Adam raised his glass to his lips and considered what he had always been told of his father’s death. Charles Carver had hanged himself in a room in the Langham Hotel. Faced with the final disappearance of the fortune he had built up over decades and with the exposure of the fraudulent means he had, for years, been employing to sustain it, the railway baron had taken his own life.
The consequences for Adam himself had been enormous: the scandal had been largely hushed up but the money to support him at Cambridge was gone. He had been obliged to leave. That first expedition to European Turkey with the late Professor Fields had saved him from the idle indigence into which he might so easily have fallen, but it had also distanced him from the investigations into Charles Carver’s affairs. When he had returned, the executors of the railway baron’s will had rescued what little could be salvaged from the wreckage of his businesses, and Adam had an income of sorts. But was there more to learn now about his father’s death, nearly five years later?
The young man drank the last of his Scotch and soda and sighed so loudly that another club member, dozing in a leather armchair a dozen feet away, awoke and glared at him.
‘My apologies for disturbing you, sir,’ Adam said, standing and leaving the smoking room at a swift pace. Surely, he thought as he left, that weretched man Benskin could not know something that he did not?
CHAPTER NINE
As he emerged from the doors of the German Gymnasium, after another exhilarating hour with the épée, Adam looked up at the sky. Although it was only just approaching half-past six in the evening, it was growing dark.
He stepped onto the cobbled walkway which led to Pancras Road. It was a warm evening and he unbuttoned his jacket. As he took a few strides away from the building, out of the twilight a figure came swiftly towards him. Instinctively, Adam took a pace back and the movement saved him. The man had a knife which flashed across Adam’s chest, ripping through the fabric of his jacket.
Off balance, the assailant stumbled. Adam seized him and they both fell, struggling, to the ground. The man from the shadows again swung the knife in Adam’s direction and the young man grabbed wildly at his attacker’s arms, succeeding in holding him by the wrists. Adam was now on his back, the cobbles pressing into him as his adversary twisted and turned in his grasp, trying to force the knife down into his face.
The unknown attacker was strong and, despite Adam’s straining efforts to hold him off, he began to press the blade in his right hand ever closer to the young man’s left eye. In desperation, Adam released his hold on his opponent’s other hand and punched his right fist into the man’s stomach.
There was a wheezing gasp and the man fell to one side. Adam was able to sit up but he remained half stunned by the suddenness of the assault. He was still in danger, he realized, and he willed himself to his feet. His attacker had also pulled himself upright.
Both men stood on the cobbles, a yard apart, breathing heavily as they stared at one another. The assailant still held the knife in his hand. Adam could feel blood trickling down his fingers from a cut in the palm of his hand.
The man lunged towards him once more, but the punch to the stomach had winded him and his aim was poor. Adam was able to grasp his wrist again and force the knife backwards. The man directed a punch at his head with his other hand and Adam ducked, the movement allowing him to grasp the man’s fist in his fingers. Swaying back and forth, the two of them began a bizarre wrestling match as each tried to force the other backwards. Adam was squeezing his attacker’s right wrist in a desperate bid to force him into dropping his weapon; the man was unable to do more than cling determinedly to it.
Grunting with effort, Adam’s attacker slowly forced him backwards until the young man felt his heel catch on one of the cobbles. He staggered and was obliged to release his hold on the other man in order to maintain his balance. The attacker tumbled forward, carried by his momentum, but righted himself before he fell. His knife hand was now free again. He took a swift step towards Adam but was stopped in his tracks by a shout from the entrance to the Gymnasium.
‘Enough!’
Another figure appeared. He was holding a long, thin sword which he was pointing menacingly at the throat of Adam’s opponent.
The attacker took one look at the newcomer and turned and fled.
The thin blade glinted briefly in the evening light before the man from the Gymnasium slipped it swiftly back into its casing. Fencing sword became Malacca cane. Its owner reached out his hand and helped Adam to his feet.
‘You are a lucky fellow, Señor Carver,’ Juan Alvarado said. ‘That rogue intended to kill you.’
Adam was leaning forward slightly, brushing dirt from his trousers and struggling to regain both breath and composure. He picked up his hat, which had fallen to the ground in the first moments of the fight, and held out his unwounded hand. ‘I do believe he did,’ he said. ‘I owe you my deepest gratitude, Alvarado. If you had not arrived when you did, I think he might have succeeded.’
‘I am happy to have been of service.’ The Argentine swordsman shook his pupil’s outstretched hand. He looked at Adam with undisguised curiosity. ‘You have some dangerous enemies, my friend.’
‘He was just a ruffian out to rob me.’ Adam did not believe this but he had no desire to offer Alvarado a lengthy explanation of why he did not. He pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it carefully around the cut on his other hand. ‘A more violent ruffian than usually roams the street, but a ruffian none the less.’
A small crowd, some of whom had either seen or half seen what had happened, was beginning to gather around the two men. Somebody suggested in a loud voice that the police should be summoned.
‘I do not wish to speak to the police,’ Adam said and began to push his way through the press of people. The Argentine followed.
No one made any attempt to stop them and, as they walked into Pancras Road, the crowd behind them began to disperse.
‘In my city, in Buenos Aires, an attempted killing would not be so unusual. During the years of civil war there were many such assassinations. But in London, in the capital of the great empire . . . ’ Alvarado left his sentence to drift unfinished between them.
‘Murders are, perhaps, more common in London than you imagine,’ Adam said. ‘And, as I say, this was no deliberate attempt to kill me. The robber simply grew more violent the more I resisted. He did not set out to do away with me.’
‘If you say so, my friend.’ Alvarado made little attempt to hide the fact that he remained unconvinced. ‘But, should you need any assistance in the future, I am at your service.’
The two men had stopped as they emerged onto the Euston Road. The Argentine turned to Adam and made the briefest of bows, at the same time raising his swordstick in a swift salute. Adam raised his hat, scuffed and battered from the fight, in acknowledgement and Alvarado walked briskly away in the direction of the new St Pancras railway station.
* * * * *
It was close to eight in the evening when Adam returned to Doughty Street. As he opened the door from the street, he could hear what sounded like voices raised in disputation on the staircase leading to his rooms. Closing the door behind him, he realized that it was but one voice and the voice belonged to Mrs Gaffery.
Suppressing a weary sigh, Adam began to climb the stairs. When he reached the small landing outside his flat, he found his landlady haranguing Quint.
‘Vagabonds accosting me on my very doorstep,’ she was saying, loudly. ‘Without so much as a “By your leave” or an “If you please”. Thrusting notes into my hand as if I was the common postman. It will not do, Quint. You can inform your master of that from me.’
Quint, who was staring past Mrs Gaffery, apparently entranced by the flowery wallpaper with which the stairwell was decorated, caught sight of Adam approaching. ‘You can t
ell him yerself,’ he said.
As swiftly as her considerable bulk would allow her, Mrs Gaffery spun on her heel and confronted the new arrival. ‘Mr Carver,’ she said, ‘I have been explaining to your man Quint here. I cannot become the go-between for any ill-kempt mendicant who wishes to communicate with you.’
‘No one would want you to do so, Mrs Gaffery,’ Adam said soothingly, wondering what had happened to ruffle his landlady’s feathers so comprehensively.
‘Well, you must tell that to the bearded lout who stood between me and my own home this afternoon. “Here, missis,” he says, “give this to that man Carver.” The impertinence of the fellow! “Madam to you,” says I. And then he pushed this into my hand.’ Mrs Gaffery waved a grubby-looking piece of paper in Adam’s direction. ‘It’s filthy. I had a good mind to throw it away immediately. But a letter is a letter. However disgusting, it should reach the person to whom it is addressed.’
Adam could now see that Mrs Gaffery was holding an envelope between the forefinger and thumb of her right hand. With a look of sour distaste, she delivered it to her tenant. Then she moved majestically past him and began to descend the stairs.
‘Thank you, Mrs Gaffery,’ Adam called after her. ‘This will not happen again.’
‘See that it does not, sir,’ the landlady replied, and retired into her own sanctum on the ground floor.
Quint, relieved of any need to remain on the landing, had already disappeared into the flat. Adam was left alone, looking at the letter he had been given. The envelope was, indeed, soiled. It was covered in grubby fingerprints and looked unpleasantly as if it had shared a pocket, at least temporarily, with a used handkerchief. Adam held it as gingerly as Mrs Gaffery had. He looked at the address, curious as to the identity of his correspondent.
‘To Charles Carver’s Young Pup, Doughty Street,’ he read. He sighed inwardly. This must be Benskin again, he thought. How had the wretched man discovered where he lived? Trying to touch as little of the envelope as he could, Adam opened it and extracted the paper inside. It looked like a sheet torn from a notebook. The copperplate handwriting on it, however, although in cheap ink which had smudged in places, was surprisingly neat.
‘You arrogant young rogue,’ the letter began without any further ado. ‘You may think yourself very high and mighty, strutting around Bloomsbury like a peacock, but you don’t fool Job Benskin. Job Benskin knows things about the Carver family that you don’t. There’s truths about your precious father and his precious goings-on that you’ll maybe want to hear. And about why he died. And how. But it’s going to cost you. For proofs of what Job Benskin knows it’s going to cost you fifty guineas. If you come to the Three Pigs in Whitechapel tomorrow night with that sum about your person, then you’ll hear the gospel from Job Benskin. If you don’t, you’ll continue to preen yourself in ignorance.’ Adam turned over the paper in search of more but there was only the signature: ‘Yours in eternal contempt, Job Benskin,’ it read.
He folded the paper and placed it back in the envelope, which he thrust into his pocket. What, he wondered, was he to make of this? In their meeting in the street near St Paul’s, Benskin had more than hinted that Charles Carver had died as a result of foul play. This was surely unlikely. His father had not been murdered; he had destroyed himself. And, assuming that to be the case, what other ‘secrets’ could the man reveal? He might know something of the circumstances of the railway baron’s death which Adam himself did not, but could that something possibly be worth fifty guineas? Almost certainly not.
And yet the young man was once again reminded of how little he himself really knew about his father’s last days. As events had pushed Charles Carver closer and closer to the awful decision to take his own life, his son had been idling away his time at college. He had seen little of his father during those final few months. Perhaps Benskin, the clerk who had been ever-present in the London offices of the railway company, had been privy to secrets to which Adam had not.
There was, Adam decided, only one way to find out. He followed his servant into his rooms.
‘What do you know of the Three Pigs in Whitechapel, Quint?’ he called.
The older man’s head emerged from the small boxroom which was his own domain. ‘It’s a boozing-ken off the high street,’ he replied.
Not for the first time Adam was quietly impressed by Quint’s encyclopaedic knowledge of all the many thousands of establishments in the city that offered drink for sale. ‘A rough and ready sort of place, I suppose?’
‘Some might call it that.’
‘What would you call it?’
‘An ’ell-’ole.’
‘Not the sort of place I should venture to visit alone?’
‘Not unless you want your pockets emptying.’ The manservant paused, as if bringing the Three Pigs and its ambience to mind. ‘Or your jaw broke.’
‘Neither of those eventualities sounds an attractive one. You must accompany me there. Two will be safer than one.’
Quint looked as if he doubted the proposition. ‘Ain’t no call to go sticking our ’eads where they ain’t wanted,’ he said.
‘But our heads are wanted there, Quint. At least, mine is. A gentleman named Benskin makes it very clear that he is expecting to see me at the establishment in question.’
Adam took off his jacket and hung it on the coat-stand in the corner of the room, then threw himself into the easy chair by the fire. ‘Come, do you not wish to discover what the wretched man wants?’
‘If we go down the Pigs, causing trouble, our necks won’t be worth a jigger,’ Quint said. ‘In fact, they won’t be worth ’arf a jigger.’
* * * * *
Adam stood by the area railings and looked down at Hetty Gallant’s flat. It was nine o’clock in the evening and the street was dark save for the light coming from the windows of the surrounding houses. He wondered if he was acting sensibly by returning to see the young dancer. There was no doubt that the invitation to do so had been given when he and Quint had called upon Hetty two days before. And there was no question that she was an attractive woman. Long of leg and lovely of feature, just as Cosmo had said ladies of the chorus should be. He remembered with pleasure the kiss she had bestowed upon him. But perhaps it would be unwise to involve himself with Dolly’s friend? To question her was one thing; to try to bed her quite another.
He was still debating what he should do when his eye caught a movement above him. He looked up. A thin-faced woman had twitched back the curtain on a first-floor window and was staring down at the street, a melancholy ghost watching with envy as the living went about their business outside. He raised his hat politely, uncertain whether or not she could see him. It appeared she could. The curtain fell back into place and the woman’s face disappeared.
Adam returned his attention to the basement flat. He could now hear raised voices coming from below. Hetty, it seemed, already had a visitor. He took several steps back into the darkness of the street as the door of Hetty’s flat opened suddenly and a man stepped into the tiny basement yard. From where he was standing, Adam could not see his face but he could hear his voice. It was educated, upper-class and, at that moment, whining and petulant.
‘I will not be treated in this fashion,’ it said.
‘You ain’t being treated in any bleedin’ fashion, you silly bugger.’
Taking a step forward, Adam could just see Hetty’s figure, framed in the doorway to her rooms. She was standing with her hands on her hips like an Irish washerwoman in a Punch cartoon.
‘I will not be teased and vexed by some little madam who earns her living by exposing herself to the public gaze.’
‘Ain’t nobody doing any vexin’ but you.’
‘I have travelled all the way out to this godforsaken part of town and now you are proposing to send me away. That is surely enough to tr
y the temperament of a saint.’
‘I ain’t sendin’ you away, sweetheart.’ Hetty’s voice suggested that she was struggling to sound soothing, when her urge was to lose her temper. ‘Jest sayin’ it ain’t a good idea for us to be together right now.’
‘Precisely. You are sending me away.’
Adam watched as Hetty flung out an arm in exasperation. He still could not make out more of the man than a shape in the darkness. ‘’Ave it your own way, then,’ she said. ‘I’m sending you away. We shouldn’t be seen together. Remember what ’is nibs said the other day? No consorting until after it’s all over.’
‘Damn and blast the man!’ The voice from the dark sounded bitter. ‘He doesn’t understand how I feel. I want to be with you.’
‘And I want to be with you, my love.’ Hetty spoke more gently than she had before. ‘But it ain’t possible.’
The man now took several steps forward and his face was illuminated in the yellow glow from Hetty’s window. Adam recognized him immediately. It was Harry Vernon – Sunman’s colleague from the Foreign Office who had involved himself so indiscreetly with Dolly Delaney. He looked tired and woebegone. His shoulders drooped and his face was frozen in misery. Hetty came closer to him and kissed him on the cheek. Vernon seized her like a shipwrecked sailor clutching at passing flotsam and pulled her into his embrace. Hetty allowed him to do so for a moment and then pushed him away. ‘After it’s all over, eh, love?’
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