The Vanishing Man

by Charles Finch

  She looked at him curiously. “You are not asking because you … you disagree with me?” she said.

  “Never in life.”

  “Oh! Good. I did, though, to answer your question. The population is quite mixed. The pragmatists in Newport, where we passed last summer, have set a target date of 1900. The last slave shall be freed then, they say. Others are afire for it to happen tomorrow.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know—truly I don’t.”

  “My second cousin went there, on my mother’s side,” said Lenox. “Fourth son. He is in South Carolina. He has land, and at least ten slaves. A very amiable person as I recall him—and yet I cannot imagine his life, how he justifies it in his mind! It beggars belief.”

  Miss Somers glanced across the room, and her hand went to her necklace nervously. “Mr. Lenox,” she said quietly, touching her necklace, “may I confide in you?”

  “Of course,” he replied, surprised.

  He did not know if it was going to be on the subject of slavery—did she need money?—but instead she said, “I am engaged to be married.”

  “Are you! My heartfelt congratulations. The chap is very fortunate, very.”

  “It is a secret. He lives in Philadelphia. My mother and father will—it is probably only half a step too far to say that they will disown me if I become an American, so we are waiting until he is on firmer footing there. He owns a printing shop for which he has high hopes.”

  “Like Franklin. I am sorry that you should be separated, though,” said Lenox.

  “I’m telling you this because Jane, in her foolish kindness—”

  He put up a hand. “Miss Somers, say nothing more. I understand.”

  She looked at him gratefully. “Thank you, Mr. Lenox. You are a gentleman.”

  He smiled. “If your fellow has a printing shop, I imagine that means he is able to send you very handsome letters even from across the sea.”

  They talked quietly for some time, and Lenox, after the initial surprise and a pang of disappointment, found that his sadness was not attached to the particular personage of Miss Effie Somers, even with her beautiful hair. It was attached to the idea of a woman who might love him and give him children.

  He had—in other words—learned something of himself that evening. That could never be all bad.

  When he returned home it was to find the final edition of the late newspaper on his step. He picked it up and read its lead headline.

  Duke of Dorset Released Home

  Servant’s death ruled self-inflicted

  Coroner returns verdict of misadventure

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Early the next morning—before six—his carriage was winding its way south. He was on his way to Bedlam after all. He couldn’t abide seeing the duke ensconced again at Dorset House, master of all he surveyed; not yet, anyhow. There was more to be done about Alexander Craig’s death, but he would not be doing it today.

  He slept for some of the drive. The journey was quicker than usual because of the time, forty minutes perhaps. As it passed he read the papers by the light of the rising sun. Nobody challenged the narrative that it had been an unfortunate accident. A few made hay of the history of the Tower—the Princes, the nine-day Queen, Anne Boleyn—but that was it.

  This was the power of being a duke, he supposed, folding the papers as they came to the gate of the asylum.

  When he checked in at Bedlam, Dr. Hansel greeted him with mild surprise. “You are here.” The old doctor smiled. They were in a small inner courtyard dominated by an ancient oak tree, putatively the preserve of the doctor since it lay just beside his office—but even here they could hear strange moans and screeches. “What brings you?”

  “I wanted to ask in person about Belmont.”

  Hansel nodded. “Never a patient who attracted my notice. I had a look at his papers after you wired.”

  There were a thousand patients or more here. “What was his situation?”

  “Committed for madness three years ago—delusions of grandeur, believed he was all sorts of people, the Empress of Austria, Beau Brummel, Alexander the Great.”

  Lenox asked if he could see the papers. “He approached me last week.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That he was held here under false pretenses.”

  “I see.” Hansel frowned. “You can examine his papers, yes. Strange timing. His sister wrote and asked that he be transferred to Edinburgh on the Monday after you left.”

  “Giving what reason?”

  “She had recently married and moved there from London, wished him close.”

  “Is that sort of move unusual?”

  “No, not in the least. In fact I didn’t even hear of it—not a decision that would reach my desk. She sent the fees to have him go by post, though, which is rather luxurious.”

  It also meant two large bailiffs, Lenox imagined. Hansel signaled to a young assistant—brave lad, to work at Bedlam—and asked him to fetch the papers, spelling the name Belmont twice.

  “Thank you,” Lenox said.

  “Of course. Tell me, do you have reason to believe him?”

  “I don’t know, in truth. But I didn’t like how it felt not to come.”

  “I understand. But you must excuse me—I have patients to see, even early on a weekend.”

  “Of course,” said Lenox.

  He sat down in the courtyard. No matter what went on here, the birds in the trees sang their morning songs. He pulled the little fortune-telling book of Shakespeare quotations from his pocket—he felt he was getting the hang of the bard, a bit—and opened it at random.

  The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.

  —Julius Caesar

  Ten minutes or so later, the boy returned. “Here you are, sir.”

  “Thank you very much. Say, by chance do you keep the annual naval gazette here? I can’t imagine you do.”

  “Oh, yes. We have quite an extensive library, sir. Would you like to see it?”

  “Who uses it?”

  “The inmates.”

  Lenox felt a trickle of panic at the idea of being in a room with them—but he nodded. “If you don’t mind, thank you.”

  The boy led him to a desk with a green banker’s lamp. Lenox glanced around nervously, but everyone there seemed absorbed in scholarship. He could imagine what some of them must have done to come to arrive at this station in life, yet all were calm now.

  Belmont’s file was a disappointment. The fellow had been here for two years. His health was good. He had never caused trouble. There were regular additional monies allotted to him for small luxuries: tobacco, newspapers, and so forth.

  Lenox flipped through the pages twice but noticed nothing else.

  Then he turned to the long row of annual gazettes to which Hansel’s assistant had guided him, bound in blue leather, with gold lettering on their spines. He tried the one from two years before. There was no mention of a Captain Irvington in the index—the name Belmont had said was actually his own. He tried the year before and after. Nothing.

  But then he did find something. In the gazette for 1849, this short entry from November:

  Captain T. Irvington, Hants, formerly HMS Bella, Livia, Aurelie, lost in solo hunting expedition from HMS Victoria near Storm Bay, Van Diemen’s Land, Australia.

  Search fruitless; numerous inlets along “Tasmania,” as locals call it; small parties gave up after several days; funeral services held at sea; Lt. Pilon breveted to Captain for remainder of voyage by Rear Adm. Weber.

  Lenox felt a rush of excitement. He looked through the previous years’ gazettes methodically and found no mention of an Irvington except in the year 1842, when he had received his first captaincy aboard the Aurelie.

  Was it possible that Irvington had been whisked away, his disappearance covered with this tale, and then pressed into his imprisonment here in England?

  He turned back to Belmont’s file. Something was
bothering him.

  Only after studying it carefully did he suddenly realize what it was: His visitor log for the past two years, despite his having this sister so eager to bring him with her to Edinburgh, was entirely empty.

  He got up and went to the offices to send a few wires, one to a friend in the naval office, another to the asylum in Edinburgh, and a third to the sister there, return post paid, asking if Belmont had arrived safely.

  He felt sure he was onto something. What had Belmont said? Never to let a member of the royal family fall in love with your wife. It seemed ridiculous to imagine an officer of the navy being interned here under a false name simply by royal fiat, but in the same thought he remembered the headline that had greeted him in the paper the night before, and all those clerks and solicitors in their efficient swarm around the duke in the Tower.

  It was past nine o’clock by the time Lenox left, and he was hungry. They stopped at a coaching inn in Penge called the Sycamore, which his driver said was good—and though it was relatively quiet, he was right. They sat at a small knotted table together and fell ravenously upon eggs on toast, a piping hot Welsh rarebit, sausages, and strong dark tea, with a measure of whisky for the driver, to aid, he said, his concentration upon the roads.

  “That works, does it?” said Lenox, ingenuously.

  “Works a treat, sir—works a treat.”

  It was the first meal they had ever shared, but then there was something democratic about a coaching inn. It was different from a regular public house. A coaching inn was much larger, for a start, and generally located along a main road, since horses could be stabled there. All of them had private dining rooms and sleeping quarters for travelers; unlike a pub, a coaching inn never closed.

  Some of the best memories of his childhood were of a coaching inn. When they were young, his and Edmund’s father had taken them up to town by himself once a year for the start of Parliament, so they could sit among the spectators.

  There had been something delightful about traveling without their mother, love her though they dearly did. It was more of an adventure with their father. He didn’t have any particular rules, for one thing.

  They had always stopped at the same inn halfway, the Admiral Nelson. It was a wonderful, uproarious place, full of the scent of beer and coffee and horses. Class vanished. Men of every stripe—he had never seen a woman there—traded stories, those coming from London, those headed there, over tankards of ale and the latest newspapers.

  Most of all Charles remembered the food: His father, generally ascetic, had let the boys have whatever they wished.

  Edmund’s taste tended to mutton, but for Lenox the best sight was the huge black pot, trembling when there were footsteps nearby, that always hung over the fire, full of a delicious stew. It came in a tremendous bowl—what had seemed tremendous at the time, anyway—with hunks of bread and a pitcher of freshly chilled milk.

  Edmund and Charles watched how their father handled himself, as they ate and their horses were watered and fed; he was civil to all, familiar with few, a figure, whether because of his clothes or because someone had whispered his name, of instant significance and respect.

  He could so easily recall that awe.

  Once he had told them—Lenox had never forgotten—about England’s two most famous coaching inns, just a few hundred yards apart on the same road in Buckinghamshire.

  Their father, eyes twinkling, said, “They are famous for their tall tales. Have been for centuries now. Nobody goes there expecting the truth—only for a good rattling yarn. And do you know what they’re called?”

  “What?” Charles and Edmund had said simultaneously.

  He smiled. “The Cock and the Bull, lads,” he had said. “That is why you shouldn’t let anyone at school tell you a cock-and-bull story.”

  Lenox and his driver finished their breakfast and by ten had returned to Hampden Lane. Lenox had fallen deeply asleep again, full and tired, but apparently the driver was right—the whisky had kept him alert.

  He woke up thinking of the dozens of words that he had been scrawling in his notebook before he fell asleep, trying to force his hand to generate what his mind could not: Corfe, money, Craig, 20, Shakespeare, Vere, terrace, a loose association. He read over them again as the carriage stood patiently in front of his house.

  Something was still wrong. But what? The page wouldn’t give it up to him, even after twenty minutes. At last he sighed and went inside.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Graham greeted him. “How was your journey, sir?”

  “Puzzling. What have you been doing?”

  “Housework, sir. But I have the maps of Kent laid out in the large drawing room, where with your permission I will consult them. Before that, if you have no need for me here, I thought I would find General Pendleton for you, and try one last trick to run Maggie McNeal to ground.”

  “Thank you, Graham,” Lenox said. “If you have time, could you also do a bit of research for me? It would be on a sea captain, dead, by the name of Tankin Irvington. Only if you have time.”

  Graham was writing the name down. “Of course, sir.”

  “Thank you, Graham. Incidentally, where is Lancelot?”

  “The junior curate at St. Michaels’s, a Mr. Wilfrid, has agreed to superintend the three children for the next week, sir. Mr. Templeton has been reprimanded and placed on a month’s involuntary leave. He is apparently somewhat susceptible as a gambler.”

  “Poor Mr. Wilfrid,” said Lenox.

  “Yes, sir,” said Graham, with what amounted to fervent feeling for him—a slight rise of his eyebrows.

  The confused state of Lenox’s social status in London was clear from the table in his front hall: two more invitations stylishly withdrawn, but also a dinner invitation to White’s from his father’s old friend Lord Salisbury, a touching marker of good faith to which Lenox immediately replied in the affirmative.

  A detective—and now bound up in the mess of Dorset. Before the summer of 1853 was out he would be an untouchable.

  He riffled through the rest of his letters as he walked to his study. But perhaps Salisbury’s loyalty stayed in his mind, for when he sat at his desk—through the windows it was turning into a clear, warm June day—he had a thought.

  Wasn’t it far more likely that Craig had died out of loyalty to the duke than anything else? It was the duke who had given him employment for close to two decades. He might have felt affection for the house’s heir, but nobody so serious as Craig had been, both by appearance and by all accounts, would have risked everything for a silly young fool like Corfe.

  And there was still the uneasy matter of Corfe’s motive.

  Solvitur ambulando. It had already been a long morning, but he decided that he would go out into the sunny morning and think it all through. He told Mrs. Huggins (coaxing a cat with milk, in the hallway) that he would be back shortly, then went out and headed in the direction of the river.

  He kept a steady, unthinking pace, rather as he did when he rowed. For perhaps twenty minutes he didn’t think of anything particular—only watched the city fold and unfold itself around him, the milkman delivering to a café, four boys playing skittles down an alley, an old woman walking with her spine very straight, and behind her a lady’s maid holding a King Charles spaniel.

  He stopped short at a bookshop on Bond Street and went inside and bought the first volume of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was sold in separate parts.

  “Flying off the shelves it is, sir,” the lean young clerk told him.

  “Is it any good?”

  “Haven’t read a word of it, sir. Here’s threepence back. Enjoy the day.”

  He tucked the book into his jacket pocket and went on walking, thinking of Effie Somers and her secret engagement. He liked her. The night before she had told them amusing stories of her time in America, gently caricaturing her father, a diplomat who in his spare time was working on an apparently infinitely proliferating history of the American continent. (It was
at nineteen planned volumes thus far—half of a quarter of the first one written.)

  When he reached Pall Mall he leaned against a wall and lit his pipe, smoking and studying the comings and goings at the Reform Club. After a moment he reached into his pocket and took out the novel, and soon found himself consumed by its quick-moving story. He read for fifteen or twenty minutes, as long as it took his pipe to run cold.

  Just up the street was the Army and Navy Club, and he had the idea that he would go in. In the carpeted front hall he was greeted by a smartly dressed majordomo, clearly ex-military himself, who asked if he could help. There were portraits of various generals running along the walls, and beneath them paintings of famous battle scenes.

  “I was hoping to call on General Pendleton,” he said.

  “The general is not in town at present.”

  “No? When did he leave?”

  “He was last here in April, sir.”

  Lenox raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps he is staying somewhere else.”

  The steward laughed. “Impossible, sir.”

  “I see. Well, thank you.”

  Lenox went outside, book tucked under his arm. The sand kept slipping through his fingers. He walked the beautiful green stretch of the mall in a deep study, the beds embanking it abloom with tens of thousands of yellow wallflowers and red tulips, tender sprays of purple salvia. The avenue was filled with prams, children, and couples—it was Saturday, a day to be outside.

  Then, in the distance, he spotted a woman he momentarily thought was Effie Somers.

  He saw when she turned that it wasn’t, but it was this that caused him to reverse course, walking rapidly now, toward Dorset House.

  He had it. He was all but sure—he had it. That glimpse had resolved all of his doubts.

  One he reached Dorset House, he didn’t approach it. Instead, he slouched back against the wall facing it, using the tricks that Bonden had taught him, or trying to, anyhow. It helped to be reading something, Bonden had said, and Lenox made it through a long stretch of Uncle Tom’s Cabin; it helped to be eating something, so he bought some chestnuts from a passing woman; it helped to be smoking.