by Mike Ashley
“And what of d’Urfey’s death?” she asked less severely. “Is it connected, do you think?”
“There seems to be a tenuous sort of link, Lady Wroth. It seems likely.”
“Likely, Sir!” she spluttered. “No more than that?”
“Very likely, if you wish.”
“No, Sir,” she exclaimed passionately. “I do not wish it!”
She sat very still for a while, then busied herself with her handkerchief, snuff-box, patch-box, perfume-bottle and headscratcher in turn. She returned to fretting away with her fan, and at length said wearily: “If d’Urfey was involved, then my rascal of a grandson must be involved also.”
“Not necessarily, Ma’am,” I said evenly. “D’Urfey could have been about his own business.”
“His own business?”
Her diamonds sparkled as her hand shook, and I had a sudden flash of inspiration. His own business, indeed. I had a vision of d’Urfey, the dear friend, the boon companion, the sharer of boyish confidences. Could he have been the prime mover in all this? If there were any skeletons to be rattled in the Wroth cupboard, he would be privy to them all. He, d’Urfey, the privileged guest. He could well have been the link with Murrell – and, if his purpose had been served, then, like Murrell, he could have been disposed of.
But in the same way as Pelham? With a knife through his throat? There was a break in my vision, the divine afflatus reascended.
“What are you thinking, Captain Nash?” Lady Wroth asked, looking at me curiously.
Without taking thought, I answered: “If only you would be honest with me, Ma’am!”
She bridled. “Sir?”
“Your ladyship may not be aware that I have twice suppressed information regarding two crimes . . . temporarily. I did it to serve your interests. If only you could have more confidence in me.”
Her manner relented somewhat. But, all the same, her eyes pierced through me sharply, as she said: “I have told you all I know.”
“Not entirely, Ma’am,” I answered.
She blinked at my impertinence, but controlled herself. She made the picture of a perfect great lady dealing with an insolent menial.
“For example, Sir?” she asked.
“Where is your grand-daughter, Miss Catherine Wroth?”
An astonished pause. She lost control of herself – her acting days were far behind her. She gaped and spluttered.
“What has that to do with anything, Sir?”
I came to the point.
“Lady Wroth, your grand-daughter disappeared, turning her back on a grand fortune and her place in society. She went in haste and there must have been a reason for it. Rumour has it that she lives with Sir Harry Pelham, and we know that he has some unsavoury connection with Murrell’s business. I think there is more to the receipts than is written on them. Murrell had some knowledge of a secret and scandalous nature concerning your family, which he was willing to sell. Somebody must have provided Murrell with that information and I think it may well have been – ”
I was going to say Pelham, but she interrupted me with a cry.
“No, Sir! That is a monstrous suggestion. She could no more have passed such information to that – ”
She caught herself short, with a furious look for me.
“So she is with Pelham?” I said.
“That, Sir, is none of your business. She has done what she has done, and that is between herself and her Creator. But I know that she is not in any way connected with this business.”
“She lives with Pelham and he is connected to it,” I said stubbornly.
“Enough, Sir!” she cried, and rose. I was about to be dismissed both from the room and probably from the enquiry.
She hesitated. The façade of the grande dame crumbled and a troubled old lady peered anxiously out at me from behind the elaborate framework.
I spoke gently. “I apologize if I have offended you, Lady Wroth,” I said. “But you must admit that you have been less than frank with me.”
“I have told you all you need to know, Captain Nash,” she replied. “You were commissioned to deal with the receipts only, Sir,” adding viciously: “Which you have failed so to do!”
She rang her bell imperiously.
“Not quite yet, Ma’am,” I said distinctly.
She looked up in surprise, the bell tinkled to a foolish halt. Her mouth twisted with contempt.
“Are you saying that you can still get them for me?”
“Yes.”
She frowned at me.
“How, Sir?”
“I still have an important piece to bargain with, my lady,” I said. “The code-book. Pelham will need it soon. He wants it badly enough now – so much so that he is willing to storm my rooms to get it.”
She caught her breath.
“Do you think Pelham has the receipts?” She looked almost fearful.
“If he hasn’t, I think he knows where he can lay a hold to them,” I smiled. “Do you still wish me to act for you?”
“Providing that you can do so without involving innocent people,” she said grimly.
The door opened. Chives awaited his instructions. Lady Wroth looked from me to him and back again.
She made up her mind.
“Bring a dish of tea, Chives,” she ordered. “Captain Nash is staying for a while longer.”
She sat down and beckoned me to resume my seat.
Chives closed the door. Lady Wroth began to tell me about her grand-daughter, Miss Catherine.
And an hour later I rode away from Stukeley, not much the wiser for her confidences. Her ladyship had spoken quite freely, but without imparting the least information. She knew where the girl was, she was in no peril, either physical or moral, and she was not in the least entangled in this sad business.
She would say no more than that. But what she said was highly emphatic. Her grand-daughter was an honest, decent girl that the world traduced. She had her own reasons for behaving as she had and, however wrong-headed she might be, she had behaved with all possible honour. But, in any case, it was none of society’s business. It was none of my business.
And with regard to my business, she asked, how soon did I think I should be able to procure the receipts and have finished with the whole squalid affair?
Ah, when indeed? I wondered, as I turned into my street. It depended entirely upon how the action fell from this point on.
But some new development was about to commence, it seemed. For the past four miles, I had been aware of being followed. Obviously I had been tracked all the way from the Hall.
A grey man on a grey mare was trying his best to merge into the grey day, but not altogether succeeding.
And not entirely wishing to succeed, perhaps.
XVIII
I sat in my rooms waiting for the knocker to rattle or for the bell to jangle, but both objects refused to oblige me. Pelham seemed in no hurry to contact me again. Either he had lost interest in the code-book or else he was experiencing some difficulty in unearthing the receipts.
It seemed scarcely possible that he had lost interest, so the latter solution seemed the more likely. If this was so, I realized that I myself would experience some difficulty in obtaining the receipts. Both Murrell’s rufous-haired assistant and the uncomely Negress appeared to have vanished into the limbo of the netherworld and, although I had set my Seven Dials contacts on to trying to discover their lair, I had, so far, received no encouraging news from that quarter.
My best chance remained with Pelham. I had put a man to watch his house in Newick Square. This fellow, Droop by name, was an old and experienced hand at keeping watch. He was to send for me at the slightest sign of any activity and report on all Sir Harry’s visitors. To date, he had reported nothing of note, only the comings and goings of tradesmen, nothing at all suspicious, though with a man of Pelham’s stamp, nothing could ever seem wholly innocent. But I kept him at his post because I felt sure that if I was to be led in a new direction, Pelham
would lay the scent for me.
As I finished my supper, the bell rang. I opened the door to find a ragged-arsed urchin grinning up at me.
“Capting Nash?” he piped.
“Yes, boy.”
“Droop says yo’re to come, yore ’onour.”
He held out a grimy hand into which I fed a coin. With a nod and a wink, he ran off into the night.
Five minutes later I followed him.
At some point I became aware of the man in grey, drifting like a moth from shadow to shadow behind me. He looked to be the greyest man I ever saw, in the uncertain light, grey from head to boots. Even his face seemed to be a subtle shade of grey.
I kept to the main thoroughfares and as much in the light as possible. At that time of the evening, the streets were reasonably crowded with folk taking the air. People flowed and eddied around me. As I walked purposefully towards Newick Square, my pursuer kept up an even pace behind me. When, for the space of a few minutes, I passed through a patch of darkness empty of people, I speeded my steps slightly, expecting the man to make some move, tensing myself for a sudden lethal rush from behind.
But nothing happened. The man kept a discreet distance and I arrived in Newick Square without incident. Droop was waiting for me. He emerged from behind the plinth of a statue, where he had been lurking.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Copper-top,” he replied. “He went into the house by the back way about a half an hour ago.”
I looked at Pelham’s house. Almost all the rooms were ablaze with light, a prodigious waste. One would have thought he was at home to the world instead of being confined to his room.
Had Murrell’s apprentice brought the receipts at last? If so, Pelham would soon be in contact with me to arrange for their delivery.
We stood half-hidden behind the plinth and waited. A terrace away, my pursuer waited in his turn. I was dimly aware of his grey shape hovering behind a house corner.
“Don’t look around,” said Droop hoarsely, “but we’re a-being hobserved.”
I chuckled. Very little escaped Droop’s baleful eye.
“He followed me here,” I said.
“Shall I run ’im orf?”
“No. When we leave, I may want you to follow him.”
“Foller him follerin’ you, d’you mean?”
“Yes.”
Droop laughed softly. The notion of a mouser1 following a mouser amused him greatly.
We waited ten minutes more. Nothing happened to disturb our solitude. The street emptied of people. A carriage passed along the cobbles, its wheels rattling quietly over the straw. A sedan stopped before a neighbouring house and a rouged, patched and powdered old nobleman was carried off to his evening’s entertainments.
Presumably all the inhabitants of Newick Square were away for the evening, for their houses were lighted modestly. Only Pelham’s house was lit up, as for a ball. The lights streamed from every window, except one. This room I judged to be his bedroom: it was a black oblong and a curious, almost sinister, contrast to the rest of the house.
At one point, I thought I heard a cry wrung from behind the unlighted window.
“Did you hear anything, Droop”? I asked.
“Wot?”
“A cry of some kind.”
“Naw.”
Droop’s ears were foxy-sharp. I must have imagined it, I thought.
The minutes crawled past.
But at last there was a sudden stir of activity from the house. The saucy footman poked his head from behind the great door, looking up and down the street. Droop and I ducked quickly behind our refuge. The door closed.
Five minutes later, a clumsy carriage trundled from Pelham’s mews. Creaking heavily, it passed us, turning in the direction of Piccadilly.
I made up my mind in an instant. “Follow that fellow yonder,” I ordered Droop, and I nodded back towards the grey man, still skulking behind his corner.
I ran swiftly and silently after the carriage. As it paused for a moment before plunging into the busy traffic of Piccadilly, I jumped lightly onto the back axle-tree and settled myself on the perch between the wheels. The carriage dipped a trifle beneath my weight, but as it jolted forward at the instant of my stepping upon it, I trusted my presence to go unnoticed.
Once beyond the Knightsbridge toll-gate and out onto the open road, the carriage covered ground quickly. Indeed, for such an ungainly vehicle, I was amazed at the turn of speed whipped up by the coachman.
An hour or more passed. We were in the country now, somewhere close to the village of Hammersmith. The coach turned towards the river. A breeze sprang up and the leather braces that I clung to grew clammy in the damp night air.
The coach turned off the high road onto a grassy track. I was bumped mightily as we rattled along without decreasing speed. The coachman was in a mortal hurry.
We came to rest at the entrance to a field. There was neither a house nor a hovel in sight. The winking lights of Hammersmith shone a mile beyond. A dismal miasma rose from the river, gleaming ghostly a few yards away. I huddled deeper below the body of the carriage.
The coachman climbed down and opened the gate into the field. He was a hulking fellow, even when he stripped off his greatcoat. He opened the carriage door and reached inside. Breathing stertorously, he dragged some object along the floor and, with a grunting heave, slung it over his shoulder. From my vantage point beneath the carriage, I saw him stride away across the field towards the river, a white, shrouded shape draped across his back.
The horses whickered gently as I slipped from my hiding place. I walked through the gate and, slipping through a gap in the hedge, I followed the staggering coachman down the length of the field. As he dropped the bundle on the marshy ground by the river’s edge, I sought shelter behind a leafy tree.
The man did not trouble to look around. He was confident that he was unobserved. Without ceremony, he stripped the white cloth away from the black shape and, taking a deep breath, lifted it up high above his shoulders and hurled it with great force into the river.
It fell with a dull splash and a small wavelet washed up the reedy bank. The coachman waited only long enough to make sure that his burden was far enough out to catch the current of the tide when it drained away towards the sea. Satisfied, he picked up the white cloth and turned away from the river. In a moment he was halfway across the field, the cloth glimmering in the weird light.
I looked towards the river. A dim shape floated just beneath the surface of the water some four yards out. The current had already caught it and was tugging it downstream, a hump-backed object like some obscene fish.
Suddenly the dark mass changed direction. It began to drift in towards the bank. Greatly excited, I walked along the river’s edge, keeping myself parallel to the floating hump. A tooth of land projected some five yards distant and I saw that the black mass would be washed ashore upon it. I ran forward snatching at a broken branch with which to haul it in.
Two minutes later I was looking at the Thames-soaked body of Murrell’s singular assistant. His hands and feet were lightly bound with twine, his eyes gazed up at me with lightless horror, the strange teeth protruding in a grim rictus – a parody of a grimace.
I struck a light and leaned over the body. His wet shirt had been torn on a floating spar and where the flesh showed I could see faint blue markings. He had obviously been tortured. My ears had not deceived me.
Had he been tortured to death? He appeared to have met his death by some blunt instrument. A dark bruise stood out against the pallor of his skin. I fingered his head, peering closely at the bruise, moved the head around with both hands and felt at his ribs. I lifted the lax hand and examined the fingernails. I let the hand fall. He had died of a broken neck. Already the body was beginning to stiffen in the chill night air.
XIX
The bell jangled through my sleep, cutting into a soft and pleasant dream. I descended the stairs, more asleep than awake. It had been three o’clock in
the morning before I had trudged wearily up my stairs to bed.
I opened the door and snapped suddenly into full awareness. I could not have been more abruptly awakened had somebody dowsed me with freezing water.
The grey man stood upon my steps, greyer than ever in the bright morning light.
“Captain Nash?” he enquired in a grey voice, a wraith of a voice, as solid as a river mist.
“I think you know me, Sir,” I said half-severely, half-amused.
He blushed, if that is the word to describe it, for a darkish hue crept under his grey cheeks.
“I should like to speak to you privately, Captain,” he said quite meekly.
I examined him keenly. He looked harmless enough in the daylight. Out of the shadows, shorn of all mystery, he presented a rather nondescript, even a pathetic figure.
He carried no arms about him, of that I was sure. I thought it safe enough to admit him.
He sat in my room like a shrivelled elephant. His skin sagged about him like a hide, grey and leathery, with all the lines running downwards in the most depressing way.
“My name is Smith,” he said in his whispery voice. “‘Coffin’ Smith,” he emphasized. The epithet conveyed distinction.
I bowed. He flushed again, as if common politeness were in some obscure way an insult to him. He was, I could see, a man well-used to snubs.
He licked his lips nervously and looked about the room. Thinking to put him at his ease, for I feared that he would never get started until I had reassured him, I offered him a pinch of snuff. A man generally gains confidence from the use of trifling properties, such little actions give a release from tension.
He flushed, or “greyed”, even deeper and took the snuffbox from me awkwardly. He took the snuff between his fingers with a very gauche air and, with a most unfashionable sniff-sniff, inhaled the powder. After a prodigious sneeze, he said, “God amercy!” and then sat looking as awkward, miserable and grey as ever.
“I’m a mate o’ Betty’s,” he said, and waited. I was obviously expected to know who Betty was, and as I was in ignorance, I thought it best to hold to an enigmatic silence. I could see it greatly impressed him.