The American Boy

by Andrew Taylor

  A few paces ahead of me, Harmwell crouched and again examined the ground. “Someone else has been here recently,” he said over his shoulder. “Perhaps more than one.”

  I brought my mouth so close to his ear I felt the coldness of his skin. “You do not mean the boys?”

  “Grown men, I think. But I cannot be sure, not in this light – the tracks are confused.”

  We hurried up the path until at last we came to the ice-house. The double doors stood wide.

  “They are here!” I cried.

  “It does not follow,” Harmwell said. “The place was left open. The workmen desired to air the place overnight.”

  “But someone has been here,” I said. “Look at the snow in the doorway.”

  As I spoke, we stepped into the passage. The familiar stench of decay, less powerful than before, swept out to meet us. Harmwell pushed roughly past and, holding his lantern high, preceded me towards the chamber. I pulled my muffler over my nose and mouth and followed.

  The inner doors were open. We looked into the black depths of the pit. The light from the lanterns, feeble though it was, flowed like water into the darkness below.

  “Oh God,” I murmured. “Oh dear God.”

  Harmwell clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Who is it?” he said.

  I did not answer. Lying on the floor of the pit was the body of a man, face-down, his head obscured by a hat. He wore a long dark coat with a high collar. His arms were outstretched, and his body was embedded in the thin layer of dirty straw and slush.

  “Who is it?” said Harmwell again, and there was a thrill of urgency in his voice. “For Christ’s sake, man, who is it?”

  61

  There are memories that haunt the mind like ghosts: some benign, some not, but in either case one cannot avoid them, one cannot pretend they do not exist. So, though I do not care to dwell on what happened next, I shall set it down here, in its proper place.

  First, the light. The only source of illumination, of course, was from our lanterns. A faint, murky radiance filled the chamber, as unsettling as marsh gas, making the very air seem solid and unwholesome. The stones, the brickwork, the slush on the floor, the thing that lay in the bottom of the pit – everything glistened with drops of moisture that reflected back what little light there was.

  I glanced at Harmwell, who was holding the jamb of the door with one hand and staring down at the body. I fancied there was a clammy sheen on his black cheek. He was muttering something under his breath, a continuous mumble, perhaps a prayer.

  “Who is it?” he repeated, speaking low, but his rich, deep voice rolled round the ice-house and bounced back at us like the light of the lanterns.

  “I don’t know.”

  But I did know. That was what made it infinitely worse. I grasped the bracket on the wall, set the lantern on the threshold of the doorway, and swung my weight into the void. My foot lodged on a rung of the iron ladder. Step by step I descended, climbing slowly because of the damp flapping skirts of my topcoat. The foetid smell rose up to greet me, growing stronger and thicker with every step I took.

  “Shall I lower the lantern?” Harmwell called down.

  The cold was intense: it seemed to creep into my bones and take up residence there.

  “Mr Shield? Mr Shield?”

  I looked upward and saw Harmwell’s face, the whites of the eyes shockingly vivid, poised over the pit. I gave a little shake of the head; I was reluctant to speak for that would mean opening my mouth and allowing in more of that foul air. I lowered my foot on to the next rung. No need for a lantern because I knew what I would find on the floor: a nightmare which would poison all our lives, that would fill every crack and cranny of our existence like the air itself.

  My right boot splashed into the mess of straw and icy water that carpeted the floor. The body, a black, wet bundle, lay with its head near the foot of the ladder, and its feet towards the centre of the chamber. Propped against the wall was a cartwheel. I stared at it stupidly, trying to imagine what it was doing here, where no wagon would ever come. I stripped off my right glove and extended my arm towards the wheel. Where my fingers expected wood, they found the cold, abrasive surface of rusting cast-iron.

  “Mr Shield?” Harmwell called, and there was a curious intensity, almost excitement, in his tone. “Mr Shield, what have you found?”

  “It looks like – like a cartwheel.”

  “It will serve as the grating for the drain,” Harmwell said.

  My eyes ran down the length of the body to the circular vacancy, about a yard in diameter, in the middle of the floor. One of the body’s feet dangled over it. I bent and touched the long, black coat with the tip of a finger. The man still wore a flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, held to his head by a scarf tied round the chin and now tilted to one side by the impact of the fall.

  From the first, I had had a powerful conviction that the man in the pit was dead. Now I saw that he could hardly be anything else: his mouth and nostrils were submerged beneath the watery slush on the floor. As Mr Noak had learnt from the example of his unhappy son, a man may drown in a puddle – that is, if he is not already dead before he goes into it. I moved my hand to the fold of bare skin above the neckcloth. It was like touching a dead, damp, plucked pheasant.

  “Is he still breathing?” Harmwell said, his voice now an urgent whisper. “Wait, I’ll bring down the lantern.”

  Nausea burned in my throat. “God damn it, of course he’s not breathing.”

  Hobnails scraped on the iron rungs. The light swung to and fro: and for an instant my mind was adrift from its moorings, as it had been in the days when they quietened me with laudanum, and I thought that the pit itself was swaying, not the lantern, that this entire chamber was like a cold bird’s cage covered with a blanket and swinging from side to side over a dark void. The black shape of the body receded into shadow, and then burst into view again.

  Ayez peur, the bird said in Seven Dials. Ayez peur.

  I was full of fear for all of us now, and most especially for Sophie.

  “Poor fellow.” Harmwell held the lantern over the upper part of the body. “We must turn him over.”

  We bent over the corpse. I took hold of its left shoulder and upper arm, and Harmwell clasped a massive hand round its hip and thigh. We pulled. It did not move. The wet, inert body seemed an immense weight. We pulled harder and at last the slush sucked and heaved as it gave up its burden. The body fell with a splash on to its back. Harmwell and I sprang up. There was a moment’s silence, apart from the slapping and rustling of the disturbed water. The light from the lanterns fell on the face.

  “No,” I said. “No, no, no.”

  “No what?” Harmwell rasped in my ear.

  No, it was not Henry Frant lying there. Instead it was the woman who had loved him.

  62

  “It is imperative that we find the boys,” I said as I followed Harmwell up the ladder.

  He was standing by the inner door into the passage. “You know their haunts better than I. If you wish, I will stay here to guard the corpse.”

  “We shall find the boys more quickly if we both look. And when we find them, they may need help.”

  “True.” Harmwell’s face was in shadow. “On the other hand, we can hardly leave Mrs Johnson unguarded. It would not be fitting.”

  “She will not mind, sir, not now. The boys are more important. We must search by the ruins.”

  His persistence in the matter puzzled me, even with the boys’ safety weighing on my mind. I remembered what the foreman had told me the previous morning about the blocked drain of the ice-house, and all of a sudden it occurred to me that this was one of the few nights of the year when the building would not only be unlocked but empty – in other words, with its floor and the sump below easily accessible. Was it possible that the same thought had occurred to my companion?

  I pushed past him and walked down the passage to the outer doorway. The events of this terrible night were no
t over. The poisoned mastiff and the clang of the mantrap were fresh in my memory. Harmwell followed me into the open air.

  “The poor lady has gone beyond all mortal harm,” he observed in his deep preacher’s voice. “You are in the right of it – we must look to the living.”

  We picked our way slowly down the defile and reached the path along the bank of the lake. Here we made better speed. Every few paces one of us would call the boys’ names, Harmwell’s great booming bass mingling with my baritone. At last we attained the crest of the ridge that sloped down towards the ruins and Grange Cottage beyond. The smothering weight of the darkness lay heavily on the sleeping land. To our left was the dense shadow of East Cover.

  “Stay,” Harmwell said. “Did you hear? Call again.”

  A moment later, I heard it too – a high, faint response to our shouts, coming from somewhere below. Careless of danger, we stumbled and slithered down the snowy slope. As I plunged into the dark, I remembered the bright, cold afternoon of St Stephen’s Day when Sophie and I had run together towards the boys.

  A single voice called repeatedly: “Here, sir! Here!”

  We found the boys huddled in the lee of the tallest part of the ruins. They had found shelter in a recess made by a blocked doorway. Snow had drifted over their lower legs. Charlie was slumped at the back of the niche, and Edgar held him in his arms.

  “Oh, sir,” said the little American through chattering teeth, “I am so glad – Charlie was so distressed – and then he fell asleep – and I thought I should fetch help, but I did not like to leave him and I did not know which way to go.”

  “You did quite right. Mr Harmwell, I suggest we wrap them like a pair of parcels, and carry them home.”

  Charlie stirred as we moved him and began to whimper. We covered him with the spare cloak. I took off my coat and draped it round Edgar. We gave both the boys a drop of brandy and then swallowed rather more ourselves. Then, groaning with the effort, I lifted Edgar on to my back; Harmwell lifted Charlie; and we began the slow, infinitely laborious climb up the slope.

  I knew that our troubles were not over. Our best course was to aim for the mansion-house, for who knew what we might find at Grange Cottage? But it would not be easy to carry the boys for the better part of a mile, especially in this weather. As we were encumbered with our burdens, we could not use the lanterns to their best advantage. I was worried about the boys, too, in particular Charlie, who seemed barely conscious of what was happening, and the thought of frostbite was never very far from my mind.

  As we reached the brow of the ridge, however, I heard the sound of hallooing voices by the lake, and saw in the distance the swaying lights of a dozen lanterns and torches. I turned back to Harmwell, to share my relief, and discovered him facing the way we had come with a hand cupped over his ear.

  “Listen, Mr Shield. Listen.”

  A moment later, I heard it too. Somewhere below us, perhaps on the lane by Grange Cottage, came the sound of hooves, muffled by the snow and moving very slowly.

  “Come,” I said. “The boys are growing colder.”

  Without further words, we staggered on towards our rescuers. Charlie lay inert and silent on Harmwell’s shoulder as we plodded towards the lights dancing in the darkness.

  “The monk ran away from us, sir,” Edgar whispered. “We did not see him but we heard him.”

  “What?” said Harmwell. “What was that?”

  “Hush now,” I replied, thinking of those hoof-beats. “We must save our breath.”

  After what seemed like hours, our rescuers reached us, and willing hands received our burdens. We had men enough to spare – Sophie and Mrs Kerridge had woken Miss Carswall, and together they had roused the household and the stables. At the lake we divided into two parties. One took the boys back to the mansion. Harmwell and I led the remaining five men up the defile to the ice-house. The sight of Mrs Johnson in trousers seemed to shock some of them more than the fact of her death. We brought her up from the pit of the chamber – it was no easy task, and it needed all of us to do it. We laid her on a leaf of the ice-house’s inner doors, covered her face with her cloak for decency’s sake and bore her away on her makeshift bier.

  When we reached the mansion, which was ablaze with lights, the footmen were carrying the boys up to bed, with Miss Carswall, Sophie and Mrs Kerridge fluttering about them on the stairs. But Sophie ran back to the hall for a moment, and pressed Harmwell’s hand and then mine.

  “Tell them to bring you whatever you wish, Mr Harmwell, Mr Shield – you must be chilled to the bone. I shall go to the boys.”

  “Let them grow warm gently,” I said, for my father had been used to dealing with frostbite in the Fen winters. “Wrap them in blankets. Sudden heat is harmful.”

  Carswall appeared, stamping into the hall in his dressing gown, ready to rant and roar. But Mrs Johnson under her black cloak brought him up short. Sophie left us and ran upstairs without another word.

  “Uncover her,” he said to Pratt, who had just returned from carrying Edgar upstairs.

  Carswall studied Mrs Johnson for a moment, as she lay there on her back, her skin grey and waxen, her big body ungainly in that unseemly attire, the hat tied under her jaw, as though she had laid herself out for death and did not want to be found with her mouth open. He looked up, saw me standing there at the foot of the stairs and at once looked past me to Harmwell.

  “Was she dressed like that when you found her?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What the devil possessed her?”

  Harmwell shrugged.

  Carswall told Pratt to cover her face again. “Take her up to the Blue Room, and lay her on the bed. Find Kerridge to go with you and do it decently. Then lock the door and bring me the key.” He turned on his heel and went into the library, calling over his shoulder for someone to make up the fire.

  A maid approached me, and said that soup, wine, sandwiches and a good fire were waiting for us in the little sitting room. We ate and drank in silence, facing each other across the fire. Miss Carswall came in as we were finishing.

  “No, do not get up. I came to tell you that Charlie and Edgar do very well and are now sleeping the sleep of the unjust. Are you yourselves recovered from the ordeal? Have they brought you all you wish for?” She was kindness itself, yet it was not long before her curiosity peeped through. “Poor Mrs Johnson! I’m sure none of us will sleep a wink for thinking of the horror of it. Tell me, was there no clue as to why she was there, and how she happened to fall?”

  We assured her there was none.

  “Sir George must be told as soon as possible – quite apart from the tie of blood, he is the nearest magistrate. Mr Carswall has ordered a groom to ride over to Clearland at first light.”

  She wished us goodnight, and Harmwell withdrew at the same time, leaving me to my wine and my reflections, which were not happy. The clock on the mantel was striking three in the morning when I stood up to leave. In the hall, I picked up my candle from the table. Pratt was waiting there, and he coughed as I approached.

  “Mr Carswall’s compliments, sir, and it will not be convenient for you to leave tomorrow after all.”

  That night I hardly slept, and when I did my sleep was uneasy, crowded with memories and fears which mingled with one another and masqueraded as dreams. In one of them all was dark, and I heard again the clang of the mantrap closing its jaws; but this time the sound was immediately followed by two others, first a high scream, rising rapidly in pitch and volume, and then the sound of hooves on the lane by Grange Cottage.

  What lawful business would take a man and horse abroad on a night like this?

  63

  Early in the morning, the sound of the groom’s horse on the drive brought me back to consciousness in a rush, yet seemed also an echo of the hoof-beats in my dream. In a flash, the events of the previous night lost their fantastic forms and paraded through my mind as black and sober as a funeral procession.

  I spent that day in
limbo. I had no duties. But I could not leave. Mrs Frant sent word that she would stay with the boys, and that Charlie, though recovering rapidly from his ordeal, would spend at least the morning in bed.

  There was little to keep me within-doors. The silent presence in the Blue Room cast its shadow over the house. But the morning was fine and the temperature had risen a few degrees. After breakfast, I decided that as I had nothing better to do I might as well indulge my curiosity. I took the path to the lake, retracing the route we had taken the previous evening. A knot of men was standing by the door to the kitchen gardens. As I drew nearer, I recognised two under-gardeners and one of the gamekeepers.

  My approach stirred them into activity. Each of them bent and seized a leg of the dead mastiff. The door to the garden was open. Immediately inside stood a sledge. Muttering curses, they hoisted the unfortunate animal on to it.

  “Have you found his fellow?” I asked.

  The gamekeeper turned and civilly touched his hat, which told me that news of my disgrace had not yet reached him. “Yes, sir. In the shell grotto. As dead as his brother here.”

  “And for the same reason?”

  “Poison,” he said flatly.

  “Are you sure?”

  “He had a mutton bone in there with a few grains of powder still on it. Rat poison, I’d say.”

  I beckoned him aside. “Mr Harmwell and I were out last night.”

  “I know, sir.” He watched the other men hauling the sledge along the path, their heavy boots slipping and sliding on the layers of snow.

  “We found the dog. There was something else. As we were passing the lake, we heard a noise in the distance. Mr Harmwell thought it was a mantrap snapping shut.”