The Detective and the Devil

by Lloyd Shepherd

  Again, Putnam smiled.

  ‘As you please.’

  They sat down, and Horton pulled out the piece of paper Lamb had given him. Putnam looked at it, but Horton kept the face of it away from his eyes. The man might know Lamb’s hand, after all – though he rather suspected the time for such niceties was past.

  ‘What can you tell me about the position of assistant treasurer in St Helena, Putnam?’

  ‘I can tell you nothing about it,’ Putnam replied.

  ‘Because you know nothing?’

  Putnam waved his hand around him. This place, the gesture said.

  ‘Then I shall be more specific. Tell me about Captain Campbell.’

  ‘I do not recall the name.’

  ‘Indeed? He was found in Kingston-upon-Thames, earlier this year. He had been attacked with some kind of a knife. It was around the same time another man, a Captain Suttle, was found at Boxhill. He too had been killed with a knife. Both smelled strongly of drink.’

  ‘A tragedy,’ said Putnam. ‘Two tragedies, in fact.’

  ‘Both Campbell and Suttle had held the office of assistant treasurer in St Helena.’

  Putnam said nothing to that. He shrugged, and held out two open palms, silently repeating his inability to help.

  ‘Captain Robert Fox, then. The predecessor of Captain Campbell. A St Albans man, I believe. A distant relative of Charles James Fox.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I do recall Captain Fox.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Indeed, yes. There was something of a scandal concerning him, was there not? Something to do with indecency around children. He threw himself into the Thames, I believe. He was a Company man. But there are so many of us, the law of averages dictates that some will be wicked, does it not?’

  ‘You have told me nothing I could not find for myself in the newspapers.’

  ‘Well, the gentlemen of the press are very astute, are they not?’

  ‘Captain Fox was an assistant treasurer at St Helena.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘And what of Captain Stephen Jenkins? He served in St Helena from 1780 to 1792.’

  ‘Before my time, constable, as you must realise.’

  ‘Which is why, Putnam, the Company keeps records.’

  ‘Records which you seem to have some access to, constable. Might I enquire as to how?’

  ‘Captain Jenkins lived in a house on Manchester Street. I asked after him at the Public Office at Great Marlborough Street. One of the magistrates there remembered the case. Captain Jenkins was thrown from an upper window of his house in June 1798, with such force that his body had been impaled on the railings outside, where it remained until removed by constables. A woman was also found inside the house. It is assumed she was a whore. Her identity is unknown, as was the cause of her death; she seemed to have simply stopped breathing, and there were no marks on her body beyond those any man would expect to find on a London whore. An odd mark drawn in ink was found on her left breast, immediately above her heart. It was not a tattoo. It looked like this.’

  Horton handed Putnam the piece of paper on which he had copied the symbol Salter had found on the bodies of the Johnsons. The clerk glanced at it, and just then – for a brief moment – something opened up in the clerk’s face, some brief but potent mixture of surprise and anxiety which was shut down immediately like the snap of curtains on a room lit from behind.

  ‘A macabre motif, constable,’ said Putnam, handing it back, his face recomposed. ‘I take it you expect me to see some significance in it? I’m afraid I do not.’

  ‘Do you have a tattoo, Putnam?’

  The question was almost certainly stupid, but Horton remembered their first meeting, when Putnam had spoken of Otaheite and how he carried its mark on me still.

  ‘You mean, do I have this odd symbol tattooed on me? No, constable, I do not. And with that preposterous enquiry, I think we should draw this to a close.’

  ‘What is the relationship between Captain Burroughs, the new assistant treasurer of St Helena, and Alderman Burroughs?’

  Putnam stood up, and Horton did likewise, so that the two of them were once again pitched into the stream of clerks that ran along the corridor.

  ‘Do you know where I live, Putnam?’ asked Horton. ‘Have you been in my apartment?’

  The Company man’s face was as unreadable as the marble floor.

  ‘What do you make, constable?’

  ‘What do I make?’

  ‘In salary. What are you paid?’

  ‘I am paid enough.’

  ‘Really? I suspect that is not the case, in fact. When you begin to suspect the same, come and see me.’

  The clerk turned away, and rejoined the black-suited throng, just another among hundreds of careful, calculating men.

  During these days of corresponding and searching and travelling, Abigail remained under the watchful eyes of Rat and Cripps and the other street boys. Occasionally their numbers were supplemented by a Wapping constable on the orders of Harriott, who seemed determined to demonstrate his protectiveness towards Mrs Horton. But when she saw one of these men loitering around in Lower Gun Alley, Abigail was wont to open a window and yell at him until he left, to the sniggers of the boys in the shadows and the dismay of the neighbours.

  These neighbours knew that something was afoot with Horton and his wife, but they had long known that Charles Horton had an unusual job – was, indeed, an unusual man – and that his wife was almost as odd. She kept a good clean house, that much could be said for her, but there were no children, and she read more books than was good for her – any learning garnered from books and not experience was, to most of the denizens of Lower Gun Alley, cause for great suspicion. Some of the women of the street had complained to Horton directly about the boys who hung around the place, and Horton pretended to hear their complaints and then ignored them. It was a fact, after all, that Lower Gun Alley was safer for everyone by being watched.

  Rat’s adoration for Abigail only grew as the days passed. He accompanied her everywhere, and grew quieter and cleaner and altogether more acceptable as a companion. Abigail was teaching him to read, an activity he clearly found astonishingly onerous but impossible to refuse, as it meant spending time in close proximity to and in conversation with the beloved Mrs Horton.

  Abigail, for her part, admitted to finding the lad amusing, though Horton thought there was rather more to it than that. She had bought him new clothes and boots, such that Horton worried about the fate of the boy when all this was over and he had to rejoin his street mates in his fresh and clean attire. But when he pointed this out to Abigail, her face became desolate, and he knew he had opened a window she had deliberately closed. The question of Rat’s future was, for her, best ignored. She enjoyed the boy while she could, even introducing him to the pleasures of the Royal Institution’s Lecture Hall, which he had judged to be wondrously mesmerisin’.

  She continued to read about John Dee, and about that strange symbol which seemed to attract new significance with every day that passed, such that Horton began to understand how secret texts and images could attract power just by their existence, by their promise of unifying explanations and underlying themes. The promises were empty, of course, at least in the realms of philosophy. But somebody had drawn those symbols. The Monad, Abigail said the symbol was called – and it was created by Dee.

  The newspapers were full of the quotidian gossip and business of the metropolis, with one persistent drum beat which grew louder and louder as May progressed towards June: the extraordinary prospect of the wars with Napoleon recommencing. The emperor had left Elba, the little Mediterranean island which had been ceded to him by the European powers, three months before. In less than a hundred days he had reassembled his armies and reinfatuated the French with his talk of Imperial glory. The British government had pledged tens of thousands of men and tens of thousands of pounds to bring the French back to heel, and armies had been gathering, their swarms calculated in daily newspa
per reports. Horton was struggling to keep the interest of his magistrate, John Harriott, who seemed to have taken Napoleon’s activity as a personal outrage. Likewise the interest in the deaths of the Johnsons, and then of Amy Beavis, had sunk beneath the rising tide of a new Francophobia. Napoleon seemed almost infernal in his resistance to defeat: an emperor who could not die and would not surrender until Europe burned beneath his cloven feet.

  Edward Markland, similarly, had become less interested in the case after the embarrassment of his visit to the Home Secretary. The political appeal of solving the murders had declined along with the public interest. There was no new London Monster, or so every day without another killing suggested. The only Monster was Corsican, not English.

  A few days after his encounter with Putnam at East India House, as May drew to an end and June came in, Horton received a letter at the Police Office. It was from Charles Lamb.

  Horton – a note, scribbled in some urgency. I am this day to take the stage north, to spend time with my friend Southey in the Lakes. I am, I admit, running away. Last night, I was followed home, I know not by whom. I kept to the busiest streets, and made it to my door. I locked it and secured all the windows. I stayed awake all night, and made a point of keeping as many lamps and candles burning as possible. I was not disturbed, but the experience shook me. I have found nothing else on the St Helena assistant treasurers, and must now beat my retreat. My anxiety grows so great. I must find air and freedom. I cannot be Locked AWAY!

  Lamb

  The note had such frenzy that Horton feared a recurrence of Lamb’s mental disarray. He tried to decode what it might mean, Lamb being followed in this way. Had he himself put Lamb in danger, when he had questioned Putnam in the way he had? Horton had been on high alert in its immediate aftermath, but had seen nothing suspicious. Was it just that the Company had been waiting for things to settle down? Might the danger Lamb perceived be real? He felt the force of Lamb’s imagination and the shadow of his mania, projecting forbidding shapes into Horton’s own mind.

  There were three men standing at the bar of the Prospect. They were removing their coats, for the day was warm and inside the pub the air had become close and sticky. One of them rolled up his sleeves before returning to his pint, and Horton saw an enormous tattoo snaking up his arm – literally snaking, for the tattoo depicted a blue-skinned serpent, an evil thing that was at once ugly and beautiful. A reminder of his talk with Putnam.

  He minded a man arriving in the pub, tall and out of place, his head turning as he looked for someone. It was Salter, the surgeon. He caught Horton’s eye and walked over to him.

  ‘Dr Salter,’ Horton said. ‘Were you looking for me?’

  ‘I was.’ Salter looked around once more, as if he feared every man in the pub might jump on him at once.

  ‘Can I fetch you a drink?’

  ‘No, indeed. I do not . . . partake.’

  ‘Well, then, please do sit.’

  Salter looked at the chair opposite Horton. It did not impress him, but he carefully placed himself in it nonetheless.

  ‘I have some information,’ Salter said. ‘It relates to the odd smell we detected on the bodies of the Johnsons, and which you also reported at the home of Mr Beavis and his daughter.’

  ‘Yes – the smell of bitter almonds.’

  ‘Exactly. Well, it reminded me of something, but I’ve been busy and had not the chance to pursue it. I also wished to consult with an acquaintance of mine. Do you know of Dr Granville, physician in ordinary to His Highness the Duke of Clarence?’

  Horton laughed, but seeing Salter frown he realised his mistake. Salter was not joking – he was honestly asking if Horton knew the physician to an HRH.

  ‘No, Salter. I do not know Dr Granville.’

  ‘Ah, well. Of course. Well, Dr Granville has been long interested in a substance named Prussic acid. Do you know of this, perhaps?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It is a constituent part of the pigment Prussian blue. It is an unusual thing. It was first created in the last century by the Swedish chemist Scheele. He mixed Prussian blue with red precipitate of mercury and water, boiled and agitated and filtered it, then poured it over iron filings and added sulphuric acid. He then distilled a quarter part of it, and made Prussic acid with a mixture of sulphuric acid; the latter he removed using barytic water.’

  Salter looked mesmerised. To Horton, he might as well have been speaking Greek.

  ‘Four years ago, Gay-Lussac in France perfected this technique, and created the purest form of Prussic acid yet seen. He calls it hydro-cyanic acid. Dr Granville is interested in the medicinal properties of this substance – he believes it has great potential as a sedative, even more powerful, he says, than opium.’

  ‘And its relevance to the current case?’

  ‘Simply this: Prussic acid, or hydro-cyanic acid – whatever you wish to call it – has three distinct properties. One, it carries a strong smell of bitter almonds. Two, it has a very low boiling point, and is gaseous at some 20 degrees Celsius. Three, it is extraordinarily poisonous. I believe it may have been used in the deaths of the Johnsons and, almost certainly, in the deaths of the Beavises also.’

  The information fitted, like an old key in a smooth lock, and Horton was grateful for it. But he wondered where it led him. He had suspected, of course, that the Johnsons and the Beavises had been poisoned. Did knowing the mechanism make any difference? If a door had opened, did it lead anywhere useful?

  Horton finished his ale and left the Prospect of Whitby with Salter, bidding the doctor farewell out on the street and thanking him for his information. He walked to the River Police Office, but there he was interrupted by Edward Markland, who was just leaving after a meeting with Harriott. As Markland made his customarily superior greeting, the office porter handed Horton a note. Markland watched him read the name of the sender on the envelope, and must have seen his face.

  ‘Who is it from, Horton?’ Markland asked, rudely. Horton swallowed his first impulse, which was to tell the man to mind his own business. However he had behaved these past weeks, Markland was still his superior.

  ‘It is from Robert Brown, the librarian to Sir Joseph Banks,’ Horton replied.

  Markland raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Indeed? You have an interesting correspondence, constable.’

  He emphasised the word constable, as if reasserting a natural order. How on earth did one such as Horton come to be receiving letters from an esteemed man of learning like Robert Brown?

  Horton opened the letter, desperately wishing he could be somewhere else, but he was trapped – Markland wanted to see what was in the letter, now, and he had no way of refusing him. As he read the note that feeling of loss of control deepened still further.

  ‘And what does Mr Brown have to say to Constable Horton, hmm?’

  ‘He requests that I attend Sir Joseph at his earliest convenience in Soho Square on an urgent matter relating to my wife.’

  Markland’s face showed shock, followed by a kind of scandalised amusement.

  ‘Your wife, Horton? What on earth does Sir Joseph Banks have to do with your wife?’

  ‘I confess I do not know. But it appears she is already there.’

  MRS HORTON’S TRIP

  Abigail had been trying not to think about that last encounter with the doctor at St Luke’s, but every now and again the memory would intrude like a bad smell in a clean kitchen. She filled her days with Rat – reading with him, shopping with him, attending lectures with him. It was, in many ways, a very pleasurable time, and she almost imagined that she did have a son, that she and Charles were mother and father, but these happy thoughts only served to snag awful realisations: that her womb was barren, her life half-full, her mind preoccupied because it had nothing to love other than her strange, unfathomable partner.

  Her visits to St Luke’s had filled the spaces in which these thoughts tended to condense, but now that outlet was gone, leaving only that dirty sense of havi
ng been bitterly used by Drysdale.

  She needed to be of use. So she decided on a trip. She walked down to the Wapping stairs with Rat in attendance, and took a wherry. It was a sunny day, and the river was as bustling as any London square or market. Voices called across the river from lighter to ship to barge, and their wherry made its way upstream following the same course her husband had taken to Putney. Abigail, though, went further. The trip would take time, but she was in no hurry, and besides, she enjoyed watching the riverbank change its character, from the crowded wharves of Wapping to the colourful splendour of the Tower and the City markets, and then the river widened out to the towers and roofs of Westminster and the fields of Chelsea. Then they were out in the country, on the same river but also on an utterly different one.

  They went past Putney, under its wooden bridge, the palace at Fulham passing by on their right as they entered the great river-loop around Barnes. Curious trees leaned into the river to see their reflections as they passed, and as they approached their destination she saw a church tower and several roofs, one of them tall and steep and hard by the riverbank. The waterman tied up at some steps down to the shore, and Rat jumped out first and held out his hand for her, ceremoniously. She stepped up onto the bank.

  ‘Will you wait?’ she asked the waterman.

  ‘It’s you as is paying me, missus,’ he said, and sat down in the boat. She turned, and faced John Dee’s house.

  It was both bigger and smaller than she’d expected. The house itself was large, but the ground on which it stood was cramped by surrounding houses, most of which looked more recent. The old house had a high roof, steeply pitched, like a country cottage though now tiled rather than thatched. On the other side of the path from the river stood a gate, and she remembered the story of Dee standing in his doorway, and speaking to Elizabeth while she sat in a boat on the river. Abigail went through the gate, as the Queen had refused to do, and here was the door, a black and ancient thing. Almost without thinking she knocked upon it, half expecting Prospero to answer in his wizard’s cloak, blinking with stars and planets.