The Hidden Man

by Robin Blake

  ‘I hope your strong room is safe, then,’ I said in a jocular tone.

  ‘Safe?’ he boomed. ‘Yes, my friend, it is indeed safe. Imagine the Bastille of Paris lodged inside the Tower of London. That would not be safer. My strong room’s door has inside it a gate made from thick bars of iron, closed by a pair of strong locks of the latest design. Safe? I should just like to see the man who can dig or break his way into there. But no matter, because the large part of a bank’s money is not in the strong room.’

  ‘Oh? Where is it?’ I asked, shaking the dog off by waggling my foot.

  ‘Circulating, Titus. Money is like blood, the town’s blood, and if it does not circulate, corruption and death must follow. So we cannot let it rot in some locked hutch in the Moot Hall, or even in my strong room, merely waiting to be expended. We must put it to work and let it engender more of itself.’

  ‘You told the Corporation this?’

  ‘Certainly, and they were so well convinced, you might say they were converted. They saw the light.’

  ‘And agreed to your proposal?’

  ‘Yes. It was an excellent stroke of business, was that.’

  ‘So what do you do with this money?’

  ‘That is my partner’s concern. He places it at a profit in money-making enterprises – the importing of sugar, spices, or tea from China.’

  At this point a stranger waiting just ahead of us, a prosperous looking farmer from somewhere towards Clitheroe, turned and tapped Pimbo on the shoulder to get his attention.

  ‘And what, Sir, if the enterprise breaks and the town wants its money?’ he wanted to know.

  Pimbo looked flustered for a moment, but quickly recovered his confidence.

  ‘No, no, that cannot be, not at all,’ he said wagging his finger. ‘You would sooner break the Rock of Gibraltar. At all events, we furnish promissory notes. Each is redeemable by the depositors on demand for a particular sum of money. The total of promissory notes is the total of money they have entrusted to us – which in this case, as I say, is a tidy amount. They shall also, of course, be in receipt of interest at 4 per cent.’

  The farmer leaned back a little, with eyes half closed, assessing the proposition as he might a ram at market.

  ‘I’ll allow it’s a clever scheme, to use another man’s money for your own profit. But I won’t say I approve it. Suppose you send me fifty head of sheep for pasturing out, like. Well, you may allow me the shearing but you’ll want the animals still picking grass in my field when you come back for ’em. You’ll have a good deal to say to me if I’ve sent ’em off to breed in Yorkshire, never mind China.’

  Pimbo’s upper body deflated, as boasting gave way to earnestness. He appealed to me.

  ‘Our friend doesn’t understand. Money is not sheep. What a banker does is to follow the Bank of England in London: takes in money – nota bene, not sheep – pays interest and meanwhile puts the money to work by lending it at a greater rate of interest. If he can get the better rate, there’s nothing wrong in that.’

  ‘But,’ I replied, ‘is not the Bank of England something of a special case? Firstly it lends to the government, which is rather a safe transaction, and secondly it issues notes payable on the spot “to bearer”. To call yourself a bank you will have to lend your money to general enterprises and issue notes on the same basis. Can you stand the risk?’

  ‘Oh! Of course, of course! I have no doubt.’

  Pimbo puffed out his chest and protruded his lips.

  ‘If there be a Bank of England in London, and a Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh, I can see no reason why not a Bank of Lancashire, you know, or even a Bank of Preston. Moon, for one, believes we can safely issue bank notes redeemable by the bearer.’

  He turned back to the farmer, who was puzzled.

  ‘When the notes are payable “to bearer”, Sir, it means anyone who happens to have such a note in his hand can go to the bank, you see, and on presenting it receive full value in gold and silver there and then. In that way, paper can be used in place of coin.’

  The farmer considered this proposition for a moment, then said:

  ‘And why would any man want to do such a thing?’

  ‘Because the note is so much lighter on the pocket, man, so much easier to transport than the coin.’ Pimbo rubbed his hands with glee. ‘It is a very safe scheme, depending on the issuer’s confidence, and Mr Moon is very strong in confidence. Very strong indeed. There is demand for this, I am certain of it, and the day is coming when my partner and I shall establish Preston’s first dedicated banking office.’

  His remarkable ears, the twin beacons of his fervour, had begun to glow red. The farmer, however, shook his head in grizzled scepticism.

  ‘No,’ he declared with emphasis. ‘Folk like their gold and silver too much. Change it for paper? They’ll like as change a clog for a cloud.’

  * * *

  I recalled this conversation on the morning of our appointment as I walked the short distance to Pimbo’s Fisher Gate premises. These were yet far from resembling what we now think of as a bank: in fact, the place was still a working goldsmith’s shop, with two counters, running away from the door to the right and left – the left hand counter being reserved for valuing, buying and pawning, while the right was for selling items in precious metals. At the far end of the shop, facing the street door, there was a cashier’s desk protected by bars. Here sat Robert Hazelbury, the Chief Cashier, with writing stand, cash box and brass scales on the desk before him. In the wall at his back, a bookcase sagged under a load of thick ledgers, and there were doors to the right and left, one of which led to the smithing workshop and the other to Phillip Pimbo’s private business room.

  I walked up between the two counters to the cashier’s cage, where I passed the time of day.

  ‘How do, Mr Cragg?’ he replied.

  ‘Mr Pimbo asked me to call,’ I said. ‘A legal matter.’

  Hazelbury jerked his thumb up and over his right shoulder at Pimbo’s door. The words Phillip Pimbo Esq. were painted on it in a plate-engraver’s script, below which hung a sign, written on pasteboard in block capitals: ENGAGED AND NOT TO BE DISTURBED.

  ‘He’s been closeted behind that sign since before we opened, before I had even arrived myself.’

  ‘He is alone?’

  Hazelbury shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I hear no voices. Happen he’s writing.’

  He rose from his stool, stretched, and stepped up to the door. He gave it three firm knocks with his knuckles, then waited with an ear cocked. There was no answer from within.

  ‘Mr Pimbo?’ he called with his lips close to the door panel, ‘I have Mr Titus Cragg here to see you.’

  There was still no reply and he gave a second knock, twice as loudly. Hearing nothing, he took a step back.

  ‘Strange. Perhaps he’s dropped asleep.’

  ‘Or is taken ill,’ I ventured. ‘You had better disregard that notice and go in, Mr Hazelbury.’

  Hazelbury turned the door’s brass knob and pushed on the door. It did not move. Hazelbury turned to me with an impotent look.

  ‘It’s locked. What should I do, Mr Cragg?’

  ‘Unlock it,’ I replied. ‘And with dispatch.’

  But unlocking could not be done with dispatch. After a search for a duplicate key had failed, a boy was sent into the alley that ran along the side of the shop. He climbed onto the sill of the barred window that lit the room but, as he reported half a minute later, the window was shuttered and he could see nothing inside.

  Next, Arthur Benn the locksmith was fetched to come and pick the lock. He made sure that we onlookers admired the mystery of his craft as, with much muttering to himself, he assessed the thickness of the door and then, removing his hat, put his eye analytically to the keyhole. He had with him a leather roll containing, as we saw when he now unrolled it, a range of instruments shaped like miniature hayrakes. He meditated on these for a few moments before selecting one, which he introduced into the lo
ck. With eyes shut, he twisted it this way and that, blindly seeking the position that would turn the lock. After a minute or so of failure he picked out another hayrake, which also failed, as did the third, fourth and fifth hayrakes. Finally he stood back, uttered a curse, and rolled his lock-picks up again.

  ‘Key’s in lock on t’other side. There’s your obstruction, and I can’t push it out. If you’ll have my advice, you’ll break the door.’

  Watched by a craning audience of shop customers and passers-by, it took two men, a crowbar and a mallet to break in. They were recruited from a house-building crew at work a few doors along the street. With Hazelbury visibly wincing at the damage, they drove the crowbar between the door and the lintel, then levered it until the wood creaked and gave out a few sharp cracks. An instant later, with the sound like a gunshot, the frame splintered and the door was freed. One of the workmen pushed at it and the door swung open. There was a momentary pause in activity as two dozen eyes focused on the interior room, then the workmen and their mob of attendants surged through the doorway. But as soon as they had done so they stopped again, letting out a collective cry.

  ‘Oh!’

  It was a spacious room, with a large sash window on the side wall to the left. In the wall facing us, behind Phillip Pimbo’s writing table, was a fire grate with a handsome marble surround, in which lay a heap of cold ashes. A second door stood between the window and the fireplace while, hung on the walls, were two suites of engravings: one showing a waterside city, perhaps Venice, and the other a set of Hogarth’s A Harlet’s Progress. But it was the writing table – or rather what lay across it – that had brought the crowd up short: a man’s body face down and motionless.

  He had pitched forward from a position on the other side of the table, for his head lay towards the door. Two things could be seen immediately: he wore an expensive silk coat, edged with golden braid, and he displayed a black blood-caked hole in the top of his bald head. The great quantity of blood that had flowed from the wound had swamped the desk and dripped to the floor. Although his face was downward and turned to the side, I could clearly see that it was Phillip Pimbo: his visible wing-like ear betrayed him instantly.

  By now the room was crowded with a rabble of people. Few, in my experience, can resist the breaking down of a locked door, and those who had gathered around the breakers-in – customers of the shop, and others drawn in from the street – were pressing through the doorway now, to see what was inside.

  ‘We must get these people out of here,’ I called to the Chief Cashier, hurrying to the window and opening the shutters.

  It could not be done in less than two or three minutes, and not without barging and pushing, as everyone present took the chance to get a good look: even if they lacked the curiosity themselves, a man would be flayed by his wife, and a woman by her neighbours, for coming home without a full account of the corpse.

  At last all had gone but one: a young woman dressed in the plainest clothes, without even a hat, who had fallen to the floor. I knelt beside her and found that she was bleeding from the head.

  ‘We must have the doctor,’ I said, rising and closing the damaged door as best I could. ‘Hazelbury, will you send out to fetch Dr Fidelis?’

  But Hazelbury had not even seen the injured woman. He stood staring, his face chalk-white, at the corpse across the writing table.

  ‘There is nothing a doctor can do, Sir,’ he said in awed tones. ‘I perceive Mr Pimbo cannot be alive.’

  I took him by the arm, turned him and pointed to where the woman lay.

  ‘It’s for her, Hazelbury. She was hurt in the crush. Will you send the boy? Running, mind! We should see to the living before the dead.’

  I put my hand to his back and gave it a push to hurry him on his way. Then, while I waited for Fidelis to arrive, I crouched beside the woman and tried to talk to her. But I hardly knew what I was saying, so extraordinary were the circumstances of the room: Pimbo with a hole in his head and his blood and brains spilling out, all behind a locked door. Meanwhile the woman was groaning gently but saying nothing.

  After a few minutes, Luke Fidelis bustled in, having been found by the messenger at home. He seemed not in any way affected by the presence of a corpse across the table, merely glancing in its direction, before kneeling beside the injured woman and inspecting her face. As soon as he did he uttered a cry of surprise.

  ‘Well, well, it is Amity Thorn, that I saw at home only yesterday. Amity? Can you hear me?’

  His patient had begun to recover herself. From her clothes she was evidently very poor but her poverty did not conceal the other notable fact about her: she was extremely pretty. Carefully Fidelis helped her to a chair and, loosening the ribbon of her bonnet, took it off and examined her shapely head. She had a cut about the temple, and the beginning of a swelling on her cheek.

  ‘It wouldn’t do to have you falling into the same condition as your husband, Amity. But I think you have escaped lightly.’

  He brought a piece of clean lint from his bag which he folded and pressed against the temple, securing it with a few turns of a cloth bandage around her head and brow.

  ‘There. That will serve. So, how is it with you now, Amity? Can you speak? Can you say what happened?’

  Her voice was faint but her meaning was not confused in any way.

  ‘Well, I followed the crowd into the room but there was such elbow banging that I was off my balance when a gentleman violently crashed into me, and down I went to the floor. I knocked my head that hard I think I fainted.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘My head, it does ache a little, but my thoughts are clear.’

  Fidelis briefly held up three fingers before her eyes.

  ‘How many fingers did you see?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Good. Did you come into the shop today about that spoon I wonder?’

  Grasping both hands he helped her to her feet.

  ‘Yes, doctor, to pawn it.’

  ‘Well, perhaps it had better wait for another day, after what’s happened here. Can you sit quietly for a few minutes in the shop? I shall willingly take you home, but first the Coroner and I have a little business to conduct.’

  He inclined his head towards the corpse across the desk. Amity Thorn took the point and nodded, though a little gingerly.

  ‘Well, I’d be glad of a few minutes’ rest before I get off home, doctor, for I am right dazed.’

  When she had carefully replaced her bonnet, Fidelis opened the door, guided her out and settled her securely in the cashier’s chair. He rejoined me with Hazelbury himself and for a few moments the three of us jointly and in silence surveyed the fatal room. Then Fidelis approached the body and began a superficial examination, bending to peer at it from various angles, laying a hand on the cheek and lifting the shirt to feel the flesh of his back.

  Pimbo was lying, as I say, in such a way as to indicate that he had been standing at the table before falling forward onto it. His feet were still in contact with the ground, his arms were up and lay on the table’s surface with the hands resting one on each side of the shattered head. The hands were empty but on the floor, a few feet from the desk, lay a pistol.

  ‘Well, his brains appear to have been blown out by a pistol shot,’ Fidelis said casually, as if remarking on a change in the weather. ‘It will have been an instantaneous death.’

  He stooped to pick up the pistol and looked it over as I turned to the Chief Cashier.

  ‘Do you know of this pistol, Mr Hazelbury?’

  ‘No, Sir,’ said Hazelbury, his voice slowed by shock. He was still trying to grasp the implication of what had happened. I went on,

  ‘Mr Pimbo had asked me to come here this morning for a consultation, urgent he implied, about some legal worry. Can you help in any way with that?’

  ‘A bad do, is this,’ was the best Hazelbury could manage by way of reply, still shaking his head slowly from side to side. ‘A very bad do.’

  ‘Well, that i
s certainly an accurate statement,’ I agreed. ‘But the harder question is not what it is, but why? Was Mr Pimbo in some trouble?’

  But Hazelbury’s mind was elsewhere. His mouth hung slightly open and his eyes were glassy with tears. I took him by the elbow, steered him towards a chair and sat him down. When I returned to the corpse, Fidelis had placed the pistol on the surface of the desk beside a powder flask that lay there, and was examining the floor around and under it.

  ‘What do you make of it, Luke?’ I asked. ‘One must suppose he shot himself by accident whilst loading the pistol.’

  My friend was staring upwards, with particular attention to the ceiling.

  ‘But I wonder why he would happen to be loading a pistol in his office before breakfast.’

  His eyes darted down again, and cast about on the floor in the area of the table.

  ‘Well then, he meant to do it,’ I persisted. ‘Such is not unknown in a man that suffers great reverses – in his business, for instance.’

  ‘It is better,’ said my friend, ‘to consider what we can find out by looking.’

  He stooped and looked once under the table, then returned to the dead man’s side and began to examine him closely around the head. After a minute or two of this, he straightened and began to walk around the room with his gaze fixed on the floor.

  ‘Where the devil is it?’

  ‘Is what, Luke?’ I asked.

  He looked at me as if surprised that I was not able to share his thoughts.

  ‘The wig, of course. What’s happened to his wig?’

  ‘Perhaps he left it at home.’

  ‘I doubt it. Just look.’

  He was standing at the door now, pointing to the floor at his feet.

  ‘Here’s a smear of blood and it is, what? Eight feet from the corpse. I noticed it as soon as I came into the room. How do you think it got here?’

  ‘The injured woman, Amity, was bleeding.’

  Luke gestured to his right.

  ‘Yes, but she was lying over there. You can see where she bled. This here is not her blood, it isn’t fresh.’