It was Gilbert Waterton.
‘Ah, the persistent Mr Carver. After Ravelstein telegraphed me with details of what happened the other day, I thought that I might possibly be receiving a visit from you.’ Waterton made an extravagant gesture of welcome. ‘Allow me to invite you into my humble abode.’
Adam entered and made his way past his host into a short, dark corridor.
‘The first door on the left will take you into my reception room,’ Waterton said.
The room was tastefully but not extravagantly decorated. Adam’s eyes were immediately caught by two prints of Roman goddesses – Diana and Minerva, perhaps – on the wall facing him. His host moved past him and towards a drinks decanter on a table beneath a tall, eighteenth-century window. For a moment, Adam thought he would be offered refreshment but, instead, Waterton turned suddenly and smiled at him. He was holding a gun.
‘I am growing weary of people pointing firearms at me,’ Adam remarked.
‘Perhaps you should refrain from poking your nose so assiduously into those people’s business.’ Waterton waved the pistol briefly in the direction of a leather-covered chair. ‘Do sit down while I decide what I should do with you.’
‘I think I prefer to stand.’
‘Your preferences are of no interest to me.’ Waterton waved the gun in his hand again. ‘Sit down.’
Adam lowered himself into a chair. Waterton bared his teeth in an approximation of a smile. ‘Thank you, Mr Carver.’ He sat down carefully in another chair, his eyes never leaving Adam’s. ‘And, now we are both comfortable, we can debate the best method of resolving the tangle in which we find ourselves.’ While keeping the gun carefully trained on his visitor, Waterton made a pantomime of pondering what he should do. ‘No, I do not think there is any other way,’ he said eventually. ‘I shall have to kill you.’ He grinned wolfishly at Adam. ‘But, before I do, I have one or two questions to ask you. Just to satisfy my own curiosity. And if you have any questions yourself, do feel at liberty to put them to me – I should hate you to go to meet your Maker in a state of bewilderment.’
‘That is most kind of you.’
‘Ever the gentleman,’ Waterton said. ‘In fact, so much the gentleman that I shall allow you to ask your questions first.’
‘Most generous of you.’ Adam bowed his head in ironic acknowledgement. ‘But you have been the puppet master throughout this play that has been enacted, have you not?’
‘I have pulled some of the strings,’ Waterton admitted. ‘Greed and lust have also had their roles in the drama. Would poor Harry have done what he did had he not been so pathetically eager to bed a beautiful dancer? Would the girls have played their parts if they had not dreamed of gold and jewels? I think not.’
‘You corrupted all of them.’
The man laughed. ‘How melodramatic your language becomes. You have been tainted, Mr Carver, by your time in the theatre. I did not corrupt them – I merely provided the opportunity for their inherent vices to flourish. Who knows? If I had not shown Harry a way of escaping his tipsy wife and finding some pleasure between the sheets, perhaps someone else would have done so.’
‘You make your deeds sound like those of a philanthropist. But everything was planned so that you would have a hold over Vernon. So that you would be able to blackmail him into agreeing to your plans.’
‘I needed a scapegoat. Or perhaps “sacrificial lamb” is a better term.’ Waterton spoke as if he believed that any reasonable man could only agree with him. ‘Harry was so obvious a choice for the role that casting him in it was easy.’
‘You compromised him with Dolly and forced him into stealing the plans for the submarine. Then you arranged for him to travel to Berlin to deliver them to Ravelstein. I have no doubt that you emphasized his knowledge of Berlin and of the German language. Flattered him into further participation. It would not surprise me to learn that Harry Vernon almost came to believe that the whole scheme to sell the secrets was as much his as yours.’
‘You are an astute man, in your own way, Mr Carver.’ Waterton was staring coldly at Adam. ‘Harry’s ability to delude himself was astonishing. There were times when he did seem to forget that what we were planning was treason and that he had had to be, shall we say, coaxed into joining me. And he did indeed begin to assume that we were equal partners in the enterprise.’
‘He was wrong, of course.’
‘Oh, entirely. But Harry made very many unjustifiable assumptions. He assumed, for instance, that Dolly was wildly enamoured of him.’
‘Whereas, in truth, she was besotted with you.’
‘It would be immodest of me to agree with you,’ Waterton said, looking far from modest as he spoke. ‘But she was prepared to go to great lengths to please me.’
‘Including seducing Harry at your request.’
‘Including that.’
‘And so she travelled with Vernon to the Continent.’
‘Yes. He was still under the impression that the girl adored him. He wanted her to go with him. It seemed easiest to tell her to accompany him.’ There was a pause as Waterton continued to stare at Adam like a stage hypnotist endeavouring to influence a member of his audience. ‘How, I wonder, did you guess that Harry had fled the country?’
‘I found a scrap of paper hidden in one of the song-sheets at Dolly’s lodgings. It had times on it which could only have referred to the boat trains. It was in Harry’s writing.’
Waterton smiled mirthlessly. ‘I told her from the beginning to destroy any communications she received from him,’ he said. ‘And I suppose it was an obvious assumption for you and Sunman that he would make his way to the land of his birth.’
‘Obvious enough. Where else would he go?’
‘Where else indeed?’ Waterton gave another ugly smile. ‘One of Harry’s characteristics on which one could always rely was his predictability.’
‘And the blueprints . . .’
‘Harry thought he had them with him.’
‘I am sure he did. But in fact they were in your possession. What did poor Vernon take so trustingly to Ravelstein?’
‘I believe it was the designs of a new breech-loading cannon. Mildly interesting, perhaps, but scarcely worth the money the Germans had offered to pay for the submarine plans.’
‘So, when Ravelstein came to believe that he was being tricked, he ordered his men to kill Harry. You would have come along a little while later, with the real plans, taken the money and returned to London. Everybody would have known that the plans had been sold to Germany but everybody would have assumed that Harry Vernon – the late Harry Vernon – was the traitor. You would have continued your life in London just as before. Except that you would be, say, ten thousand pounds better off. And free to do further business with Ravelstein and the Germans.’
‘Something like that,’ Waterton agreed. ‘Although I could not be certain that Ravelstein would do away with Harry. However, I know that the count is not a man who likes to be crossed. It seemed to me very possible that he would. And, if he did not, the plan would still work. I could still make my appearance with the submarine designs and Harry would still be blamed for everything. He could babble all he wanted about my treachery but no one would be likely to believe him.’
‘There is only one thing I do not quite understand,’ Adam said. ‘Why did the women need to exchange identities? Why did Dolly have to become Hetty and Hetty become Dolly?’ Yet even as he asked the question, he suddenly knew the answer. ‘It was done to protect the real Dolly, was it not? Just as Harry was to be the scapegoat for your crimes, so the other girl was to provide camouflage for your lady friend.’
‘How clever you are, Mr Carver.’ Waterton spoke with a sneer. ‘You are correct, of course. The original plan was merely that she could hide behind a new name. In addition, I
thought that changing the girls’ identities might sow extra seeds of confusion. More smoke and mirrors. It has turned out rather well. With the false Dolly dead, it will become even easier for the real Dolly to embark on a new life.’
‘With you?’
Waterton shrugged. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘I am not a sentimental man, but I admire Dolly Delaney. She has intelligence, spirit and ambition. All qualities to be applauded. And, like me, she knows how to protect her own interests. She was eager to gain her new identity. Indeed, she insisted on it as a quid pro quo for her participation in the plot.’ Adam had his own reasons for admiring the girl, but he said nothing of them. ‘And yet in Berlin,’ he remarked, ‘you arranged an attempt on her life.’
‘That was not I.’ Waterton was angered by the suggestion. ‘It was Ravelstein. He believed at first that she knew more than she did. In any case, his plan was not to kill her. His agent arrived at the Deutscher Hof to abduct her. Your arrival in her room threw everything into confusion and poor Dolly was shot accidentally.’
‘So it was my fault?’
‘In a sense.’
‘And the death of the false Dolly? The girl in York. I suppose that too is my responsibility.’
Adam spoke with heavy sarcasm but Waterton, pretending to think the matter over, agreed with him. ‘A modicum of the blame can be attached to you,’ he said. ‘It was mostly the girl’s fault for deciding so precipitously to travel north. I was happy for you to chase around London in pursuit of her. London is a large place, so there was little chance that you would catch up with her. But when she went to York and you followed, I thought it only too likely that you might find her and speak to her.’
‘So you also travelled to York and you killed her.’
‘That was not part of my original plan.’
‘But you murdered her. Tracked her to the theatre, chloroformed her and stabbed her to death.’
‘If you say so.’ Waterton shrugged. ‘It was better that she be hurried off to meet her Maker than loiter around York making a damn nuisance of herself.’
‘And, of course, you killed poor Cyril Montague.’
‘Poor Cyril Montague, as you so naively call him, was a malicious little opium-soaked nancy boy who was too greedy for his own good. He came calling upon me when he returned to town. With ridiculous threats and demands for money.’
‘That was the worst mistake he ever made, I suppose.’
Waterton smiled as if enjoying some private joke. ‘I could not take the risk that he would speak unwisely to other people. To your good self, for instance. I’d already guessed when I was in York that the girl might have been indiscreet in her discussions with him. I wanted to speak to him to learn how much, if anything, he knew. I tried to find his address from the theatre records.’
‘It must have been you that Quint saw in the office in the York theatre.’
‘I saw no one in that office.’ Waterton sounded surprised. ‘And no one saw me.’
‘That is where you are mistaken. Quint was under a table at the time. He heard you coming and hid himself.’
Waterton laughed. ‘So all the time I was looking for something which would tell me where Montague was, your little homunculus was crouched under the furniture, was he? How amusing!’
‘But you were unable to find him?’
‘I had so little time. I needed to be back here. I came to the conclusion that Montague in York represented little threat to my plans. But then I saw that he was in town once more, having read about it in one of the papers—’
‘—and you decided to kill him.’
‘Only after he began to make a nuisance of himself. If he had not had the gall to approach me with a demand for money, he would be alive today and spouting Shakespeare to his heart’s content. He knew, of course, that the Dolly in York was not who she claimed to be. He had been in the same theatre company as the real Dolly.’
‘At the Gaiety.’
‘If you say so. I am not such a devotee of the stage as you seem to be.’ Waterton continued to sound as if he was enjoying the conversation. ‘He had not only realized that Dolly was not Dolly but he had learnt that she had been paid money to change her name. This had aroused his curiosity. He had wheedled more information out of the girl, I think.’
‘He knew of your connection to her?’ Adam was puzzled.
Waterton shrugged. ‘Not at that point, no,’ he said. ‘I assume that the wretched girl spoke of Harry in York. Montague visited Harry when he returned to town and the fool panicked. Not only blurted out far more than he should have done about our scheme, but mentioned my name.’
‘And Cyril sealed his fate when he approached you demanding money to keep quiet about what he’d learned.’
Waterton nodded. ‘I couldn’t run the risk that that opium-soaked board-treader knew enough to scupper my plans. I followed him to the theatre in Holborn one afternoon. He thought I had come to pay him off. I brought a bottle of wine with me. We drank several glasses. Or rather, he did and I pretended to. The wine had been liberally dosed with laudanum.’
‘There was no wine bottle in his dressing room.’
‘I took it away with me. And the two glasses. I had to wait a confounded age before the drug took effect. Montague’s constitution must have become so inured to the intake of opium that it needed enough laudanum to fell an elephant before he succumbed to it.’ Waterton was still holding his pistol but he seemed relaxed. He had the air of a popular clubman recounting a favourite anecdote to a gathering of his friends. ‘But he did so eventually and I left, clutching the evidence of my crime. No one saw me go save some strange urchin who was loitering in the theatre lobby.’
Billy Bantam, Adam thought. That had been what the belligerent little man had been trying to tell him that night as he had left the Holborn theatre.
‘So,’ Waterton continued cheerfully, still the amiable raconteur, ‘the girl and the nancy boy were both dead. They were no longer in a position to open their mouths and ruin everything. You were a minor irritant, but I was confident that you knew only a little. All could go ahead as planned.’
‘Harry Vernon could travel to Berlin.’
‘Exactly.’ Waterton smiled. ‘Anything more you wish to know? Or is all adequately explained?’
‘I do have one or two questions,’ Adam said, wishing to keep Waterton talking as long as he possibly could. ‘Was it you who persuaded Job Benskin to approach me?’
‘Ah, the bitter Mr Benskin. I have long known him – from those happy days when he was general factotum to your father. Would you believe that I once invested money in one of your father’s many railway schemes? I lost it all, of course, but I made acquaintance with Benskin at the time. Imagine my pleasure when I bumped into him in the Strand one afternoon. And realized how useful he might be to me.’ Waterton moved the gun from one hand to another. He stretched the fingers on the hand that had been holding the weapon before returning the gun to its original position. All the time he did this, it continued to point at Adam. ‘He needed little persuasion, incidentally. Poor Benskin. He really does hate you. I thought that his story about your father’s demise might, if suitably embellished, distract your attention from the search for Dolly. I underestimated your determination to find her.’
‘I found it odd that Benskin should suddenly appear from nowhere, after so many years, and confront me.’ Adam shifted slightly in his seat. ‘And what about the attempts on my life? That was the man Baines, I assume?’
‘A fool as well as a rogue.’ Waterton sniffed in distaste. ‘I found him through Benskin. I gave him money to threaten you on the night you visited the East End.’
‘And the night I was leaving the German Gymnasium?’
‘The man was a loose cannon. He seemed to think that, since I had paid him a certain a
mount to knock you down and wave a knife in your face, I would necessarily pay him even more if he actually used the knife on you. I had to disabuse him of that notion. By that point, you seemed little more than a harmless distraction. I had even decided that you might be useful to me insofar as your investigations could lead me to the girl in York.’ Waterton sat back in his chair, but the gun remained half pointed in Adam’s direction. ‘So, now I think you know everything, Mr Carver,’ he said. ‘It is a pity that the knowledge can be of no benefit to you. And now there remain only the questions I wish to ask you before I dispose of you.’ Waterton leaned forward slightly in his seat. ‘I am curious to learn . . .’
His words were interrupted by a furious knocking on the door, and several raised voices could be heard in the corridor outside. One of them, Adam recognized with relief, was that of Inspector Pulverbatch. Quint had, for once, done exactly what he had asked of him: he had gone to Scotland Yard and summoned help.
‘The game is up, Waterton,’ Adam said. ‘That is the police.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The hammering at the door continued. Waterton turned in the direction of the sound, looking suddenly panicked and unsure of himself. He stared at the print of Minerva on his wall as if the goddess might provide him with the wisdom he needed to make a decision. Standing up, he moved a step or two towards Adam, who remained seated. ‘I should destroy you for the interfering devil you are,’ Waterton said. The two men gazed at one another as the noise from the door increased. Waterton raised the pistol and aimed it more deliberately at the young man’s head.
Adam felt his heartbeat rise and his pulse pound. ‘There is no point,’ he said, his throat dry and his voice croaking. ‘You might escape the noose for the murders you have already committed, but you would scarcely do so if you killed me with Inspector Pulverbatch and his men as witnesses outside the door.’
There was a long pause and Waterton dropped his aim. He had recovered something of his aplomb. ‘You are right, of course,’ he said. ‘The temptation to put an end to you is strong, but your death, although it would afford me great pleasure, would bring me no advantage.’
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