The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris

by Leon Garfield

  The importance of the black-haired baby fascinated and tantalized him. “What secret lust begot you, my young friend?” he murmured to himself. “And what shameful womb nourished you, etcetera? Discover that, and we discover all!” He rapped his boot with his stick as if seeking confirmation.

  Indeed, it was almost as though he conversed with his monstrous appendage and received from it answers as black as itself. “Was it your mother or your father who passed on the telltale Gypsy blood?” Before there could be an answer, his sherry and mutton chop came in at the door on a tray carried by the bootboy, since none of the maids would venture into Mr. Raven’s room.

  The boy put the tray down and glanced inquisitively at the inquiry agent’s boot and wondered if he ever took it off. Night after night there was only the commonplace right one left out to be cleaned. The great ugly left boot never appeared but on Mr. Raven’s foot. The boy went out and Mr. Raven ate his chop and continued to worry at the problem.

  Two things were plain. The Gypsy baby must have been important enough for it to have been laid in a private cot rather than entrusted to the stony mercy of some church night; and there must have been a traitor in the Harris household to have opened doors, and closed them afterwards.

  The inquiry agent washed down the mutton chop with the sherry and returned to staring out of the window from which he could see the quiet sea endlessly unrolling on the shingle like some wide, secret document displaying itself, then drawing back with a whisper before it could be read.

  “What is it saying?” murmured Mr. Raven, tapping his boot.

  That there is nothing so black as the human heart, came the answer. Under the sea lie poisoned bones and ribs all chipped by knives. Bullets roll inside skulls and ghastly captains lash long-dead cabin boys with whips of trailing weeds, etcetera. Yet the sea’s surface is as bland and fair as a baby’s cheek . . . So plunge deep, Selwyn Raven, and deeper yet till you reach the gloomy depths where human motives coil and strike. For every action there is a foul motive, and this it is your sacred task to find.

  “Alas!” whispered Mr. Raven, gazing down on his boot with a mixture of fear and repugnance. “Were it not for you, I might not be cursed with such bitter knowledge. I too might be blind like other men and not be burdened with such truth. Before this affair of Adelaide Harris is done with, great families will totter and guilty souls will plunge into hell. Murder may be done, etcetera . . .”

  So it was, that with these thoughts in his mind, he clumped from his room and went downstairs to the back parlor, where sherry and claret were loosening devious tongues and unlocking tangled hearts. Secrets black, secrets gray, all came to the ears of Selwyn Raven as he sat and listened and distilled them into the bitter draught of guilt.

  Eight

  RALPH BUNNION, HAVING risen at last from his bed and taken a cautious lunch, was on his way to meet a friend. He walked carefully, for the effects of the calamitous night had not entirely worn off. His face was deathly pale and the double scratches had gone black and venomous looking, as if some dissatisfied artist had made an attempt to cross him out. Nonetheless he was dressed with his usual care, wearing a dark blue coat cut away to display a lavish waistcoat embroidered with the yellow and purple flowerets of love-in-idleness. Maggie Hemp had stitched it for him during a lull in the first weeks of their passion and had woven her name into the design.

  Sunday walkers, crossing his path, glanced curiously at him, but he returned a look of dignified aloofness and glided on. In his own way, Ralph Bunnion was something of a hero. Though he knew Major Alexander’s accusation to be false and the challenge therefore unjust, he scorned to say so, partly because he knew he wouldn’t be believed and partly because the notion of a duel was grandly romantic.

  A great many noble and even tragic ideas thronged his brain and he tended to look on the passing landscape as bidding its last farewell to the gay and dashing Ralph. Already he’d determined, if he should fall, that he would bequeath his collection of waistcoats to Frederick.

  Frederick was the friend he was meeting, and it was he who owned the pair of dueling pistols. Ralph would certainly have preferred swords, but in the end it turned out that he didn’t know anybody who had a pair and it seemed undignified to hire them. So pistols it was to be, with Frederick as his second.

  Or one of his seconds. Ralph frowned. His father had gone and saddled him with that sly, sour fellow Brett as the other. Ralph disliked Mr. Brett, and it was humiliating to be seconded by him. But there was no help for it now. Brett was to fix up about the surgeon, and there again his father had interfered. Sometimes Ralph wondered who it was who was supposed to be fighting the duel. His father insisted on having Dr. Harris, whose brat was at the school. He fancied this might keep things in the family, as it were, and prevent them from getting out all over the town.

  An expression of melancholy contempt came over Ralph’s face. What good could even Dr. Harris do when the glorious Ralph lay quiet and still with only his red blood moving, moving away from a hole in his breast?

  Ralph’s heart beat rapidly. Why did he always think of himself as being dead? Was it an omen? “What will be, will be,” he whispered philosophically, and entered the Old Ship Inn.

  There were few people in the dim back parlor where Ralph and his friends delighted to hold court and sing and drink the night into day, but good old Frederick was among them. He was thinner than Ralph and would need to fill out before the waistcoats would fit him. Ralph shivered as once again his thoughts implied his own death.

  “Arternoon, Mister Ralph, sir,” said the landlord affably. “Pint of the usual?”

  “Half,” said Ralph quietly. “Just a half, landlord.”

  “Night on the tiles, eh?” chuckled the landlord. Then, observing Ralph’s savaged face, he guffawed loudly as the full extent of his own wit reached him. “He—he! I sees you been tom-catting again! Lord, Mister Ralph, you’ll have the town on your tail afore long!”

  Though privately the landlord detested Ralph Bunnion and his gaudy friends, they were entitled to his courtesy as they drank well and kept the parlor from being lonely. Ralph smiled feebly at the landlord’s tribute, then joined the negligent Frederick at a table by the fireplace.

  “Rattlin’ fine mess your face is in, old sport,” said Frederick, yawning sympathetically. “Tell us all. Your uncle Fred’s all ears.” This last was not entirely a figure of speech. He did have rather large ears—or else a very small face—and they stuck out from under his wig like loosened coach wheels. Otherwise he was presentable enough, being the son of a successful livery-stable owner.

  “Fred,” said Ralph with a seriousness that caused his friend to abandon his smile. “I need your pistols—”

  Suddenly Ralph stopped. He had become aware of a stranger watching him. He frowned, and the stranger’s innocent eyes seemed to drift away under pressure of his own. This stranger was a stoutish, plainly dressed man; he was quite ordinary, even pleasant looking, but for his left foot which was encased in a gigantic black boot. Ralph shuddered. There was something horrible about that boot and the way it seemed to crouch beside the commonplace right one like some silent, evil hound.

  “What’s up?” asked Frederick. Ralph shook his head, then went on talking, but in a much subdued voice. The stranger half closed his eyes and leaned forward imperceptibly. From time to time Ralph glanced at him with a kind of fearful disgust—on which the stranger would ease himself back and seem to transfer his attention elsewhere, where it would be equally unwelcome.

  “So that’s how it stands,” muttered Ralph, having explained the whole wretched story as he saw it, and confided his fears for the immediate future. “If I don’t do in her cursed pa, sure as anything the brute will do me in. But come what may, I won’t be blackmailed into marrying his tatty little slut.”

  Ralph was very violent against Tizzy, who he blamed for everything. He swallowed down the remainder of his claret and the landlord, unasked, sent his boy to replenish it. Ralp
h, feeling rather warm, removed his coat and Frederick gazed with gloomy admiration at the splendid waistcoat. Even the clubfooted stranger seemed impressed by it and Ralph lounged back carelessly. The stranger peered, and smiled . . .

  The parlor door opened and a newcomer entered. He was slim, no more than twenty-eight, with a thin, worried looking face. Though not fashionably dressed, his linen was clean and neatly mended. He glanced about the parlor uneasily.

  This, thought Mr. Selwyn Raven, is a man who is haunted by a secret. Mr. Raven, to the landlord’s disapproval, had been in the back parlor for some hours over a single glass of brandy and water. During that time, a little world of mean sins and cheap corruption had passed in review before him. Silently he’d sat and listened as they’d come and gone—faithless husbands, dishonored wives and false friends, all winding in and out of their tapestries of lies. But what he sought still eluded him. Then the haunted newcomer had come in and Mr. Raven had shifted his murderous boot. This man carries a load of guilt such as Judas Iscariot must have carried, thought Mr. Raven idly. His eyes widened as he saw the newcomer make for the two young men who’d mentioned pistols and blackmail.

  “Why if it isn’t Mister Brett,” said Ralph Bunnion sourly, and introduced Frederick to his other second.

  Mr. Brett sat down with a furtive glance around the parlor as if expecting Major Alexander to appear and confront him with his wretched duplicity. He’d had an abominable morning in which he’d flitted from room to room in the school to avoid the Major and the Bunnions. Luncheon had been worse, with the headmaster saying grace as if it was a graveside prayer over the invisible body of his son or his arithmetic master. Then had followed a silent meal laced with such looks as might have cut the beef far better than the knives. Next, Major Alexander had caught him in the privy and earnestly reminded him of his obligations as his second, claimed his loyalty, his honor, his soul, and it seemed to the unhappy Mr. Brett, his eternal life, and told him that the duel, unless anything happened to prevent it, would take place upon the following Saturday. He didn’t see how he could postpone it for any longer.

  Shortly after that the Bunnions, father and son, had trapped him in the passage outside his classroom, and looming threateningly over him, had claimed much the same degree of loyalty as had the Major before them. The one had followed so closely upon the other that it seemed extraordinary to Mr. Brett that the Bunnions couldn’t still hear the Major’s words. At last, by desperate nods and reckless promises he’d escaped them—only to see the fiery little Major beckoning him from the stairs.

  “When you call on Bunnion’s second,” he’d urged, “tell him we’re open to reason!”

  Bunnion’s second. That was him. “My principal’s open to reason,” muttered Mr. Brett to himself in a quiet corner, and half waited for a reply. To his overwrought mind it seemed that there must be at least two James Bretts. But alas, neither was an improvement on the other. Too well he knew that all his separate selves were made of the same weak clay.

  Then he saw Bunnion père shambling toward him, his enormous eyes gleaming with second thoughts. Panic seized Mr. Brett. The school seemed full of Bunnions and Alexanders. Wherever he turned they appeared, from corner, door, stair, from the very shadows; smiling, beckoning, plucking at him, drawing him nearer and nearer to that moment of exposure when he would be revealed as an object of universal contempt and disgust. And in that universe would be Tizzy, her eyes outflashing a skyful of stars.

  The headmaster was almost upon him when he saw Sorley, the fat boarder, passing on his way to the kitchen. “Sorley!” cried Mr. Brett, and clutched fiercely at the boy, who stared from master to master with slow alarm. Dr. Bunnion patted Sorley on the head. Not for worlds would he have brought up the scandal of his son and Major Alexander in Sorley’s presence. Mr. Brett knew it and for the next hour or so took to following the baronet’s son everywhere, thus driving the fat boarder into a truly pitiable state of guilt for he knew not what.

  “We must be discreet,” said Mr. Brett as he seated himself between Ralph and Frederick and gazed from one to the other in a dazed kind of way. Dr. Bunnion’s last words to him had been concerned with the overwhelming need for discretion. Ralph’s whole future was in the balance; a word out of place could wreck it. After all, the Sorleys of Cuckfield would scarcely be pleased to connect themselves with a scandal. It was more to Frederick than to Ralph that Mr. Brett addressed his words, in the hope of impressing him with Dr. Bunnion’s fears and Ralph’s marital hopes.

  “The Sorleys,” mused Frederick. “Ain’t that Sir Walter Sorley of Cuckfield?”

  In his father’s livery-stable business, Frederick had made himself master of a real directory of titled names. It was his only intellectual accomplishment and he was fond of displaying it.

  “No need to shout,” said Ralph, uncomfortably aware of the stranger with the clubfoot whose large, innocent eyes seemed fastened to his magnificent waistcoat like buttons on abnormally long threads. “I suppose the other second will be calling on you any time now,” he went on, turning to Mr. Brett, who nodded eerily. “And then you’ll be seeing about Doctor Harris? What the—”

  Suddenly there’d come a sharp scraping noise from the direction of the stranger. His terrible boot had moved forward and remained, swaying slightly, as if straining on a leash. Then the stranger, observing all eyes upon him, smiled apologetically, finished his brandy and water, and clumped out of the parlor.

  “Good riddance!” muttered the landlord under his breath.

  Mr. Selwyn Raven’s vigil had at last been rewarded. He had heard what he’d been waiting for: the connection between one secret and another. He had found the telltale thread that sooner or later would lead him to the center of the weird labyrinth in which the mystery of Adelaide Harris was concealed. He went back up to his room to fit the pieces of the puzzle together in his mind.

  One tiny thing, the unguarded mention of a single name, had illuminated everything. Dr. Harris. The inquiry agent sat down by the window and patiently recalled the fragments of talk he’d overheard. Blackmail, pistols, forced marriages, a Sussex baronet and then, like a key turning in these dark wards, the single name of Dr. Harris—the fatal connection.

  “Tom-catting again, Mister Ralph?” The landlord’s words recurred, and with them, the image of the young man, lounging back in his chair, displaying his ridiculous waistcoat. “Maggie Hemp!” whispered the inquiry agent, as he remembered the name woven into the design. “Maggie Hemp.” He tapped his boot. The mystery of Adelaide Harris was growing clearer.

  For a long while there was silence in the little room, during which Mr. Raven stared across the sea. Then he began to fumble in his pockets and bring out several folded pieces of paper. One by one he opened them and smoothed them out till he found one of a suitable size. Then he settled down to write with a pen that seemed to writhe and strike at the paper like a serpent.

  He wrote names: Adelaide Harris, the Gypsy baby, Mister Ralph, the Sorleys of Cuckfield, Maggie Hemp, Dr. Harris, and etcetera. He was not such a fool as to imagine he knew everything yet. There was always the etcetera—the dark spider who would be at the center of the web.

  But they were all connected somehow, that much he did know. He smiled rather grimly to himself when he reflected how quickly he had involved the seemingly innocent Dr. Harris in the fine mesh of deceit. In view of this he was relieved he’d not taken luncheon with the Harrises. He would not have eaten with them now if they’d begged him on their bended knees.

  For a moment he had been sorely tempted to put Dr. Harris’s name in place of the unknown spider, the etcetera of the web, but an obscure sense bade him hold his pen. It was this quality that made him the formidable man he was and ever prevented him allowing personal resentment to cloud his pursuit of truth. After all, what did it matter that they hadn’t asked him to lunch?

  He left the central portion of his plan empty, folded the paper and replaced it in his pocket.

  “No matter, the
y are all monsters, one way and another.” He stood up, his face clouded with the anguish of triumph. There was always anguish in Mr. Raven’s triumphs, for his was a nature that looked for goodness but found only the spots that rotted it away.

  He rapped his boot. “Beside them, even you are a thing of beauty.” Then he stumped out of the room and down the stairs in search of necessary fresh air.

  As he left the Old Ship, the distant bell of St. Nicholas’s chimed six o’clock and shortly after, a baby began to howl, then another and another, till a thin, despairing anthem filled the fishy air. It came from the poorhouse, a tall, black building that lay behind the Old Ship Inn. The foundlings—of which at present there were five—were hungry. The inquiry agent nodded. “Howl,” he whispered bitterly. “Howl your little agonies and curses, till you are grown enough to take your revenge on this vile world. And then in your turn suffer again.”

  Tap-thump . . . tap-thump . . . The inquiry agent passed under the high windows of the poorhouse. But now his ears were shut to the sad howling. He was brooding on another actor in the drama of which the disappearance of Adelaide Harris was but the first scene. There was still the man with the secret, the man who had ignored him so completely that even Mr. Raven’s clubfoot had not been honored with a glance.

  “Brett,” muttered the inquiry agent. “What manner of a monster are you?”