by D. J. Taylor
“I suppose you know,” he remarked, “why we are come here?”
Again, Esther nodded her head.
Later they lay in a room beneath the eaves of the house, where pigeons clacked at the window and from beyond could be heard the implacable drone of the city.
“What a noise those birds make,” Esther said suddenly.
“Regular little nuisances they are. Like rats with wings. And never quiet. Not like the owls at Easton.” William was silent for a moment. “What would old Randall say if he could see us now? Probably give us each a tract, eh?”
Despite her respect for Mr. Randall, the image that this conjured up in her mind was too much to be borne, and Esther laughed.
“Probably stand over us and fire off a regular prayer,” said William, rather less amiably.
“I’m sure,” Esther said, more demurely than she intended, “that he would see nothing he had not seen before.”
“Nothing he hadn’t seen! What do you know about it, Miss Pert?”
“I am not Miss Pert! And you should not mock Mr. Randall.”
“And what about you?” William persisted, making a grab for the coverlet of the bed. “What have you seen that you never saw before?”
“Nothing to startle me. Men always think that a girl has no notion of the world.”
“Well…perhaps they do. Hold on, though, it is gone six, and I have a fellow to see at eight. We had better go and eat, Esther.”
But Esther had her own ideas about this. William’s fireplace, she noticed, contained several utensils, while the cupboards gave notice of one or two things that could be drunk or eaten.
“I could cook something for us,” she said, getting to her feet and standing uncertainly in the centre of the room, “if you cared to eat it.”
“That’s my good girl,” William said.
Presently there came the sound of a kettle boiling and the jingle of cutlery. William looked on approvingly.
The next day was one of the pleasantest that Esther ever remembered having spent. She woke late, with bright sunshine streaming in through the window and the sound of music in the street below. It was a bank holiday, said William, whom she now saw staring at himself in a fragment of mirror, a razor halfway to his chin, and they could do as they pleased. The sight of William shaving reminded her of the situation in which she found herself and she lay for a moment considering it, recalling certain scenes of the previous day to mind and taking pleasure in their remembrance. Was there anywhere that she would care to go? William persisted. Esther sat on the bed considering. The values of the city both fascinated and repelled her, she had not the faintest idea, as yet, of how time could be spent there or how people amused themselves.
“I think I should like to walk about,” she said, “and see the people.”
William nodded, which, as the lower half of his face was covered with soap, produced a very comical effect.
“See them you shall,” he said. “Why there will be thousands of them out on a day like this, I shouldn’t wonder.”
Esther’s clothes lay on a chair at the foot of the bed. Seeing her gaze move towards them, William became self-conscious. “I have to see a chap at the Green Man for a moment,” he explained, scraping the final twist of lather from his chin and pulling on his jacket. “There’s water here in the jug, you know.”
Glad of his consideration, Esther waited until he had gone and then washed and dressed herself, examining the contents of William’s chamber as she did so. In truth there was not a great deal to see—a few prints of racehorses that hung on the walls, a wardrobe containing his clothes and a pile of what she supposed to be business papers seemed to be the extent of his possessions. On a shelf above the fireplace she found a piece of cloth that she recognised as having fallen from her apron string six months before. The realisation that William had hoarded this memento and taken it with him to London produced in her the queerest sensation, and she sat down on the bed once more with her dress only half buttoned to brood upon it. It was here that William found her ten minutes later as he sauntered into the room with his hat cocked back on his head and a sporting newspaper in his hand.
“Here’s a stroke of luck,” he said. “Who”d have thought the Tin Man would have won the Gold Cup after all that was said about him?” His gaze moved downward. “Why, what’s the matter, Esther? Sorry you’re here?”
“Not in the least,” said Esther truthfully and hastily buttoning up her dress. “Is that a horse that you had money bet on, William?” she enquired timidly.
“You sound like old Randall. It was just a trifle, and now I have a couple of sovereigns to spend today.”
Esther said that she was glad of it, and holding his arm descended into the street. Here it was as William had predicted. A great crowd of people swarmed here and there across the pavements bent on pleasure. The noise of the German band playing in the street grew louder, and the public houses had already opened their doors. They breakfasted at a pastrycook’s—a very gay pastrycook’s, with little Saturnalian rosettes decorating the trays of tarts and muffins—and wandered in the vicinity of Covent Garden for a while. Then, almost without realising that they were a part of it, they were caught up in a throng of people moving through the dusty roads in the direction of Holborn Viaduct.
“What do you say, Esther?” William demanded. “Shall we take a train and go to the Palace?” The look of bewilderment on Esther’s face prompted him to explain. “The Crystal Palace. There’s grounds to walk round and the glasshouse to see if you’ve a mind.”
Esther thought that she would very much like to see the Crystal Palace, yet the size of the crowd on the station platforms frightened her. Men and women, all dressed in their holidaying clothes, with small children dragging at their heels, flocked around her with such eagerness to be off that she was thankful for William’s protection. A man with a corked bottle protruding from his coat pocket stumbled into her, and William tapped him on the shoulder and told him that if he played that trick again he should knock him into next week, see if he didn’t. Then, all of a sudden, the train drew in, and William was pushing her, much to her alarm, into a first-class carriage, where he remarked that it was a public holiday, was it not, and he should like to see the ticket collector as could turn them out. They sped away over the rooftops of South London, the universal glare of sunlight about them, the carriage dense with tobacco smoke, and Esther, nestling in the crook of William’s arm, thought that she had never felt such delight.
Everything about the Crystal Palace—or “the paliss,” as the other people in the carriage referred to it—impressed her. She marvelled at the grounds and the promenade, and the fair to which William escorted her, above which a white cloud of dust already hung kicked up by the multitude of feet, seemed to her even more splendid than the fairs of Norfolk. William, she noted happily, was all indulgence, standing at her side as she shyed for coconuts and handing her gallantly out of the whirligig into which they had ventured.
“I declare that’s game of you,” William pronounced. “Being flung about like a parcel in the back of a donkey cart. Tired, are you? Well, I shall be glad to sit down, as there’s a fellow or two as half promised to look me up.”
The realisation that the trip had been in William’s mind all along, rather than—as she had first presumed—something presented to her which she could accept or decline, did not distress her. It seemed proper to her that William should have things that he wished to do and schemes that he wished to prosecute even in the midst of this new life. So she went very happily with him to the shilling tearoom to be regaled with tea, bread, butter and cake in hunches, while William skirmished dextrously for milk jugs and sugar basins and such items that needed almost to be fought for among the crowded tables. At the heart of the throng went serving girls, twisting this way and that through the tumult with trays piled high with crockery, and Esther sympathised with them in their plight.
“It’s a shame those girls have to work on a day suc
h as this,” Esther said.
“I daresay. Why look! That is Mr. Grace coming now. And Dewar with him.”
“Who is Dewar?”
“Why he’s a little fellow that works on the railway. Tremendously down in the mouth, you know.”
The two men, having ascertained through the crowd where they sat, were now bearing down upon them. Grace, Esther saw, was a big burly man, quite unlike his name, and wearing a dark suit that she thought must stifle him in the heat of the day. Dewar, who trailed behind him in the manner of a factotum, was shorter and stouter, with a crestfallen, woebegone face beneath hair that had at some point in its history been dyed.
“Why, Latch, taking the air I see,” said Grace affably to William, and then, nodding at Esther in a way that suggested he knew all about her, “pleased to make your acquaintance, miss.”
William caught the eye of a waiter, more chairs were brought and the four of them sat down together, William and Grace immediately falling into a subdued conversation that Esther could not for the life of her comprehend. The afternoon sun, she now saw, had reached its zenith, there was a band playing in the middle distance beneath the walls of glass that sparkled in the glare, the crowd in the tearoom had somewhat diminished, and this, together with her own fatigue, gave her the feeling of one plunged into a state halfway between wakefulness and dreaming. A woman of about her own age wearing a yellow frock cut very low and with a little boy clinging to her skirts came hastily into the room, looked about her for a moment, swore in vexation at not finding the person she sought and then hastened out again, and Esther wondered at the sorrow in her face and her corn-coloured hair. Dewar, she noticed, said nothing. Now and again Grace would look up from his talk with William and address a remark to him, whereupon Dewar would nod or shake his head as the occasion demanded, no other response did he care to make. He seemed utterly cast down.
“How’s your wife, Dewar?” Grace flung out at one of these junctures.
“Bad as bad,” Dewar rejoined shortly.
“Mind you take her something home then,” Grace said, not unkindly, and went back to his deliberations.
Something about Dewar’s miserable face and the set of his lank hair awakened a memory in Esther, and she said, “Did I not see you before, Mr. Dewar? You came once to Easton Hall, I believe.”
Dewar turned to look at her as if he had only now seen her for the first time. “I believe that I did, miss,” he said, and both of them were silent, she remembering the linen draped over the currant bushes as he went, he recalling Mr. Dixey in his study and the mouse stirring in his palm.
“But your wife is ill, they say?”
“I’m afraid she is, miss. Very bad.”
“Has she not anyone to look after her?”
“There’s Mrs. Hook as lives above us promised to give her a bit of dinner. And then I shall be back by seven, I hope. But you’re right, miss, it’s a poor lookout for her.”
He seemed anxious to say something more, only for Grace suddenly to tug at his shoulder.
“And you’ll mark the time you’re to be on the lookout, Dewar. Late afternoon—or never.”
Dewar said he would mark it. Grace, his professional obligations apparently at an end, took another cup of tea prior to his and Dewar’s departure and said that he hoped Esther was enjoying herself. “Yes indeed, sir, very much,” she replied. The three men laughed good-naturedly at her simplicity, and Grace bowed and said he hoped he would have the pleasure of meeting her again. The afternoon wore on. So much dust rose up above the fairground that it was as if a white cloud hung above the heads of the coconut shyers and those who swung crazily on the pleasure boats. There was dancing upon the grass in which William was eager to take part, but Esther found herself too weary to do anything save cling to his arm. And so, by slow degrees, they came to the station and the train that would return them to Holborn.
There was but one embarrassment between them. It came as they sat in William’s room in Shooter’s Buildings and Esther, leaning over the fire to adjust the teakettle, remarked, “If you’ll direct me, William, there is a letter I must deliver in the morning.”
“A letter? What sort of a letter?”
“It was give to me by Mrs. Ireland. Mr. Dixey’s ward that you must remember.”
“Certainly I remember Mrs. Ireland,” William said, somewhat sharply. “Who has she been writing to?”
Esther explained the circumstances of the letter’s composition, William listening intently from his position on the sofa. He was especially interested in the mention of Mr. Crabbe’s name.
“That’s a fellow Mr. Pardew has dealings with. No end of a swell, that has a house in Belgravia. Grace knows all about it. But see here, Esther, it won’t do. There’s some mystery here as I won’t be charged with the unravelling of.” There was a curious tone in his voice, Esther discerned, as if he knew more of Mrs. Ireland than he cared to reveal. “You had best give it up, indeed you had. Where is the letter?”
Wordlessly, Esther went over to the travelling bag which contained her mother’s books and the little packet of documents—a letter from Lady Bamber, a “character” from a former employer—that she referred to as her “papers.” It occurred to her that for reasons which she could not yet determine William wished to destroy the letter, and that if she wished to serve Mrs. Ireland’s interests she must deceive him. This thought did not distress her. She merely accepted it as one of the necessary subterfuges that her situation demanded of her.
“What shall I do with it?” Esther wondered, bending over her bag.
“You had better throw it in the fire. Or wait—let me see it. Never mind, that will do very well.”
For Esther, seizing an envelope from the bundle that she held in her hand, had cast it into the flames.
“I should not like to offend Mr. Pardew, you understand,” William said, feeling that some explanation was required for this piece of high-handedness.
“Certainly not.”
“Grace says he is a real tartar at such times. You ain’t cross with me, Esther, I hope?”
Esther, knowing that the letter lay concealed among her papers while the note from Lady Bamber burnt to blackness in the flames, shook her head.
Easton Hall ran through her dreams. Each night her imagination dwelt upon some aspect of her time there, twisting what she knew to have been real into ominous, phantom shapes. Sarah and she were running through the wood pursued by some silent, fleet-footed creature that burst out on them continually from the trees. The master, turning to speak to her in the drawing room, had no face beneath his tall hat. Mrs. Ireland, sitting in her chamber, changed suddenly into a great bird that flew blindly at the window and scored its beak across the pane.
William suffered no such hallucinations. He said, “No, I don’t think of the Hall. Why should I, unless it’s to remember old Randall prosing and that cat Mrs. Finnie making herself disagreeable. It was a place I had that I threw over—that’s all! As for being a footman, why if you offered me a pair of yellow plush breeches and a cockade for my hat, I’d laugh in your face. There’s other things in life than holding a door open for ladies as has come to call, or running up three flights of stairs with the master’s shaving water.”
And Esther could not gainsay him.
XXVI
THOROUGHNESS OF MR. MASTERSON
It was at about this time that Captain McTurk came upon a piece of information—to be exact, several pieces of information—that interested him very greatly. Some months had now elapsed since the audacious robbery upon the South-Eastern Railway, and many another crime had risen to enflame the imagination of the public, but still Captain McTurk was sanguine of his ability to extract something from the mystery. He knew—long experience had taught him—that there are many ways in which a guilty man may be induced to declare his guilt. He was aware, too, that very pertinent and significant pieces of evidence may not be immediately available to authority’s investigating eye. Consequently, Captain McTurk kep
t his counsel and busied himself, in the midst of half a hundred other matters, with what he believed might be a useful line of enquiry—that is, establishing what had become of the very considerable sums of bullion abstracted during the course of the theft.
These, he had been able to confirm from Messrs. Abell, Spielmann and Bult, consisted of a quantity of gold bars, a nearly equal number of Louis Napoleons and a somewhat smaller amount of American eagles. Of the gold bars, Captain McTurk almost instantly washed his hands. Contraband of this nature, he knew, would be melted down, reconstituted and disposed of in half a dozen ingenious ways; whatever the nature of the transformation, it was now beyond his grasp. But the Louis Napoleons and the eagles he thought he might do something with. Accordingly Mr. Masterson was sent out into the City, instructed to renew the familiar acquaintance he enjoyed with certain majordomos of counting houses and banking establishments and urged to solicit their opinion with regard to certain transactions that these gentlemen might have witnessed in the course of the preceding two months.
Mr. Masterson, though he went about this task with his customary efficiency, was, if truth be known, less sanguine than his superior. He himself did not believe that the money was in London. He thought it was in Paris, Dresden, New York—in any city where it could be passed through the banking system with the least remark. But he was a thorough man, and he followed the instructions with which he had been entrusted to the letter. For a considerable part of that autumn, in fact, as the leaves fell on the grass of legal courts and inns and were gathered up in Charterhouse Square, as the lamps were lit earlier and earlier and the mud grew in the streets, Mr. Masterson went diligently about his business, and in the course of these enquiries he found…something. A bank in Gutter Lane, a most respectable establishment, indeed a bank with which Captain McTurk dealt in his private capacity, but not one engaged in much foreign business, had at some point in the late summer received into its safekeeping a considerable quantity of Napoleons. Mr. Masterson’s heart was not immediately uplifted by this intelligence, for he knew that there are many excellent reasons why an Englishman should think it prudent to pay foreign currency into an English bank, but he was sufficiently interested to enquire of his informant in Gutter Lane who had done the depositing. Learning that the customer was the legal firm of Crabbe & Enderby of Lincoln’s Inn, Mr. Masterson, though not a little awed by the lustre attaching to the name and reputation of Mr. Crabbe, decided that an investigation had better be made.