The Silent Boy

by Taylor, Andrew

  Lizzie had spent much of the morning deciding on her clothes and watching the weather. Savill had found her on three separate occasions consulting the thermometer which he kept in the passage at the foot of the stairs. The winter so far had been abnormally mild, and the temperature had risen to 45 degrees by midday. The wind had dropped too – a brisk westerly had moderated during the morning to a gentle southerly breeze. True, it was cloudy, and there had been the occasional shower of rain. But nothing that signified, Lizzie decided, nothing that would force them to postpone the outing.

  There were five of them in the party that left the house, for Miss Horton was spending the day with the Savills. She had come up to stay with Mrs West in Green Street again.

  ‘He has grown prodigiously,’ she murmured to Savill as they walked arm in arm down the lane. They had had little chance for conversation until now.

  ‘My sister has seen to that,’ he said. ‘She feeds him at every opportunity.’

  ‘His face has filled out, too. He doesn’t look fearful any more.’

  ‘Not in the day, ma’am. Sometimes at night he does. He has bad dreams. And I have not seen him laugh or even smile yet.’

  Ahead of them, Lizzie was leaning more heavily than was perhaps necessary on the arm of Mr Malbourne. There was a hint of rain in the air, enough to justify his raising his umbrella over them.

  Charles walked between the two couples, occasionally glancing over his shoulder at Savill and Miss Horton as if to make sure they were still there.

  ‘Will you send him to school?’ she said.

  ‘I hope so. Eventually. He is able enough – he reads whatever he can lay his hands on.’

  ‘He and I had a game of chess just now. He beat me with ease.’

  ‘But he does not speak yet,’ Savill said. ‘I would not wish to expose him to the ridicule of his schoolfellows. I think I shall engage a tutor, and we shall see how we go.’

  She glanced up at him from beneath the brim of her bonnet. ‘But what if he never speaks?’

  ‘He will, ma’am. He will.’ He smiled at her. ‘Lizzie has quite made up her mind about that.’

  She smiled back and looked ahead at Lizzie and Malbourne. ‘Lizzie usually knows her own mind, I think.’

  He followed both the direction of her glance and the current of her thoughts. But he said nothing.

  They strolled along Gower Street to Bedford Square. By a fortunate chance, Mr Malbourne had been able to obtain a key to the gate in the railings in the centre of the square. His great aunt lived in one of the smaller houses on the north side.

  The garden was not crowded at this hour. Half a dozen nursemaids were exchanging gossip as they took the air with their charges. Three or four small boys were kicking a ball between them on the south side.

  ‘Do you make a long stay in London, ma’am?’

  ‘Three or four weeks, perhaps, unless my father desires me to return earlier. I hope he does not – Norbury will soon offer even less in the way of society than it did before. Did you know that the household at Charnwood is to be broken up?’

  ‘No. When?’

  ‘It is happening already. The Count has left for Switzerland. Monsieur Fournier and Dr Gohlis came up to London with us but they return to Norbury on Wednesday to settle things there. They talk of joining him in a week or so.’

  ‘The news from France is so bad that we must be at war at any moment.’

  ‘That is why they must go – they can do nothing here, Monsieur Fournier says. Besides, they are not welcome in England, as you know. But Mr Malbourne has been most helpful in arranging their papers. He says the Count is quite resigned to leaving Charles in the care of his English family, on the grounds that when war comes he will be safer here.’

  They talked a little more and then separated, for it would not do to leave Lizzie too long beneath Mr Malbourne’s conveniently large umbrella. Lizzie and Miss Horton walked on, while Charles played a complicated game with himself which involved jumping and skipping in a zigzag pattern across the path.

  Malbourne fell into step beside Savill. He still wore a dressing on his face that masked most of his nose. It had been broken in two places and the surgeon had set it badly. His face would never be called handsome again.

  He had changed in other ways since Savill had first met him. He looked older, haggard even, and though he still dressed with scrupulous care there was little of the dandy about him now. Jarsdel’s attack had left him with scars of the mind as well as the body.

  ‘I was in Crown Street this morning,’ he said. ‘The mails from Paris came in. Yesterday they found the King guilty.’

  ‘Have they announced the verdict?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Surely they cannot execute him?’

  Malbourne shrugged. ‘Those devils can do anything they please.’ He lowered his voice. ‘And I have news that touches us both more closely. Mr Rampton’s attorney forwarded another packet of Mr Rampton’s papers to the Magistrates’ Office. They included a document that related to Jarsdel. It appears that he was once a tenant farmer of Mr Rampton’s. Not a good one – he was on the verge of bankruptcy. But he killed his wife in a fit of temper one night when he was in his cups. He hit her with a hot skillet. Did you ever mark that scar on his hand? He must have got it then. He would have hanged, but Rampton swore blind that he had been there, that it had been an accident, and of course he was believed. But he made Jarsdel sign a confession and gave him employment at Crown Street. So Jarsdel became his creature.’

  ‘What will happen about …?’

  ‘As little as possible. The Government has no desire to make this affair more public than it is. This confession simply makes it easier for their consciences. It confirms the wisdom of what they have already done.’

  It had been put about that Jarsdel had run amok at Vardells. It was said that he had been infected with the insurrectionary spirit of the times, that he had nursed an inveterate hatred of his betters. The authorities had found illegal broadsheets at his lodgings, though who put them there, and when, was another matter. The story was that he had attempted to murder Malbourne and had probably caused Rampton’s death as well, by throwing him down the stairs. Malbourne had been commended for shooting him dead in self-defence, despite the almost fatal injuries he had sustained from him.

  Neither Savill nor Charles had figured in this account. As for Tabitha, the old servant at Vardells, she proved to be half-blind as well as deaf. She obligingly made her mark at the foot of every document that Malbourne laid before her.

  They walked in silence for a few minutes. Savill wondered whether he could have saved Rampton if he had run forward to break his fall rather than stood there like a moonstruck fool. That was better than wondering why Rampton had fallen in the first place: whether he had been distracted by Savill or, worst of all, whether Charles had pushed him in the course of that last desperate struggle for control of Rampton’s stick.

  ‘Was it Jarsdel who killed poor Ogden?’ Savill asked, grasping at a distraction.

  ‘Perhaps. Unless it was Rampton himself when he came to collect Charles, and found him gone. To shut his mouth. We found a pair of pistols at Vardells, and one of them had been recently fired.’ Malbourne looked away. ‘Poor Dick. I blame myself.’

  ‘Blaming yourself is not rational,’ Savill said. ‘Ogden was a free agent. He did not have to accept Rampton’s commission and kidnap Charles.’

  ‘It’s not that, sir. It is the fact that Mr Rampton would not have known Dick at all if it had not been for me. He and I were friends at Oxford and I led us into scrape after scrape. By our own stupidity, we became prey to a moneylender and I had to turn to Mr Rampton to extricate us. That’s how he came to know Dick in the first place. Through me. Through my folly. And perhaps it was also because of me that Dick became what he was after he was sent down from the University, for he always followed where I led.’

  ‘Come now. You should not blame yourself for consequences you could not possi
bly have envisaged.’

  ‘But the mistake was—’

  ‘Sir, we all make mistakes,’ Savill said. ‘I believed it was you that my wife was blackmailing. I believed it was you who killed her. If I had thought clearly about the matter, I should have known it was Rampton. I imagine she threatened to expose him as a spy if he did not pay what she asked for. Then, when he read my letter from Charnwood, he found out not only that Charles had been struck dumb, but also that he had witnessed the murder of his mother and might well have seen the killer’s face. That’s why he sent Ogden when he did. And that’s why he was so shaken when I guessed the significance of the letter when I was building my case against you.’

  ‘But at the end he spared the boy.’

  ‘Perhaps it was easier to plan the murder of a child than to execute it. Or perhaps he meant Jarsdel to do the deed. Or perhaps when he saw Charles, he thought he could make all right with his conscience, and get himself an heir into the bargain. God knows.’

  ‘He was kind to me once,’ Malbourne said.

  They walked, looking at the two women strolling ahead, arm in arm.

  After a while, Malbourne went on: ‘We discount the desires of old men. But the fact is, they are much the same as ours.’

  Savill smiled at him. ‘Come now, sir. Let us call a truce with our inner critics.’

  Miss Horton raised her arm to point out a carriage that was passing around the square. She turned to the two gentlemen. ‘Isn’t that Mrs West’s?’

  The carriage slowed as it came level with the five of them on the gravel walk. It was thirty or forty yards away but Savill saw, quite clearly, the face of Monsieur Fournier inside. It was hard to be sure, but he thought there was someone sitting beside him.

  Fournier saw them too. But he did not lower the glass or command the coachman to stop. Instead he raised his hand in greeting, and the carriage rattled on.

  ‘To be sure, he’s pressed for time,’ Miss Horton said. ‘I know he has much to do while he is in town.’

  ‘By the way,’ Malbourne said in an undertone. ‘There’s something else I …’

  He continued to speak but Savill was distracted by shrill shouts from the boys, whose ball was now rolling across the grass towards them. It was clear from their voices and gestures what they wanted. As Savill watched, Charles paused in his erratic progress along the path and watched the ball. He stepped towards it and, with perfect accuracy, kicked it to the nearest of the boys.

  Mrs West’s carriage left the square at its south-east corner.

  Savill turned to Malbourne. ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I did not catch what you were saying.’

  ‘Mr Rampton’s attorney asked if I was acquainted with you,’ Malbourne said. ‘When I said I was, he asked me for your direction.’

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  When Charles goes to bed, either Lizzie or Aunt Ferguson hears him say his prayers and blows out his candle.

  Not that he says the prayers aloud: it is understood that he kneels while one or other of the ladies prays on his behalf. These are different prayers from the ones that Jeanne and Father Viré used long ago in that other life, because now he is Protestant.

  He prefers it when Lizzie is there. Aunt Ferguson is not unkind but she is a bustling, practical woman, always with her mind on the next task. That is what looking after him is to her, he thinks: a task, like many others.

  It is Sunday evening after the walk in Bedford Square where the boys were playing football. Lizzie comes upstairs. After they have finished the prayers, she lingers, as she does sometimes, wrapped in a shawl and perching on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Do you like Mr Malbourne?’ she asks, which is a question she has asked before, not that she requires an answer. ‘Now that we have seen more of him, I mean.’

  He smiles at her, which he sometimes does when they are alone together.

  ‘I think he is a kind man,’ she says. ‘But he looks so sad, doesn’t he, with his poor nose?’ She lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘But it’s not just that. Have you heard? He’s not betrothed to Miss Woorgreen any more. She jilted him. Mary told me when I went to Mrs Pycroft’s yesterday. The news is all over town. Isn’t it truly heart-rending for him?’

  Lizzie sighs. But there is quite enough light from the two candles, his and hers, to see that she is smiling.

  ‘It is so cruel,’ she goes on. ‘It’s because he’s not handsome any more, I think, and because he’s not going to be Uncle Rampton’s heir. These grand folk are not like us, you see – they can be very hard, very unkind.’ She falls silent. She plaits her fingers together and stares at them. ‘The trouble is, he is one of them too. He – he is quite different from us.’

  He touches her hand. She looks up and smiles.

  ‘But I think Father likes him. Don’t you?’

  She kisses him and slides off the bed. She blows out his candle, takes up her own and leaves the bedchamber. He listens to her footsteps on the stairs and the opening and closing of the sitting-room door.

  The old house moans and sighs and creaks. Charles thinks about the boys in Bedford Square and about the way he kicked the football so neatly back to them. He sleeps.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Five days later, Savill entered Lincoln’s Inn from Chancery Lane and walked briskly through the maze of buildings to the great expanse of New Square. It was a fine morning, colder than it had been but still unseasonably warm.

  Mr Rowsell’s chambers were on the west side, a well-appointed first-floor set in the middle of the range. Savill was before his time but he mounted the stair and stated his business to a soberly dressed clerk in the outer office.

  While he waited, he glanced about him, noting the portraits on the wall, the smell of beeswax and the neatly labelled shelves of files and boxes. Mr Rowsell was, according to his letter, an attorney, so he must be a tenant, rather than a Member of the Inn, as indeed were many of the occupants of these chambers. Everything suggested that he was successful in his profession and eminently respectable to boot.

  Exactly at the appointed hour, an invisible bell jangled on the other side of one of the doors beyond the clerk’s desk. The clerk climbed from his stool, bowed to Savill and ushered him into the presence of his employer.

  The private room was bright with watery winter sunlight. In every respect but one it matched the comfortable respectability of the outer office. The exception was Mr Rowsell himself, who now was in the act of rising to greet Savill while allowing ink drops to fall from his pen to the leather surface of his desk.

  He was much younger than his apparently prosperous circumstances had implied, no more than five-and-twenty. He was a large, untidy man, already putting on surplus weight. He wore his own hair, which displayed an unruly tendency to rise in tufts above his florid face. He had an ink stain on his forefinger.

  ‘Mr Savill, sir – your servant.’ He bowed awkwardly, revealing in the process that he had lost one of the buttons from the cuff on his coat. ‘I hope you have not been waiting long?’

  When they were seated, he twirled the pen between his fingers. ‘It’s very good of you to call so promptly, sir.’

  ‘I am naturally curious about what you have to tell me.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ Rowsell stared at the pen as if wondering how it had come to be in his hand. He laid it on the pen rack. It promptly fell off. ‘May I offer you a glass of wine?’

  ‘No, thank you, sir. I understand from Mr Malbourne that you act for the late Mr Rampton.’

  ‘Yes. Or rather no.’ Rowsell looked up. ‘Allow me to explain. My principal, Mr Veale, was Mr Rampton’s attorney for many years. Unfortunately, Mr Veale’s health has obliged him to go abroad for a time, leaving me to represent him. Which is why – not to beat about the bush, sir – I’m afraid an apology is due to you. You see, Mr Malbourne’s enquiries to us went to Mr Veale’s private address, and the people there are at sixes and sevens at present, so a number of letters were put aside to wait Mr Veale’s return wh
ich should have been directed here.’

  ‘I am here now, at all events,’ Savill said. ‘But why do you wish to see me?’

  ‘Because Mr Rampton did us the honour of lodging his will with us, sir, among other papers and deeds.’ Rowsell opened a drawer of his desk and took out a file of papers. ‘Now that the circumstances of his death have been resolved, the will must be executed. I may tell you that just before his death Mr Rampton wished to discuss his testamentary intentions – he wrote to Mr Veale to that effect in September – but he did not do so.’

  The words tumbled out of the young man in a torrent, creating an impression of youth and nervousness. Savill was wary of him, nonetheless. He was not disposed to take for granted a lawyer employed, even indirectly, by the late Mr Rampton.

  ‘We do not know whether he desired to draw up a new will or merely to add a codicil to the old,’ Rowsell went on. ‘I instituted a search for a new one, if it ever existed, or even a memorandum concerning his wishes, but we found nothing of that nature at Vardells or his house in Westminster. Mr Malbourne assures me there is nothing at the office, either – not that Mr Rampton was in the habit of keeping private papers there. So the will we have here will almost certainly be accepted as valid.’

  ‘When was it drawn up?’ Savill asked.

  Rowsell did not need to refer to the document. ‘The fourteenth of December, 1781. Mr Veale has appended a note that Mr Rampton desired to have the will drawn up and signed before he went abroad. He spent nearly a year in Germany and Italy.’

  Savill knew the significance of the date. After Yorktown, in October 1781, the Government had fallen; the new Whig administration had wound up the American Department. There had been little to keep Mr Rampton in London then, and much to drive him elsewhere for a time.

  Mr Rowsell took out the will and unfolded it. ‘Apart from one or two small legacies – to servants and so on – he wills his estate in its entirety to your wife – his niece, Mrs Augusta Savill.’