by Caro Peacock
I looked at her, in her neat grey dress with her hair clean and tied back. She was scuffing her shoe on the cobblestones as she did when her mind was uneasy. It was often the prelude to a dip back into her urchin mode. She’d sometimes vanish for a day or two, then appear suddenly and take up from where we’d left off. Something told me this was more serious and I was surprised that she’d taken the disagreement so much to heart. It had happened weeks before and should have blown over by now. Perhaps I should have taken more trouble to explain at the time, but I’d been much occupied then with one of the nastiest cases in my experience and had been determined to shield Tabby from it, so we hadn’t been talking as much as we usually did.
‘You’ll come back?’ I said.
All I got was a nod. I took a handful of coins out of my pocket and gave them to her.
‘Don’t need it.’
‘Take it anyway. Let me know if you need me.’
I turned and went upstairs, to stop myself uselessly pleading with her. She was like a young fox that might consent to live with you for a while but will never surrender its freedom. That night there was no candle gleam from the cabin at the end of the yard where she lived.
At the start of the week, when Tom was due to give his evidence to the parliamentary committee, I received another invitation to a Mary Anne Disraeli ‘At Home’. Considering that I’d exchanged hardly ten words with her on my previous visit, she seemed to have developed a surprising taste for my company. This time I waited on a sofa by the window, playing with somebody’s lapdog, and sure enough the elegant figure of Mr Disraeli appeared beside me.
‘May I?’
He flung back his coat-tails and sat down beside me, giving a passing stroke to the lapdog, just in case it was ever given a vote, I supposed.
‘So what did you make of our friend Mr Griffiths?’ he said.
The skill in dealing with Mr Disraeli was never to let him see he’d surprised you, so I just stopped myself from asking how he’d known.
‘A very interesting gentleman,’ I said.
‘So I gather. He should certainly annoy most of the committee. You know it’s loaded with friends of John Company, all wanting an excuse to go to war with China? Those McDruggies – I mean those excellent and reputable gentlemen in the opium trade – have packed the committee so thoroughly that they might as well conduct their deliberations reclining on divans and smoking pipes.’
He gave a lightning impression of an MP leaning back and inhaling, so droll that I almost laughed out loud.
‘Why do you call the merchants the McDruggies?’ I said.
‘They do seem to include a remarkable number of Scotsmen. Fresh from Canton with a million of opium in each pocket, denouncing corruption and bellowing free trade, like Jardine and Matheson.’
‘And Mr McPherson?’
‘Indeed, like Alexander McPherson. I believe he’s seeking a cool quarter of a million in compensation.’
‘Is there nobody on the committee against them?’
‘There’s an earnest young man named Gladstone who’s dead set against the war, but nobody listens to him.’
‘So you’re not on the committee yourself?’
He shook his head.
‘So many demands, so little time.’
Which went a long way to explain Disraeli’s interest. In spite of his failure so far to gain a ministerial post, he refused to believe that anything in the political world could happen without him. If, as was likely, he’d tried to be appointed to the India parliamentary committee and failed, he wouldn’t rest until he knew more about its proceedings than any of the MPs involved.
‘If you happen to meet Mr Griffiths again, you might warn him that McPherson and friends are doing their best to shred his reputation before he gives evidence to the committee,’ he said, serious now.
‘I think he knows that already.’
‘Does he? He’s an eccentric who spends his spare time talking to Indians instead of drinking whisky with his fellow countrymen, a troublemaker and quite probably a murderer. The committee will swallow it whole.’
‘Then there’s his pamphlet,’ I said.
A sudden glint in his eye was the only indication that Disraeli hadn’t known about that. I hoped I hadn’t blundered, but then surely a man putting out a pamphlet doesn’t wish for secrecy.
‘Indeed. I’m sure we’re all looking forward to that,’ he said.
Two women were approaching, obviously intent on conversation with him.
‘You’ll excuse me, Miss Lane. Please give my good wishes to your brother. Do tell me if you think there’s anything I should know about our friend.’
As often in my meetings with Mr Disraeli, I was left wondering if I’d found out more from him than he had from me. Honours equal this time, I hoped. But given his taste for sailing in stormy waters, his interest worried me.
SIX
I delivered Disraeli’s message to Mr Griffiths the following afternoon, when he and I were taking a decorous walk in the sunshine beside the Thames at Richmond. Once again, he’d managed neatly to get us apart from my brother. The cottage was a chaos of straw and packing cases because Mr Griffiths had suddenly decided to move himself closer to the centre of things in London. He’d brought few possessions with him from India – a trunk of clothes, half a dozen carpets, some pictures and ornaments, several hundred books – but packing them for the carter seemed such a business that he greeted our arrival like a man besieged.
‘Tom, my boy, I’m being driven mad. You know how I like things. Could you very kindly see to the last of the packing and spare your sister to take me for a walk in the fresh air?’
So we left Tom and the Indian lad, whose name was Anil, loading books into tea chests, with the carter’s horse dozing in the shafts outside. As soon as we were through the garden gate, Mr Griffiths resumed his spry air, striding out and swinging his walking cane. He nodded when I passed on the warning about McPherson being determined to damage his reputation.
‘Of course he is. Still, thank Mr Disraeli for his goodwill.’
‘I told him about the pamphlet. Does it matter?’
‘Of course not. I’m sending copies to all the MPs. I don’t suppose more than a dozen will read it, but we must do what we can.’
He sounded quite cheerful about it. We stopped to watch some children with their nursemaid, throwing bread to the swans. I think he needed a rest from the brisk pace he’d set, but was trying to hide it.
‘Tom’s annoyed with me,’ I said. ‘He wanted me to promise that we wouldn’t talk about what happened in India.’
‘And did you promise?’
‘No. He thinks I did, but that’s only because he expects me to do as I’m told.’
He laughed. ‘He should have more sense. So have you come to any conclusions?’
‘How can I? I don’t know anywhere near enough. All I’ve come up with are some more questions.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as why Mr McPherson went out to meet the assistant on his own, and why the robbers only took some of the jewels and missed the really valuable ones.’
‘Yes, those had occurred to me too.’
‘Did they occur to anybody else in Bombay?’
‘I believe there were questions, yes. But nobody discussed them with me.’
‘This assistant, Burton, was he well known?’
‘In Bombay, hardly at all. The first most people there knew about him was his funeral.’
We left the children and swans and walked on at a slower pace beside the river.
‘There was another question,’ I said. ‘It’s even occurred to Tom, though he wouldn’t dream of asking you.’
‘Oh?’
‘Why did you send him to find that diamond hawk, when you knew it was there anyway?’
He said nothing for a few steps and I thought I’d gone too far, but when he answered his tone was calm, even amused.
‘So Tom suspects that, does he?’
&nbs
p; ‘If he thinks about it, only he won’t let himself think.’
‘He’s very loyal to his friends.’
‘Yes, so there’s an obligation on his friends not to misuse his loyalty,’ I said.
‘I hope I’m not misusing it. He’s told no lies. I sent him and he found it, just as he describes.’
‘But you knew it was there?’
He swished his cane through a clump of cow parsley, setting it swaying.
‘Miss Lane, if I answered that question, you’d feel obliged to tell your brother?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’ll excuse me for not answering it at present.’
‘So the answer is yes?’
‘The answer is: wait.’
‘Wait how long?’
‘A week or two.’
‘Until Tom’s given his evidence to the committee?’
‘And until my pamphlet is out. It will explain many things to you and others. Then we shall talk again.’
The tone was still perfectly good-humoured, but there was no budging him and we didn’t talk again until we’d turned back towards the cottage. Then he broke the silence.
‘There is one respect, at any rate, in which I’m not playing entirely fairly with your brother.’
‘What?’
‘He believes that I’m halfway to persuading you to join the fishing fleet.’
‘Fishing?’
‘Forgive me. That’s the disrespectful term some men in India have for ladies sailing in search of husbands.’
‘In some more words from our Bard, I’d sooner “lead apes in hell”.’
‘I’m sure of it. You’d hate life in India very much.’
‘But you love the country.’
‘The country, yes, but not our countrymen within it. And – with a few brave exceptions – our countrywomen even less.’
‘Are they so ill-humoured?’
‘In essence, no worse than most ladies here. But India makes caricatures of them. You know the way society ladies live in London – the calling cards, the dinners, the charity concerts by bad amateur musicians, the shredding of each other’s reputations over the teacups?’
‘All too well.’
My work sometimes took me into these horrors. Seeing them at close quarters was one of the reasons why I’d resisted my friends’ efforts to marry me off to socially acceptable men.
‘Well, imagine all these things with the thermometer at ninety degrees in the shade, with husbands absent on tours of duty, children at school thousands of miles away, sick with low level fever half the time, and so many people attending to your wants that you never even have to open a sunshade for yourself. All the tedium of being a fine lady in London multiplied a hundredfold.’
He smiled when I shuddered.
‘Poor Tom,’ he said.
We arrived back in town ahead of Mr Griffiths, who said he had business to finish off in Richmond, and Tom suggested that we should go to his new lodgings to superintend the unloading of his things. Mr Griffiths had rented rooms in the City, not far from where the coach set us down at St Paul’s, so we strolled there slowly to give the carter time to arrive. On the way, we passed Tom’s temporary workplace, the headquarters of the East India Company. It dominated Leadenhall Street with its great columned front, like an overgrown Greek temple but with top-hatted businessmen instead of priests pacing up and down the steps. A few minutes’ walk away, Mr Griffiths had taken two floors of a tall grey stone house. The rooms were elegant and decorated in modern taste but had the lifelessness of a place let out by the month. A porter came up from the basement and helped us oversee the unloading of the packing cases, mildly curious about the new tenant. Would the gentleman be bringing his own servants? The porter’s wife could oblige with meals sent up and laundry done. Would the gentleman be staying long? One servant only, Tom told him, and probably not long. He left the question of meals and bed linen for Mr Griffiths.
The cottage in Richmond had seemed much more cheerful and homely. I was surprised he’d decided to leave it when he could easily have travelled in and out for the hearing. Tom admitted he was surprised as well and said it had been a decision made in the last couple of days. We both wondered if this restlessness might be a sign that Mr Griffiths’s nerves were not under such iron control as he liked to pretend. When I suggested that we might unpack to make the place more welcoming for his arrival, Tom instantly agreed. We spent a pleasant couple of hours unrolling carpets and silk wall hangings and placing books in the bookcases. Most of the books were leather bound and gilded, with titles in Latin, Greek, Arabic and others that Tom identified as Sanskrit and Hindi. Tom unpacked Mr Griffiths’s personal kit and laid out in the bathroom his sponge, razor and razor strop and bronze mirror. It was a fine room, with a gauze curtained window looking out over the street, black-and-white tiled floor and a fixed bath. You only had to turn a tap for a rush of cold water, presumably from a tank in the attic. Two gleaming cans stood beside the bath, ready for the servant or porter to carry up hot water from the basement. We walked round the rooms, satisfied with our efforts, and left the key with the porter for Mr Griffiths’s arrival later.
That was the day before Tom’s evidence to the parliamentary committee on East India Company affairs. I knew he didn’t want to talk about it, so had just wished him good luck when we parted. When the day came, I couldn’t help thinking about him and around midday I put on my cloak and bonnet and walked through Green Park and St James’s Park to Westminster. I knew that the committee was holding its sessions in a room off Westminster Hall. The great hall, nearly eight hundred years old, had miraculously survived the fire that had destroyed the rest of the Palace of Westminster six years before. While our legislators argued about plans for rebuilding, they had to carry on their business as best they could in what was left to them. Of course, the public weren’t allowed into the committee but there was nothing to stop anybody lingering in Westminster Hall. I thought I’d just wait there to watch Tom come out. If he looked reasonably composed and had people with him, I should keep in the background and not ever let him know that I’d been there.
Inside, the hall was like a cathedral – stone-flagged floor, great wooden roof beams, dim light from small windows high up. But the atmosphere was alive with men walking and talking, quietly in conspiratorial groups or calling to each other loudly, like boys in a playground. Frock-coated servants of the House hurried around, with messages for MPs. Ordinary people, nervous in best clothes, stood on the edge of things, probably hoping for a word with somebody willing to listen to their problems. Lawyers in wigs and silk gowns swept past, clerks loaded with papers trailing behind them. There must have been two or three hundred people there, dwarfed by the size of the hall, and only a few women. Other committees beside the one I was interested in were sitting in various rooms off the hall and each one had its own group of men waiting outside. In one group, some of the faces between the tall black hats and white stocks looked more sun-browned than the rest. A clerk confirmed that, yes, this was the East India committee. I found an inconspicuous place by the wall, where I could keep the door to the committee room in sight and waited.
It was the glint of the thing that caught my eye. In the dim light, with most of the men in black coats, it flashed like a sudden jet of water. A group of men, five or six of them, had come in to the hall and were walking in my direction. The tallest one was leading the way, the others following him like courtiers. He was perhaps in his early fifties with a square, forceful-looking face. His broad nose looked as if it had been broken and reset badly. Even in this setting, there seemed a piratical air about him, as if he’d be in his element superintending the firing of cannons. Dark eyebrows with traces of grey jutted over narrow eyes that were moving all the time, as if observing the people round him then discarding them as not important enough for lingering. None of these were the first things anybody would notice about his appearance. What was drawing most of the eyes in this part of the hall, as well as mi
ne, was the ornament he wore on the lapel of his coat: a diamond hawk as big as a woman’s hand, with ruby eyes and talons. On a man who was otherwise in conventional business clothes it should have looked absurd, but the fierce beauty of the thing and the confidence of the man wearing it made it look like a declaration of power.
A buzz went through the group waiting outside the committee room. Some of them walked up to the man. I didn’t need the ‘Hello McPherson’, to tell me who he was. He asked a question I couldn’t hear and nodded at the answer. Watching him, I didn’t at first notice the man who was walking in our direction from the far end of the hall. As he came closer I saw it was Mr Griffiths, strolling along and looking up at the great roof beams as if simply out for a constitutional walk. I guessed that, like me, he’d come to meet Tom and probably had no idea that McPherson was there. Then one of McPherson’s group noticed him and said something. McPherson had been chatting to his neighbour, but instantly his head came up. Almost at once his posture became challenging, bull-like, feet braced, eyes glaring. Almost at once, but not quite. I doubt if the men around McPherson saw it, but from where I was standing I had caught the first expression on McPherson’s face and it had looked very like alarm. By then, the men around McPherson had gone quiet and were all staring at Mr Griffiths. It must have been a shock to him when he looked down from the roof beams and caught that collective stare, but he held his nerve and kept walking. When he came to a halt, a few yards away from them, there was a smile on his face. Everybody had gone quiet so that it seemed as if the great hall was concentrated on the meeting between the two enemies.
Mr Griffiths spoke first, in a conversational tone, but loudly enough for bystanders to hear.
‘Good afternoon, McPherson. Sporting your jewellery collection, I see.’
McPherson gave him a hard look down his boxer’s nose. ‘I’m surprised you’ve got the face to come here. Or are you getting up a protest meeting?’
His voice was a deep and arrogant drawl. If he’d ever had a Scottish accent, it had vanished in his time out east. Some of the men round him tittered as if he’d made a good joke. It seemed an unfair encounter, McPherson surrounded by his cronies, Mr Griffiths very much alone.
