Keeping Bad Company

by Caro Peacock

  ‘It might not have been for anybody in London,’ Tom said. ‘They have banks in India too.’

  ‘But it was for somebody he hoped to see in the next day or two. That must mean London, or near it. And why didn’t he seal and post it, as he must have intended?’

  ‘Because he’d died,’ Tom said, practically grinding his teeth.

  ‘But he was the sort of man who’d want to leave everything in order, wasn’t he? So why leave that undone before he killed himself?’

  ‘Liberty, stop it.’

  I moved the kettle closer to the fire to boil and rediscovered the letter to Tom, which I’d propped against the tea caddy.

  ‘Something came for you.’

  He glanced at the clerkly hand on the wrapper, frowning. I turned away to tidy things on the table, then heard him gasp as if the contents had burned him.

  ‘What is it?’

  He said nothing, just held it out for me to see. The thick parchment and bulge of a wax seal through the folds showed it was a legal document. He turned it over. The writing on the outside was also in a clerkly hand, but not the same as the one on the covering wrapper.

  LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF EDMUND GRIFFITHS ESQUIRE.

  ‘When did this arrive?’

  ‘By the morning post. I’d have rushed it round to you, only I didn’t think it was important.’

  ‘Why has he sent me his will?’

  Tom stared at me then at the still-folded document, getting no answer from either. I picked up the wrapper. There were two lines of writing on the inside.

  Dear Sir, We have been requested to forward to you the enclosed. A note acknowledging receipt of it is requested. Smith and Danby, Solicitors, London Road, Richmond.

  It was dated five days earlier.

  ‘It looks as if he gave it to them just before he left Richmond,’ I said.

  ‘But why send it to me?’

  ‘Hadn’t you better look at it?’

  ‘It’s a legal document, Libby. Shouldn’t it be opened in a lawyer’s presence?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s essential. Anyway, why should he have sent it to you if he didn’t want you to see it?’

  At least Tom still possessed his fair share of curiosity. After thinking about it for a while longer he opened it, read, then passed it to me.

  It was a short document, drawn up by an English solicitor in Bombay. It was dated from the autumn of the preceding year and duly witnessed by two men with English-looking names, probably the solicitor’s clerks.

  I, Edmund Griffiths, currently resident in Bombay, being of sound mind, do hereby give and bequeath:

  The sum of £500 each to the Hindu College in Calcutta and the Sanskrit College in Calcutta, with the wish that it shall be used towards the education of boys who would otherwise be too poor to attend these colleges.

  The sum of £100 to my faithful servant Anil, with the hope that some of it will be used to further his education.

  My library, including books, maps, pictures and manuscripts to the Sanskrit College of Calcutta, subject to the provision below.

  All the remainder of my estate to the Rani Rukhamini Joshi, of the Red Fort, near Amravati, India in small recognition of the wrong done to her and to her family.

  I appoint as my executor Thomas Fraternity Lane and direct that he shall be paid the sum of one hundred guineas from my estate for his trouble, and shall choose what books he likes from my library. I direct him as my executor to see that my body is disposed of according to Hindu rites by the sacred mother Ganges.

  Then his signature, and the witnesses. A broad margin had been left below the witness signatures. In it, a line in Griffiths’s handwriting in very blue, new-looking ink:

  Or as near to that as he can contrive. E.G.

  Tom had been watching as I read.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘This leaves no doubt at all, does it?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘That he killed himself.’

  Relief as well as shock in Tom’s voice. I hadn’t realized until then how, in his heart, he’d doubted the verdict of suicide.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. He leaves the will with a solicitor to forward it, so that it will get to me after his death. He’d planned it all carefully.’

  ‘Had he? Everybody seems to think that he was driven to suicide by that argument with McPherson, but that only happened after he’d moved in to town from Richmond. By then, he’d already left the will with the Richmond solicitors for forwarding. So if he did kill himself, it had nothing to do with your evidence or with the argument.’

  Tom said nothing while I made tea and poured it. He was rereading the will, probably several times over.

  ‘What shall I do with it?’ he said.

  ‘It will have to go to probate. I should see a solicitor. Ask Daniel to find a good one. He has some legal friends.’

  ‘You don’t think I should show it to them at East India House?’

  ‘Of course not. What’s it got to do with them?’

  ‘Back in Bombay, Griffiths did say something about naming me as his executor, but I didn’t think much about it at the time. Some of the men revise their wills before going on long sea voyages.’

  ‘So who’s this Rani who gets the balance of his estate?’

  ‘I have no notion. Literally, ‘Rani’ means queen, but it’s often a term of respect for any high-born Indian lady. Rukhamini is the name of a Hindu goddess. Amravati is in the Maratha. I’ll have to find out when I get back to India. But I doubt if there’ll be much left over after the bequests to the colleges. I don’t think he was a man of means.’

  At the time, I didn’t give much thought to the clause about Hindu rites and mother Ganges, or Griffiths’s footnote to it. There was simply too much to think about. When Tom said goodbye his mind was clearly elsewhere. He surprised me with a last question that seemed to have nothing to do with what we’d been discussing.

  ‘Will Amos Legge be at the stables at this time of day?’

  ‘Yes, they’ll be getting ready for evening feeds.’

  So at least he was planning to get some exercise.

  As I watched him walking away along Adam’s Mews, I noticed a member of Tabby’s gang standing in the doorway of one of the stables. I’d never sorted out the exact hierarchy of this troop of errand runners, horse-holders and occasional pickpockets, but knew this lad was one of the leaders. His nickname – probably the only name he had – was Plush. He was squat in build, immensely broad of shoulder. Trousers cut off raggedly at the knee showed calves of solid muscle and bare splay-toed feet, very dirty. His body could have been anything from twelve years old to twenty. His face was like some malign gargoyle from the middle ages, his voice as husky as dry leaves shifting in the wind from his habit of pipe smoking. Judging by his yellowed and oddly angled teeth, he’d taken to it as soon as he’d been weaned. He lived for fighting against members of rival gangs and usually carried some recent injury, in this case a left ear so bright and swollen that it looked as if it would glow in the dark. And yet, there was a tentative, almost gentle, air about him.

  He shifted his short clay pipe in his mouth and wished me good afternoon. I returned the greeting and asked if he’d seen Tabby recently. He shook his head.

  ‘Not for ten days or more.’

  ‘Do you know where she’s gone?’

  ‘Dunno. Just said she was going away for a bit.’

  ‘That’s all she said to me. I’m afraid she’s annoyed with me.’

  ‘Them little dogs?’

  ‘Yes. It wasn’t right, you know.’

  He nodded, grave as a churchwarden. I was sure that the business of lapdog kidnapping and ransoming was still being carried on, only transferred for a while out of my orbit. No use saying anything. I asked him if Tabby had given him any idea where she was going.

  ‘Nah. She’s been a bit strange the last few weeks, not talking much. Like she’s angry about something.’
<
br />   ‘She’s been like that with me too. I thought it was just on account of the dogs.’

  ‘Something else bothering her, only she won’t say what. I said to her when she came for the knife—’

  ‘Knife? What knife?’

  ‘The one she asked me to get for her.’

  ‘Tabby asked you to get her a knife?’

  ‘Good sharp one, with a long blade. Three bob I had to pay for it. She paid me back without turning a hair.’

  ‘What did Tabby want with a knife?’

  ‘That’s what I asked her. I said to her if she was expecting trouble from anybody, just let me know and I’d truss him up with his heels round the back of his neck any time she wanted. Wasn’t interested.’

  I asked him a few more questions, without result, and went back into Abel Yard, badly shaken. Tabby was angry. Tabby had a long sharp knife. Tabby was inquiring about where rich men went. And I could see no way of finding her if she didn’t want to be found.

  NINE

  Amos didn’t arrive for our usual ride early next morning, sending a lad on a cob with Rancie instead. The lad explained that Mr Legge had been called away elsewhere. I assumed that he’d gone on some horse-dealing errand, but was sorry because I wanted to talk to him about Tabby. I’d woken in the early hours, worrying about her and the knife and blaming myself. As far as I could see, there were two possibilities. One was that she really had gone out to look for cases of her own and found one more desperate than anything I’d have allowed. The other possibility was even worse: that she intended the knife for attack and not defence. Was this interest in the ways of rich men the start of a crusade? I’d been too pleased with myself for taking Tabby away from the gutter and giving her a chance at better things. In our strange trade, she’d been given a close view of some of the rich and powerful in society. She’d seen things that were admirable, but many that were rotten and hypocritical. Then, in my company and even with my encouragement, she’d met radicals like Tom Huckerby who wanted to sweep away privilege, take from the rich and give to the poor. Shouldn’t I have foreseen what a wild and quick-witted girl would make of that? Had I made an assassin of her?

  I tried all morning to work, going over domestic accounts with Mrs Martley, drafting a letter to a client who was disputing a bill. In the afternoon, tired of it all, I put on my bonnet and walked across the park to the livery stables in the Bayswater Road. Amos was in the stable yard, informally dressed by his usual smart standards in corduroy leggings, third best boots and felt hat. The leggings looked as if they’d been hastily brushed but there were dried traces of grey mud round the knee buckles. He was inspecting the swingletree of a small carriage drawn up in a quiet part of the yard. He seemed surprised to see me, and not altogether pleased.

  ‘Is that a new one?’ I said, looking at the carriage.

  It seemed plain and run-of-the-mill in a yard that usually ran to fashionable open landaus and barouches for drives around the park.

  ‘Just borrowed.’

  His manner was definitely uneasy, even furtive. Amos could tell lies with the best of them when necessary, but was no good at deceiving me.

  ‘Did my brother Tom find you yesterday?’

  A nod. Now he was giving one of the wheels the benefit of his close attention, though there was nothing remarkable about it. I made one of my leaps.

  ‘I suppose you’ve hired that for Tom.’

  His head came up. He looked at me, surprised.

  ‘He told me you weren’t to know about it.’

  ‘He did, did he?’

  I hate it when men plot against me, especially if it’s a brother and a good friend. I left Amos to think it over and went to say hello to Rancie. She was half dozing, with her black cat Lucy comfortably asleep on her back. Something was tucked into the straw at the far corner of the loosebox. I went over and pulled out a pair of boots, covered from soles to tops with dried and encrusted mud, the same grey as the splashes on Amos’s leggings. I put them back under the straw, gave Rancie her carrot and strolled back across the yard to him.

  ‘You shouldn’t go wading in river mud in your second best boots,’ I said.

  ‘River?’

  His face was a picture.

  ‘It has to be the river,’ I said. ‘There’s no mud anything like that deep around the park. Besides, there’s the colour of it.’

  ‘I told him it was no use trying to keep it from you,’ he said.

  ‘Quite right.’

  ‘We had to make sure of it. See how far out you could get when the tide was right.’

  He assumed I knew more than I did, and I had no intention of disillusioning him. The picture was becoming much clearer. Amos and my brother had been wading like mudlarks in the mud of the Thames. Whatever they were planning depended on the state of the tide. That surely meant a boat. What could Tom be doing with a boat that I wasn’t supposed to know about? I was sure it had something to do with Mr Griffiths’s instructions in the will: ‘I direct him as my executor to see that my body is disposed of according to Hindu rites by the sacred mother Ganges.’ Then the postscript: ‘Or as near to that as he can contrive.’ Tom, conscientious as I’d expect, was determined to do what he could to carry out his friend’s wishes. He was planning to ship his body back out to India. At a guess, a vessel about to sail for India would be somewhere downriver near the docks and Tom was planning to have the body rowed out to it. How it was to be arranged, given the heat and the length of the voyage, was a puzzle. I had a hazy memory that the body of Lord Nelson had been brought home from Trafalgar preserved in a cask of brandy. Was Tom planning something on those lines? Probably nothing illegal about it, once the body had been released by the coroner, but macabre enough to justify some secrecy.

  ‘Whereabouts?’ I said.

  ‘Just down from Westminster Bridge, south side.’

  Amos, hangdog, thought I knew so much anyway that details didn’t matter.

  ‘After dark, I suppose?’

  ‘Just after.’

  I left without plaguing him any further. I knew enough.

  I watched the sun setting from Westminster Bridge. On a fine evening, there were enough people strolling to make me inconspicuous. The south side of the river in the dark would be another matter. A warren of ramshackle streets and warehouses lined the muddy river bank, with a few wooden wharves sticking out into the mud. Not many respectable people went there after dark, and no women except those who were a long way from respectable, or so poor that they had to raise families in the half-rotten houses that were on their way to sliding back into river mud. I wished very much that Tabby was with me. I hadn’t realized how much I’d come to depend on her tough, resourceful company at times like this. Still, I was determined not to miss what Tom was doing. It was part of the business of getting to know this young man who’d been my little brother. His loyalty to his friend was admirable. More than that, the imagination and defiance of convention in carrying out his wishes recalled the younger, reckless Tom. I wanted his plan to go well. The tide puzzled me, though. It was well out, the river somewhere near its lowest, with long expanses of mud sloping down to the water. Not the right conditions for loading a body into a rowing boat. Could Tom and Amos have got the tides wrong?

  The sun went down. The strollers wandered back across the bridge to the north bank. I’d be conspicuous now if I stayed, so I went to the south side of the bridge and waited, leaning against the stone parapet. A few men called out remarks, but no worse. As the dusk came down, I was all but invisible. The traffic on the bridge was much thinner now, mostly carriages going from south to north, a few carts creaking in the opposite direction. The light was almost gone when the twin gleam of a pair of candle lamps appeared from the north side of the bridge, along with the sound of eight hooves going at a brisk walk. The driver of the carriage was wearing a dark coat and black top hat, but was unmistakeably Amos. He was looking straight ahead and didn’t see me. The carriage blinds were down. Once they were past, I fell i
n behind the carriage. I had to walk fast at first to keep up, but once they turned towards the river the streets were hardly wider than the carriage and heaped with rubbish. At one point Amos had to scramble down to move a pile of broken boxes. I kept well back and heard him say to somebody in the carriage – Tom presumably – that it was all right, he could manage. The carriage rolled on and came to a halt beside a warehouse. A jetty of old black timbers stuck out, with an iron ladder at the far end, leading down to the mud.

  It was dark. It shouldn’t have been possible to see the iron ladder, but there was light wavering on its rungs. Out on the mud, more lights, small and various. People were out there with candle lanterns and oil lamps, half a dozen of them. They moved around, throwing shifting silhouettes. At first I thought they must be the local mudlarks, scavenging the mud for anything valuable, and might be an obstacle to what Tom was planning. Then I heard Tom’s voice, calling softly to somebody, probably whoever was holding the lamp at the bottom of the ladder. He was out of the carriage now and only its bulk separated us. I moved back against the warehouse and watched. The men on the mud were building something, low down near the waterline. A wooden platform, rough planks showing white against the mud. A gangway of single planks led out to it from the bottom of the steps. Amos got down from the carriage and whistled up a boy from the mud to hold the horses.

  ‘Ready?’ Tom said.

  He held the carriage door open. Amos ducked his head and shoulders inside and straightened up with a white-wrapped bundle across his shoulders. Mr Griffiths had not been a large man and the weight was nothing to Amos. Tom unhitched one of the candle lamps from the carriage and lit the way for Amos to walk with his bundle to the top of the ladder. They disappeared down. Then Amos, still carrying the bundle, appeared again down on the shore, walking steadily along the line of planks, Tom following. I was more and more puzzled. No boat, precious little water. Did they intend to wait on the makeshift platform until the tide came up? It looked as if they did, because they’d built a kind of rough catafalque of logs and driftwood as a temporary resting place for the body. Then, as the shifting silhouettes formed a circle round the platform, shining their lanterns on it, I understood and gasped. Tom was being even more faithful to his instructions than I’d realized.