‘I believe Ben discovered something. It was a day some months ago. Putnam had given him a task to complete – he wanted to calculate the market rate for cattle sold in St Helena to Indiamen on the track home, or some such triviality – and gave him certain ledgers from which to gather the information. Ben became agitated at the completion of this task.’
‘Agitated? In what way?’
‘Nothing dramatic. He was a phlegmatic individual. And he didn’t say anything explicitly. Most people would not have noticed. It has been a time of general agitation at East India House; somebody is always worried about something.’
‘Why has there been such agitation?’
‘There are some who think the Company is coming to the end of its time. Two years ago a law was passed which opened trade in India to interlopers, and this has sparked much dismay. Ben told me that he had noticed another change, in recent weeks, relating to St Helena directly. It was as if the Directors expected the island to slip from their grasp. He was deluged by requests for information. St Helena is an oddity in the Company’s holdings. It has never paid its way, you know; it has only ever really served as a staging post for Indiamen returning home. Its loss would, one would think, bear little weight on the Company.’
‘So what did Johnson discover?’
‘He did not say, explicitly. But he said he thought he knew why the Directors wanted to hold on to St Helena.’
‘When was this?’
‘Three months ago, initially. I tried to ask him about it again later, to speak to him about his progress. But he denied having found anything of interest at all. He grew positively heated when I raised it.’
‘When was this second conversation?’
‘Six weeks ago.’
The man was determined to see a story here, even if none existed. He imagined Lamb perched at his clerk’s desk, bored out of his wits, his mind spinning flights of fantasy from the slenderest of threads.
‘Mr Lamb, it is important that we do not see things that are not there.’
Lamb’s face turned sour.
‘Constable, my understanding is perfectly solid. I find your suggestion impertinent. I have told you of my suspicions, and my admiration for you. I think I have done all I can.’
Lamb drank down the remainder of his gin.
‘I will take my leave of you, and my imperfect understanding will accompany me. Good night, constable.’
Horton watched the clerk’s thin, long shape make its way out through the crowds in the tavern, and wondered what he had said to offend him so.
St Helena, 22 November 1677
My dear Sir Jonas
I hoped to write to you before now, but have had little to report on the main matter of my voyage. I hoped that we might have some clear weather when the Sun came near our Zenith, so that I might give you an account that I had near finished the Catalogue of the Southern Stars, which is my principal concern; but such hath been my ill fortune, that the Horizon of this Island is almost covered with a Cloud, which sometimes for some weeks together hath hid the Stars from us, and when it is clear, is of so small continuance, that we cannot take any number of observations at once; so that now when I expected to be returning, I have not finished above half my work.
Such hath been my frustrations in staring at the Skies, I have had to turn my attentions to the Island itself, and the People upon it. There are about four hundred Whites in the place, almost all of them planters, and a quantity of Blacks who are slaves. These Whites appear healthy enough, for the climate is astonishingly mild, but the Blacks are appallingly treated. But I do not speak of these. This day I encountered a creature who seems neither Planter nor Slave, an ugly Creature whom I take for a Portuguese. He has neither nose nor ears, and one of his hands is entirely missing. I spied him by my observatory, which he was much intrigued by. He had no English, and I no Portuguese, but by a sequence of attempts I concluded he could speak Dutch. When I asked him how he had come by such a tongue, he said he lived with a Dutch family on the Island. There are some such families, a holdover from when the Island’s status was disputed between England and Holland.
Then he began to speak of the Island. He spoke of a time when the Island was covered in forest, though it be now as bare as one of our Moors. The Portuguese had brought goats to the Island, he said, and these had multiplied to such an extent that they destroyed much of the forest; men, too, cut down trees for firewood and for distilling alcohol, in their monstrous way. I began to realise, then, that he was describing a change which had happened over decades, and this man, despite his deformities, seemed to me no older than forty years. I asked him when he had arrived on the Island, and he gave me the date of 1516. More than one hundred and sixty years ago.
I was astonished, yet he seemed undisturbed by his Revelation. I asked him how a man could live so long, and he said only that ‘it is the Island’, as if this explained everything. And yet there is something about this place, something I cannot fathom or fully explain. The climate is extraordinarily beneficent. I can speak of a vicar who sailed here with me with his wife, both of whom were over fifty and childless. The wife is now pregnant with child, at an age so advanced that such a condition must seem a Miracle. I have spoken to her of it at length; indeed, certain loose Tongues have begun to wag about who the true father of her astonishing child is, such is the time I have spent with her.
I would not have this Fancy shared with your fellow Royal Society councillors, Sir Jonas. It is probably no more than the idle speculation of a man grown frustrated with his work, a man stymied by Clouds. But I cannot deny that there is something inexplicable about this Island, something alien which made me give credit to the ogre’s story.
I have also detected a significant Variation in the Variation of the Magneticall Needle, if such a verbal construction be not too confusing. I have been fascinated by the way Magnetic North varies as one travels south across the ocean, and am developing a theory that these Curve-Lines of Equal Variation can be mapped, and may join each other, such that a Map of Variation might be possible covering the entire Globe.
The most interesting of these is the Line of No Variation, which I conjecture from my own observations runs in a gigantic sweep from the north-west to the south-east along the central Atlantic Ocean, joining Florida and passing through St Helena to the Icey Sea beyond. However, on this Island itself, this Line of No Variation disappears, and the Variation to Magnetic North jumps to almost 10 degrees. The effect disappears a mile off the coast, such that it is barely ever noticed by navigators, as they have no need of their Compass when they can navigate by Eye.
I have no explanation for this odd behaviour of the Magneticall Needle. It worries at me like a sore Tooth, and paints the entire Island in a fog of Mystery as thick as the real fog which obscures the peaks.
I may grow fanciful. This talk of Magnetic Variation may just be down to faulty Apparatus, and my ancient ogre just a fictive Caliban, and I a Trinculo who has drunk too much of Prospero’s wine. But not all discovery is made merely by Observation. There may be more here than can meet the Observer’s eye. We should send more men to St Helena, and we should not limit our Gaze to the Skies.
Yours, in continuing gratitude
HALLEY, E.
CONSTABLE HORTON AND THE BODIES
The following morning, Horton took his drink-addled head and the things he had learned to the River Police Office. Despite Markland’s dire warnings, it was still to Harriott that he owed his loyalty. He reported in full to the magistrate on his meeting with Charles Lamb, rehearsing the clerk’s stories of Johnson’s hidden discoveries within the East India Company’s ledgered innards.
‘What do you know of St Helena, Horton?’ asked Harriott.
‘I confess very little, sir.’
‘The extent of my knowledge, also. I stopped there myself, on my return from India, but saw precious little of the island. I could barely walk at the time. An extraordinary prospect, though. Like a rocky fortress alone on t
he ocean.’
A look familiar to Horton passed over his magistrate’s face, like the shadow of a cloud on blue waters. An old seaman’s look, salty with memories.
‘I also spoke to Mr Markland last eve,’ Horton said, carefully. ‘He was much exercised with our visit to East India House. It appears that he is a Proprietor in the Company.’
The wistful expression disappeared from Harriott’s face, which immediately went an old and worrying shade of red.
‘A Proprietor? Markland?’
‘Yes, sir. He has only one vote, which suggests he may only be in possession of a small holding . . .’
‘Why, this is a disgrace! Wait a minute. You met him in the Prospect?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘He found you in there?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘He went to look for you! He warned you off, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, sir. In a manner of speaking. Or rather, he intimated that I would find things difficult if I did not immediately report any developments to him.’
‘Scandalous! The Home Secretary will be informed of this.’
Horton wondered if he should add what Markland had told him about Harriott’s personal circumstances: how he was ill, how he was poor. But would an outbreak of hostilities between the magistrates make his investigation easier or more difficult? Harriott had always been something of a loose cannon and this had on occasion made things more difficult than they might have been. For now, Markland was more use as an ally than an enemy.
‘Sir, I wonder if we should not perhaps leave Mr Markland’s revelation alone.’
‘What? How so? It is a clear and flagrant breach of the essential integrity of his office.’
Horton didn’t know if that were true or not; he had certainly encountered a number of magistrates for whom integrity was no watch-word.
‘Sir, Markland knows the Company, or at least aspects of the Company which are unfamiliar to you. He may provide us access we would not otherwise achieve. And it is his case, not ours. He may simply decide to keep it to himself.’
‘Not if the Home Secretary tells him not to.’
And what if the Home Secretary is himself a Proprietor? thought Horton.
‘Can we perhaps wait until after the coroner’s inquest, sir?’ he said. ‘Then we shall see what we shall see.’
‘No, Horton. We cannot. This is a terrible lapse. I will not stand for it.’
Harriott turned his chair to face the window. It was his customary way of dismissing his constable.
‘Salter was looking for you earlier,’ the magistrate said, to the window and the river. ‘He wishes to show you something.’
‘He is downstairs?’
‘Yes. With the bodies. In the basement.’
Horton noted how the Johnson family had lost their names. They were now ‘the bodies’. Subjects for inspection, not a family of warm-blooded beings. He left Harriott to his anger, and went downstairs.
The basement was used to store bodies, inspect bodies, argue over bodies. No one had decreed it so, but it had become the unofficial morgue. Once a body has been stored in a room, it never quite leaves. Horton wondered after the first body to have been stored in there; a dead waterman, perhaps, pitched over the side of his wherry, his head knocked on the starlings of London Bridge. He had set the template, and now this little room was a laboratory of decease.
Salter was waiting for him, standing over the three bodies laid out on tables. When he saw Horton enter the room he folded the newspaper he was reading.
‘Bonaparte! The man is a devil,’ he said.
‘Indeed,’ said Horton.
Salter looked down at the bodies on the tables.
‘Perhaps it is for the best, that this family departed so soon. If Bonaparte makes it to the Channel . . .’
The surgeon sighed. The last time Horton had seen him, the man had been angered by the constable’s impertinence. Now, his dry old face was warmer.
‘You were right, constable,’ Salter said. ‘I should have checked the bodies unclothed.’
Horton looked down at the table. He sniffed the air as he did so. There was something oddly reminiscent about the odour.
‘Come to this side,’ Salter said. He pointed to the body of Benjamin Johnson. ‘The bodies are decaying rapidly. Another day, and the skin might have disintegrated entirely.’ Johnson’s shirt was unbuttoned to his waist. Salter peeled back the two sides of the shirt, revealing the grey expanse of the man’s chest and stomach. There was a sense of movement beneath the skin, as if the dead organs were beginning to slide around each other in their decay. It sickened Horton.
‘Now, constable. Can you see that?’
Salter pointed to the left-hand side of the chest, above Johnson’s still heart. There was the outline of a shape there, about four inches high, and faint. Horton leaned in, smelling the horrible miasma around the body as it enveloped him, but smelling something else, that same strange smell he had detected when he came in. He peered at the shadowy image on Johnson’s flesh. It depicted an odd geometric shape: a circle atop a cross, which itself sat on top of a figure three laid on its side. The circle itself was intertwined with a crescent, giving it the impression of horns. In the middle of the circle was a single dot. Horton found himself oddly repelled by it, as if it were the sigil of some kind of demon.
‘A tattoo?’ asked Horton.
‘No. It is ink, but only on the surface of the skin.’
‘Have you seen the shape before?’
‘No. I had never seen anything like it. But I have since seen it twice more.’
Salter pointed to the dead woman and her daughter.
‘In the same place? Above the heart?’
‘Would you like to see?’
‘God, by no means. Your word is sufficient for me.’
Horton reached out and touched the point on Johnson’s skin where the pattern had been inked. The skin felt like death. He pulled his finger away.
‘Is it possible to say when it was put there?’
‘No. It is not a tattoo, as I said, so it must be fairly recent. The mark on Johnson’s chest is much fainter than those on the two females.’
‘So it was perhaps older?’
‘Yes. Perhaps.’
‘Or someone tried to wash it off, and failed. So they did not make the attempt on the other two.’
Salter looked at him as if he had performed some kind of magic trick.
‘Yes. Exactly like that.’
Horton stood up, and closed Johnson’s shirt himself.
‘Do you smell something odd on these bodies?’ he asked Salter.
‘Yes, I noticed that as well. A slight odour of bitter almonds.’
That was where he remembered the smell from. It was the same smell he had detected in Johnson’s kitchen. He thought it had been a cooking smell, but it seemed to emanate from the bodies themselves.
‘What does all this signify, Horton?’ asked the surgeon.
‘At the moment, only that it signifies something,’ said Horton, not looking at him. ‘But that is better than nothing.’
Upstairs, he found a piece of paper and some ink and a quill, and drew the shape on Johnson’s body from memory. Then, next to it, he drew the constituent parts of the shape: the upturned crescent and number three, the circle with a dot within it, the cross. He looked at it for some time, finding it strangely profane. Was it the mark of some secret society?
He folded up the piece of paper, and went to the street door of the office. He would walk home and show the picture to Abigail. Perhaps she would recognise it.
At the door, the porter handed him a letter which had been left for him. He paused on the street outside to open and read it. The letter was from Lamb, who had paid to have it delivered by hand, presumably from East India House. Horton read the message as he made his way back over the road to his home.
My dear Horton
My apologies for leaving so precipitously last night. I’m afraid
that without realising it you perfectly stuck your hand into the hornets’ nest that is my Mind. You cannot have known what you said, or how it would be taken, and I can only blame myself for reacting so badly to your words.
My family has suffered for many years with misapprehensions of the fancy; it is our defining curse. I am afraid I rather took to heart your suggestion that I might in some way be imagining that there was something sinister about poor Johnson’s discoveries. On reflection (and now that the gin which I drank copiously and on an empty stomach has left my system) I understand that you are only doing your job. A healthy scepticism is to be applauded in one with such duties as yours. I apologise for so taking it to heart.
I have remembered something else, which may perhaps lend some credence to the strange story I told you last night. It is this: Ben came into some money last year. He said he had inherited it from his wife’s family. But his wife had no family other than a sister, a woman to whom neither he nor his wife had spoken in a good number of years. There seemed to be substantial bad blood between them. Ben often talked of it.
Some time after the news of this bequest, I happened to run into Ben and his wife at a lecture being delivered by my good friend Coleridge (the poet of whom you have not heard). We spoke of this and that, and our conversation turned to walks in the countryside. Mrs Johnson had grown up by the river, she said, and she added ‘at Putney, where my sister lives’.
Is Mrs Johnson’s use of the present tense to describe her sister meaningful? The woman is clearly still alive. So what was the real source of the Johnsons’ money? And why did poor Ben lie about it?
Forgive me if these are idle conjectures. But it would be a source of unutterable pleasure to me, and to my acquaintances, if we were able to help you in your investigations. I can be found at the address below if you would like to talk further.
I remain
Yours sincerely
Lamb, C
Horton pondered the note as he climbed the stairs to the apartment. Lamb had shared an office with Benjamin Johnson, but it seemed he also shared something with Horton’s own wife, Abigail – a disorder of the understanding which could not be shaken.
The Detective and the Devil Page 8