetime.