Читать книгу The Scent of Death - Andrew Taylor, Andrew Taylor - Страница 25

Early in November, I saw the little girl for the first and last time.

I had just dined with the Commandant and a considerable company of gentlemen, most of them in uniform. There had been much food and many toasts. I was a little drunk, and therefore disposed to be emotional.

As I strolled along, Lizzie was in my mind, which was perhaps why I noticed the child in the first place. The thought of my daughter aroused a host of feelings in me – love, of course, and a sort of hunger for her company, and also anxiety: suppose she fell ill? Suppose her mother or her aunt treated her cruelly? Suppose I were to die, leaving her penniless and unprotected in this harsh and unforgiving world? Suppose the unthinkable, that Lizzie herself should die?

It was still early in the evening and Broadway was crowded. It was dark. There were a few streetlights, and the lighted windows and shop doorways. But these emphasized the gloom rather than dispelled it. That was when I saw the child.

The girl was younger than Lizzie and was in leading strings. She was with a woman. The two of them had emerged from a haberdasher’s shop about twenty or thirty yards in front of me. Both were muffled against the weather in long cloaks with hoods over their heads. The woman tugged the girl along, almost pulling her off her feet. The child had not yet learned how to walk quickly without falling over. She strained against the harness that held her as if bursting to escape.

In a moment they passed a pastry-cook’s shop – a large and brightly lit establishment with two big windows. The child was distracted by the smells and the warmth. She pulled her reins free from the woman’s hand and darted towards the open door.

The woman caught her in an instant. She hooked her arm around the girl’s waist and spun her, legs kicking, into the air. The movement dislodged the hoods from their heads.

The scene was as brightly lit as a stage. I saw the child in profile, her arms outstretched towards the pastry-cook’s, her mouth open in a howl of frustration. She was a negro, as was the woman who had charge of her.

In that same moment, alerted by my footsteps, the woman looked in my direction. To my surprise, I recognized Miriam, Mrs Arabella’s maid.

The scene dissolved. Miriam walked rapidly away, almost at a run, still with the kicking, wailing child in her arms. I called out. She did not turn round. A porter staggered out of the furniture shop next door with his arms wrapped around a large wing armchair, which stopped me dead in my tracks and blocked my view.

By the time I reached the pastry-cook’s, there was no sign of the woman and the girl. I could no longer hear the child’s cries. Either the two of them were obscured by the throng of passers-by or they had turned into another shop or down one of the narrow alleys that punctuated the line of buildings.

Why such apparently furtive behaviour? Was Miriam outside the house on some unlicensed errand? Was it possible that she was married? Could the child be hers? I began to doubt it had been Miriam – after all, I had barely glimpsed the young woman and the light had been poor.

I returned to Warren Street. Josiah answered my knock on the street door. The old man helped me remove my hat and greatcoat, murmuring gently that the ladies were in the drawing room and Judge Wintour was at work in his library. He turned aside to dispose of my coat.

‘Josiah?’

‘Sir?

‘I saw Miriam this evening. At least I believe I did.’

Josiah hung my coat without undue haste. He faced me and bowed, his face expressionless.

‘She was with a child – a negro girl, an infant. Has Miriam a daughter?’

‘No, sir.’

Josiah bowed again and retreated into the shadows at the back of the hall.

It cannot have been more than a week later that Captain John Wintour came home. I have a note of the date: it was on Thursday, 12 November. He had been badly wounded at Saratoga and, by his own account, had spent many months on the borders of life and death. An old and feeble-witted woman stumbled across him half dead in a wood when she was gathering kindling near her cottage. She had nursed him back to health.

Eventually he had reached Canada and found his way to Kingstown, where there were cousins of his mother who were able to shelter him; but his health had broken down again. Fortunately he had, in his own words, the constitution of a horse and had recovered sufficiently to be able to undertake the voyage home.

He arrived in Warren Street in the evening. It was the dead hour before supper. As chance would have it, when he knocked at the door I was descending the stairs on my way to the parlour.

The younger manservant, Abraham, let him in, trying to say a few words of welcome. Wintour pushed past him and stood in the middle of the hall, legs apart and hands in the pockets of his patched greatcoat, which had clearly been made for someone much smaller. He was a spare man of about thirty, with flushed, bony features and deep-set eyes, which were an unusually bright blue. He stared at me.

‘And who the devil are you?’ he demanded, swaying as he spoke.

‘My name is Savill, sir. Have I the honour of meeting Captain Wintour?’

‘Indeed, sir. The honour is entirely mine.’ Wintour attempted a bow, staggered forward and righted himself. ‘You must be the gentleman from the American Department. My father told me.’

‘Yes, sir. You have—’

The parlour door opened and Mrs Wintour almost ran to her son, an extraordinary exhibition of physical energy from the old lady. She embraced him. The Captain closed his eyes and patted her shoulder. With his other hand he scratched his nose.

Next came the Judge, more slowly. He looked his son up and down.

‘I am happy to see you home, John,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir. And – and I to be here.’

‘You are – you are fatigued?’

‘It has been a long day, sir, and my health is not yet quite restored.’

‘Then perhaps you should rest – after you have seen Bella, of course. Let Abraham take your coat.’

Mr Wintour took his wife’s arm and drew her from her son. The Captain held out his arms and let the slave ease the coat away from him.

No one looked in my direction. I thought they had forgotten me.

There were footsteps on the stairs. I turned. Mrs Arabella was rounding the bend at the half-landing. She paused at the top of the last flight down to the hall.

First she must have seen me. She let her eyes drift past me to the group in the hall below. I could not see her expression because the light was dim and the flame of the candle she held was below the level of her chin.

But the candlelight revealed two things about Mrs Arabella. It showed her slim white neck. It showed that she was swallowing repeatedly, as if trying to force down an unpalatable morsel. And the flame also picked out her hand holding the top of the newel post, and how the fingers gripped it so tightly that the skin wrinkled.

The Captain looked up. ‘Ah – there you are, madam. My pretty, witty wife.’