The Detective and the Devil

by Lloyd Shepherd

  ‘Horton, you are a man I can trust,’ said Sir Joseph.

  Was this a question? Or a statement? It was something of both. But was he indeed to be trusted, this Nore mutineer? Did Sir Joseph know of that part of his past? Horton looked at Graham, who smiled weakly but somehow reassuringly.

  ‘I believe so, Sir Joseph.’

  ‘Because what I am here to speak to you about is known by not half a dozen men in the world outside this room. You have perceived some of it, I think. Graham has told me of your involvement in recent matters. The Ratcliffe Highway murders. The Solander incident. Even, I am told, last year’s affair with the woman from New South Wales, which I am to understand involved my librarian. All these incidents have involved the Royal Society in some way.’

  ‘The Highway murders, sir? I was told that important men had an interest in them and in their conclusion. I was not informed that you were one of them.’

  Sir Joseph looked at Graham and Harriott. Both men seemed suddenly uncomfortable, and Horton detected a strain of guilt in the room. He knew he had been used, of course. The extent to which those who had used him were aware of the reasons – that had remained obscure. He found himself staring at Harriott and for the first time in their association, the magistrate was unable to meet his eye.

  Sir Joseph, having not apparently noticed the discomfiture of the magistrates, continued regardless.

  ‘Horton, you are a constable. It is a lowly position; before this evening, I do believe I have never spoken to one such as you. You should not expect to always have been taken into confidences of greater men with wider horizons. That is the simple truth.’

  Horton nodded to acknowledge this.

  ‘And yet, here we are. Three men of some social standing narrating secrets to a mere waterman-constable. A man of little rank with a murky past.’

  At least his question had been answered. Sir Joseph knew all about his personal history.

  ‘This has come about because of your remarkable gifts, constable. I do believe that you might be able to solve a mystery which has occupied the finest minds this country has produced for over a century. I think the time is right to ask you to look at it. And I think it may have a great deal to do with the case you are currently investigating.’

  Sir Joseph leaned his enormous body forward, and his mechanical chair creaked loudly.

  ‘A fine word, investigating. We are similar, you and I. We pursue knowledge. We unpick secrets. We classify and we contain. The natural philosopher and the . . . the . . . detective. Yes. A fine coinage, I think. Detective Horton. It has a ring to it, does it not?’

  Sir Joseph smiled, and though the smile was warm and in some ways delightful, it also contained teeth. The great man sat back in his chair.

  ‘Know this, then, Detective Horton: the Royal Society has for one hundred and fifty years concerned itself with investigation and observation of the natural world. Our transactions have catalogued a world of wonders, from the nutrition of plants to the construction of palaces. Like my predecessors, I believe in evidence and I believe in proof. The proof of mine own eyes, and the proof of eyes other than mine which are to be trusted.’

  The smile again.

  ‘In this, we are the same, detective.’

  Aaron Graham coughed, an ugly little rattle that sounded like death clearing its throat.

  ‘When my Society began its work, the world contained much mystery,’ continued Sir Joseph. ‘When Robert Hooke produced his Micrografia, he drew things he saw through microscopes of his own design, and the world saw the monstrous and beautiful appearances of even the most ordinary flea through Hooke’s perceptions. It was as if there were another world all around us, could we but see it. But there remain mysteries, Horton. Inexplicable matters, beyond understanding. Plants that grow at breakneck speeds, and seem to possess consciousness. Women who can bend other wills to their own. All of these things you have had some dealing with.’

  Horton thought: plants?

  ‘Some people call these things magic. I say any reality we do not yet understand will appear to be magical.’

  Sir Joseph’s enormous face flickered in the light from the oil lamp. He stared into the shadows at the corners of the room. As if he were confessing to a crowd that had hidden itself away. A man at the end of his road, making sense of things.

  ‘Which brings me to St Helena.’

  Harriott sighed, another rattling old sound of ominous import.

  ‘St Helena is, as you know, a possession of the East India Company,’ Sir Joseph continued. ‘I have fought with all my might for years to extract the island from the Company’s clutches, and yet the Company will not let it go. Many find this odd. St Helena does not pay its way. It is barely more than a staging post for ships returning from the East Indies and New South Wales. A rock holding a few planters, a good many slaves and whores, and no visible means of support. So why does the Company protect it so?’

  Harriott, noticed Horton, had leaned forward in his chair. His face looked more animated than the constable had seen it in months. He was learning things, too.

  ‘At the end of the seventeenth century, shortly after the foundation of our Society, we despatched a promising young man to St Helena to make improvements to our star charts, and to track a transit of Mercury across the sun. His name was Edmond Halley. His achievements were extraordinary, and my own life was linked to his, even though he died long before I was born. He predicted the transit of Venus in 1769, which was the cause of my own first voyage to observe it. To Otaheite.’

  Harriott stared at Sir Joseph but Graham, Horton noted, was staring intently at him, as if to verify that he were following all this. If he were seeing how these events connected to each other; young Halley sailing south a century and a half ago, young Banks following him a century later, and now this room tonight, full of stories and secrets.

  ‘Halley’s trip was a success, but he came back with an odd story. He wrote a letter to a benefactor, in which he claimed there was something unique about St Helena. He had noticed – through observation, mind – that compass needles on the island deviated significantly from the North.’

  ‘As they do in most places,’ Horton said.

  ‘Indeed they do. But Halley had started mapping magnetic variation, Horton. He had developed a theory that turned out to be entirely true – that one might draw lines between areas of similar magnetic variation, and that these lines would be constant. Some years after he travelled to St Helena, he produced a chart of these lines, which we now call Halleian lines.’

  Horton knew the phrase, from his own knowledge of navigation. He had even seen Halley’s map.

  ‘I know of this chart, Sir Joseph.’

  ‘Good. Then you know of the line of zero variation that passes, like a great curve, through the Atlantic.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you know that St Helena sits upon this line.’

  ‘Yes. I understand your point now, Sir Joseph. Compass needles on St Helena should point directly at magnetic north, as there is no variation.’

  ‘Indeed. And yet they do not. Sail a mile away from the island, and they do. But on the island itself, they vary by as much as ten degrees. Halley could find no reason for this. Nor, thus far, can we. But that is not the end of it, Horton. In the very same letter in which he first wrote these observations down, Halley also mentioned an encounter which is just as inexplicable.’

  Sir Joseph looked back into the shadows, as if young Halley might be found there, scribbling his discovery.

  ‘Halley met a man on St Helena; he described him as an ugly fellow, whom Halley took for a Portuguese. This man had neither nose nor ears, and one of his hands was entirely missing. He did not speak any English, but they managed to communicate in Dutch. The stranger claimed to have knowledge of the island before the arrival of the Dutch or the English, and when Halley asked when he had come to the island, the Portuguese said he had arrived there in 1516. A hundred and fifty years before Halley had met
him.’

  At this point, Horton expected Harriott, or at least Graham, to interject. A 150-year-old man on a distant island? Neither man said anything, and this disturbed Horton as much as the strange stories Sir Joseph was recounting.

  ‘When Halley returned to England, he looked into the history of St Helena,’ continued Sir Joseph. ‘He discovered the tale of a Portuguese nobleman who had led a group of renegades during that country’s wars in Goa. As punishment for his crimes, this man – his name was Fernando Lopez – had his right hand and the thumb of his left cut off, along with his nose and ears. Lopez later stowed away on a ship returning to Portugal, but asked to be let off at St Helena, which was then deserted. It was said he was left there with only a cockerel for company, and for years he was seen there by visiting Portuguese ships. How many years, we cannot say. This, Halley believed, was the creature he met on St Helena.’

  Horton had no conception of what this could mean. Nothing Sir Joseph was saying made any sense to him at all. He looked at Harriott, but the old man was staring out of his riverside window. He tried Graham, who caught his eyes, and nodded. It was an awful thing, that nod. It seemed to say I believe all this to be true. And yet, how could it be?

  A silence. A question was expected of him.

  ‘And what does this . . . this story have to do with John Dee?’

  ‘Ah. A good question, constable. One worthy of Detective Horton.’

  Banks smiled. He seemed to be rather enjoying himself.

  ‘What do you know of Dr John Dee, constable?’

  The question did nothing to dilute Horton’s confusion.

  ‘Only what my wife told me from a guide book to Surrey.’

  ‘Well, I will tell you this. He was a highly original thinker, a disciplined mathematician and geometer. He lectured on Euclid, and when he wrote about such matters he was as fine a mind as this country has produced. But then he began to be interested in other matters – matters of a more celestial kind, shall we say. He developed an extraordinarily detailed cosmological picture on the shaky edifice of Renaissance science – I cannot make head nor tail of it myself, it seems stuffed to the gunwales with arcane hogwash and esoterica. But there are some members of the Society who believed he was on to something; that he had stumbled across some great truth about the inner workings of our Reality. I do believe Dee made discoveries which remain hidden; discoveries which, if they came to light, might help to explain some of the strange things you and I have encountered together these past few years.’

  Now, it was Graham’s turn to sigh, gently and elegantly, but the sigh was cut off by yet another bitter little cough.

  ‘Such has been Dee’s reputation that the Royal Society has, since its formation, made itself the repository of his thought. The Society purchased Dee’s house at Mortlake many, many years ago, and we have kept it on ever since. That is itself a great secret; if it were to become public, we would be a laughing stock. The world has moved on from John Dee. Or at least, it believes it has. Certain Fellows of the Society have worked to reassemble Dee’s library. This library was the finest private collection of volumes in Elizabeth’s England – perhaps the finest in Europe. But when he left the country under allegations of necromancy and witchcraft, the library was ransacked and destroyed. Dee eventually returned to England and made a claim to the Crown for compensation – he included a list of the volumes in his library. We have, essentially, recreated it.’

  ‘Why?’ said Harriott, suddenly. ‘Surely much of the material in it is redundant?’ He sounded angry to Horton’s ears.

  ‘Indeed, Harriott, much of it is. But it is a record of men’s thought in the years immediately preceding the foundation of the Society. And as such it is of incalculable value. But that isn’t the main reason. You see, many believe that certain particular volumes were stolen from Dee’s library. Volumes containing great secrets. Dee was playing for high stakes, gentlemen. He believed that through a combination of what we now call science and what he called magic, man might ascend a kind of celestial stair. Might, in fact, move closer to God. This was the true work of the men we now call alchemists – to purify the spirit of man through the combination of elements, as one might make gold. To make man, essentially, immortal.’

  The three old men were still in their room. Mortality stalked them all, and did not bother to hide itself.

  This is madness, thought Charles Horton. It chilled him.

  ‘Dee claimed he had visited St Helena, in one of his writings on navigation,’ said Sir Joseph. ‘There is no other evidence for him having gone there, but why even mention it? It was then an obscure staging post held by the Portuguese. Why would John Dee have an interest in it?’

  The silence fell again. Horton did not know what to say.

  ‘Do you believe this, Sir Joseph?’ he asked, eventually. ‘That Halley met a man who was centuries old?’

  ‘I am not in the business of believing in anything,’ said Sir Joseph, firmly. ‘I am in the business of investigating and confirming, that is all. And I believe we are in the same business, are we not?’

  Sir Joseph smiled that warm smile again, the smile which was practised and worn smooth with much use over the years.

  ‘We can assume, can we not, that the Royal Society has itself investigated these matters?’ asked Horton.

  ‘Yes. We have sent dozens of men there over the years, both before and after Halley died. Halley left us with a simple instruction: watch St Helena. It is something we have tried to do over the decades, but God knows it is not straightforward. The East India Company guards its secrets carefully. I have tried to travel to St Helena myself on several occasions, but it has always been made clear to me that such a journey would not be countenanced.’

  ‘Countenanced by whom?’ said Horton.

  ‘By the Crown.’

  The three simple words spoke so much: of influence and power, of secrets and schemes. Yet Horton wondered if he quite believed Sir Joseph. Was the man not a friend of the now-mad King? Had he no influence in this matter? Horton looked at Harriott, and could see some of his own suspicions in the magistrate’s face.

  Sir Joseph shifted his enormous weight in his chair.

  ‘Detective, here is the matter: the East India Company is, to all intents and purposes, the Crown on St Helena, as it is in India. And while we maintain cordial relations with the Company and its Directors, it is fair to say that in this, as in all things, we are in competition for funds, for attention from the Crown, for influence. The Company watches any undertakings by the Royal Society within its territories as if we were footpads creeping in to empty their pockets.’

  This with a high degree of bitterness.

  ‘And it may be that it will soon become impossible to ever find these secrets. I have heard of changes to how the island is to be governed. It appears that our interests have become conjoined, gentlemen. You are interested in St Helena. I am interested in St Helena. I propose, then, that I send you to St Helena.’

  ‘But what does any of this have to do with the matter at hand?’ Harriott asked.

  ‘The matter at hand?’ said Sir Joseph, and in his confusion was all the arrogance of the powerful, and their ignorance of the weak.

  ‘The murder of Benjamin Johnson, his wife and his daughter. The murder of Amy Beavis and her father.’

  Sir Joseph had no answer to that, and neither did Harriott or Graham. Charles Horton, though – he did have an answer. A symbol, a Monad, inked on the chests of the Johnsons. John Dee’s symbol. He did not share this thought. It felt like a fragment of influence, a tiny portion of power which might, one day, serve a need.

  Horton looked at the faces of the old men, one after another. In their exhausted eyes was the flickering excitement of one last game, a final mystery to be unlocked, perhaps the biggest of them all. And out there, perhaps, another Monster, stalking him, his wife, his home.

  CONSTABLE HORTON IN KENT

  It was a four-hour carriage ride from Wapping to the vil
lage of Seal, just outside Sevenoaks in Kent. This considerable ride was made worse by the persistent presence of Edward Markland, who spent his time saying very little but exuding a smug sense of superiority. It made for a tiresome journey, and Horton found himself staring at Markland on occasion and thinking to himself of what Sir Joseph had said to him last night.

  Detective Horton. It has a ring to it, does it not?

  Sir Joseph’s stories of ancient seers and hidden texts had been suitably resonant with darkness descending on the river, but did they hold any root in the real world on this lovely spring morning? What did that phrase the real world possibly mean, when set against Sir Joseph’s tales of mysteries and matters celestial? As he ignored Markland, he pondered Sir Joseph’s proposal to send him to St Helena.

  It was an extraordinary idea, and Harriott had said nothing of it as the strange little meeting broke up. It had been left to Graham to take Horton aside and talk to him of it, while the other two old men sat silently, not waiting for an answer. It had been more like they were waiting for death.

  ‘Feel under no compulsion,’ Graham had said, sotto voce and with a conspiratorial hand on Horton’s arm. ‘It is an astonishing thing to ask of you. But also, know this, Horton: your enemies are all around. And soon, all three of us will be gone. And what then?’

  Horton pondered that question in the Kent-bound carriage. What had Graham meant, precisely? Who were his enemies? Was Markland one of them? And how did the ancient troika – Harriott, Graham and Sir Joseph – come to be his protectors?

  He had not, he believed, deliberately enraged anyone in his years investigating matters for John Harriott. So it bemused him to think he may have made enemies. But then he considered Sir Joseph’s strange tales, and wondered if it might be what he had learned that made him dangerous to certain powerful men. Not what he did or said, but what he had unearthed.

  And then there were practical questions. If Harriott were to die soon, who would he work for? He saw no appetite for his unique skills among other magistrates – even Markland might baulk at making him an employee. He could be cast into penury at the quiver of a quill. And what then? A middle-aged mutineer with a single indescribable skill – that of a form of investigation that nobody seemed to know they needed. What possible future awaited him on the other side of Harriott’s death? Did the world need detectives?