by Caro Peacock
‘Tom, you did not fail him.’
‘Didn’t I? I give evidence against him, and two days later he kills himself. Doesn’t that seem like failure to you?’
I tried to protest but he wouldn’t listen and practically ran away downstairs. I think he didn’t want me to see him losing control again. I sat and thought about it for a while, then put on my coat and bonnet, walked to Piccadilly and caught a coach to the City.
The crowd had gone from the house where Mr Griffiths had lodged so briefly. The porter was sweeping the front steps and recognized me from three days ago.
‘Was he your father, miss?’
‘No, just a friend. But I’ve come to see to his things.’
‘The gentlemen locked up his rooms and took away the key. They said they’d be back.’
‘What gentlemen?’
‘The ones who were here after they found him this morning.’
Calcutta again. Why should they be so careful of the possessions of a man they despised? A small lie seemed justified.
‘I think I left my shawl when my brother and I were unpacking the other day,’ I said. ‘I’d be sorry to lose it.’
I’d come prepared for modest bribery. The half-crown I slipped into his palm prompted him to be kind and remember that there was a service door from the back stairs that had not been locked. He led the way up broad, uncarpeted stairs and through the doorway to the landing. When he opened the door to the main room, a faint metallic tang of blood was still in the air.
‘At least he did it tidy enough,’ he said. ‘Money worries, was it?’
I made as slow a business as I could of looking for my hypothetical shawl, although the tidiness of the room made that difficult. Mr Griffiths seemed to have disturbed very little after the unpacking Tom and I had done, apart from leaving his velvet smoking jacket on the back of the chair by his desk. The desk was open. If his pamphlet were anywhere, it would surely be there. I went over to it and shifted the smoking jacket as if looking underneath. A simple desk, only two shelves and four pigeonholes, all empty. We’d unpacked his blotter, ink bottle and tray of pens and laid them out ready for him. Two sheets of paper lay on the blotter. One of them was a note in what looked like his handwriting, as far as I remembered it from just a glance at his manuscript.
I trust you are safely settled in. Please do not hesitate to cash and make use of the enclosed as soon as possible. I hope to see you within the next day or two. E.G.
The other smaller sheet was a bank draft in the same handwriting for one hundred pounds, made out to ‘Bearer’. Obviously, he’d intended to fold the draft inside the note and address it. The other side of the note was blank. Luckily, the porter hadn’t been watching, preoccupied by a rather detailed drawing propped against the wall of what was probably an Indian temple carving. Tom had tried to prevent me from seeing it when we unpacked and left it with its face to the wall. Griffiths, or somebody, must have turned it round. I opened the doors of the cupboard beneath the desk. Empty as an eggshell.
‘Did you hear or see anything last night?’ I said to the porter.
He turned quickly.
‘Not a sound. I’m a good sleeper.’
‘I suppose you don’t know where his servant went?’
‘No. Just scarpered, like they do.’
‘Where did he sleep, I wonder?’
I’d meant the servant boy, but the porter nodded towards the main bedroom.
‘In there.’
He opened the bedroom door, probably assuming by now that my shawl had been just an excuse for morbid curiosity. The bed was made, not slept in. A small camp bed in a corner answered the question of where the servant slept. An unlit spirit lamp, a jar of coffee beans and a brass coffee grinder stood on a table near the camp bed. Mr Griffiths had been living simply, like a traveller. The only likely place for a pile of manuscript was the chest of drawers. I walked across and opened the top one.
‘The gentlemen said they’d send for his things,’ the porter said, a little uneasy now.
‘Just in case my shawl got put inside,’ I said.
We’d left Mr Griffiths to unpack his own clothes. The top drawer contained nothing but clean shirts, underlinen and cravats. The second held two beautifully embroidered silk tunics of the kind a high-born Indian man might wear, carefully folded. The other two drawers were empty. The porter had gone through to the bathroom. I could hear him opening the window. I had a quick look under the mattress, though there was no reason why Mr Griffiths should have hidden his manuscript. Nothing. I went and stood in the doorway of the bathroom. The black and white tiles had been mopped clean but were still damp. The bath had been cleaned too. Mr Griffiths’s big yellow sponge was propped on the edge of it, surprisingly unbloodied. As ordinary objects can, it brought home the loss of him more than anything else had done. I looked away from it to the two hot water cans on the floor.
‘Did he ask you to bring hot water up to him last night?’ I said.
‘Not last night, no.’
‘Nor very early this morning?’
‘He’d have been dead by then, wouldn’t he? Why are you asking?’
‘I’m not sure. I suppose when somebody you know kills himself, you want to know what he was thinking.’
‘Uncle of mine jumped in the canal because he’d lost his taste for beer,’ the porter said.
‘So no hot water?’
‘The only hot water I took up to him was Sunday morning, and he said only half a can, for a wash.’
So Mr Griffiths had not even allowed himself the Roman comfort of a warm bath to die in. I walked over to the window and found myself looking down on the crown of a black top hat.
‘It looks as if one of the gentlemen’s come back,’ I said.
‘I might be in trouble if they know I let somebody come up here. You’d better go quick down the back stairs, miss, shawl or no shawl.’
I let him usher me back through the service door, but instead of going downstairs I left it open a crack and waited just behind it, while he went to meet the visitor. I heard their footsteps coming up the main staircase and peered out, getting quite a good view of the gentleman. He wasn’t flaunting the diamond hawk today, but the jutting eyebrows and broad broken nose were unmistakeable. Alexander McPherson in person.
‘You can go,’ he said to the porter. ‘I’ll call you if you’re needed.’
The porter left. McPherson went inside the main room and closed the door. I could hear him moving about inside the room, as if looking for something. Trying to track his steps, I judged that he was standing looking down at the desk. The steps paused there long enough for him to read the note and draft, then went through to the bedroom. He was walking round there longer than you’d expect for a sparsely furnished room. I heard drawers open and close, then what sounded like a wooden lid being lifted up and put down. The only thing in the bedroom with a lid was the commode. I hadn’t thought of looking in there. Alexander McPherson was making a thorough search and, judging by the way he went on roving around, not finding what he was looking for. After a while I heard the door slamming and his footsteps stamping downstairs. I ran back into Griffiths’s rooms and looked out of the bathroom window as he walked away down the street. He was swinging his arms as he strode along, so not carrying anything. His overcoat was well fitted, with nothing bulging out the pocket – or certainly nothing as heavy as a wadded up manuscript. I waited for him to get well on his way, then went back downstairs and let myself out quietly, so as not to alert the porter again. So Alexander McPherson had not found what he’d come for. Then again, neither had I.
EIGHT
I walked from the City to Fleet Street. At the east end of it, not far from Ludgate Hill, a narrow alleyway leads to a cobbled courtyard within bad-smelling distance of the Thames. The creaking and tapping sounds that came from open doorways around the courtyard in various competing rhythms marked it as one of the communities of small printing shops that cluster behind the larger buildings o
f Fleet Street. As far as I knew, it was the present working place of my radical printer friend, Tom Huckerby. He and his printing press never stayed in one place long, because of threats from bailiffs and the paid bullies of public men who thought he’d libelled them. He sometimes had, but they deserved it, more often than not. My luck was in. He was at work, leaning over a galley of type. I waited until he straightened up and greeted me by my first name. He was part of a staunch Republican tradition that didn’t hold with titles, not even Mr or Miss. After asking after each other’s health, I came to business.
‘Tom, if you wanted to get quite a large pamphlet printed in a hurry, where would you take it?’
He puffed out his cheeks and spread his arms in a gesture indicating the whole of Fleet Street and probably places beyond.
‘Yes, I was afraid of that,’ I said.
‘Seditious, is it?’
‘I haven’t read it. At a guess, it will annoy a lot of powerful and wealthy people, but not seditious or treasonable.’
‘That makes it harder. Not everyone will print something that might land him in Newgate, but aside from that you could take your pick from several hundred.’
‘If it helps at all, the man who wrote it spent most of his life in India and probably doesn’t know many people in London. Are there any printers who specialize in Indian affairs?’
He thought about it.
‘Probably, back in the City near East India House. But I’d guess those are some of the gentry your friend wants to annoy?’
‘Yes.’
‘So if he’s got any sense, he wouldn’t go to any of those, or people might get wind of it and try to stop it.’
‘I think he had sense.’
He acknowledged the past tense with a raise of the eyebrow.
‘So you can’t ask the man himself?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll ask around, if you like. What was his name?’
‘Griffiths. The pamphlet was against the opium trade with China. And he’d probably have wanted it done within a few days.’
‘Not unusual. Most people want it done the day before yesterday. I’ll let you know if I find out anything.’
Then, being a journalist and political to his ink-stained fingertips, he wanted to know what it was all about. If I’d been working for a client I should have been discreet, but as it was I could see no harm in telling him more or less the full story. He knew already about the committee looking into the affairs of the East India Company, but hadn’t heard about the confrontation between Mr Griffiths and Alexander McPherson in Westminster Hall.
‘I can use it,’ he said.
‘You’ll keep my brother out of it?’
‘Of course. Give my regards to young Fraternity.’
He was the only one who still used my brother’s radical middle name. I suspected brother Tom himself would like to forget it.
Before I left, Tom Huckerby had already scribbled out the paragraph he intended to put in the next edition of his paper The Unbound Briton.
We hear that the temperature is rising to Indian heights around Leadenhall Street. Recently arrived in town from Calcutta is one Alexander McPherson, a commercial gentleman whose main business is smuggling shiploads of opium into China. Since the ungrateful Chinese have seized and burned some of his cargoes, Mr McPherson has arrived at Westminster to demand vengeance and compensation. He has given evidence to the committee of MPs looking into the way John Company is using its vast and chartered powers over millions of our fellow human beings. He recently honoured Westminster Hall with a visit, blazing with looted diamonds. An altercation arose between him and a certain E. Griffiths, a servant of the Company who has greatly annoyed his colleagues. Griffiths’s offence was to criticize the policy of using our navy to protect the fortunes of McPherson and his merry smuggler friends. Griffiths had the best of the Westminster Hall debate. Since when he has sadly died in mysterious circumstances, though not before confiding his pamphlet against the opium merchants to the printers. We await its publication with interest.
I made a few objections.
‘It was just the one big brooch,’ I said. ‘Not exactly blazing. And we don’t know it was looted.’
‘Of course it was. All jewels from India are looted.’
‘And you do realize that you’re practically accusing McPherson of murdering Mr Griffiths?’
He put on an innocent face.
‘Am I really? Where does it say so, exactly?’
‘And we don’t know the manuscript is with printers. I just hope it is.’
‘So if it is, this might flush it out.’
I gave up. The readership of The Unbound Briton was devoted, but quite small, and appreciated good political punching rather than slavish sticking to facts. Besides, it wasn’t my duty to look after the interests of the Calcutta men.
I thanked Tom Huckerby and turned to go.
‘Has Tabby found what she was looking for?’ he said.
I turned back.
‘Looking for? What do you mean?’
‘She turned up here out of the blue four or five days ago, asking where rich bastards went to make money.’
‘What!’
I had thought I was managing to clean up her language. She’d developed a liking for Tom Huckerby and his printing friends that was surprising in a girl so determinedly illiterate.
‘She had this idea that there were places where rich men congregate, something like pickpockets or beggars all lodging in the same part of town. Not so wrong, after all. She’s got a lot of sense, that girl,’ Tom said.
‘So what did you tell her?’
‘I mentioned gentlemen’s clubs, but she seemed to know about those.’
‘She would. We had a case involving one.’
‘It turned out she’d picked up some notion of the stock exchange. I told her about Capel Court, where the stockjobbers trade.’
‘Why did she want to know about stockjobbing? Tabby’s never had more than a shilling or two in her life.’
‘I supposed she was on some kind of errand for you.’
‘No. It would have been something specific, not vague like that.’
‘Maybe she’s setting up on her own,’ Tom said.
He meant it as a joke, but I was worried. It looked as if Tabby had taken our difference of opinion on business ethics very much to heart. She surely had too much sense to think that her apprenticeship was over and she could go out and look for cases on her own account. Or did she think she could pick up work the way she once begged halfpennies? I asked Tom to please try and persuade her to get in touch with me if she called on him again, and he promised he would.
I hoped my brother might call in the afternoon, but he didn’t. I supposed he was too busy with the formalities of Mr Griffiths’s death. That evening, no glint of light from Tabby’s cabin, no letters, no clients, no distractions. I drank tea and ate Welsh rarebit for supper with Mrs Martley, spent a conscientious hour doing accounts and went early to bed. In the morning, a shout came up from Mr Grindley, the carriage repairer in the yard.
‘Letter for Miss Lane.’
I flew downstairs with a handful of small change to pay the postman, hoping for news from Athens. The letter he handed over to me was a double disappointment. It was a mere local letter, not a well-travelled one, and was addressed not to me but to Thomas Lane Esquire c/o Abel Yard, Adam’s Mews. The address was written in a clerkly hand and the thing had a formal look about it. Probably something from the East India office about Tom’s employment, though I was surprised he’d given them my address. When he arrived at last, in mid-afternoon, his exhausted look drove the letter from my mind. His gloves and neckcloth were black. Even his shirt studs were small knobs of jet.
‘The inquest?’ I said.
He nodded.
‘What was the verdict?’
‘That he took his own life.’
‘Just that?’
He nodded. So no half-consoling addition of ‘while the
balance of his mind was disturbed’. Mr Griffiths was a suicide, pure and simple.
‘Did it take long?’
‘No more than half an hour. I had to identify him and give evidence about finding him. Some fat MP who’d been in Westminster Hall gave evidence about that wretched business.’
‘Was McPherson there?’
‘No, but quite a few of the other Calcutta men were.’
‘And nobody argued against suicide?’
‘Are you saying I should have? What possible evidence could I have given?’
So I told him about my visit to Mr Griffiths’s rooms, about the lack of warm water, the missing pamphlet. Tom looked shocked at first, then downright furious when I came to hiding behind the door to find out what Alexander McPherson was doing.
‘Liberty, this is intolerable. What if he’d seen you?’
‘Would it have mattered? He wouldn’t have known I’m your sister.’
‘But you had no right to be there.’
‘Nor had he.’
‘He might have come to pack up Griffiths’s things.’
‘On his own? Rather a menial job for him. Anyway, he wasn’t packing up anything, he was searching. And I’m sure he was searching for Mr Griffiths’s pamphlet.’
‘Why do you keep coming back to that?’
‘Because it was important to him, and we don’t know where it’s gone. It definitely wasn’t in any of the things we unpacked. That means he kept it with him when he left Richmond for London. What did he do with it after that?’
I hoped Tom might draw the same conclusion as I had: that Mr Griffiths had hurried it straight to a printer. But he was still too occupied in being annoyed with me. That decided me not to tell him about my visit to Tom Huckerby. I was already having some regrets about that paragraph that would be appearing in The Unbound Briton and didn’t want another cause of war between us.
‘I wonder who he meant that bearer bond for,’ I said. ‘He didn’t know many people in London, but here he is intending to send somebody a lot of money.’
