Читать книгу The American Boy - Andrew Taylor, Andrew Taylor - Страница 31

ON TUESDAY THE 23rd November, Wavenhoe’s Bank closed its doors for ever. On the same day, two of its customers committed suicide rather than face ruin.

When a bank fails, the consequences spread like a contagion through society: fathers rot in the Marshalsea or blow out their brains, mothers take in sewing or walk the pavements, children are withdrawn from school and beg for pennies, servants lose their places and tradesmen’s bills go unpaid; and so the plague spreads, ever outwards, to people who never heard of Wavenhoe’s or Russell-square.

‘Frant burned his fingers badly when the tobacco market collapsed,’ Dansey told me as we smoked our evening pipes in the garden. ‘I have it on good authority that he had to turn to the Israelites to keep his head above water. Oh, and the servants have left. Always a sure sign of a sinking ship.’

On Wednesday there were more suicides and we heard that the bailiffs had gone into that opulent house in Russell-square. Dansey and I stood at a window and watched Charlie Frant, arm in arm with Edgar Allan, marching round the playground and blowing plumes of warm breath into the freezing air.

‘I pity the boy, of course. But take my advice: have nothing more to do with the Frants, if you can help it. They will only bring you grief.’

It was sound advice but I was not able to take it, for the very next day, Thursday, the sad history of the Frants and Wavenhoes reached what many believed to be its catastrophe. The first intelligence we had of the terrible events of the night came at breakfast time. The man who brought the milk communicated it to the maids, and the news set the servants whispering and swaying like a cornfield in a breeze.

‘Something’s afoot,’ Dansey said as we sat with our weak, bitter coffee. ‘One doesn’t often see them so lively at this hour of the morning.’

Afterwards, Morley sidled up to us, with Quird hovering as usual at his elbow. ‘Please, sir,’ he said to Dansey, shifting from one foot to the other, his face glowing with excitement. ‘Something horrible has happened.’

‘Then I advise you not to tell me what it is,’ Dansey said. ‘It may distress you further.’

‘No, sir,’ Quird broke in. ‘Truly, sir, you don’t understand.’

Dansey scowled at the boy.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Quird said quickly. ‘I did not mean to –’

‘Someone’s been murdered in the night,’ Morley broke in, his voice rising in his excitement.

‘They say his head was smashed into jelly,’ Quird whispered. ‘Torn limb from limb.’

‘It might have been any of us,’ Morley said. ‘The thief could have broken in and –’

‘So a thief has turned to murder?’ Dansey said. ‘Perhaps Stoke Newington is not such a humdrum place after all. Where is this interesting event said to have occurred?’

‘Not exactly in the village, sir,’ Morley answered. ‘Somewhere towards town. Not a stone’s throw from us, not really.’

‘Ah. I might have known. So Stoke Newington remains as humdrum as ever. When there is news I shall be interested to hear it. In the meantime, I do not propose to waste my few remaining moments of leisure listening to second-hand servants’ gossip. Good morning.’

Morley and Quird retreated. We watched them leaving the room.

‘What tiresomely underbred creatures they are, to be sure,’ Dansey said.

‘I wonder if there is some truth in what they heard.’

Dansey shrugged. ‘Very possibly. No doubt we shall be talking about it for weeks on end. I can imagine nothing more tedious.’

This was not affectation on his part. Dansey could be reticent to a fault but he rarely troubled to lie. Indeed, he rarely troubled much with anything; I sometimes wonder what might have become of him if he had.

I did not have to wait long to learn more. Part way through morning school Mr Bransby’s servant came to fetch me. I found my employer in the parlour with a small man in grey, mud-stained clothes. Bransby was pacing up and down, his face redder than usual.

‘Allow me to present Mr Shield, one of my ushers,’ he said, pausing to help himself to a large pinch of snuff. ‘Mr Shield, this is Mr Grout, the attorney who acts as clerk to the magistrates. I regret to say that a most shocking circumstance has come to light, one that may cast a shadow over the school.’

Mr Grout had a face that was an appendage of his nose, like a mole’s. ‘A man has been murdered, Mr Shield. His body was found early this morning by a watchman at a building plot not more than a mile and a half away. There is a possibility that you may be able to identify the unfortunate victim.’

I stared in consternation from one to the other. ‘But I have never been there. I did not even know –’

‘It is not the location which is our concern,’ the clerk interrupted. ‘It is the identity of the victim. We have reason to believe – I would put it no more strongly than that – that he may not be unknown to you.’

Bransby sneezed. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, Shield, Wavenhoe’s Bank had an interest in this building projection.’

‘The bank hold the head-lease on the land themselves. Or perhaps I should say held.’ Grout wrinkled his nose. ‘Owing to the scarcity of money at the present time, the man who holds the principal building-lease, a Mr Owens, was compelled to apply to them for a series of loans. Unfortunately the money the bank provided was not enough to meet his obligations. The poor fellow hanged himself in Hertford a few months ago.’

Bransby shook his head. ‘And now poor Frant has gone to meet his Maker. Truly an unlucky speculation.’

‘Mr Frant is dead?’ I blurted out.

‘That is the question,’ Grout said. ‘The watchman believes the body is Mr Frant’s. But he met him only once, and that briefly, and he cannot be said to be a reliable witness at the best of times. At such short notice I have been able to find no one in the vicinity who knows Mr Frant. But I understand that he has – had, that is to say – a boy at the school, so I have driven over to see whether someone was able to identify the body; or not, of course, as the case may be. Mr Bransby tells me he has never met Mr Frant either, but that you have.’

‘Yes, sir, on several occasions. Tell me, what of Mrs Frant? Has she been informed?’

Grout shook his head. ‘It is a delicate matter. One would not like to tell a lady that her husband had been murdered, only to discover that the victim was in fact somebody else. Mr Bransby tells me you have been a soldier, sir, that you were in fact one of our glorious army at Waterloo. I hope I am correct in inferring that the sight of a man who has died a violent death may have fewer terrors for you than it would for a mere civilian.’

There was a glazed expression on Mr Bransby’s face. He gave me a tight smile and nodded. I knew I had little choice but to accept the rôle that he had allotted me.

Mr Grout bowed to my employer. ‘Mr Shield should be back in time for dinner.’

‘Well, the sooner this is done the better.’ Bransby fixed me with a glare. ‘We can only hope and pray that the unfortunate man does not prove to be Mr Frant.’

A few minutes later, Mr Grout and I were driving briskly away in his whiskey. We rattled down Church-street and turned right into the High-street. It was on this road, not very far south from here, that I had met Mr Frant for the first time – in September, when I had walked to Stoke Newington to take up my situation at Mr Bransby’s school. I remembered the meeting well enough – as one does when a man more or less threatens to set his servants on one – but he had never shown the slightest recollection of it. It occurred to me that now I had a possible explanation for his presence on the road that day, one that perhaps also accounted for Mr Frant’s bad temper: he had been inspecting one of his failing investments.

We turned into a narrow lane between tall hedges. As we bounced and slithered along on a surface of rutted, frozen mud, I glimpsed market gardens and scrubby pasture over the tops of the hedges. Grout squeezed the whiskey into an opening on the left that led to a large field. There was little grass to be seen – merely heaps of sand and gravel, stacks of bricks, and above all mud. Few walls were higher than my waist. The plot looked as if it had recently suffered an artillery bombardment, leaving two rows of ruins separated by an immense heap of spoil. Grout pulled up beside a wooden shed. For a moment we looked out over the dismal scene.

‘I believe the design is for twenty houses facing each other across a communal garden,’ Grout said. ‘Wellington-terrace. Mr Owens drew up the plans himself. According to the prospectus, Londoners will flock to benefit from the healthy air.’

‘One can see why he felt obliged to hang himself,’ I observed.

‘I agree – it is not a happy place. Nothing has gone well for the scheme from start to finish.’

The door of the shed opened and a man came out, touching his hat.

‘Ah, there is the constable.’ Grout raised his voice. ‘Well, where is he?’

‘We brought him in here, sir, just as you said.’

Grout glanced at me. ‘Are you ready, Mr Shield? Then let us wait no longer.’

We jumped down from the whiskey and followed the constable over the caked mud into the shed. My eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom. A small stove burned in the corner and filled the air with heavy, acrid fumes. A man huddled beside it, a clay pipe smouldering in his mouth. In the shadows at the back of the shed was the shape of a door laid upon trestles. On the door lay the long, dark mound of a body. I sniffed: in the smoke were other smells: the tang of spirits and the dark effluvium of the charnel house.

Grout indicated the man by the stove. ‘This fellow’s name is Orton, Jacob Orton.’

‘Late of the Seventy-Third, sir,’ said Orton in a mendicant’s whine. ‘And I have a testimonial from my company commander to prove it.’ He raised the hand holding the pipe in a parody of a military salute and a shower of sparks flew like meteors through the air. ‘They called me Honest Jake in the regiment,’ he said. ‘That’s my name, sir, that’s my nature.’

‘Are there no more lights in here?’ Grout demanded.

‘It is a terrible dull day, to be sure,’ Orton said, sucking on his pipe.

Grout darted towards him and seized his lapels. ‘Are you sure you heard nothing in the night? Think carefully. A lie will cost you dear.’

‘As God is my witness, sir, I was sleeping as sound as a babe in his mother’s arms.’ Orton snuffled. ‘I could not help it, your worship.’

‘You’re not paid to sleep: you’re paid to watch.’

‘Drunk as a pig,’ said the constable. ‘That’s what he means, sir.’

‘I don’t deny I took a drop of something to keep out the cold.’

‘Drank so much the Last Judgement could have come without him noticing anything out of the way,’ the constable translated. He nodded towards the silent shape that lay on the trestles. ‘You’ve only got to look at him to see he didn’t go quietly. Ain’t that right, Mr Grout?’

The clerk ignored the question. He turned aside and tugged at the sacking over one of the windows, which were small and set high to dissuade thieves. The sacking fell away, revealing an unglazed square. Pale winter daylight spread reluctantly through the little cabin. Orton whinnied softly, as though the light hurt him.

‘Stow it,’ said the constable.

‘He moved,’ Orton whispered. ‘I take my oath on it. I saw his hand move. Just then, as God’s my witness.’

‘Your wits are wandering,’ Grout said. ‘Bring the lantern. Why is there not more light? Perhaps we should have left the poor man where he lay.’

‘There’s foxes, and a terrible deal of rats,’ Orton said.

Grout motioned me to approach the makeshift table. The body was entirely covered with a grey blanket, with the exception of the left hand.

‘Dear God!’ I ejaculated.

‘You must brace yourself, Mr Shield. The face is worse.’

His voice seemed to come from a great distance. I stared at the wreck of the hand. I bent closer and the constable shone the light full on it. It had been reduced to a bloody pulp of flesh, skin and shockingly white splinters of bone. I fought an impulse to vomit.

‘The top joints of the forefinger appear to be missing,’ I said in a thin, precise voice. ‘I know Mr Frant had sustained a similar injury.’

Grout let out his breath in a sigh. ‘Are you ready for the rest?’

I nodded. I did not trust myself to speak.

The constable set down the lantern on the corner of the door, raised himself on tiptoe, took the top two corners of the blanket and slowly pulled it back. The figure lay supine and as still as an effigy. The constable lifted the lantern and held it up to the head.

I shuddered and took a step back. Grout gripped my elbow. My mind darkened. For an instant I thought the darkness was outside me, that the flame in the lantern had died and that the day had slipped with tropical suddenness into night. I was aware of a powerful odour of faeces and sweat, of stale tobacco and gin.

‘He should think himself lucky,’ Orton wheezed at my shoulder. ‘I mean, look at him, most of him’s hardly touched. Lucky bugger, eh? You should see what roundshot fair and square in the belly can do to a man. Now that’s what I call damage. I remember at Waterloo –’

‘Hold your tongue, damn you,’ I said, obscurely angry that this man seemed not to have spent the battle cowering in the shadow of a dead horse.

‘You block the light, Orton,’ Grout said, unexpectedly mild. ‘Move aside.’

I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the sights and sounds and smells that struggled to fill the darkness around me. This was not a battle: this was merely a corpse.

‘Are you able to come to an opinion?’ Grout inquired. ‘I realise that the face is – is much battered.’

I opened my eyes. The man on the trestle table was hatless. There were still patches of frost on both clothes and hair. It had been a cold night to spend in the open. He wore a dark, many-caped greatcoat – not a coachman’s but a gentleman’s luxurious imitation. Underneath I glimpsed a dark blue coat, pale brown breeches and heavy riding boots. The hair was greying at the temples, cut short.

As to the face, it was everyone’s and no one’s. Only one eye was visible – God alone knew what had happened to the other – and it seemed to me that its colour was a pale blue-grey.

‘He – he is much changed, of course,’ I said, and the words were as weak and inadequate as the light from the lantern. ‘But everything I see is consonant with what I know of Mr Frant – the colour of the hair, that is to say, the colour of the eyes – that is, of the eye – and the build and the height as far as I can estimate them.’

‘The clothes?’

‘I cannot help you there.’

‘There is also a ring.’ Grout walked round the head of the table, keeping as far away from it as he could. ‘It is still on the other hand, so the motive for this dreadful deed appears not to have been robbery. Pray come round to this side.’

I obeyed like one in a trance. I was unable to look away from what lay on the table. The greatcoat was smeared with mud. A dark patch spread like a sinister bib across the chest. I thought I discerned splinters of exposed bone in the red ruin of the face.

The single eye seemed to follow me.

‘Now take cavalry,’ Orton suggested from his dark corner near the stove. ‘When they’re bunched together, and charging, so the horses can’t choose where they put their hooves. If there’s a man lying on the ground, wounded, say, there’s not a lot anyone can do. Cuts a man up cruelly, I can tell you. You wouldn’t believe.’

‘Stow your mag,’ said the constable wearily.

‘Least he’s got a peeper left on him,’ Orton went on. ‘The crows used to go for the eyes, did you know that?’

The constable cuffed him into silence. Grout held the lantern low so I could examine the right hand of the corpse. Like the left, it had been reduced to a bloody pulp. On the forefinger was the great gold signet ring.

‘I must have air,’ I said. I pushed past Grout and the constable and blundered through the doorway. The clerk followed me outside. I stared over the desolate prospect of frosty mud and raw brick. Three pigeons rose in alarm from the bare branches of an oak tree that survived from a time when the land had not been given over to wild schemes and lost fortunes.

Grout pushed a flask into my hand. I took a mouthful of brandy, and spluttered as the heat ran down to my belly. He walked up and down, clapping his gloved hands together against the cold.

‘Well, sir?’ he said. ‘What is your verdict?’

‘I believe it is Mr Henry Frant.’

‘You cannot be certain?’

‘His face … it is much damaged.’

‘You remarked the missing finger.’

‘Yes.’

‘It supports the identification.’

‘True.’ I hesitated and then burst out: ‘But who could have done such a thing? The violence of the attack passes all belief.’

Grout shrugged. His eyes strayed towards the nearest of the half-built houses.

‘Would you care to see where the deed was done? It is not a sight for the squeamish, but it is as nothing compared with what you have already seen.’

‘I should be most interested.’ The brandy had given me false courage.

He led me along a line of planks that snaked precariously across the mud. The house was a house in name only. Low walls surrounded the shallow pit of the cellar, perhaps two or three feet below the surface of the field in which we stood. Grout jumped into it with the alacrity of a sparrow looking for breadcrumbs. I followed him, narrowly avoiding a pool of fresh excrement. He pointed with his stick at the further corner. Despite his warning, there was little to see, apart from puddles of icy water and, abutting the brickwork in the angle of the wall, an irregular patch of earth which was darker than the rest, darker because shadowed with Henry Frant’s blood.

‘Were there footprints?’ I asked. ‘Surely such a struggle must have left a number of marks?’

Grout shook his head. ‘Unfortunately the scene has had a number of visitors since the deed was committed. Besides, the ground was hard with frost.’

‘When did Orton make the discovery?’

‘Shortly after it was light. When he woke, he found that while he slept someone had wedged the door of the shed. He had to crawl out through one of the windows. He came here to relieve himself, which was when he found the corpse.’ Grout’s nose wrinkled. ‘First he alerted a neighbouring farmer, who came to gawp with half a dozen of his men. Then the magistrates. If there were footprints, or other marks, they will not be easy to distinguish from those which were made before or afterwards.’

‘What of Mr Frant’s hat and gloves? How did he come here? And why should he come at that time of evening?’

‘If we knew the answers to those questions, Mr Shield, we would no doubt know the identity of the murderer. We found the hat beside the body. It is in the shed now, and has Mr Frant’s name inside. And the gloves were beneath the body itself.’

‘That is odd, is it not, sir?’

‘How so?’

‘That a man should remove his gloves on such a cold night.’

‘The affair as a whole is a tissue of strange and contradictory circumstances. Mr Frant’s pockets had been emptied. Yet the ring was left on his finger.’ Grout rubbed his pointed nose, whose tip was pink with cold. ‘The principal weapon might have been a hammer or a similar instrument,’ he went on, the words tumbling out at such a rate that I realised that he, too, was not unmoved by the dreadful sight on the trestle table. ‘Though it is possible that the assailant also used a brick.’

He scrambled out of the cellar and we walked slowly back towards the shed.

‘They may have come here on foot,’ Grout said. ‘But more likely they rode or drove. Someone will have seen them on the way.’

‘Ruined men can be driven to desperate measures, and it is not impossible that one of those whom Mr Frant injured has had his mind overturned by his troubles, and has sought revenge.’

Grout gave me a long look. ‘Or this might be the work of a jealous lover. Or a madman.’

There was nothing more for me to do at Wellington-terrace. As Mr Grout drove me back to school, I sat in silence beside him, my mind too full for conversation. We passed the flask to and fro between us. It was empty by the time we drew up outside the Manor House School.

I said, ‘May I tell Mr Bransby what has passed?’

Grout shrugged. ‘He either knows or surmises everything you or I could tell him. So will the whole neighbourhood in an hour or two.’

‘There is the matter of the boy. Mr Frant’s son.’

‘Indeed. Mr Bransby must do what he thinks fit on that head.’ He bobbed his nose towards me. ‘I do not know how the magistrates will proceed, and if I did know, it would not be proper for me to tell you. However, there will be an inquest, and you may be required to attend. In the meantime, though –’ he spread his arms wide ‘– there will be talk. That much I do know.’