A Conspiracy of Paper bw-1

by David Liss

  “I understand you,” Elias muttered. “He wished for the world to see his men assault you.”

  “I think so,” I agreed. “And why? Perhaps because he fears Rochester. He wishes to keep me upon my course, but he wishes for the world to believe that he and I are at odds.”

  “If he fears telling you what he knows—if your possession of that knowledge would make it clear to Rochester that you had obtained it of Wild—we must assume that Wild knows things that no one else knows.”

  “And that,” I announced, “is why I seek out Wild’s man, Quilt Arnold—the man who spied upon me at Kent’s Coffeehouse when I awaited a response to our advertisement. If I can learn why Wild sent Arnold there, I may be closer to learning more of Wild’s involvement, and that may take me closer to Rochester.”

  Elias smiled. “You have truly learned to think like a philosopher.”

  I swirled my wine about in my cup. “Perhaps. I promise you I shall not forget to think like a pugilist when I find Arnold. I grow tired of this matter, Elias. I must resolve it soon.”

  “I heartily endorse your sentiments,” he told me, rubbing his injured knee.

  “I only hope I can resolve it. Your philosophy has allowed me to come this far, but I cannot see how it can take me farther. Perhaps if I were more of a philosopher I would have concluded this unpleasantness long ago.”

  Elias looked down for a moment. He appeared to me to be nervous, agitated. “Weaver, our friendship frequently involves a great deal of raillery—too much, I think. When you fought in the ring, you were the best fighter this island had ever seen. I must have had the sixth sense of a Highland seer to have bet against you that day, for only a fool would have done so. As a pugilist, you turned a sport that was the province of mindless animals into an art. And when you set your mind to thief-taking, you turned something that had been the province of criminals and petty minds into an art as well. If philosophy no longer yields results, perhaps it is not because you have reached your limit to understanding philosophy. I think it far more probable that philosophy has done what philosophy can do, and you would be wise to trust your instincts as a fighter and a thief-taker.”

  My face burned with pleasure as I listened to Elias’s sentiments. He did not often speak thus, and his doing so made me determined. “My instincts tell me to find anyone whom I believe to have information and beat that information from him.”

  Elias smiled. “Trust your instincts.”

  BUOYED BY HIS COMMENTS, I left my friend’s lodgings and traveled to the Laughing Negro. I sat at a table in the back that gave me a good view of the door, and I snuffed the candles around me to obscure my face should Arnold look in my direction before I should look in his. There was, however, no sign of him; I had to fend off the advances of several whores and gamblers, and soon I heard whispers about the foul sod who sat in the corner, not drinking enough to satisfy the barkeeper.

  By eleven o’clock it was clear to me that Arnold was not to come in, so I paid my reckoning and stepped outside. I was not ten feet away from the door before I saw a shadow rushing from the darkness toward me. Perhaps I was too eager for violence, for I drew my hangar and ran it through someone’s shoulder before I realized that my assailants were but a few boys out to knock me down for my money. They had no connection with murders or Wild or the South Sea Company. This was no conspiracy, just London after nightfall. I wiped my sword blade as I laughed upon my own panic, and I somehow managed to make my way from that place without further incident.

  IN THE DAYTIME Bawdy Moll’s is but a dank place of sleepy drunks and whispering prigs, but at night it becomes something else entirely. It was so full of sweaty and sickly bodies that I could barely press my way inside, and the air was thick with the stink of vomit and urine and tobacco. I could not call Moll’s crowd merrymakers, for no one came to a gin house to make merry; they came to forget and to recast misery into senselessness. They pretended they took some pleasure in it, however, and I could hear a hundred conversations, the shrill and nervous laughter of women, the breaking of glass, and somewhere in the back a player scraped a bow across an untuned fiddle.

  I pushed through the crowd, as my boots sloshed in things I did not care to think of, and I felt countless fingers of undetectable origin explore my body, but I held secure my sword, my pistol, and my purse, and I made it to the bar without any serious damage. There I found Bawdy Moll cheerfully dispensing gin by the pint and collecting her pennies with equal delight.

  “Ben,” she shouted as she saw me. “I ’ardly expected to see ye ’ere at a time like this. ’Avin’ a bad time are ye? Well, I’ve the cure for it, and it comes a penny a pint.”

  I was in no mood for Moll’s banter. I was in a foul temper, and the stench of sewage from the Fleet Ditch was particularly rancid that night. “What,” I said as quietly as I could, “know you of a man called Quilt Arnold?”

  Moll screwed up her face in displeasure; I watched her face paint crack like the earth in the summer sun. “Ye know better than to come ’ere on a busy night and ask me suchlike questions. I can’t have me customers thinkin’ they’ll be ’peached in me place.”

  I slipped Moll a guinea. I had not the time to equivocate with smaller coins. “It is a matter of the utmost importance, Moll, or I should not bother you.”

  She held the coin in her hand, feeling the weight of the gold. It had a power no paper or banknote could ever match. Her objection vanished.

  “Quilt’s a no-good blackguard, but he ain’t the murderin’ type what I can tell. Stands close to Wild, ’e does, and does the great man’s bidding. Least ’e used to. ’E also run with that whore ye asked me for last week: Kate Cole, what ’ung ’erself in Newgate.”

  “Do you know where I can find him?”

  She did. At least she knew of a few likely places, not one near the other, unfortunately. I surreptitiously slid her another guinea; I had violated the trust we had by making my inquiries before a crowd, and I was more than willing to pay the price to keep Moll happy.

  I inspected two more places that night, but I caught no sign of Arnold, and growing tired and despondent I returned home to sleep. I began the search anew the next day, and was fortunate enough to catch him around noon, eating his dinner in a tavern Moll had told me to be a favorite daytime haunt of his. He sat at a table, shoving spoonfuls of watery gruel into his face, caring little of his bad aim or the effects it had upon his attire. Across from him sat a sickly whore, hideously in need of nourishment, who was so thin I feared she might expire as I looked on. She stared at Arnold’s food, but he shared none of it with her.

  I carefully kept myself from Arnold’s sight as I hired a private room on the first floor. The tapman blankly accepted an extra shilling in exchange for paying no mind to what happened next. I approached Arnold from behind and kicked out his chair from under him. He fell hard, and much of his meal followed him. His companion cried out while I compounded Arnold’s surprise by stomping hard on his left hand, which was sloppily wrapped with a filthy bandage. He let out a howl—shrill and desperate. His whore clapped a hand over her mouth and stifled her own scream. I grabbed the stunned Arnold under his armpits and dragged him down the hall and threw him into the room I had hired. I closed the door and locked it, placing the key in my coat. The room was perfect: dark, small, and poorly lit through a window too small to admit thieves, and thus too small to allow Arnold’s escape.

  His one good eye bugged in terror, but he said nothing. I had seen once before that he was not at heart the ruffian he pretended to be, and I knew his kind too well not to know how to get him feeling talkative. For good measure, and because I felt little other than anger, I picked him up and threw him hard against the wall. Too hard, I fear, for his head hit the brick, and his good eye rolled back into his skull as he collapsed upon the floor.

  I returned to the bar, locking the door behind me, and bought two pints of small beer. The whore, I noticed, was now at another man’s table, and she paid me no attention. Th
e barkeeper showed me nothing but terse indifference—something just shy of politeness. I made a note to myself to return to this place, for I liked its way of conducting business.

  I reentered the room and threw one of the pints of beer into Arnold’s face. He stirred like a man awakened from a pleasing slumber. “Oh, Christ.” He used his hand to wipe the ale from his eye.

  “I hope I shall not have to kill you,” I said. “I even hope I might avoid inflicting much more pain upon you, but you had better be very cooperative if we are to realize these hopes.”

  He rubbed at his good eye until I began to fear he should pluck it out. “I knew you was trouble,” he mumbled.

  “You are a keen observer,” I said. “Let’s start with a simple question. Why were you at Kent’s Coffeehouse when I came in response to my advertisement?”

  “I was just having a dish o’ coffee,” he said meekly.

  I would have to be creative if he did not become more forthcoming, but for the time being, a good stomp upon his injured hand proved the fastest way of assuring him I would have no nonsense. The bandage was now covered with fresh blood and a kind of brownish liquid I did not care to consider at length. “You will lose that hand I think,” I said, “and perhaps your life if you don’t have that looked at. But you may not live long enough for the rot to advance. So perhaps you will tell me what it was you were doing at Kent’s?”

  “Let me go,” he said with a whimper. “This is me last chance. Wild, ’e used to trust me. Now ’e’s got that Jew Mendes doing me work. I need to make things right.” His face turned a sickly shade, and I feared he would lose consciousness.

  “What were you doing there?” I repeated.

  “Wild sent me,” he told me at last. Then he vomited, making no effort to avoid soiling himself.

  I felt no surprise to learn that Wild was behind it, but I still needed to understand Wild’s interest in my inquiry. “Why?” I continued. “What did Wild tell you to do?”

  “To watch you, ’e said.” He was gasping for breath as he spoke. “To let ’im know if anyone bothered you.”

  It was not an answer I had anticipated. “What? Are you telling me that Wild sent you to tell him if I was attacked?”

  Arnold attempted to move farther away from me. He crawled toward the corner. “Aye, I swear it. ’E wanted to know if you was bothered. And ’e wanted to see who it was what showed up to see you. He said I should see if I recognized ’em, and if not, to let ’im know what they looked like. But ’e said not to let you see me, and so when you did, I got scared and run off.”

  “Who did he expect to show up?” I barked.

  “I don’t know. ’E didn’t say.”

  “Who killed Michael Balfour and Samuel Lienzo?”

  I thought a direct approach worked best for a man in Arnold’s state. At first he only groaned and said “Oh, Christ,” again, but I moved toward his hand, and he came around. “It was Rochester,” he said at last. “Martin Rochester done it.”

  I fought the swell of frustration. “And who is Martin Rochester?”

  He looked up at me with an equal mixture of supplication and incredulousness. “Rochester is Rochester. What kind of question is that?”

  “Does he have another name?”

  He shook his head. “Not what I know.”

  “I find it hard to believe that this man broke into Michael Balfour’s home and staged a false hanging himself. Who helped him?”

  I knew he didn’t want to tell me, and he stared at me in such a way as to implore that I did not force him, but my look told him I cared nothing for him and I would as soon kill him myself as wait for Rochester to do it in revenge. “ ’E’s got ’is boys. Bertie Fenn, who I reckon you know about what with your killing ’im and all. Then ’e’s got three more—Kit Mann, Fat Billy, who ain’t fat, so don’t let the name fool you, and a third cove whose name I don’t know, but ’e’s got red hair. I keep my distance from all of ’em, except as what I see ’em once in a while, but I don’t have no truck with them, and I ain’t got nothin’ to do with these killings.”

  “Where can I find these men?”

  Arnold let out a string of public houses, taverns, and gin houses where they might be, but because he didn’t know the men well, he said he was only guessing.

  I looked down at him—broken, beaten, and miserable. It was the second time I had left him so. I suppose, I thought to myself, he deserves no better. He is Wild’s man, and he plays his part in this villainy, yet I could not but feel some sympathy for a man so totally shattered.

  I threw a few shillings on the floor before him and bade him come see me if he ever wished to serve a better master than Wild. I had no expectation that he would abandon the Thief-Taker General, and he never did do so, but I believed that by making the offer I would appear a greater man than I was.

  I FOUND THE MEN before nightfall in a disreputable tavern near Covent Garden Market. They sat together, drinking and shouting incomprehensibly at one another in a language that was half impenetrable country accent and half drunken slur. I suppose I must have been fatigued, for I let them see me first. I had gone around the back to look at the various tables, when I heard a commotion of chairs overturning and saw three men running toward the door. I had looked at them when I first walked in and thought them only drinking men of the lower orders. Only once they had seen me and scrambled to their feet did I know them. I recognized one of them quite clearly, for he was the man who had denounced me outside the masquerade in the Haymarket.

  Two of them got away, but one was slow, and I managed to tackle him, though I felt my age when I did so, for the old wound in my leg sent a pain shooting up to my hip. Nevertheless, I had a grip on the fellow, whose head knocked hard upon the dirt floor as I threw him down.

  I had been in enough of these places to expect a crowd to gather around me, which it did, but to believe myself immune from interference—and indeed I was. I thus felt free to go about my business. Having banged his head sufficiently to obtain his full attention, I thought it time to begin. “What’s your name?”

  “Billy, sir,” he gasped in the pathetic way of a begging street urchin. Indeed, he looked young, perhaps not more than seventeen, but his youthful appearance might have been owing to his extremely light and small form.

  “Fat Billy?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Fat Billy,” I said, “you will answer my questions or your new nickname is going to be ‘Breathing Billy,’ and I assure you your new name will be every bit as ironic as the old.” My threat only confounded him, so I placed a hand hard over his throat and squeezed just a little—not enough to prevent him from speaking, but enough that he would understand my meaning. “What is Martin Rochester’s real name?”

  “I don’t know, sir, I swear,” he rasped. His eyes bugged, and he looked to me like a fish, but I knew not if he feared me or the consequence of answering my question.

  “What does he look like?” I tightened the pressure just a little.

  “We never seen ’im. We get messages from ’im. Kit does. And ’e sends us money, but we ain’t never seen ’im. Maybe Kit ’as. I don’t know. We ain’t supposed to talk about ’im at all.”

  I eased my grip a bit. “Did you kill Michael Balfour?”

  He said nothing. He only stared up at me, terrified. A thin stream of blood trickled from his nose. I suppose my more delicate readers may grow weary of these descriptions of violence, but I know they will understand that these means were unavoidable in dealing with this species of man. Thus, let us suffice to say that there were cracking noises and a bit of screaming as well, and Fat Billy then felt comfortable telling me that, yes, he had indeed taken Michael Balfour’s life with the help of his three friends. They arranged to get the servants drunk and, with the potential witnesses off drinking or pursuing other pleasures, they had dragged Balfour into the stable, where they forced him into a noose and hanged him. The servants, I could only guess, feared the discovery of the unwitting r
ole they had played and chose to remain silent.

  What I wished more than anything else, as I sat atop him with my hand upon his throat, was to ask him if he had played any role in the murder of my father. Fenn was dead, but how did I know that Fat Billy had not participated? I tightened my grasp even as I thought on the question, but I knew I had not the time to indulge that particular revenge. Fat Billy’s friends might return, perhaps with help, and there was much I needed to know before they did.

  “Did you steal anything?” I demanded.

  “Nothing!” he exclaimed indignantly, as though outraged that I would ask so insulting a question. He would drag a man from his home and hang him, but he would not steal from him.

  “You were not to search for anything. Stock issues?”

  He tried to shake his head under my grasp. “We didn’t have nothing to do with those.”

  He appeared to know about them, however. “Who was supposed to take the stock?”

  He tried to shake his head again. “I wasn’t supposed to ’ear about it. Don’t want trouble.”

  “Fat Billy, it occurs to me that you are in trouble right now.”

  He must have agreed, because he gave me the name. Had Fat Billy delayed but an instant, he could have withheld his information, for just as our conversation ended, his two friends reappeared at the door, pistols in hand. There was some screaming of women, and men too, and a great deal of running for the door, which struck me as illogical, for the men with the guns were at the door. I grabbed Fat Billy and hoisted up his limp body to use him as a shield. I did not know if his friends would hesitate to shoot him, but I believed that even his slight frame would slow the lead.

  I followed the momentum of the crowd, which forced the men away from the door, and angled my way around as well, until there was an instant when there was no one between me and Fat Billy and, ten feet away, the two other ruffians, pistols loaded and ready to fire. With a mighty thrust that sent pain shooting up my leg, I hurled Billy into them, knocking them off balance, but not down. I then took my chance while I had it and ran out of the tavern, where I managed to lose the villains in the crowd that had gathered outside to bemoan and delight in the carnage.