by D. J. Taylor
Putting down the paper, Mr. Pardew delved into his desk and emerged with two sheets of writing paper. Taking up his pen, and again pausing to consider a sudden clatter of cartwheels from the street beyond, he scrawled a few lines upon the first sheet, delved in his desk once more for an envelope and addressed the letter to Jas. Dixey Esq., Easton Hall, nr Watton, Norfolk. The second sheet he brooded over for several minutes. Then, with somewhat more care than he had brought to the first letter, he wrote the following:
I am summoned out of town unexpectedly. I cannot say when I shall return. The enclosed will cover all immediate expenses. It may be that enquiry will be made of you regarding my whereabouts. If so, you may honestly say that you know nothing of them.
Yrs. affnly.
R. PARDEW
This letter Mr. Pardew sealed up in a second envelope together with a twenty-pound note and addressed to Miss J. Tomsett, Laburnum Villas, St. John’s Wood. It may be that as he searched for the stamp that was to adorn it his mind returned to the vision of himself and a young woman with a pink and white complexion riding in a carriage by the river at Richmond, but if so, his face did not betray the fact. Barely had Mr. Pardew completed the business of stamping the letters and concealing them in his breast pocket than there came a determined rattling at the door. Very coolly, but making sure that his stick was well within his line of vision, Mr. Pardew returned to his desk, sat down at it and had just completed the manoeuvre when Bob Grace, somewhat dishevelled and with his hat pulled down low over his eyes, tumbled into the room.
It would have been immediately apparent to any impartial observer that the relationship between Mr. Pardew and his clerk, whatever its former ambiguities, had now taken on a somewhat different aspect.
“What are you up to then?” Grace demanded, standing in the centre of the room and breathing stertorously. “Locked up in here like an old spider, eh?”
“I could ask the same of you,” Mr. Pardew remarked, baring his teeth in a somewhat ghastly smile, while making sure that the stick lay within his reach. “It is gone ten.”
“Oh yes,” Grace countered. “And half a dozen bills wanting renewing at six weeks, I suppose? And a p’liceman not waiting outside my house and following me all the way here until I give him the slip at Blackfriars?” His eye, roving fearfully around the room, fell upon a travelling bag placed in a little recess by the door. “You’re a-going to split, ain’t you? That’s what you’re up to, isn’t it? Well, I’m not going to stand for it, do you hear?”
“I am not going to split, as you put it,” Mr. Pardew observed, a shade less emolliently. “I have been sitting here going about my business since half past eight.”
But Grace’s eyes—very muddy eyes they were, that looked as if their owner had been awake half the night—were still trained upon the travelling bag.
“What business?” he nearly snarled. “There ain’t no business left to do, and you knows it. Only p’licemen waiting outside a fellow’s house and the man as knows everything about it sitting there with a travelling bag all neat and packed.” He lowered his voice. “Perhaps I ought to go and tell that p’liceman something that might interest him. Like who did for a certain gentleman down in Suffolk for one. Like who played that trick on old Mr. Fardel for another. No, you shan’t hit me with your blessed stick!”
For Mr. Pardew, rising from his desk, very red and with his chin bristling, had lashed out suddenly with his walking stick, missing the body of his clerk, who skipped nimbly out of the line of his stroke, but smiting the floor so hard that the stick broke in two pieces and fell from his hand.
“You old villain!” Grace sang at him. “Go on! Hit me, and I’ll do for you, see if I don’t.”
But Mr. Pardew’s moment of wrath had passed. He knew that no good could come from attempting to strike his clerk again, knew also that only a display of sweet reasonableness would achieve the object he had in mind. Accordingly, he picked up the two halves of the stick and placed them carefully on the desk, his mind working all the time over the best means of obtaining this end. Grace, meanwhile, looked haplessly around him, made a nervous little movement in his employer’s direction, thought better of it and subsided. As he did so there came another rattle at the door, less forceful than Grace’s and suggestive only of a tentative enquiry.
“That’ll be Dewar,” Grace confirmed. “Saw him a-follerin’ me up the street as I came by.”
Grace’s surmise was correct. Pushing open the door, Dewar came timidly into the room. He was dressed not in the uniform of the railway company but in a nondescript suit of black. As with Grace, there was a vacancy about his eyes indicative of some deep disquiet.
“Why ain’t you at work, Dewar?” Mr. Pardew wondered.
“Suspended from duty, aren’t I?” Dewar replied mournfully. “Got a letter telling me to stay at home while enquiries were being made.” Having spoken the words, he seemed overcome with anxiety, sat down heavily in a chair and gazed about him with an air of terrible hopelessness. “Was a policeman called at the house last night,” he said. “Saw him coming and managed to slip out, and my wife told him I was away, but what’s to be done? What’s to be done, eh?”
Seated once more at his desk, hands playing with the fragments of the broken stick, Mr. Pardew regarded his lieutenants. He was aware that the game was nearly up, that if an attempt were being made to apprehend Grace and Dewar, then his own turn would not be far behind. In his subordinates—Grace, wary and indignant at his side; Dewar, silent and reproachful in the chair—he had no interest. They could go to the Devil as far as he was concerned. And yet Mr. Pardew knew that men who go to the Devil very often wish to take other men with them. Consequently, he softened the set of his features, made a small gesture of appeasement with his hand and smiled in what might have been interpreted as a confidential way.
“There is no need for alarm,” he proposed. “Indeed there is not. Naturally, Pearce being taken complicates matters.”
“Pearce is in quod?” Grace whistled. “Then we’re done for, you old Jew!”
“Listen to me. There is no need for alarm. Who is to know what Pearce may say and what he won’t? As for you, Dewar, you have been questioned half a dozen times and no one any the wiser.”
“That’s so,” Dewar conceded. “But it was a torture to me, and you knows it. I’ve half a mind to tell all I know simply to give myself ease. ‘Twould be a relief to me to do so, indeed it would.”
“You’ve fixed us good and proper, that’s what you’ve done,” Grace announced. “Where’s William Latch if it comes to that? Called at his house yesterday, and there’s no one there and no maid to answer the door neither. See that bag there on the floor, Dewar, my boy? He’s going to split, that’s about the strength of it, and leave us behind. What do you say to that, you old villain?”
Mr. Pardew continued to smile.
“Nobody is to be left behind,” he observed. “Come with me if you wish. Only there are no funds to take us. Look! Here is my pocketbook. Let me only go out to the bank in Eastcheap, and we may be in France by this evening.”
There was a silence as Grace and Dewar considered his words.
“You’re an old villain,” Grace said. “What’s to stop you taking your hook? I’ll come with you to the bank, that’s what I’ll do.”
“With policemen looking for you in the streets? You had much better stay here.”
“And have you disappear while I’m waiting? You old villain, you.”
“You shall have charge of my travelling bag while I am gone. Will that satisfy you?”
They continued to wrangle about this until Dewar’s voice, mournful but insistent, broke over the argument.
“I won’t go.”
“You won’t go?” Grace looked at him queerly. “Why won’t you go, eh?”
“My wife’s near dying,” Dewar told him. “I shan’t leave her, whatever I’ve done.”
“But say that Pearce goes Queen’s Evidence?”
“I
don’t care,” Dewar repeated sullenly. “My wife’s near dying. I shan’t leave her.”
They wrangled a little more, but the gravity of their situation both scared and calmed them. In the end it was decided that Grace and Dewar would remain in the office, together with Mr. Pardew’s travelling bag, while the latter departed in a closed cab to the bank in Eastcheap, from which he would return in not more than half an hour. Silent and subdued, Grace and Dewar watched him go. Then, as there came no noise from the street and as Mr. Pardew had obliged them by locking the door firmly behind him, Grace’s spirits revived a little.
“Why don’t you want to go when you has the chance?” he enquired curiously of Dewar.
“It’s as I said. I can’t leave my wife.”
“But you could be took and put into quod, and she’d miss you all the same.”
“That’s true, I suppose. But where shall you go?” Dewar’s face as he asked this showed a wholly naïve interest, as if the idea of anyone quitting their native shore was quite remarkable to him.
“Go? Why, anywhere there’s a man to pay for it. But he’s a sly one, that Pardew. I shall have to watch him, I daresay.” Grace’s tone as he said this was that of some wealthy householder who suspects that his butler may be stealing sherry. “But I had the measure of him just now, didn’t I, Dewar? Makin’ him leave his bag here when for two pins he’d have taken it away and gone.” The travelling bag, still lying in the recess near the door and apparently very tightly packed with Mr. Pardew’s belongings, for whatever was in it seemed to strain against the leather sides, appeared to interest him and he strode towards it and prodded it with the toe of his boot. “Tell you what, Dewar, my boy, let’s haul up this item onto the desk and take a look at it. Ain’t it heavy, though? Ten to one the old villain has the rest of the gold in here. Is it locked? No it ain’t. Now that’s curious.” His fingers played for a moment over the clasp, whereupon Dewar, standing a yard or two behind him, heard him let out a tremendous shriek, a veritable wail of rage as if the metal of the clasp burned red-hot.
“What ever’s the matter?”
“Don’t you see? Look how the old villain has swindled us!”
Dewar followed his gaze. Then he too drew in his breath, for the travelling bag contained nothing but packets of lead shot.
“Why there aren’t no clothes at all!”
“The villain!” Grace screamed. “The old villain! I’ll cut his throat before I’m done. I’ll tell every tale there is to be told, see if I don’t. Do you know that he had his own partner murdered once? And a man down in Suffolk on account of some scheme he was a party to? Why, I’ll…”
And then he ceased his expostulations, for he became aware of a noise in the street somewhat above the ordinary sounds of passersby going about their business.
“What’s the matter?” Dewar wondered. “What is it?”
As if by way of an answer there came a fierce rattling at the doorknob, which twisted violently in its groove. A shout, indistinct but unambiguous, sounded from the street. Grace cowered by his desk.
“They’re going to break down the door,” he said grimly. “You’ll see.”
To Dewar, standing a short way behind him, his eye, too, fixed on the quivering doorknob and the frame of the door itself, which now began to shake beneath the weight of the repeated blows delivered to it, it seemed as if the situation in which he found himself was not quite real. He discovered that he registered only small things—a little vein in Grace’s head that pulsed and bulged like a roving snake, the packets of lead shot lying in the travelling bag, a pen nib fallen to the floor and resting in a crack between the boards. Not quite knowing why he did it, he bent down to retrieve the nib and placed it in the pocket of his coat. On the instant there was an almighty crash, and the door flew open with a force sufficient almost to drive the frame from its hinges.
Of what followed he had only a confused recollection. There were policemen in the room, three or four of them at least, who, though they moved in his direction, seemed fascinated by Grace, who, dashing to the door, made a mighty effort to fling them off but was beaten down and hurled into a corner with his hands thrown up to protect himself and his feet kicking out like pistons. Tumbling over a chair and evading the grasp of a man who seemed to trip and fall over the travelling bag as he came, Dewar found himself standing in the doorway, the noise from the ransacked office ringing in his ears, but apparently alone.
Immediately, he fled down the street, not pausing to look behind him, reached the corner—he had by now almost come to the margin of St. Paul’s Churchyard—and stopped to catch his breath. There were two officers following him, he realised, but a good way behind and not moving with great speed. Dodging in and out of the knots of passersby, who regarded him with keen interest, he sped on towards Cannon Street in blind panic, came to a crossing and rushed upon it, heedless of the traffic. Before he could gain the further side, the shaft of a cart struck him on the breast and threw him down. A man helped him to his feet and enquired if he were injured.
“Hurt? No, no, it’s all right.”
To the man’s surprise, and that of other people standing near him, he walked on quickly, hardly feeling any pain. But within a few moments there came a sensation of nausea, an ominous warmth in the back of his throat, and he stopped and vomited up a quantity of blood. Sympathetic passersby were all about him—he could see no sign of his pursuers—but he threw them off, drops of blood spraying onto his jacket cuffs and his shirtfront. As he passed the corner where Cannon Street leads into Watling Street, the memory of an ancient conversation came into his head, of Dunbar standing in the deserted boathouse at the lochside, giving his address and telling him to look him up. What was the number? It was 18. He was sure it was 18. He was conscious now of a pain between his ribs and knew that he was conspicuous to the people through whom he passed. These onlookers shrank from him as he moved desperately along the street. Number 18 was a corn chandler’s, with its goods spilling out onto the pavement, but there were rooms above and he seized upon a boy who was standing in the shop doorway and demanded, “Does Mr. Dunbar live here? I must see him. Mr. Dunbar.”
Seeing his bloodied clothes and the agonised expression on his face, the boy started back in fright. As luck would have it, there was a noise of footsteps on the wooden stair behind him, and Dunbar, a brown-paper package under one arm and a newspaper in his hand, moved slowly into view. Seeing Dewar, he set down the brown-paper package and looked at him keenly.
“Who’s this? Why it’s Dewar, who wondered why men should collect eggs!” Then his eye fell upon Dewar’s crimson shirtfront. “But heavens, you’re injured, man. What’s the matter with you?”
“It’s nothing—truly.” Dewar’s mouth was full of blood as he spoke. “Only I must come inside. Let me come inside!”
A whistle sounded at the end of Watling Street. To the surprise of Dunbar, whose hand still grasped him by the shoulder, Dewar sank to his knees on the pavement amidst the corn chandler’s spreading paraphernalia. Here the policemen, coming up at a run with their faces very red, found him in a state of insensibility with Dunbar feeling his pulse for signs of life. At first it was proposed that a cab should be fetched, then, when an examination of the prisoner had been conducted, a police doctor and a stretcher. Shortly afterwards, when the crowd of onlookers had dispersed and the police ambulance rolled off through the dust, the corn chandler’s boy emerged from the shop with a bucket of water and began silently to wash the blood from the grey stone step.
XXX
SOME DESTINIES
FROM THE DIARY OF THE REV. JOSIAH CRAWLEY, CURATE OF EASTON
15 November 1866
Aghast, on returning to these pages, to find three years now gone since first I came here. Three years! And what is there to show? And yet there have been passages in my life when I could account for each passing day, so plenteously filled were they with good work done on the Lord’s good business. Now the memory of the week past is like a b
lank page in a book from which the words have ebbed away, quite beyond the power of calling back. Thought of unburdening myself to Margesson, but—as ever—shrank from the candid confession of my woes, from which no good ever came. A month now since I last saw Ely.
17 November 1866
Winter encroaches on every side. White mist, which in these parts hangs over the fields at dawn, still there at dusk; geese abound on the lakes and meres; haw berries ripe on the hedge. My landlady confined to bed with a bronchial ailment, necessitating on my part the performance of many irksome chores. Mrs. Forester much gratified by my condescension. “There’s many a gentleman wouldn’t stand for such treatment, &c. She is a good woman, and I would perforce do my best by her. A curious letter from Cousin Richard. A living in which he has some faint interest at the coast here to fall free this next quarter day. What would be my opinion? Wrote, as best I could, on my behalf, sending my tutor’s commendation, the letter Warden Plender addressed to me when I took my fellowship, but I have suffered too much disappointment to set great store by it.
20 November 1866
Much troubled by conscience, I determined to make a visit to the Hall, to which every species of rumour continues to adhere. Dixey not seen in the parish for a month, a bailiff absolutely heard enquiring of him in Watton High Street, &c. Rain falling incessantly through my journey gave the estate a yet more melancholy aspect than I remembered: the grass grown up a foot high by the driveway; the windowpanes at the lodge smashed and broken. Approaching the house, in which no sign of life seemed apparent, I found myself visited by the queerest apprehension and misgiving, to the extent that I could scarcely bring myself to belabour the great front door. Receiving no answer to my repeated summonses (which clamour resounded inside the house, I fancied, like the roll of some ghostly drum), I wandered around the side of the house. Here all was fallen into the rankest desuetude: weeds grown up in the kitchen garden; the door of the keeper’s cottage swinging from its hinge and a pig peering out from within.