The Devil's Mask

by Christopher Wakling

  ‘Meddled with?’

  ‘I left the man dead on the floor. Somebody else strung his body up.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I don’t much care. Neither does it upset me that I botched Waring. Murder doesn’t sit well with me, and anyway, he died in the end. My conscience is clear now.’

  ‘But the women,’ I said. ‘You’re not saying Waring killed them? Or Addison? The timing doesn’t work.’

  ‘No. Yet in a way they were dead before they arrived. When you said you were investigating the Belsize, I assumed it had to do with the illegal trade, further up the chain, that you would get knowledge of who had taken possession of these women. The owners and traffickers. I wanted to help bring them to justice, too.’

  ‘I … no … it was just about import duties, port fees!’

  ‘It was never about that. Your employer, perhaps, knew better.’

  The gentle certitude of the man, laying out his thoughts, contrasted completely with my fizzing uncertainty in those minutes. A thought was forming, but I couldn’t make it connect; it was like a punch thrown in a dream. ‘But listen,’ I heard myself say. ‘The notes. On Addison’s body, the faked suicide message. And … What was your involvement?’

  Blue’s eyes narrowed with incomprehension. He seemed to think I had lost my mind. ‘As I say, somebody else wanted it to look like suicide,’ he said eventually. ‘Not me. Whoever it is, this man here …’ He nodded at the Justice, prone, his mouth a sagging O. ‘He’s in their pay, and for that he deserves punishment. Yet you prefer me to leave him be …’

  ‘He’s not responsible,’ I said weakly.

  ‘In which case,’ Blue looked from Wheeler to me and back again, ‘you’re on your own. I must leave immediately.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, holding out my hand.

  The sailor’s calluses bit into my palm with the force of his grip.

  Sixty-six

  I dragged Wheeler into the shed by the heels, checked that he was still breathing, and laid him on his side, the better to bind his hands and feet with the groundsman’s staking twine. Then I retrieved the axe. Blue and Ivan Brook had disappeared down the lane. I knew what I had to do, and I walked back down the hill to the hawthorn hedge determined to do it, but as I stood over the twisted, burned corpse, and gritted my teeth to do it, saliva flooded the back of my tongue and before I knew it I was reeling away to vomit in the hedge. The sight of my own weakness, in the shape of strings of drool hanging from my open mouth, enraged me. I spat, spun around, brandished the axe, and set to with it. One blow wasn’t enough. Two, three. On and on, a howl held tight within me, I did it. I got the manacles free.

  Then I covered the corpses and set off for town.

  By the time I made it to the edge of the city, morning proper had broken. Achingly clear autumn sunlight illuminated the patchwork of roofs laid out before me, riven by gulls. As I descended St Michael’s hill the city’s spires – the cathedral nearby, St Mary Redcliffe in the distance – appeared to rise up out of the mass, as if intent on bursting the taut blue sky. A woman, washing something in a wooden bucket on her stoop, looked up at me as I passed and, pleased with the day perhaps, she smiled at me. Was my predicament not written large enough to be evident? My boots and breeches were mud-caked, my hands were black, and I had a pair of manacles slung over my shoulder. Despite all this I smiled back.

  But I stamped through the Dock Company’s panelled hallway in search of Orton’s office with my face set hard enough to dissuade the porter from all but weak protestations. His ‘You can’t …’ mewed in my ears as I banged open one door, then another, and checked the meeting room we’d occupied on my previous visits. All empty. I took the polished oak staircase three steps at a time, the manacles rattling the banisters, and the porter, having foundered to the half-landing, thought better of following further, and chose to duck back out of sight again. I found Orton behind the first door I threw open. He was already out of his seat in an odd and defensive half crouch behind his desk. He retreated a pace when he saw it was me, but drew himself tall: it struck me he’d been fearing a worse visitation. I advanced, the chains held out before me, and dropped them on to his tabletop.

  He winced at the noise, then said weakly, ‘These are private offices.’

  I leaned over the manacles, turned one of the metal cuffs over, and held it out before Orton. ‘There,’ I said. ‘The Company mark. You can feign ignorance no longer.’

  ‘A Company mark. The relevance of which is …?’

  ‘The relevance? They were used to chain a slave. A slave trafficked on the Belsize, brought to these shores not two weeks ago. Along with two others, she has since been murdered. Whatever you intended us to find in our examination of your records, this is where the search has led.’

  ‘But that matter is –’

  ‘Closed, I know. Not at your bidding. You were told to shut us down. Justice Wheeler has similarly curtailed his investigations into the murders. Yet there’s a connection. Whoever has taken Carthy feared he would discover it. If they know their secret is out anyway, perhaps they will give him up.’

  The man’s face was down-turned, but I detected the flickering of a mirthless smile upon his lips. Eventually he looked up, and his eyes came to rest upon the metal device splayed on his desk. They skated away from it quickly. His papery hands, their cuticles frayed, had begun pecking at each other again miserably.

  ‘The Dock Company does not exist in isolation,’ I said. ‘There’s the High Steward and the common council men. I will report my findings beyond these walls.’

  Once again the pursed lips.

  ‘The news-sheets, if necessary. I will inform the hacks.’

  Orton accompanied his desperate smile with a shaking of his head. ‘And who edits the editors, do you think?’

  I dropped my voice. ‘There are good people in this town. You are one of them, I think. You wanted to root out the corruption which oppresses us all, or address it at least. That’s why we’re standing here. Whoever got to you, you know who they are. Send a message back. Ask for Carthy’s release. Can you at least do that?’

  ‘I know who they are, do I?’ Orton tore into a thumbnail before going on, his voice cracking. ‘What I know is what I’ve been trying to tell you all along. It’s in everyone’s interests, yours most of all, to walk away.’

  I glared at him. I picked up the manacles. How heavy they were, how brutal and despicable. To remove them from the slave woman’s body I’d had to cut off both her charred feet. That was somehow this man’s fault. I hefted the chain from my left hand to my right and swung them down on to the desk cacophonously hard, striking savage bite-marks into the leatherwork. Suddenly I could barely stand with tiredness. The black earth smell of those corpses seemed to rise from beneath my shirtfront. I shut my eyes and saw bloody splinters and broken fingernails and slumped sideways into a smoker’s bow chair.

  ‘Wait here,’ said Orton. His shoes creaked as he crossed the floor behind me. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  Sixty-seven

  Little kindnesses count for something, no matter the circumstances. After waiting ten minutes in Orton’s office, I turned to the door to see his maid hovering with a tray of bread, honey, and sweet tea. I had not realised my hunger, but despatched this offering in famished gulps. Then tiredness welled up again. I folded my arms on Orton’s desk and dropped my head upon them.

  And I dreamt that it was all over. There were broad leaves above me and the sun was dropping through them like the arms of God, illuminating white teeth exposed in a smile. Little Anne’s. No, it was Lilly, turning towards me, her hair coiled golden at her neck. She was letting me go. Then the smile belonged to a woman with coffee-coloured skin who was looking down at me with eyes so kind and knowing that I felt like a child before her. I turned away and saw Carthy seated at his desk. Another shaft of liquid sunlight fell across the paperwork he was considering. He looked up and beckoned me over. Unmistakably, he was going to tell me abou
t a new case. As if from above I saw myself walk towards him, a gull’s eye view. I was wearing a clean shirt, so white it looked blue, and my hair was neat. ‘What is it, then?’ I asked. ‘I’m all ears.’

  Before he could answer, Orton’s door had creaked open and a hand was on my shoulder. I found myself blinking up at my brother, John. At first the familiarity of his face was as reassuring as the dream, but then the incongruity of him being there at all bit home. I rose and shook myself loose and two things struck me. First, that his affable grin had a rubbery, forced quality to it, and second that he smelled wrong. He’d been drinking.

  ‘Come on then Inigo, let’s get you home,’ he said, his voice steady enough.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘You look like you’ve slept in a bramble patch!’

  ‘I … look … where’s Mr Orton?’

  He had obviously been waiting outside for he materialised as I said this. He stood by the door, ineffectual as a reed in the breeze, looking as if he were intent upon keeping out of reach. ‘I took the liberty of sending for –’

  ‘I can see who you fetched! But why? Pleased as I am to see you, John, I’m here pursuing … a specific business.’

  John thumped my shoulder at this and let loose an inappropriately loud salvo of laughter. ‘Just come with me, Inigo. Father is waiting for us at home.’ His meaty hand fixed itself around my upper arm, and he made as if to steer me from the room.

  ‘No, wait!’ I said, shaking him off.

  Orton had his head bowed to one side, almost apologetically. ‘Go with him, Inigo. I have done as you asked,’ he said.

  I picked up the manacles and John took hold of me again and I found myself exiting Orton’s office in front of my brother. There was something familiar and repellent about being so led: a reminder of the Bath Justice’s strong-arming, perhaps? I almost wanted to appeal to Orton again. We had barely made it to the head of the stairs, however, before John, in a stage whisper, asked, ‘What use can that husk of a man possibly be to you anyway? You’d do better petitioning a scarecrow!’ He burst out laughing at this, as if it had been a joke made by somebody other than him, and once again I sensed the drink in him. Orton had to have heard the remark. Even though it tallied with what I thought, deep down, I could not help feeling shame that he should have been privy to it.

  Still led by John, I descended the staircase and made my way out into the street. The strange sensation persisted, that I had somehow walked this walk before. Oblivious to the chain and cuffs slung over my free shoulder, John continued prattling in my other ear about how Father would be looking forward to our return, but I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking that if this was the way Father wanted it, so be it. I would present the manacles to him. He’d waxed on long enough about how the trade had run its course, but I wagered his face would tell the truth. Presented with such stark evidence, he would have to reveal his complicity and make some form of amends. He might even be able to get the investigation reopened.

  ‘Yes, he’ll be pleased to see you,’ John repeated. ‘But those things …’ he glanced now at the manacles and pulled a mock grimace … ‘what on earth are you doing with them? A gavel would be more appropriate. Gavel. Funny word. You’d have to have a robe, too, for the judging. Isn’t that what you want to do? Judge us all? What can the Dock Company matter to you, anyway? Gavel!’

  Was I witnessing the effects of the previous night, or had he already begun drinking this morning? There was no way Father would tolerate such a display; yet how could he not know about it?

  ‘Trade’s the honest thing,’ John went on. ‘It makes money, which means jobs, sides of beef, etcetera. There’s no honour in a luncheon got from nitpicking.’

  I was about to respond to this, but he dropped his voice three octaves in drunken emphasis and growled, ‘Anchovies to yams, and yams back to anchovies again. What a joke!’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Import duties. You know, for you fellows it’s all about form checking.’ Again he dropped his voice comically. ‘Anchovies, alabaster, yams and yellow-finches, and all the way back again.’

  Carthy had said something similar; I was sure of it.

  A coincidence, it had to be, except for the voice. There was no mistaking that artificially gruff voice. Its twin, dark as opposed to jocular, but equally fake, had threatened me high above the city’s rooftops. Coffee underscored with hard liquor. A strong hand forcing the sack over my head. Knife-tips and precipices.

  I swung round and in one movement slammed John hard into the pavement railings. Though bigger than me, and heavier, I had taken him by surprise, pushing him backwards with enough force to drive the wind from his lungs. He blinked at me, struggling for breath. I leaned into him, a manacle in each hand, the chain stretched taut across his chest.

  ‘You are a part of this?’

  I worked the links up towards his throat. His eyes bulged. This close their whites looked a dirty pink. He coughed and struggled and coughed again, the brandy fumes sharp on his breath. Having given him away, the drink now made him guileless; though he was sputtering incoherent denials I knew I was right to accuse him, his panic-blinking said as much. He worked a hand up inside the chain and tried to lever me away; my forearms burned with the effort of keeping him pinned there.

  ‘Own good,’ he gasped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Father said.’

  I let the heat out of my grip and John managed a proper breath.

  ‘Father said it was for the best, but …’

  ‘Did you know about these?’ I said, jerking the manacles up under his chin.

  He twisted his head this way and that, whether in denial or disgust I could not tell.

  ‘Did you?’

  He began to cough again, wetting my knuckles with a mist of spit. I released him. He staggered forwards, hunched over, pitiful. His scalp shone dully through the hair scraped across the top of his head, and made me think suddenly of our father’s bald head.

  ‘Ingo,’ John gasped. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He had called me that when he was too small to say my name properly. He would follow me around repeating it. I was quarrelling with the wrong person here: John had never had an original thought in his head.

  ‘Is he at home?’ I growled.

  John nodded.

  I turned from him. The driver of a goods sled had paused behind us, I now saw, to enjoy our altercation. His horse blew in its traces. I glared at the man until he prompted the animal onwards. Metal runners ground insolently on the flagstones. With John trailing at my heels now, I struck out up the hill for my father’s house.

  Sixty-eight

  Approaching Bright House, I looked across the shoulder of Brandon Hill to the city’s fourteen spires, still jabbing at the forget-me-not sky, but punctuated now by columns of smoke pulsing from the glass manufactories, tendrils of blackness trailing from stunted chimney tops. The clarity of the day just worsened the hellfire look of them. They were better suited to the city’s familiar grey haze. I did not knock at the back door or pause to wipe my feet en route to my father’s study.

  He was reading a ledger, or pretending to, with his head bent disingenuously low over his desk, his shoulders and pate and one arm cut out by the brightness of the day, which poured in through the window casement in a solid block and fell across a wedge of the room like spilled whitewash. I sensed he’d reached for the book on hearing our arrival; it felt as if he wanted me to interrupt him with words in order that he might then pointedly delay his answer, so I said nothing, just let go of one end of the manacles and allowed them to swing from my hand. Eventually, he spoke.

  ‘I gather from Mr Orton that you have become … embroiled despite my counsel.’

  ‘Counsel? You’ve offered more than that.’

  ‘Very well. Despite my warning, then.’

  ‘You set my own brothers against me.’

  ‘Our interests lie together,’ he shrugged. Then he looked back
down at the ledger and turned the page, oblivious to its contents: pornographic pictures would not have held his attention in those moments. Indeed, he glanced straight back up again as John slumped on to the ottoman beside the dusty bookcase. John hung his head. Father’s affection for him came at a price: what hold did the old man have over my brother that he did not have over me?

  ‘John,’ Father said now. ‘You don’t look well. Why not retire to your room?’

  Amazingly, my brother swam back on to his feet, muttered his thanks, and took his leave. Father regarded me complacently.

  ‘You’re concerned with nobody’s interests but your own,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘The very essence of this trade –’ I lifted the manacles ‘– depends upon it. You were privy to the Belsize’s illegal slaving. Instrumental in it. Weren’t you.’

  Ignoring the restraints, Father looked straight at me, the brightness falling across one side of his face, chipping splinters of light in his right eye. ‘How do you think that the fortune which has enabled your legalising, never mind moralising, was made?’

  ‘You yourself declared the trade defunct.’

  ‘Pre-abolition, it was. But like anything else, a shortage of goods increases demand, and therefore profit. It was an opportunity –’

  ‘It was what it always was. Inhuman. The only difference now is that it is also illegal.’

  Father turned his face toward the window, so that sparks now flew in both his eyes. ‘Oh please,’ he said. ‘It’s as old as man itself. There’s nothing illegal about owning slaves. It’s only the getting of them which is in question just now. And as soon as the sugar stops flowing, mark my words, they’ll find a way of making that part lawful again. In the meantime, there is money to be made. Lots of it, you understand, because of the financial exposure. That is all business is about, Inigo, in the end. Profit and risk.’