Lemprière's Dictionary

by Lawrence Norfolk

  Doubts nagged Sir John. He had a sniff of his quarry, but no more. On the strength of his visit to the Craven Arms, he had recalled the lightermen who had found Rosalie’s body, and they had told him of a one-sided fight between themselves and a madman in the King’s Arms tavern. That was the night of the murder, and their assailant had worn eyeglasses and a pink coat. He had asked Rudge if he remembered the boy from George Peppard’s room, Theobald Peppard’s companion, and Rudge had confirmed “John Smith” had been seen at the King’s Arms that night, except John Smith was not his true name.

  Sir John waited in the Examining Office for his summoned witness to appear. He could not fault his own deductions. There was no missing element in the causal chains by which he hooked the killings to one another. And yet something marred the composure of his logic, something which told him all his deductions led him falsely, that his steps were actually theirs, and they served other masters. Doubts and more doubts clouded the case before him, adding another layer to his troubles. A knock sounded at his door.

  ‘Come!’ instructed Sir John. He heard the door open and fussy footsteps move across the floor. ‘A seat, Mister Peppard.’ He gestured before him.

  ‘Sir John,’ Theobald said by way of greeting as he sat.

  ‘You are Theobald Peppard, brother of the late George, an employee at East India House in Leadenhall Street?’

  ‘Chief Archivist and Keeper of the Correspondence, I am yes,’ Theobald answered. Sir John leaned forward.

  ‘On the night your brother’s body was discovered, you arrived in company with another gentleman. Do you recall that night?’

  ‘Naturally Sir John, my own brother’s death, how could I forget?’ Because, by all accounts, you had not spoken to him since his good name sank with the Falmouth and Captain Neagle twenty years before, Sir John thought to himself.

  Aloud he said, ‘Do you recall the name of your friend that night?’

  ‘He was no friend of mine! Not at all, no. I met him only that evening, he was trying to force George into a terrible business. Blackmail, would you believe? I tell you I have my own suspicions about that gentleman….’

  ‘Naturally.’ Sir John sought to stem the flow. ‘But do you have his name, Mister Peppard?’

  ‘Lemprière,’ said Theobald promptly. ‘L-E-M-P-R-I-E with an accent like this.’ He gestured with his hand and Sir John sighed inwardly. ‘R-E’.

  A future-ghost stirred in the city of the dead, rose and walked amongst the shades of forgotten heroes, through streets which rose and leaned in until the sky was a narrow slat of light far above. The powerful gods were only local deities here, weakened to lares, the lemures of untended graves. He saw the false prophet, Laocoon, whose errors would now lead no-one astray, there being nowhere for them to be led. He saw the unheeded prophets, Nereus and Œenone, who told Paris of the outcome of the rape and his own end, but it made no difference then and never would again. Larga and Lais walked arm in arm taunting the shades of Lycurgus who hobbled on his stumps through the streets which were all so similar with their shallow curving gradients and regular flagstones and clean too, as though invisible sweepers were always at work over the next rise, around the last corner, erasing all traces of the inhabitants. Macco gabbled and Mandana looked askance at her groom. Manto was silent for there was nothing to foretell there. Niobie’s hybris trailed behind her, the shade of a shade as she drifted past. Odatis, weeping bitter tears which seemed to sink into the flagstones, stood by Pasiphae who waited for the attentions of her lover with a patience borne of certainty he would not come; the Minotaur would never be born, would never be slaughtered in the labyrinth by Perseus, who would never escape to leave his accomplice wailing on the beach at Naxos. He would never return. She would never wait for him. Penelope would weave by day and unravel by night and never abandon her task, for her husband too would never reach Ithaca. He wandered ashen and insubstantial as them all, a grey man in grey streets which wound round and about and back, doubling and re-doubling. Theseus and Pirithous passed without recognising one another; Volumnius and Lucullus forgot their old friendship. Xenodice and her mother were nearby or so, over there it was Zenobia she knew her child was lost somewhere round the twisting streets in the city doubled on itself and tiered in time, the first and second and third and fourth and all the cities of Rome, all the cities of Carthage and all the cities which had folded one inside the other until every last stone was the stone of a thousand such cities, every wall had fallen a thousand times and every gate led to the same flat landscape, scree rolling for miles under skies which would never rain or shine….

  And here was where his search went on, this future-ghost, for the city was counter-weight to his dictionary which filled itself at the expense of these streets, and he was the agent of an exchange between different versions of the same past: the city and the book. The faces came greyer and greyer, almost transparent as the streets coiled about some unseen central node and their gentle gradients grew steeper. They were fewer now and they fumbled like blind men in the expanding light for the roofs were drawing back and the streets opened out into broad bland swathes of grey stone. Still he noted the shrinking ghosts although now they seemed to fade at his touch. He saw them fall away to nothing but knew they were safe, serried in columns and rows down the page like the bodies washed ashore from a wreck which are lined up along the beach. At the centre of the city was the citadel and already, even at a distance, he seemed to be pounding on its doors, a huge thudding sound against the heavy iron, because she must be inside, whatever he sought had to be there for there was nowhere else but the space beyond these portals and his fists were crashing into them, thud, thud, thud…

  … thud, thud, thud, ‘John!’ Thud. Are you there?’ His hand jerked spilling a tongue of ink over the entry for Xenodice. ‘John!’

  ‘Yes! A moment….’ He dabbed at the ink, then ran to open the door. Septimus walked past him into the room.

  ‘Ah,’ he added his own efforts to those of Lemprière as the last of the ink was mopped away. ‘Splendid work.’ He leafed through the entries picking one out. ‘Unsigned?’ Lemprière scribbled a signature and date, still gathering his thoughts.

  He had been at work, transcribing the ghosts into his dictionary in a waking dream. Septimus brandished the sheaf of completed entries as though to congratulate him on his industry. He was nearing completion. Another month and the strange grey city would be empty, all its citizens interred with only his entries for headstones. Septimus was talking of his work, telling him of an obscure incident involving the Pug and Warburton-Burleigh. Lydia was well. He spoke of Cadell’s enthusiasm for the project, the weather, a contretemps amongst the opera set, the Lottery Suicides, Lemprière’s orange tree which simultaneously flourished and caught tree-diseases in the corner and Lemprière, who had resolved to ask him about the night they had visited the Stone Eater - he had not seen him in the meantime, three perhaps four weeks - listened instead as this compelling chatter led further and further away from that night towards far-flung matters: the shoals of dead fish floating in the Channel, a moveable hospital erected in Somerset House, the defection of a dwarf-troupe from the circus at Magdeberg.

  ‘They were sighted in Perpignan a week yesterday,’ he said. But Lemprière saw his face with its eyes shut and all the colour drained away and he heard Lydia’s comment that it was a harmless fire had terrified him. He did not think of Septimus as particularly brave, but neither could he connect terror with his friend. He had faced down the lightermen in the King’s Arms. He was never at a loss. Why had he stayed away these last weeks if not to hide the face behind that undaunted mask? He would ask. Now, he thought. Do not wait.

  ‘Septimus,’ he interrupted, and was about to form the question when a second knock sounded at his door.

  ‘That will be Lydia,’ said Septimus as he opened it.

  But it was not Lydia. It was the three professors: Ledwitch, Linebarger and Chegwyn who burst in and began talking all at once.
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  ‘Mister Lemprière!’ said Ledwitch. ‘We rushed as soon as we heard.’

  ‘We remembered your investigations,’ added Chegwyn.

  ‘Flying men.’ Linebarger drew Septimus into the conversation. ‘Firm proof at last.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ said Lemprière, which the professors thought very good indeed.

  ‘Ho, ho! On earth, ha ha!’

  ‘Who are these people?’ asked Septimus.

  An hour later, Lemprière, Septimus and the three professors sat in the room where Lemprière had once listened to the Widow Neagle as she spun a tale of her husband and her lover, a ship and a whale. Ledwitch brandished a copy of the Morning Chronicle. Septimus sat with his fingertips touching, his posture conveying intense scepticism as Ledwitch spoke of Turkic prisoners marching north from the Banat who witnessed a flying man.

  ‘At first they thought it was a gull,’ he said.

  ‘It was no gull,’ said Chegwyn. ‘No gull is the size of a man.’

  ‘No gull,’ said Ledwitch.

  ‘We remembered your interest in the Rochelle Sprite,’ Linebarger spoke to Lemprière, ‘and this sighting is so similar, so strikingly similar.’

  ‘They saw its face,’ Ledwitch continued. ‘Blackened it was, just like the Sprite’s, an infant’s face …’

  ‘You never told me those things before,’ said Lemprière.

  ‘Hardly surprising,’ muttered Septimus.

  ‘An infant’s charred face,’ said Lemprière, more to himself than his companions.

  ‘From the fire,’ said Ledwitch. ‘The fire in the citadel, when the Rochelais died. Of course the Turks took it for a Mahometan angel….’

  ‘What else do they say?’ asked Septimus.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ledwitch. ‘They are dead. They were found two days’ march from Karlstadt with their heads caved in. A “Sergeant Vittig” is under arrest.’

  ‘So there are no more details. A flying man, a blackened face, an infant’s face….’

  ‘The Sprite, yes. There are records, Richelieu’s men saw….’

  ‘I mean the Karlstadt sighting. You say an infant’s blackened face?’

  ‘The face of a Moor, a musselman. If it were a Mahometan angel as they say, its face would be dark, would it not?’

  ‘But then it would not be the Sprite, if such a thing ever existed, would it?’ Septimus came back. ‘And the report makes no mention of an infant, or an infant’s face, and this report is taken from the Vienna despatches, is it not?’ He turned to Lemprière. ‘Would it not be convenient for the Austrians if such a miracle took place in this way; it does after all rather distract from Mister Vittig’s massacre, does it not? And a massacre of prisoners by an Austrian renegade when the Emperor is clearly trying to extricate himself from this war, when his own Internuncio is, they say, held hostage by the Turks, would be at the least an inconvenience, would it not? And, regarding your Sprite,’ he gave the word an incredulous inflection, ‘how convenient for Richelieu and his friends, would this Sprite have been? An angel, a flying man. So much more engaging than the squalid details of a siege. Who would talk of women and children burned alive when one could tell the story of the Sprite? Can you really give any of this credence, John?’ His tone was hurt, amazed, angry all at once.

  The professors were silenced by his demolition. Lemprière read quickly through the article.

  ‘It does seem largely concerned with the massacre,’ he said. ‘You could have told me this at my lodgings.’

  ‘There is no such animal,’ Septimus weighed in. ‘Not at Karlstadt, not at Rochelle, not here or anywhere. Why do you waste my colleague’s time in this way? He has business enough without such nonsense. Come John, Lydia will be waiting for us in any case….’

  ‘No, wait!’ said Ledwitch. Lemprière had risen and was putting on his coat. He turned in surprise.

  ‘I mean, please wait,’ Ledwitch repeated. ‘If you could….’

  ‘John?’ Septimus was ready to leave.

  ‘We did not mean to deceive you,’ said Linebarger.

  ‘Deceive me?’

  ‘We need your help Mister Lemprière. We had to bring you here.’ He paused and looked at the other two, who nodded for him to go on.

  ‘It concerns the Widow,’ he began.

  And of course Lemprière had thought of the Widow. He had thought of her the night he had shouted after Theobald Peppard in Blue Anchor Lane, which was the night she had lost George though she did not know it then. She might have had him; they might have had each other. Against all the odds, between them they had kept their chances alive. Against all the odds, their stock had risen, their long-awaited cargo delivered by the ship which was moored below the Captain’s house. But George was dead and Lemprière had thought of the Widow and done nothing. Now he had been called to account. The professors knew nothing of his involvement in Peppard’s death, nothing of the agreement which had led the killer to George’s room. If it was strange the professors had not previously mentioned their hostess, it was stranger Lemprière had not asked after her. To sit in her house and talk and not say her name; it was a small lie to which a larger evasion was attached. When Lemprière asked how he might help, and Ledwitch said that he was the only one who knew “a Mister Peppard”, he felt the full weight take hold of him as though the intervening months were so much slack which was now used up.

  ‘She is much changed,’ Ledwitch said, ‘since she heard of his death. She rarely leaves her room now and we, we hardly know what to do. We thought if you spoke to her perhaps….’ His words trailed away, lost somewhere in her loss.

  ‘Of course,’ said Lemprière and he began to climb the stairs, thinking of the things he might say and those he might leave unsaid.

  Later, when he had bade his farewells to the professors and told them to think nothing of their slight deception, thinking of his own being so much greater, when he walked back through the noise and chaos of Thames Street with Septimus, typically his counter-weight, in buoyant mood, when his gloomy silence proved resistant to all Septimus’ sallies and his friend was at last forced to ask how he had consoled the Widow, Lemprière would say only that he had not told the truth. Now, as he knocked and opened the door to the Widow’s room, he still entertained the thought that he might blow a little of George’s hope on the ashes and she would rise up, fiery and full of the outrage which was how her own hopes had been preserved through all the years of the lawyer’s disgrace. But one glance at the old woman sitting in the high-backed chair facing away from the curtained windows and he knew that it was not so.

  The Widow did not look up as he entered. He began the long litany of condolence standing in front of her in the darkened room. He ended by mumbling and twisting his fingers together. He took off his spectacles and the room dissolved. He could not see her face, which was blank, or her eyes, which never looked at him or blamed him. He knew the truth and the truth had moved on leaving her marooned in this room which she would leave rarely now, there being nothing to draw her out. No angry visits to Skewer’s office, no strangers to accost and fix with her pertinent questions, no lover across the water waiting to claim her and be claimed in turn. Lemprière thought of these as he stumbled through the smooth phrases which he remembered d’Aubisson saying to his mother when they had gone to his office together. He could tell her that he was sorry, that he had liked George, that he too grieved, and all these things were true. He might have told her that George loved her, that had he lived he would have married her for he had found the means to clear his name, that George had told him exactly that and meant every word. He might have sailed off, caulked with these truths, insured against later discovery. He replaced his spectacles and looked down at the frail woman.

  ‘George loved you,’ he said. ‘But he could not come to you. I know he understood that. Too much had conspired against you both.’ Lemprière thought of Peppard’s jubilation at the mention of Neagle’s ship, returned at last to save them both. ‘He coul
d never have married you,’ he said and flinched inwardly at the lie. The Widow seemed to stir and Lemprière waited for a long moment, but at last turned to the door. The Widow spoke then.

  ‘We always lose,’ she said.

  ‘That is not true,’ said Lemprière. He was thinking of Juliette. ‘It is not always true,’ he said, but this time the Widow made no reply.

  In the early hours of the first day of June he gave up his efforts and took to the air. The night sky drew him up with its stars and sickle moon, high over the city and river, the sky gods pulling him south and east, the dark country falling away beneath until the air was still and cold around him and he was covered in silver-white light. He turned and saw the land give out and the sea butt against tall cliffs, the swell scending up the heights, falling back. He moved south, twisting, gliding, feeling the night air roar under his body. A sea of glass stretched to either side of him, bordered with dim lights from the western ports and to the east a silver highway as the moon reflected off the water’s surface. Between these lines, one ragged and real, one perfectly insubstantial, ship-lights glimmered in tiny points. Smacks and lighters moved close to the coast. Farther out he could see larger vessels with their masts bare for the night’s passage. The sun was invisible below the horizon, racing along an arc which would soon bring dawn to chase him back to the city and the last, he savoured the thought, the last labours of his settlement. Too long, he thought then. Too many years.