Carver's Quest

by Rennison, Nick

  ‘Undoubtedly.’ Adam was still puzzled by the direction in which the conversation was moving. Jinkinson had now taken hold of the lapels of his lurid yellow jacket and had adopted the position of a courtroom lawyer about to embark on a particularly incisive address to the jury.

  ‘To live, a man must earn money. In the sweat of his face shall he eat bread until he return unto the ground. There is no shirking honest labour simply because he has sobered up.’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘There is more need of it. And so, when Mr Creech – God rest his soul – crossed my threshold in Poulter’s Court and offered me money to follow certain gentlemen, how could I turn him away?’

  ‘How indeed? And these gentlemen were—’

  Jinkinson held up his palm to interrupt. He had not yet finished his little speech, the outstretched hand clearly said.

  ‘How could I listen to the small voice of conscience that told me I should not? How could I turn my back on the pieces of silver the tempter offered?’

  ‘You could not, Mr Jinkinson.’

  ‘I could not,’ the enquiry agent agreed. ‘I have always been a man whom the gods of chance and fortune have shunned, Mr Carver. There’s something about me like a stone round a drowning man’s neck. It keeps me from rising. And yet here was a gentleman offering me money – good money – to do no more than follow certain other gentlemen.’

  ‘And these gentlemen Creech wanted followed, they were both MPs? Sir Willoughby Oughtred and Lewis Garland?’

  ‘And another member of our honourable legislature, Mr James Abercrombie. I tailed all three of them, yes.’

  ‘Why did Creech want them followed?’

  ‘That, sir, was not information that was ever vouchsafed to me.’

  ‘Was he blackmailing these gentlemen?’

  ‘I decided that it was in my best interests not to ask such questions, Mr Carver.’

  ‘But you did follow them? The record in Creech’s notebook seems to indicate that.’

  ‘Oh, I followed them. On particular occasions. When Mr Creech – God rest his soul – asked me to do so.’

  ‘And did you discover what Creech wanted to know? You could not have followed them anywhere but on the public streets. There must have been any number of places where you could not pursue them.’

  Jinkinson shrugged. He returned to patting his pockets and this time he found the object for which he was looking. He extracted a silver snuffbox from the inner recesses of his jacket. He opened it and offered it to Adam, who shook his head. The enquiry agent took a pinch of snuff between thumb and forefinger and inhaled it forcefully up his right nostril. He was immediately seized by a furious coughing fit which threatened to send the rest of the contents of his snuffbox flying around the interior of the cab. Somehow he managed to wrestle the box shut, replace it in his pocket and take out the polka-dotted handkerchief again. This time he blew his nose on it several times.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Carver. Nothing like a pinch of snuff to clear the passages.’ He seemed to have entirely recovered his self-possession.

  ‘Did you discover what Creech wanted to know?’ Adam asked again.

  ‘I discovered a number of things. I discovered that Sir Willoughby Oughtred possesses more sidewhiskers than he does brains.’ Jinkinson continued to dab at his nose with the handkerchief. ‘I discovered that business at Westminster doesn’t preclude a bit of further business in St John’s Wood. For one MP, at least, if you catch my meaning, Mr Carver.’

  ‘One of the men was visiting St John’s Wood?’

  ‘Lewis Garland. A particular house in St John’s Wood. A particular person in St John’s Wood. A very accomplished young nymph who kept him busier than he is ever kept by the affairs of the nation.’

  ‘Aha, an arbour in the woods.’ Adam recalled the words Quint had heard in the pub yard. ‘I see. All very discreet, no doubt.’

  ‘Oh, very discreet. There’s a kind of covered walkway from the road to the front door.’ Jinkinson gave a sudden snort of laughter. ‘Convenient, wouldn’t you say? A gentleman in a top hat gets out of the cab. One step and he’s hidden from view. It could be anybody visiting. It could be the Archbishop of Canterbury or Mr Gladstone going to see the lady in question.’

  ‘Was Creech interested in these visits?’

  ‘You’d think he would be, wouldn’t you? Supposing he was intending to extort money from him. A parliamentary gentleman who can’t keep the member for Cockshire quiet, if you’ll pardon the vulgarism.’

  ‘But he wasn’t?’

  ‘He didn’t seem to be. It was difficult to decide what Mr Creech was interested in. But he kept on handing me those pieces of silver. So I kept on following those gentlemen he wanted following.’

  ‘As I have been following you.’

  ‘I had no notion that you were following me.’ Jinkinson looked surprised.

  Adam was puzzled. ‘But, that very first day I was in pursuit of you, you dodged down the alleyway by the tobacconists and doubled back on yourself in Fleet Street. I felt sure you must have seen me.’

  ‘Merely my usual method of perambulating the city streets, Mr Carver. Turn and turn about. I find that a man in my line of business cannot be too careful.’ Jinkinson paused and looked suddenly crestfallen. ‘Although, in this instance, my precautions proved futile.’

  Adam took pity on the downcast enquiry agent. ‘Had it not been for a child begging in the alleyway on that first day, I should have lost you. The child had seen you and pointed me in the right direction.’

  Jinkinson’s face brightened. ‘I am an old fox, am I not? I have my wiles and wits about me still.’

  ‘You do, indeed. And I do believe that you have been employing them in an attempt to extract money from others.’

  ‘That is possible, sir,’ Jinkinson acknowledged. ‘In this great city of ours, many of us have nothing but our wiles and wits to rely upon. To gain the wherewithal to live, I mean.’

  ‘Not to beat about the bush, Mr Jinkinson, I believe that Creech may or may not have been attempting to blackmail the two gentlemen we have already mentioned. But that you certainly have been. Using the information you acquired when Mr Creech employed you.’

  ‘I would not choose to use the word “blackmail”, Mr Carver. Such an ugly, uncompromising word.’

  ‘What word would you choose, Mr Jinkinson?’

  ‘I would prefer to say that I have been striving to persuade the gentlemen that their interests would best be served if trifling sums of money passed from their possession into mine.’

  Adam smiled and bowed his head in mock acknowledgement of Jinkinson’s artful use of euphemism. ‘And have you been successful in your efforts?’

  ‘Alas, not yet. But I do have high hopes that the gentlemen in question will come to see reason.’

  ‘You don’t think that, perhaps, you are playing a rather dangerous game?’

  ‘Dangerous?’ Jinkinson looked genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Gentlemen as powerful as Oughtred and Garland are not to be trifled with, you know. Not in any circumstances. And there is always the possibility that one of them might know more of Creech’s death than he should.’

  ‘No, no, no, Mr Carver.’ Jinkinson waved a hand to dismiss the notion. He shifted about on the cab’s leather seat, as if in preparation for leaving. ‘You are barking up the wrong tree entirely with such a suggestion. Whoever killed the unfortunate Creech, it was not any of the gentlemen I have been meeting. A member of the House of Commons committing murder?’ The enquiry agent was amused by the idea. ‘In the past perhaps, but not in this enlightened era of ours. Probably some rogue entered his house with larcenous intent and did the poor man to death when he confronted him.’

  ‘You have no certain way of knowing this. If Creech was a blackmailer, he may well have been killed by one of the people he was blackmailing. You take risks, Mr Jinkinson, if you take up where Creech left off.’

  ‘The world is full of risks, Mr Carver. There is no
possibility of avoiding them.’ Jinkinson began to struggle to his feet in the confines of the cab. ‘But I regret to say I can stay no longer to discuss them. I must say my farewell to you.’

  Bent almost double to avoid striking his hat from his head as he exited, Jinkinson climbed out. He stood on the pavement, brushing snuff from his clothes, and then raised his battered black bowler to Adam.

  ‘I do hope you won’t feel obliged to let that police inspector you mentioned know about our conversation. If the gentlemen from Westminster do not care to involve Scotland Yard’s finest in their business, then why should we?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ Adam raised his own hat. ‘Your dealings with Garland and the others are your own concern, sir. I shall tell no one of them.’

  Jinkinson smiled and replaced the hat on his head at a jaunty angle. He reached across the wheel of the cab to offer Adam his hand.

  ‘Goodbye, my dear Mr Carver. It has been a pleasure to renew our acquaintance. I have enjoyed our conversation. Confession, they say, is good for the soul and I have confessed so many of my little misdeeds to you. It is small wonder that I bid you adieu with such a light heart.’

  With that, the enquiry agent was gone. Adam watched him disappear into the crowds that thronged the pavement of High Holborn and then rapped once more with his cane to attract the driver’s attention.

  ‘Doughty Street, if you please, cabbie.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  How went the Millais “At Home”?’

  Adam was once again a visitor to Cosmo Jardine’s studio in Chelsea. He was sitting in the room’s only chair, smoking a cigarette. The painter was standing in front of his easel, applying the occasional brushstroke to King Pellinore and the Questing Beast and then standing back to judge the effect of each one.

  ‘My dear Carver, I would ask you, as a friend, to question me no further about that particular event.’

  ‘A social success of the first water, then?’

  ‘A débâcle. The beautiful Mrs Millais – Effie, as I presumptuously think of her – was not present. For long periods of time, nor was Millais himself. I was left to exchange pleasantries with two watercolourists of almost preternatural stupidity and to drink tea that was even more insipid than the company. Do you know Hardisty and Hepworth?’

  ‘I do not think I have had the pleasure of being introduced to them.’

  ‘They are like the Siamese twins who held court at the Egyptian Hall last year,’ Jardine said. ‘Chang and Eng, the indivisible brothers. Hardisty and Hepworth are much the same. Where one goes, so too must the other.’

  ‘I take it that they are not sparkling conversationalists.’

  ‘They are not. But let us speak of something else. I cannot bear to be reminded of the occasion.’

  ‘I shall torment you no longer with questions about it.’

  ‘That would be a kindness much appreciated.’

  ‘However, I have questions still about the gentleman who came to visit you, supposedly at Burne-Jones’s recommendation.’

  ‘Ah, Creech or Sinclair, or whatever he called himself.’ Jardine took several steps back from his painting, staring at it as if it might move should he take his eyes off it. ‘I have remembered one curious thing about his visit.’

  ‘And what is that? What curious thing did he do?’

  Jardine continued to address his remarks to his canvas. ‘It was more what he said than what he did. If you recall, I told you that we spoke of art.’

  ‘You said that you spoke of art. I assumed that that meant poor Creech had to endure a lengthy lecture on the evils of photography and the dangers it poses to the true artist.’

  ‘Ah, you underestimate me, Carver. I do have other arrows in my quiver, you know. I believe on this occasion the subject of my disquisition was the purblind prejudice of the Academy. However, what I said is immaterial. It is what Creech-Sinclair said that signifies.’

  ‘And that was?’

  ‘At one point, when I had paused briefly to review my arguments in my mind, he suddenly asked me where I had been to school. I assumed that he was referring to my training in painting so I confessed that I was self-taught. But he was not. He was asking about Shrewsbury.’

  ‘I am not certain that there is anything strange about that. There are many who believe that his school says more about a man than anything else.’

  ‘When last we met, I think I said I did not recall him speaking of you. My memory played me false. He did mention your name. More than once, in fact. As if fishing for titbits of gossip and scandal.’ Jardine glanced briefly over his shoulder. ‘Of course, I refused to say anything that might incriminate you.’

  ‘My thanks for your discretion.’ Adam bowed ironically in the direction of his friend. ‘I suppose that I should be flattered by his interest.’

  ‘You were not the only person of my acquaintance in whom he was interested.’ The painter returned to the examination of his canvas. ‘He went on to ask me several questions about Fields.’

  ‘About Fields?’ Adam was surprised, but a moment’s thought banished his surprise. At the Speke dinner, Creech had been asking him about the expedition to Macedonia. Of course he would want to know more of the leader of that expedition. The only puzzle was why he had chosen Cosmo Jardine to cross-examine.

  ‘Yes, about Thomas Burton Fields. Once much-esteemed senior master at Shrewsbury School. Now Professor of Greek at Cambridge. And equally respected by all who encounter him there.’

  ‘Why would Creech ask you about Fields?’

  Jardine shrugged. ‘I have not the slightest notion. I am not even sure how he knew that I am acquainted with the professor. Perhaps I mentioned it in the course of our conversation. But his questions were decidedly odd. Did Fields spend all his time in Cambridge? Did he have lodgings in London outside term? Did I see him in London? How he thought that I would be able to provide him with the answers to them, I do not know.’

  The painter stepped back from his painting again and cocked his head to one side, as if he thought that seeing King Pellinore from an unusual angle might help him continue with the work.

  ‘Well, of course I was able to answer the last question. I could tell him that I have seen the professor only once since leaving Cambridge. And that was at a dinner at the Garrick. We exchanged possibly two dozen words. Maybe three dozen, if you include the introductory How do you dos.’

  ‘What on earth did Creech mean by asking whether or not Fields has lodgings in London?’

  ‘I cannot imagine what he meant by any of the questions.’ Jardine had taken a small brush from one of the glass jars in which all his brushes stood. He was concentrating on adding tiny details to the face of King Pellinore, his nose no more than a couple of inches from his canvas. ‘In any case, I have more than enough difficulties over which to cudgel my brains without devoting time to thinking about the oddities of a gentleman who is no longer with us.’

  ‘Difficulties, Cosmo? Amorous difficulties?’ Adam was used to listening to his friend recount either long stories of the pursuit of largely unattainable young women, or equally extensive accounts of his capture of those who were only too attainable. He prepared to hear another.

  ‘Would that they were. But they are financial. Some months ago I was obliged to attach my name to several bills and they fall due for payment at the end of the week. How the deuce I am to find the money to cover them, I do not know.’

  ‘Will your father not stump up?’

  ‘I fear I have tried Pater’s patience once too often this year.’ Jar-dine’s father, the dean of a small West Country see, had never shown any noticeable enthusiasm for his son’s choice of career. ‘Several begging letters have winged their way towards the deanery already, and the summer is only just upon us.’

  ‘You should endeavour to live within your means, Cosmo.’

  ‘Don’t, pray, be such a moralising old fraud, Adam. Have you no debts of your own?’

  Adam thought a moment. It was true that he owed h
is tailor a trifle. He owed another trifle to the man who made his boots and shoes. And Berry Bros and Rudd had temporarily terminated his credit with them when his desire to put fine wines on his account had noticeably outstripped his ability to pay for them. Yet he did not consider himself much of a debtor.

  ‘I have debts,’ he acknowledged. ‘But none which is pressing. What will happen to yours at the end of the week?’

  ‘They will remain unpaid. And, as a result, I assume that I will be visited here in my sanctuary by nasty little fellows threatening all sorts of dire consequences if I do not immediately sell my furniture.’

  ‘You have little enough furniture to sell,’ Adam remarked, looking around Jardine’s spartan studio.

  ‘I suppose the matter would eventually come before a court.’ The artist ignored his friend’s comment. ‘And I would be inevitably convicted and sent off to Botany Bay, or wherever it is they now send those who put their names to bills which they shouldn’t.’

  ‘I cannot promise to pay you a visit there.’

  ‘I would not expect one. The climate, I am told, is atrocious and so, too, are the food and drink. The company is even worse. But enough of my troubles. You must tell me of yours. There is no better way of relieving one’s own pains than by listening to the tale of someone else’s.’

  ‘I am not certain that I have any, Cosmo.’

  ‘You stumble over a fresh corpse in some distant part of the metropolis and yet you claim to be free of troubles. I find that difficult to believe. Were you not called upon at the inquest? There was an inquest, I suppose?’

  ‘There was. Two days after I found the body. Did I not speak to you of it?’

  Jardine shook his head. He continued to peer at his canvas from a distance of a few inches, occasionally making the smallest of strokes with his brush.

  ‘Well, I stood up and told my story. Quint told his. The police inspector, Pulverbatch, stood up and hummed and hahed about investigating this and ascertaining that. And the jury retired for about five minutes before returning a verdict of wilful murder by person or persons unknown.’