The Resurrection Fireplace

by Hiroko Minagawa

  “Edward… Edward and Nigel… Mutilate a friend to conceal evidence? They would never… The idea is ridiculous.”

  “Does it not seem more likely than mutilating him to disguise suicide as murder? Remember what Mr. Turner claimed: they amputated all four limbs because, if they had only severed the left arm, someone might have realized that they were doing it to disguise a suicide. Consider this story from a different angle, however. If they had only amputated one leg, someone might have realized that the leg bore some clue to the culprit’s identity. Thus, they removed all four limbs, and then cut the left wrist to suggest suicide when they showed it to me.”

  “Neither of them had any reason to kill their friend.”

  “We have only their word for that. Was he even their friend at all? Perhaps their connection with him took some other form, which they are now concealing from us. As I said earlier, I cannot always distinguish truth from lies when someone speaks, but Hart’s lies were quite obvious from his voice. I cannot say the same of Turner’s voice, but if Hart is lying, and Turner agrees with him, then Turner must be lying too.”

  “Edward and Nigel would never… They are fine young men.”

  “Even I will admit their ability. It is commendable. But we must uncover the truth. Will you assist me in this?”

  “What can I do?”

  “Turner seems to be shrewd, but Hart is too weak to keep a secret for long, I think. Threats, however, may not work on him. If you were to ask him sincerely for the truth, I expect he might open up to you.”

  “Sir John,” said Moore. “It is time for court.”

  Outside the Temple Bank’s door, Peter—spotty porter and messenger boy— reclined in his battered chair. As Barton approached, he leapt to his feet and greeted him with a professional smile, doffing his well-worn cap.

  “I believe Edward is already here?” said Barton.

  “Mr. Turner, sir? No, I can’t say as I’ve seen him.”

  Barton reached for the door, but Peter was faster. He seized the handle and pushed the door open with a bow, which he held as he waited for a tip. Barton hurriedly handed him a few coins.

  Behind the two counters inside were two elderly clerks, looking almost like twins. They pushed their spectacles up their noses and welcomed him to the bank.

  “I wish to see Mr. Hume,” he said.

  “His wife called for him some time ago. He has been at home since.” A finger pointed at the ceiling.

  “Have my pupils been here?”

  “Mr. Hart appeared not long ago, but we have not seen Mr. Turner,” said one of them.

  “He may have used the outer staircase to go directly to Mr. Hume’s residence,” offered the other.

  “The stairs are in the rear lane,” said the first one. “Mr. Turner often uses them.”

  Barton climbed to the third floor via the asthmatically wheezing staircase inside the bank. The Humes gave him a warm welcome.

  “We were expecting you,” said Mr. Hume. “Mr. Hart conveyed your message.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He left with Edward.”

  The Humes kept the baby’s cradle in the cosy living room, and a nursemaid was crooning over the child as they spoke.

  “Danny can already sit up, you know,” Mrs. Hume said. “You must see. Mary, bring Danny here. I shall hold him—you might drop the little mite.”

  “You hired a nursemaid?” asked Barton.

  “The gentleman wishes to meet you, Mary. Professor Daniel Barton.”

  Mary curtseyed in her white apron, eyes lowered. Chestnut curls showed beneath her white mob-cap.

  “You too, Danny,” said Mrs. Hume, smiling down at the infant in her arms. “Say hello to Mr. Barton.”

  “Assisting at Danny’s birth seems to have made Edward quite fond of him,” said Hume. “He sometimes visits just to see how he is. And Danny adores him.”

  “Mr. Hume,” said Barton. “I must confess that I am here on a rather difficult matter.”

  “That business Edward was talking about, I presume. Let us move to my study.”

  Barton was glad to learn that Hume had grown close enough to Edward to call him by his first name. If only Sir John, too, knew his pupil better, it would surely dispel his suspicions.

  Once they were alone in the study, he said, “Your wife appears to have lost weight. Is she well?”

  “Very well indeed. Lost weight? That cannot be so.”

  Perhaps the low neckline of her dress had simply emphasized the slenderness of her neck. “I must have been mistaken,” said Barton, to reassure the frowning Hume. He then broached the main topic. “I shall ask quite plainly. Is it true that my brother has significant debts?”

  “Edward spoke of your concern about this,” said Hume. “As an employee of the bank, I cannot reveal such things to outsiders, but…”

  “He has used my preparations as security, I understand.”

  “He borrowed money from undesirable quarters. We ourselves take care to avoid any connection with unstable concerns like the Pacific Company.”

  Where had Barton heard that name before? Ah, yes—Sir John had mentioned it just that morning.

  “Is that one of my brother’s creditors?”

  “No, he was an investor… or, shall I say, a speculator.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Among the brokers who carry out the actual buying and selling of shares, there are some who intentionally manipulate stock prices for profit. I should say, rather, that such rogues make up the larger part of the profession. Indeed, brokers of good conscience are so rare that they might as well be imaginary. Now, it is in the nature of stock prices to rise and fall unduly in response to rumour. Even the East India Company’s stock price once plunged due to false information in the market—rumours of factories attacked by natives and so on. Those falsehoods turned out to have been spread by none other than an executive of the East India Company itself. He was working with a broker, of course. When the company’s shares fell in value, they snapped them up, secure in the knowledge that the firm’s fundamental soundness would buoy the price back up when the stories were revealed to be untrue. The profits were tremendous.”

  “An enviable tale.”

  “Mr. Barton, you absolutely must not dabble in such matters as these. Amateurs find themselves forced to buy high and sell low. It ends in ruin. Your brother was one such victim, misled by the silver tongue of a dishonest broker. He bought a great deal of stock in the Pacific Company when its price was on the rise. Convinced that the price would rise even higher, he then bought further stock on margin.”

  “‘On margin’?”

  “He borrowed from his broker to fund the purchase. The customary agreement involves repaying the loan in six months. If the stock price has risen by then, the borrower reaps the difference as profit—but what if it has fallen? The money that was borrowed must still be repaid in full.”

  Knowing that Barton was entirely ignorant of the stock-market, Hume was careful to explain the matter fully.

  “Stocks whose price is on the rise are in demand from all quarters, which in turn helps them continue to rise. The Pacific Company was a ‘bubble’ company, as they are known—neither responsibly managed nor profitable. Nevertheless, its stock price continued to go up, solely because it was in fashion. Finally—and quite recently—it came crashing down. Reports had begun to appear in the newspapers about people with government connections deciding to take their profit by selling all their shares. Learning this, other stockholders quickly followed suit. Once a stock begins to fall, it does so as rapidly as a rock tumbling down a cliff. This is where amateurs tend to err. They cannot bring themselves to sell at a loss until the crushing blow that forces them to act. They hesitate, wondering if it might rise again, and their losses grow larger and larger until the time for final settlement of accounts arri
ves. This is the situation your brother finds himself in today.”

  Barton could only sigh.

  “Sixty years ago,” said Hume, “before you or I were even born, a similar ‘bubble’ occurred. It pertained to the South Sea Company, which claimed to have plans for trading, colonisation, gold and silver mining, and development around South America. The idea for the company was said to have come from Daniel Defoe, who, as you may recall, was the author of Robinson Crusoe. Government officials and cabinet ministers became involved in the speculation, and the stock rose to extraordinary heights. But the South Sea Company lacked a royal charter, which meant that when rumours arose of a lawsuit against the firm, its share price dropped calamitously. Some ministers and parliamentarians took their own lives or were imprisoned, and the general upheaval was considerable. But men are slaves to greed—we never learn. And so…”

  Hume paused for a moment.

  “When your brother brought his woes to me, my impression was that it was already too late. The money his broker had lent him simply had to be repaid. Remember that I have known Dr. Barton for many years. I wanted to help if I could. But a banker is not an adventurer. A loan can only be approved if its profitability is more or less assured. I had to refuse his request, much as it distressed me to do so.

  “The broker to whom Dr. Barton is indebted is called Guy Evans, a man of some notoriety in financial circles. He has worked with an unsavoury newspaper by the name of the Public Journal to manipulate information.”

  “Thomas Paddington… .”

  “Harrington. He is known to you?”

  “Only by name. Mentioned once or twice.”

  “To settle his stock account, Dr. Barton borrowed an enormous sum from Evans.”

  “With my preparations as security.”

  Hume hunched over, as if personally to blame.

  “Those preparations are mine,” Barton said. “My brother had no right to dispose of them.”

  “If you wish to insist on your right of ownership, it appears that you will need to do so in court. However…”

  “Will it be difficult to prevail?”

  “The proceedings will drag on endlessly. That slave trial started six months ago and still has not finished—although, if I recall correctly, today is the final day.”

  They were both silent for a time. Then Hume spoke again.

  “I must ask you not to speak of this to anyone else, but among those who made vast profits by purchasing Pacific shares when they were cheap and selling just before they reached their peak, many were connected to the government. The Lord Mayor of London made no small profit himself. They knew something the rest of us did not.”

  Chapter 8

  Edward, Nigel,

  Help me.

  Hearing footsteps, Nathan turned over the paper and covered it with a blank leaf.

  Evans burst into the room.

  It was evening, and Nathan’s dinner tray had already been removed. He had not expected Evans to return tonight, and his guard was down. With no appetite, he had barely touched his food.

  Evans was carrying a candlestick with a lit candle. He walked about lighting the candles in the room one after another.

  Nathan noted the strap in his captor’s hand. Every act of defiance earned him a whipping, and not a gentle one. He had tried to be obedient of late—had his failure to eat aggravated Evans anyway? His stomach was so constricted by anxiety that he could not have eaten even if he had wished to.

  Evans pointedly brought the candle near the blank sheet of paper. “Perhaps my eyes are failing,” he said. “I cannot see a single word.”

  “You understand nothing about the creative process, Mr. Evans. A single line can take days to complete.”

  “A chicken that lays no eggs, like a goat that gives no milk, is useless,” he said coldly. He raised the strap. “Clearly this has no sting for you. Perhaps I should use a blade.”

  Nathan had concluded that his life was safe until he finished the Elegy, but that Evans could not publish the work of “Thomas Howard” while Nathan was alive to reveal its false provenance. And Evans was growing tired of waiting.

  “I shall write,” said Nathan. “I shall write the poem. Let me live.”

  Evans’s smile did not extend beyond the corners of his mouth. “I am not known for much patience,” he said. “As for your talent, it seems it may have dried up.” Then he left the room.

  Nathan looked around him.

  The bed was too heavy. Moving the wardrobe would be quite beyond him. The writing desk he did not wish to move from its place by the window. That left the small bookcase filled with part of Evans’s library. Nathan removed the books to lighten it—although not, unfortunately, very much—and then pushed it in front of the door before replacing the books again. Leaving Shakespeare, Pope, and Milton to guard the door for him, Nathan returned to his desk and continued writing his letter.

  I am imprisoned against my will. I have no way to communicate with you.

  My gaoler is a man called Guy Evans. He lives in London, but I do not know the address.

  On the day of the riot, I was caught up in the disturbance and arrested. Despite my innocence, I was imprisoned in Newgate. That such a hellish place should exist! I was put in leg irons like the worst of miscreants. Could there be any greater insult? The fetters marked my flesh, as if to brand me a criminal. These scars will be with me until I die. I could not move without feeling the heavy iron scrape at my flesh, bite into my bones. The message they sent me was clear: You are a worthless being whose life is of no account. I can never describe to you the evils I suffered in there… .

  Over the course of Nathan’s confinement, and particularly since the whippings had begun, a growing sense of powerlessness had overtaken him, silencing the urge to violence that the razor had aroused in him.

  The razor. It had never been returned. He was unarmed.

  He had no way to flee. Write all the letters he might, they could not be delivered. He tore up the one he had just written and opened the window. The night flowed in, sullen and hot. And God maintained His silence.

  The outer wall dropped straight down to a lane like a valley river. If he ripped up the curtains and bed-clothes to make a rope… But he doubted he could climb down to the lane below.

  At that moment, it occurred to him that he had not heard the jingle of keys after Evans had closed the door earlier.

  Had he simply not been paying attention?

  No. Every time he heard those keys, it was like being kicked in the stomach. Not a sound he could have failed to notice.

  He cleared the bookcase again and moved it slightly to one side. Placing his hand on the doorknob, he turned and pulled it towards him. The door opened a fraction.

  Evans had forgotten to lock it.

  This was his chance!

  If he was to escape, it must be now—though it might be fatal to be caught in the act.

  Nathan closed the door again and hurriedly made ready. He decided to leave the unfinished Elegy behind. If he took it with him, Evans would be relentless in pursuit of him. Nathan knew the poem by heart in any case. What mattered now was to make good his escape.

  What should he take with him? Next to nothing.

  The corridor was dark, the candles in the sconces unlit. Nathan pressed himself against the wall and walked on tiptoe. Peering down the staircase, he saw that the hall adjoining the entrance was in darkness too. He crept down the stairs without making a sound.

  The front door creaked faintly as it opened. He stepped out onto the porch and descended the stone staircase to the street. Carefully avoiding the light from the street lamps, he slipped through the darkness at a run. No doubt due to his poor diet of late, he was out of breath and his legs quivered. But still he ran. The darkness drew tight around his body. He knew roughly where he was going: when Evans had
taken him to Matthew’s, he had willed himself to remember the route. Edward and Nigel’s anatomy school lay between the coffee-house and the Public Journal offices. Having been in prison, it no longer bothered him to have nothing but the clothes on his back, or to be begging for help. He had lost all concern for appearances.

  If he could travel through the London streets at night without being robbed, it would be a miracle. Still, Nathan had no reason to fear robbers or footpads. There was nothing they could take from him. No money, certainly. If you’ve no money, then hand over your clothes! With pleasure! Fortunately, it was summer. It wouldn’t matter if he were naked.

  He ran and ran. Something brushed against his shin. A shape loomed in the weak light of a street lamp as if squeezed from the darkness. It was a dog, trotting alongside him. It did not seem to have attached itself to him, however. Perhaps they were simply headed in the same direction.

  The visit to Matthew’s had been during the day. With the sun down, the face of the town changed. He forced himself to remember, comparing the dilapidated scene before him to the one in his memory, confirming that they were the same.

  He felt as if his body were fragmenting, but he did not stop. Blood seemed to flow from the windows of the houses on both sides of him, but he swam through it, his gasps becoming the beating of birds’ wings, enclosing him, bearing him up.

  Astonishingly, he ran through London at the dead of night all the way to Matthew’s without encountering anyone threatening. The coffee-house had closed hours ago, and in the darkness the square merged with the sky. The fountain bubbled as strongly as during the daytime, and he saw a glint of silver in the running water like an abandoned blade.

  His escape seemed to Nathan the greatest miracle of all. God had turned His gaze on one small creature on the face of His earth.

  The rest of the way he knew without hesitation.