Printer's Devil (9780316167826)

by Bajoria, Paul

  As far as I remember, in fact, he never mentioned his Pa ever again.

  Nick had managed to rescue a few of his own things from the house. Reaching for his ragged shirt hanging by the fire, he dug his fingers into the pocket and, half-apologetically, he held out a bangle.

  “I wanted you to see this,” he said.

  Even though I knew it wasn’t mine, I couldn’t help being seized by the same suspicion Nick had shown on the dockside that morning. It was absolutely identical: the same size, weight, and color, with the same markings snaking around its whole surface. I don’t think either of us really believed there were two, until I went to fetch my treasure box, took out my bangle, and put his and mine side by side; and it seemed so strange, so unbelievable, that we both just sat there laughing, unable to speak. What did it mean?

  I watched him in the firelight, turning the banglesover in his hands, comparing them. Without his shirt, it was clear that he was even browner than I was myself. Where his skin had been continuously exposed to the sunshine, on his forearms and the back of his neck, it shone a rich, deep chocolate color. He was thin, but — as I suddenly realized with a confusing rush of admiration — strong.

  I became aware of Mr. Cramplock in the doorway; and it occurred to me he might have been standing there watching us for quite some time. I felt blood rushing to my cheeks, and I shuffled a bit closer to the fire so he might think I was reddening from the heat.

  “Would either of you two ruffians like another hot drink?” he asked.

  Nick raised his eyebrows. “We both would, Mr. Cramplock,” I said, quickly.

  Cramplock had been very quiet as the revelations emerged; and to be honest I was a bit wary of talking about it with him. I still wasn’t sure how much of a part he’d played in it all; but he’d been noticeably better-tempered, these past few days. As he brought in the drinks and handed them to us there was a softness in his eyes, which I’d rarely seen in all the years I’d known him. Without thinking about it, I said:

  “Mr. Cramplock, I don’t think I’ve really been telling you the truth these past few weeks.”

  He came and sat down, rubbing his cheek intently. “Mog,” he said, “I’m afraid that makes two of us.” He seemed to be finding it difficult to think of the right words. “When you kept asking me questions about watermarks … and when we kept getting threatening notes … I wasn’t really trying to stand in your way.”

  “I never thought you were,” I said.

  “I thought you suspected me of being in the plot,” he said.

  I considered this. “Not exactly, Mr. Cramplock,” I said. “But I knew you knew the men. You knew Fellman the papermaker. And you knew Flethick. And I thought you were maybe — protecting them.”

  “I was threatened with death,” he said in a quiet voice, “more than once. I was very frightened, Mog, and if you’d had more sense you would have been too.”

  We watched him as he talked, his voice quiet and his face serious in the glow from the fire.

  “I got mixed up with that crew years ago,” he said, “and I’ve been trying to get out of their grasp ever since. They wanted me to do printing jobs for them — forgeries and suchlike. Well, once upon a time, I used to. But I knew I could go to prison if I was found out, and it’s not hard to trace the source of printed matter, Mog, as you well know. I started to refuse to work for them. They weren’t very pleased with me. And then when Cockburn broke out of prison they happened to find out I was doing the wanted poster.”

  I suddenly realized what had been going on. “You mean you changed the picture deliberately?” I said, my eyes wide.

  “I, er — sabotaged it, in a manner of speaking, yes,” he said, looking at the table, “and then I, er — blamed you. Mmmm. It was the only way I could see to stop them beating me to death one night after I left the shop. I had to do something that would satisfy them I was helping.”

  I looked at Nick, dumbfounded. He gave a short laugh, a mixture of disbelief and relief.

  “Why didn’t you tell someone?” I asked Cramplock.

  He looked at me through his little glasses. “You know better than to ask me that,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell someone what you knew? It’s not that simple, Mog. You don’t know who to trust, do you?”

  “So the wanted poster went out with the wrong face on, and Cockburn got away without being recognized,” I said.

  “For a while, yes. Of course, he couldn’t hide from the criminal types who’d known him for years.”

  “You docked my wages,” I reminded him, indignantly.

  “Did I? I’m sorry. I must have been getting carried away.”

  A thought occurred to me. “Did you write a note to Fellman?” I asked.

  “After the poster, yes,” he said. “I decided it had all gotten too dangerous. I wrote to him to warn him this shop was being watched, and that I’d had threatening notes.”

  “And you were being threatened by Follyfeather as well,” I said. “I saw a letter …”

  “I was being threatened by everybody,” he said. “And then when you started getting threatening notes too, that’s when I got frightened. I thought it was best to pretend I didn’t really understand. But I really started to be careful then — and when a man from Bow Street came to see me, my main concern was to make sure they were looking after you.”

  I suddenly had an enormous amount of respect for Cramplock. Here he’d been, stringing along the criminals, trying to persuade them he was on their side, while all along he’d been cooperating with Cricklebone’s men, and watching out for my safety too. I was terribly impressed, and felt rather meek.

  There was something else I suddenly realized I ought to ask Cramplock about once again: one of the biggest mysteries of all.

  “You know the old house next door,” I said, “you haven’t seen anyone coming and going in the last few weeks, have you?”

  “You asked me that before,” he said. “I told you then, it’s not safe for anyone to come and go. Nobody in their right mind would hide out in there. I’m quite sure nobody’s been in there since the fire, all those years ago.”

  “No,” I said, “no, I went in there. Last week. I got trapped in there. I meant to tell you, because I fell through the wall and — made a bit of a mess. But he was hiding out there all the time.”

  Cramplock was looking at me very strangely indeed. I had lost him completely.

  “Who was hiding out?” he asked, baffled.

  “Well—” I stopped. This was a trickier question than it seemed. Who was it who’d been hiding out next door? The person who had found me in the chest at Coben and Jiggs’s lair? The person I’d seen in the stable at Lion’s Mane Court? The person who had tied up Mr. Spintwice and taken the camel? The person who had later been left in a lifeless heap at the side of the lane leading down to the docks, on that dreadful night? Or Cricklebone’s colleague, in that ridiculous disguise? Were all of these people really the same person?

  Eventually Nick spoke. “You must have dreamt it, Mog,” he said simply.

  “No,” I said, indignantly, “I know I didn’t dream it.”

  “Well, then you must have been in a different house,” said Nick patiently. “We went in there. You remember what it was like. Anybody could see it hadn’t been lived in for years, Mr. Cramplock’s quite right.”

  I bit my lip. He didn’t believe me either. My fingers playing with Lash’s silky ears, I tried to remember how I’d felt, on that hot evening, standing in that mysterious garden and walking around the disorienting old house. “I don’t know,” I said, “but it was as though — when I went into the garden, everything outside it just — stopped existing. As though I was in a completely different place, or a completely different time.”

  I was struggling, and they were still looking at me with complete incomprehension. I knew I hadn’t dreamt it, and yet it simply didn’t make sense. Neither the man from Calcutta, nor the man from Calcutta’s house, could possibly be explained. But there was
something important about it all; I just had a feeling, because of my dreams, because of the expression I’d seen on his face…

  “Nick,” I said, “I want you to look at something.”

  Until I got the bangle out, half an hour ago, I hadn’t really looked at the treasures in my tin, since that terrible dawn at the docks. I suppose I hadn’t been thinking straight; because I hadn’t realized that a lot of what I needed to know was folded up inside. But now, with Nick sitting here and the treasure box open beside me, I found my heart was beating faster.

  We emptied the tin, and spread its contents out in front of us, pulling Lash out of the way to stop him treading on them or chewing them.

  There was Mog’s Book. There were the scrawled notes from the man from Calcutta; pages from newspapers; documents I’d stolen from Coben and Jiggs which we couldn’t really understand, and which they probably hadn’t made head nor tail of either. Only the list of names was missing — kept as evidence, no doubt, by Cricklebone.

  And there was the most important document of all: the letter, signed “your undeserving Imogen,” which I’d brought from Coben and Jiggs’s hideout. The letter which Nick had quoted word-for-word, out of the blue, the other night. I held it out to him, half afraid of it, as though it might be infected with some sort of dangerous magic.

  “This is it,” I said, quietly.

  This was it. He took it from me. “I didn’t even know it had gone,” he said, smoothing the familiar, fragile old paper out carefully. “Coben must have taken it along with the other stuff he stole from our house. He wouldn’t have made any sense of it. We’re lucky he didn’t just burn it or throw it away.”

  It was the last page of a letter which, along with the bangle, Nick had owned and treasured all his life. In a fine, fading hand, it covered two sides of a fragile quarto sheet of paper. It was written in a very gracious style, with some long words I didn’t completely understand, and the first part of the letter was long lost: but the point of it was quite clear from what remained. As I read it aloud, Nick joined in, without even looking at the page. He’d read it so many times he knew it by heart.

  It began in mid-sentence.

  … apart from some doses of physic of Mr. Varley’s which I privately confess have done nothing to improve my condition. Disease is life whence we have come, and despite individual kindnesses the arrangements onboard since we left have been insanitary and unnourishing. Whatever the truth, the Good Lord attends, and it fits us not to question His motives. The one vital duty of my last days remains to be discharged, and it is in pursuit of this, principally, that I have written to you.

  You will be surprised and, I fear, aghast, at the request I make of you. Yet I beg you to give this letter your fullest attention, and to consider with the utmost care how you might execute my will. As I have explained, I am delivered of two beautiful children, and in being taken from them I leave them utterly alone and helpless. If I am taken, my sole desire in departing is to know that the warm and desperate little souls to whom my transgression gave life will be spared, and will be able to live, and grow, and laugh, and learn. It is my dying wish that they be cared for, together or separately, in the best circustances which may be afforded, and that every effort be made to bring them up in virtue and health.

  I hope I am not mistaken in assuming that you have the means to oversee such an upbringing, and I pray that, with goodwill and modest financial aid, nature may in time be allowed to heal where she has so mercilessly hurt. My dear, I beg you not to —

  It continued over the page:

  — spurn my entreaty in this matter, much as your first instinct may be to do so. I charge you with this solemn duty not because I wish to burden your remaining years but because I trust you with all my being. Whatever the imminent fate of the soul, it would indeed be too cruel if the still innocent flesh begotten of my misdeed were made to suffer.

  I know of nowhere else to turn. I feel so helpless, my dear, and I pray that you will not feel equally so, upon being charged with the care of these precious infants. I would not blame you. Your first instinct may very well be to enlist help, and even to seek out those who are closer to them in blood. Yet I would be in dereliction of my duty if I did not prepare you for the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of ever doing so. You would be attempting to conduct your inquiries in a country where letters are rarely answered, and where there are no formal records of people’s names, histories, births, deaths, professions, or whereabouts. I fear it will not be possible to reach Damyata now.

  I can say no more; and I am feeling weak. Please God this letter reaches you, and that you do not think too ill of me to grant some mercy to the gentle, perfect creatures who accompany it. My dear, Good-bye, and with all the remaining life in my body, I thank you.

  Your underserving,

  Imogen

  There was a long silence after I’d finished reading it, while the words sank in. The desperate emotion of it, expressed in such measured and refined language: Imogen, it was clear, had been a remarkable woman. I had to blink back tears. Reading these two fragile faded pages had given a personality, a physical presence, to someone who had never existed for me before, except as a name; and I suddenly felt the loss of her like a new bereavement.

  I tried to look up at Nick and smile, but my mouth wouldn’t make the right shape, and my eyes were blinded with tears.

  “My mother,” I said.

  I was afraid he’d think I was silly and girlish for crying. But his face and voice were full of understanding, and I suddenly knew he’d come to exactly the same realization as I had, at exactly the same time.

  “Our mother,” he said, gently.

  She had come, like the Sun of Calcutta, on a ship from the East Indies, twelve years before; and so had we, her twin children. It was impossible to know from the letter whether we had been born on land, or at sea; but we were still tiny and helpless when we arrived in London, that much was obvious; and we’d been delivered into the hands of a family friend or relative, whose name was lost, and who had plainly been unable to look after us for long. I understood how I had come to be in the orphanage; but how Nick had ended up being claimed by the bosun and Mrs. Muggerage was less clear.

  But, as we talked, I became convinced of one thing. The man from Calcutta would have been able to tell us everything. On that dreadful hot night, a few minutes of terrible violence outside the Three Friends had probably robbed us of our only chance of finding out who we really were. He had come to find us; and we had spent the entire time running away. “Must talk,” his note had said. And now it was too late.

  I hardly let Nick out of my sight, now. I spent all my free time at Mr. Spintwice’s with him, and he spent quite a lot of every day helping me out in the printing shop. Cramplock seemed genuinely pleased that I had discovered a brother I never knew I had; but not, strangely, especially surprised. He was treating us with noticeable kindness, but he still insisted on hard work, and came over to cluck and chivy us on if he found us talking about the camel adventure instead of getting on with the job. I still couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I was a girl and not a boy, and I had sworn Nick to secrecy. It was too much of a risk. In spite of all that had happened, I was more or less sure he’d still decide a girl couldn’t be a printer’s devil.

  We thought we might find out more when, about a week later, Mr. Cricklebone came to see us at Spintwice’s. The dwarf had never had anyone so tall in his house before, and Cricklebone had to bend nearly every joint in his body in order to get through the door. Mr. Spintwice was very polite, but he wore a rather frozen expression throughout the visit, as though he believed people really had no business being so tall, and that, if he were in any sort of power, he’d make it illegal.

  Cricklebone had ostensibly come to take down statements from us, gathering evidence to be used against the villains. As it turned out, he was the one who found himself interrogated, as Nick and I showered him with questions from the moment he arrived. He was bei
ng very cagey, doing little more than avoiding the subject or tapping the side of his sizeable nose. “There’s too much idle talk in London already,” he said.

  “This isn’t idle talk,” Nick said; “we want to know what really happened.”

  Cricklebone perched on a chair, sipping tea and trying not to let his gangly elbow stray too far out in case it knocked a clock off Spintwice’s mantelpiece.

  “Really,” he said absently, “isn’t a very easy word.” He put down his teacup, and picked up a pencil and a folded sheet of paper, preparing to write down some notes. “Now,” he began, his pencil poised, “perhaps you can —”

  “I want to know,” I interrupted him, “what Mr. McAuchinleck was up to. Was he really the man from Calcutta all the time? Was it him hiding out in the house next door all that time? Did he kill Jiggs? Did he really have a snake?”

  Cricklebone sat silently for a long time, with the end of the pencil in his mouth. “Mmmm-mm,” he said, at length, and I thought for one ridiculous moment he was going to pretend to have a stammer again. “Mr. McAuchinleck was following the case for a very long time. We discovered that a completely new kind of drug was circulating in London, something more dangerous and more valuable than anything known before. We knew it was coming in from the East Indies, and there was a whole network of criminals involved — but what we didn’t know was just how they were doing it, or who was behind it. So McAuchinleck traveled to and from Calcutta on Captain Shakeshere’s vessel. In, ah — incognito, as it were. To watch.”

  “Was this when he was pretending to be Dr. something?” I asked.

  “Hamish Lothian, yes.”

  “But when he got to London he disguised himself as Damyata?”

  “I suppose so.” Cricklebone was being a bit irritating. I think he was enjoying the mystery he was creating. “McAuchinleck dressed up a time or two, left a few notes. But the villains did a lot of work for us. They hated each other so much, all Mr. McAuchinleck had to do was play them off against one another. He scared you once or twice … but then, you shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”