Hoare and the matter of treason cbh-3

by Wilder Perkins

  Hoare made the appropriate appreciative noise, and waited.

  Thereupon, while never dropping his show of cordiality, Mr. Goldthwait embarked on the same inquisition as Sir Hugh Abercrombie had applied to him not long before, demonstrating in doing so the same familiarity with Hoare's life as Sir Hugh and then Mr. Prickett had displayed, if not more. Before long, Hoare felt himself being pressed beyond endurance. As a result, perhaps, he had entwined his tale first in his adventures in and around the Nine Stones Circle, and then in the story of his accidental removal to the schooner Marie Claire.

  "The two little craft-my own pinnace and Moreau's schooner-were all ahoo, sir, I must confess," he whispered.

  "Ahoo, sir?" Goldthwait's look was blank.

  "Awry, sir. Out of order. A piece of nautical lingo."

  A grandfather's clock chimed in one corner; Hoare realized it was sounding seven bells. From the feel of his throat, he realized he had been gabbling-as much, at least, as a mute could gabble-and he fell silent.

  As if to fill in an embarrassing silence, Mr. Goldthwait shook his head.

  "You sailors use as many bells, it seems, as all the parishes of London put together," he said, and renewed his inquisition.

  Hoare began to feel as if he were some exotic animal that had been subject unawares, all his life, to the unwinking scrutiny of too many invisible savants. He found the sensation somewhat disquieting and not at all pleasant. These intense examinations of his doings left him feeling uneasy between the shoulder blades.

  At length, Goldthwait reverted to the present.

  "So Ambler is dead," he said.

  "Is he, sir?" Hoare asked. "I did not know that. In fact, one of my men is going about the… dead-houses of every likely parish this very day, in search of him."

  "He must be dead," Goldthwait answered. "For over a week now, he has not been seen in his usual places. He is-he was-a sedentary man, and his movements were circumscribed. Across the bridge to the Admiralty every morning, the same chump chop in the same chophouse at noon, back across the bridge to Lambeth in the evening. A rump steak at the inn around the corner from his dwelling place, once a month to the whorehouse… excuse me, sir. The reference was inadvertent."

  "Not at all, sir," Hoare whispered. "I am quite accustomed to inadvertencies of the kind. A peculiar name like my own attracts them, just as a pile of shit does flies."

  With this, the interview wound down gracefully. Hoare paid his compliments and took his leave.

  Mr. Goldthwait, he thought as he traced his way carefully back to the Golden Cross, had seemed remarkably knowledgeable, not only about Hoare's past life, but about Octavius Ambler's movements as well. Furthermore, the detail with which he had described Ambler's daily habits made no sense. And what had made him so certain he was dead? The matter needed thought.

  Before returning to the Golden Cross, Hoare decided, he would go on to Threadneedle Street and call on Mr. Pickering. He hoped that Threadneedle Street was at the same end of London as Chancery Lane. This time, however, he would take no chances. He caught the eye of an urchin, to have him pilot him there. The child looked interchangeable with the first.

  "Lorst again, mister sailor man?" The child's voice was pert, and familiar as well. Following him to Threadneedle Street, Hoare felt himself blush.

  The establishment of Mr. Baker the mercer was graced by one of the newfangled bow windows, which offered more room to display his goods than the conventional flat window. Hoare paused outside the shop and negotiated with the ragamuffin to wait for him until he had finished his visit. Within, the hopeful face of the apprentice or clerk who hastened up to serve this prosperous-looking naval customer fell upon hearing Hoare's unprofitable inquiry. With a backward jerk of his head, he indicated a narrow stairway.

  "Third floor," he said in a voice burdened with scorn. Up, up, and up Hoare climbed, until the stairway came to an end in front of a low garret door. On the door the tenant had nailed a little sign, neatly inscribed, which read:

  TIMOTHY TICKERING

  PORTRAITIST AND LIMNER

  He knocked, waited, and knocked again. At last, he heard a shuffling sound from behind the door, and a faint infantile grizzling. For a truth, Timothy Pickering was a husband and father as well as a portraitist and limner.

  "Who's there?" It was a woman's voice, and it sounded frightened. Hoare knew his whisper hopelessly incapable of making his needs known to the party on the other side of the door, and that one of his whistled signals would only alarm her. In any case, she would not know what any of the whistles meant. He resorted to one of the pre-printed slips that he carried about with him. He drew it out of his pocket.

  "Permit me to present myself," it read: "Bartholomew Hoare, Lieutenant, Royal Navy. My deepest respects. That I am not speaking to you is not a matter of intentional discourtesy but is due to my inability to speak above a whisper."

  Whipping out a pencil, he promoted himself to the proper rank, reminding himself as he did so that he must have a new set of slips printed, signed the paper with a flourish, and slipped it under the door. He coughed, and watched the slip disappear.

  The door was opened by an anxious-looking woman in run-over slippers, with an infant on her hip. One of the pair gave off a strong odor.

  "You bring bad news, I know it," the woman said. "Tell me. I shall be brave."

  Behind her, the garret managed to appear both desolate and cluttered; there were no signs of an artist's paraphernalia. The artist must carry out his commissions in his subjects' homes or other places of business. The place was cold and damp, and smelled of old mold. A pot of something dreadful was simmering on a small charcoal stove in one corner, with a scrawny cat staring up at it, looking hopeful.

  "I have no news, madam," Hoare whispered. "I have simply called to see Mr. Pickering. Is he within?" Since the entire Pickering dwelling was in plain sight, he asked the question only so as to be polite.

  "No, sir. Oh, no. He has been away the entire morning, soliciting commissions. And trying to sell his hat. It's a fine hat; 'twas left him by his late brother… Indeed, he departed without even waiting for me to serve his breakfast. You see, I had to attend to poor little Beatrice…" Mrs. Pickering bounced her baby to show this alarming stranger whom she was referring to, and it began to grizzle again.

  "But please come in, sir, and have a seat if you please." With her free hand, Mrs. Pickering brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. It flopped right back again.

  "Thank you, but no, madam," Hoare said. "I may not tarry. Pray, when do you expect him to return?"

  "Why, why…"At this, the infant's grizzling became a full-fledged roar, and Mrs. Pickering must interrupt herself and step aside to put it to a surprisingly firm breast. Hoare took advantage of the interruption to look about the garret.

  At first, his glance slipped casually over the ill-made bed, the tilted lopsided table with its unwashed dishes, and the curtained corner behind which, he presumed, lay the family's wardrobe and primitive place of easement. Then it fixed on one wall, on which daylight fell less dimly than elsewhere in the apartment. There he saw an entire portrait gallery in pencil, the superbly candid, precise, unflattering likenesses that he already recognized as uniquely Pickering's work. One of the faces, of a stern middle-aged man of a naval aspect, was hauntingly familiar, but he could not at the moment attach a name to it. Drawn on separate pieces of paper, other faces surrounded it, faces which he knew but had never seen in the flesh-Queen Charlotte, the prince-and, to his astonishment, the vivid, tapered countenance of Mrs. Selene Prettyman. As a very close companion of the Duke of Cumberland, Mrs. Prettyman had been equivocally associated with the affair of the Nine Stones Circle. She was moving in odd company today, Hoare said to himself. Why was she there? Whom did she serve?

  Duke Ernest's villainous face was there as well. And, from their heavy-lidded Hanoverian eyes, so were two others of the poor king's dismal litter of princely sons, though Hoare could not be sure, having met only Cum
berland and Clarence. Kent, perhaps, York, Cambridge, or Sussex.

  Suddenly, he recalled whose face had been puzzling him. It was his own. He had not seen himself before as others saw him, his morning view in the mirror being reversed, like all mirror images. This new view made him look disconcertingly strange. When on earth and where, he wondered, had Mr. Pickering made this secret sketch? A look at still another face, and he realized he was staring at a likeness of Titus Thoday.

  On a sudden impulse, he turned to the nursing mother.

  "Will you sell me these drawings, madam?" he asked.

  "Why, I hardly-I-" Mrs. Pickering's eyes wandered swiftly about her home as if she hoped that her husband would appear, like some jinni, and give her the answer. Then the poverty in which she dwelt took charge.

  "How much?" she asked in a voice that was suddenly hard.

  "How much does Sir Hugh pay Mr. Pickering per likeness?" he whispered.

  "Seven shillings sixpence apiece, sir. But Timothy sells his royalties for as much as half a pound."

  Not often, I'll be bound, Hoare silently told himself. They aren't prettified enough to sell for more. But the Pickering family is obviously poor, poor.

  "There are… let me see… seventeen of them," he whispered. "That would be… let me see… six pounds, seven shillings, and sixpence. I'll give you five pounds for the lot. Have you change for a ten-pound note?"

  Her answer was what he had expected.

  "Change for a ten-pound note?" Her voice was bitter. "This house doesn't see ten shillings from one week to the next."

  "Well, well," Hoare said as if reluctantly. "Make it ten pounds even, then." He reached into the pocket in which he did not keep his communications and withdrew his purse. At this rate, he would soon need to draw more funds, either from the Admiralty's penny-pinchers or from his own resources. He found a ten-pound note and handed it to her. She received it in a trembling hand.

  "Do you have nothing smaller, sir?" she asked as she watched Hoare detach his purchases from the garret wall. "No one in the neighborhood will believe we came by a ten-pound note honestly. Indeed, I never saw one before. How big it is! And we do need some food for our larder. We have a few other drawings, sir. Perhaps…?"

  "Let's see them, then," Hoare said.

  Still carrying the infant, Mrs. Pickering disappeared behind the curtain and came out with a small roll of sketches. "That's all we have, sir," she said.

  Hoare did not stop to examine them but wrapped them around the others. He hauled out a fistful of small change and handed it to her.

  "Oh, sir! Oh, oh, oh!" Mrs. Pickering cried, and burst into tears. As Hoare raced down the flights of stairs to the street where his ragamuffin guide waited, he heard her voice, fading with the distance, crying, "Oh, Beatrice, Beatrice! The heavens have opened, and rained down a full year's rent!"

  Just as Hoare reached the foot of the stairs, a small hatless figure crashed into him and nearly sent him flying. Thrusting him out of his way, Timothy Pickering raced up the stairs down which Hoare had just come, shouting something about having sold poor David's hat.

  Upon returning to the Golden Cross, full of self-praise for his generosity to the poor and deserving, Hoare found that Thoday had preceded him and was waiting in the private bar to make his report.

  "I have made the rounds of the dead-houses, sir, as far as was needful," he told Hoare. "At the third, in Cripplegate, I found our man's body."

  "Are you quite sure?" Hoare whispered.

  "Quite, sir. I examined every portly corpse I saw, comparing its features with the likeness you provided me. It was, if I may say so, an experience I should not care to repeat."

  Hoare could only sympathize. From time to time in his career as Sir George Hardcastle's investigative dogsbody, he had had his own occasions to inspect numbers of the dead, in conditions ranging from the still-warm to the nearly deliquescent. The sweet sickening stench of human corruption was unforgettable.

  "The man I found had been dead for about a week," Thoday went on. "Since most of that time had been spent in the water, his more prominent features were missing, eaten by crabs or lobsters. But the pockmarks remained, and their pattern was identical to the one shown in the likeness of the missing man. Since, as you informed me, the artist manages to capture every salient detail of a subject's countenance, I satisfied myself that the corpse was indeed that of Mr. Ambler, and I felt no need to continue my search."

  "So he was drowned, then," Hoare whispered.

  "Not so, sir. He was felled by a gunshot-a pistol bullet, unless I miss my guess, fired from close enough that the explosion drove powder granules and parts of the man's clothing into the wound. I withdrew the ball and some fragments, which I have with me. Here."

  From one pocket, Thoday removed a folded paper, which he unfolded and tendered to Hoare. Mentally if not physically, Hoare shrank back. None too faintly, Thoday's specimen bore the cloying odor Hoare hated.

  "Never mind, Thoday. Wrap the thing up again, will you? In oilcloth, if you can find some. I'll take it to Sir Hugh in the morning, when I report to him on my meeting with Mr. John Goldthwait.

  "But there is something else I must take up with you, Thoday." With this, Hoare recounted his morning's call at the establishment of Timothy Pickering, Esq.

  "Here are some of the likenesses I bought from his wife." Reaching into his bulging pocket with a sense of relief that his uniform coat was now returned to a reasonable shape, Hoare produced the roll of drawings. He peeled off one after another without inspecting them, dumping them at random upon the table before him. Near the core, he slowed.

  "Ah, here we are," he whispered in triumph at last, and handed the gunner's mate Pickering's drawing of him. "How do you explain this, Thoday?"

  Thoday inspected the sketch without visible emotion.

  "An excellent likeness, sir, I would say. Of course, I am looking at a reoriented image of myself, so to speak, since the familiar countenance I see in the mirror of a morning is, of course, in reverse."

  "But how did Pickering come to take your likeness?"

  "Why, at the behest of Sir Hugh Abercrombie, sir," Thoday replied. For the second time that day, Hoare felt the blood rush to his face. Of course. Sir Hugh's acquaintance with the Royal Dukes was close; in fact, he had probably chosen most of them himself. Hoare felt an utter fool. And in any case, why, he wondered, had he been looking forward to confounding Thoday?

  "May I look at the rest of these, sir?" Thoday asked.

  "Of course," Hoare whispered. "I haven't really inspected them myself… But let us take them upstairs to my quarters, where we can examine them in peace, without my host peering over our shoulders." For Berrier had just bustled up, to see if he or his cellar could be at their service. Hoare took the whole batch of drawings under one arm, while instructing Berrier to have a decanter of port for himself brought to his room.

  "And for you, Thoday?"

  "Porter, if you please, sir. I've acquired a taste for it."

  Hoare nodded his assent to the proprietor, and then withdrew, Thoday at his heels.

  Upstairs, the refreshments having arrived and their porter dismissed, they undertook to sort out the likenesses, setting visages either man recognized in one pile, unfamiliar faces in another, with the doubtful ones in between. None of the drawings bore names. Hoare counted thirty-nine of them in all.

  Onto the first pile went one of Mrs. Pickering and the infant Beatrice, the only example of a rendering that included more than one head, Thoday's own portrait, and likenesses of several other Royal Dukes, including one of Sarah Taylor, master's mate, and Hoare's own.

  In the middle of the heap, Hoare paused in astonishment. He heard a gulping noise from his companion; Thoday would hardly demean himself by gasping. Hoare stared into a froglike face.

  "What can he be doing in this company?" Hoare knew perfectly well that Thoday would have no answer, but he could not forbear asking the question all the same.

  "I have no not
ion, sir," Thoday replied as expected. "I think of the gentleman in association with Dorset and not London. It is unmistakably Sir Thomas, however. And he has nothing whatsoever to do with the Admiralty."

  "Hardly," Hoare said. In fact, on the only occasion of their meeting, the knight-baronet and Sir George Hardcastle had nearly come to fisticuffs.

  Hoare and Thoday leafed on.

  "I know that one," Hoare whispered. "I saw him this very day."

  "Indeed, sir?"

  "John Goldthwait, Esquire, of Chancery Lane."

  "Like the others, then," Thoday said. "I suppose them to be trials which the artist chose to save for his own records. Perhaps he hopes to find an engraver and earn a few shillings by hawking them to him."

  "I wonder who has the finished works. In any case, so, Thoday, I hardly think the subjects would be pleased, do you? Look here."

  Hoare held up the likeness of Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, whom they both had last seen marching in dudgeon from the tragicomic Halloween ceremony in the Nine Stones Circle. The scarred face reeked with royal pride, self-indulgence, and malice.

  Among the unknowns were faces unfamiliar to either of them. By their attire, most of these were visibly aristocratic. Young and old, overwhelmingly male, their visages lacked sensibility. Among them, the assortment could have been models for each and every one of the seven deadly sins.

  "We must keep these portraits safe, Thoday," Hoare whispered. "I think they are very important."

  "I know just the place, sir," Thoday said. "Once we have brought them safe to Royal Duke, you can place the roll of them in the Herschel telescope."

  "An excellent thought, Thoday." The Herschel telescope was a huge thing in gleaming brass, mounted on a teakwood tripod, that lurked at the forrard end of the yacht's tweendecks. It was an acquisition of Hoare's predecessor in command of Royal Duke, who had been a devoted astronomer as well as a master of the intelligence trade. As far as Hoare knew, no one ever even looked through it. He found himself slightly surprised at what, for Thoday, was a flight of fancy. As a rule, he was a sobersided man.