by Caro Peacock
Silence again. I was sure Tom was thinking, as I was, that if the man did go out with the boat, it would be to make sure that Anil’s body was dumped quietly over the side.
‘What sort of boat was it?’ Tom said.
‘I asked him that. He was a coachman not a sailor, he said. Just an ordinary boat with two masts. The only thing about it was that it had a green and gold painted figurehead in the shape of a sea horse. It struck him that the figurehead was coming it a bit grand for the size of boat it was, but that was all he noticed.’
Tom slapped his hands down on his knees.
‘Well done, Amos. I think we’ve got him.’
I didn’t want to spoil Tom’s optimism, but it seemed to me that we were very far from getting him.
‘A man can’t come out of the blue and hire a boat just like that,’ Tom said. ‘It’s a different matter from tipping a couple of workmen to carry a chest. Either he owns the boat himself and they’ll know him around the wharves, or the boat owner will know who he is.’
‘Then we’ll go to Puddle Dock first thing tomorrow,’ I said.
‘No point in hurrying now,’ Tom said. ‘They’ll have dropped off the poor lad’s body as soon as the tide was right. The thing is to find out who the boat’s owner is without raising suspicions. Anyway, I can’t get away from East India House before lunchtime. Can you be free tomorrow afternoon, Amos?’
Amos nodded. ‘I’ll borrow the clarence and meet you in Leadenhall Street, if you like.’
‘And you can pick me up here on the way,’ I said.
‘Oh no he can’t.’
Tom said it in his most dogmatic voice. I glared at him.
‘And why can’t he?’
‘Because you’re not coming. We don’t need you and wharves can be rough places.’
‘I probably know more about rough places than you do. In any case, you wouldn’t even have known about the chest if I hadn’t sent Tabby to watch.’
‘Yes, I acknowledge that.’ Tom was trying to sound reasonable. It only made him more infuriating. ‘I promise you that I’ll come back here afterwards and let you know what happened and you can tell me what you think.’
‘You won’t need to, because I’ll be there to do the thinking on the spot.’
‘So you’re suggesting now that I’m incapable of thinking for myself?’
‘It’s taken you long enough to start.’
Tom turned from me to Amos.
‘Kindly ignore my sister. Will it suit you, then, if we meet in Leadenhall Street at two o’clock?’
Amos looked from Tom to me and back again, face so full of doubt that it seemed painful. Doubt was unlike him. I could hardly breathe. If he took my brother’s part in a masculine league against me, something in our friendship would be broken forever. It seemed a long time before he replied to Tom.
‘Miss Lane looks at things a different way from most folk. Why run a horse in blinkers if it’s got no need of them?’
I understood what he was saying and breathed again, but Tom took some time to work it out. When he did, he wasn’t pleased.
‘You’re saying she should come with us?’
Amos nodded. At least Tom had the sense to realize that opposing him would be like trying to nudge Stonehenge aside, and he needed his help.
Saturday afternoon found us travelling to Puddle Dock in the livery stable’s work-a-day clarence, Tom and I sitting opposite each other inside, Amos driving the cob from the box. We’d agreed that if anybody wanted to know why Tom was interested in the boat with the sea horse figurehead, he’d pretend to be acting for a merchant with goods to ship. Amos brought us to a halt halfway down Puddle Dock Hill, with a view of the river. A dozen or so ships were anchored off the wharves, rocking on the outgoing tide. Five of them were two-masters but from that distance you couldn’t tell if they had figureheads. We rolled on, and stopped outside the gateway of a timber yard close to the river. There wasn’t much work going on, just a man sawing a plank and another one smoking a clay pipe and watching him. Amos gave a whistle and a wave and the man with the pipe strolled over. A coin changed hands. There was always somebody willing to earn a shilling by dozing on his feet alongside a horse doing the same.
‘Stay here,’ Tom said to me, preparing to get down.
I didn’t bother to reply. We’d decided that he and Amos should go together to find somebody who knew about the boat. I’d agreed, but only because the presence of a woman might have drawn unnecessary attention to them.
I waited until they were out of sight, then got out. The man holding the horse seemed only faintly surprised to see me. We agreed that it was a nice day, but with a bit of a cold breeze up the river.
‘Left you to wait for them, have they, miss?’
I agreed that they had, in the martyred tones of a woman who did a lot of waiting for her men folk.
‘I can’t even see the ships from here,’ I said.
‘They’re not much in the way of ships, but if you want to look at them, you could take a stroll between those stacks there. Only watch out for the rats.’
The stroll brought me to the river. Our two-master was one of the closest boats, gilding on the edge of the sea horse scales glinting in the sun as it rocked. No sign of anybody on board. I strolled back to the clarence and the man guarding it.
‘Whose is the one with the pretty sea horse?’
It would have been amusing to steal a march on Tom, but the man said he didn’t know, with weary tolerance of the female taste for glittering things.
‘I suppose it goes out to sea a lot,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘About as much as this horse we’re standing by.’
‘You mean it doesn’t?’
‘Hasn’t moved from here in two weeks or more. Lads were only talking about it yesterday.’
‘Hadn’t it been out the day before yesterday?’
By now he was too convinced of my simplicity to find anything odd in the question.
‘I told you, not for a fortnight or more. Have birds nesting in the ropes this rate.’
I stood with him for a while then got back inside the clarence. It was an hour before Tom and Amos reappeared. Tom came and sat opposite me while Amos leaned at the open door.
‘Well?’ I said.
Tom seemed downcast. ‘There weren’t many people around to ask. All anybody seems to know is that it’s owned or chartered by an Indian man.’
‘Is that all? We knew that anyway.’
‘The name of the boat is Calypso. If she’s insured at Lloyds we should be able to trace the owner that way.’
‘Calypso doesn’t travel very much,’ I said. ‘She hasn’t moved from here for two weeks or more.’
They both stared at me.
‘She must have,’ Tom said. ‘What about the day before yesterday?’
‘She didn’t move. If you don’t believe me, ask the man who was holding the horse.’
Amos chuckled, then stopped abruptly when he saw Tom’s face.
‘I thought I told you not to go round asking questions.’
‘You did nothing of the kind. You see what that means?’
I watched the change in his face as annoyance gave way to something more serious.
‘That the chest is still on board.’
‘Yes.’
He thought for a while, then: ‘Amos, can we keep the clarence out?’
‘All night, if you like, as long as the horse gets a rest.’
‘It shouldn’t take that long. It gets dark around eight. If we’re back here at nine there shouldn’t be many people around.’
‘Not down here on a Saturday night,’ Amos agreed.
I didn’t interrupt because Tom was proposing exactly what I should have done. Also he’d said nothing this time about leaving me behind. Amos got back on the box and we all went together to a decent-looking inn with a stable yard not far from St Paul’s. Amos arranged stabling and a feed for the cob, and Tom a private parlour for me to wait.
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br /> ‘So where are you going?’ I said.
‘To hire a rowing boat.’
‘Easier to borrow one,’ Amos suggested from the corridor. ‘Nobody will know that time of evening.’
But Tom preferred to do things legally. He was back in about an hour, looking embarrassed.
‘Isn’t it strange how people always assume the worst?’
On questioning, it turned out that the owner of the rowing boat had thought Tom wanted it for some amorous adventure and probably increased the price accordingly. Unable to explain, Tom had to let him go on thinking it. What was really strange, I thought, was that Tom should be concerned about that, but apparently quite cool about boarding a boat that almost certainly contained a murdered boy. I was still learning things about my brother. The three of us dined together in the private parlour, not saying much. At quarter to nine we went out to the stable yard, where a groom had the clarence ready with the cob looking well rested. In darkness, without even our carriage lamps lit, we rolled back down the hill to Puddle Dock.
The timber yard was deserted. With the moon not up yet, everything was in almost total darkness so it was difficult not to crash into woodpiles.
‘Should have brought a lantern,’ Tom said.
I produced one I’d brought from Abel Yard and tucked away in the carriage until needed, along with a flint lighter. It was the kind with a metal shutter you could turn to give only a thin beam of light.
‘Burglar’s lantern,’ Tom commented, sounding quite amused about it.
‘Yes, and very useful they are too.’
As with our children’s adventures long ago, I could sense the excitement in him, as well as the finely strung nerves. I let him lead the way with the lantern, to where a rowing boat was tied up at the foot of steps down from the jetty. He went first, I followed, then the boat rocked under Amos’s weight. The boat was too narrow for both of them at the oars, so they settled it that Amos should row, with Tom in the stern to untie us and push off, myself in the bow as a lookout. Amos’s rowing was powerful but splashy. I was afraid that somebody might hear us and call out from the boats we passed, but they stayed dark and silent. Probably they weren’t valuable enough to have a man on board when at anchor, especially on a Saturday night. Now and then, when Amos rested on the oars, sounds of music and laughter drifted across to us from taverns near the water. Tom whispered the occasional instruction from the stern. We’d taken note by daylight of the approximate position of the Calypso.
The lamp beam fell on a curve of scaly tail then shot away as Amos pulled on the oars.
‘Hold steady,’ Tom said.
I angled the beam upwards, picking out the name: Calypso. From the shore, it had seemed a simple matter to climb on board but we were rocking alongside an outward curving cliff of wood. Amos rowed as delicately as he could manage along the port side, but his oar kept striking against the planks. If there’d been anybody on board the noise would have brought them out. There was no sound. Towards the stern, Tom told me to shine the beam up again. It picked out what looked like a coiled up rope ladder.
‘Should have brought a boat hook,’ Tom said.
This time I couldn’t oblige. Tom stood up in the boat, took one of the oars and tried to hook the rope ladder with the blade. It was just out of reach. Amos handed the other oar to me.
‘Get hold of it halfway down. Try and use it like a paddle and keep us steady.’
I did my best as Amos hunkered down in the middle of the rowing boat and made a back for Tom to stand on. The arrangement seemed desperately precarious, with Tom reaching up to the point of overbalancing, the oar thumping against the boat in several failed attempts. Then: ‘Got it.’
Tom and the end of the rope ladder fell back into the boat together, tangling with Amos. It took us a while to sort ourselves out, but at the end of it the ladder made the steep hypotenuse of the triangle between the Calypso and our rowing boat.
‘I’ll go up first,’ Tom said. ‘There should be a rope up there. I’ll throw it down for you to tie up the boat.’
He was doing well, I thought, but spoiled the effect by trying to take the lantern in his teeth. In the scenes we’d acted out as children, pirates had made nothing of doing that with cutlasses and pistols. In real life, all Tom got was exasperation and a burned lip, so he made the climb with no more light than the glimmer from the water.
It seemed a long time before a rope thumped into the water beside us. Amos picked it out and tied it through a ring on the bows of the rowing boat.
‘Right then. Up we go.’
He steadied the ladder as I climbed. I’d expected something like this and, learning from experience, had put on my plainest and least bunchy petticoat. It wasn’t easy getting off the rope ladder and over the gunnel but Tom was there to help me, although grudgingly.
‘I should have told you to stay down in the rowing boat.’
Amos came up next. The ladder swung alarmingly with nobody to steady it at the bottom, but he still managed to bring the lamp up with him. We clustered round the main mast, keeping low so that our silhouettes in the faint lamplight shouldn’t attract attention if anybody happened to be watching from the shore. The deck was bare, with nothing in the way of superstructure except a shelter round the wheel. Behind the main mast, two hatch covers meeting in a low peak were the only way below decks. They were just secured by cabin hooks. Tom and Amos opened them while I held the lamp, revealing a flight of wooden steps down to what looked like an empty hold. Tom took the lamp from me.
‘Stay on deck, Libby. Call down to us if you see anybody rowing out.’
It wasn’t likely. We’d have known by now if there were anybody following us. Still, I didn’t argue. I waited until their steps were echoing in the hold, then went halfway down the flight of steps and sat there. I knew that Tom wanted to spare me the sight of what they expected to find in the chest and was grateful.
‘In the corner here.’
Amos’s voice. The lamp shone on the back of the chest, plain wood. Tabby had been horribly right about the size of it: just big enough. Tom and Amos were staring at the other side. They seemed puzzled. Perhaps it was locked and they’d need to break it open. Then Tom bent down and pulled at something. The sound was unexpectedly domestic, like a dressing table drawer being opened. I stood up and went down the steps to join them. It was a drawer, and they were staring at something inside it. The whole thing was a rough-looking two-drawer chest, with lettering in Chinese characters painted over it. The drawer Tom had pulled open was divided into ten compartments. Each compartment contained something round and pale, about the size of a large cooking apple. At first I thought they might be cannon balls, until Tom lifted one out and it was obviously much lighter. He seemed to recognize it. A scale fell off it and settled on the floor.
‘Opium.’
His voice echoed round the hold. Absently, I picked up the scale. It was a petal, withered and silvery.
‘Poppy petal,’ Tom said. ‘It’s what they wrap it in.’
‘That whole ball, opium?’
‘All twenty of them.’
He put it back in its compartment, shut the drawer and slid open the lower one. Just the same, ten petal-wrapped spheres each nestling snugly in its own compartment.
‘It’s how they export it from India to China,’ Tom said. ‘It’s sold by the chest, like this, hundreds of chests to a shipment.’
Amos picked up one of the spheres and turned it gently in his hand, as if he expected it to hatch into something.
‘How much would this lot be worth then?’
Tom considered. ‘Five hundred pounds. Perhaps more. I’m not an expert.’
‘So this came from India?’
‘Certainly. Look, there’s the Company’s mark. It means the contents of the chest are guaranteed pure.’
‘But why bring it here? And why take it all the way out to Richmond and back?’ I said.
Amos, replacing the ball of opium, said they’d want to
look after it at that price, but Tom seemed almost as puzzled as I was.
‘I agree, Libby. The Chinese may have banned opium but it’s perfectly legal in this country. Anybody could bring in a hundred chests like this, if he wanted to. But why send it here when it’s nearer and more profitable to run it into China?’
‘But would they have to pay duty to bring it in?’ I said. ‘Suppose somebody’s trying to set up an English smuggling trade in case China is closed to them.’
Tom considered. ‘You might even be right, Libby. But would the likes of McPherson risk whatever reputation they have here? They’re smugglers half a world away, but gentlemen in England.’
‘It might not be anything to do with him. Suppose your Brahmin and his friends are acting on their own account.’
‘So have they smuggled in a whole shipload?’
We all three of us considered the chest.
‘This might be by way of a tradesman’s case of samples,’ Amos commented.
We looked round the rest of the hold before we left, but it was as empty as the inside of a cello. Going down the rope ladder was considerably worse than going up, but we made it safely to the timber jetty. Tom tied up the hired boat there, as promised, and we went back to the clarence. With nobody to hold the horse at this time of night, Amos had hitched the reins to the fence. It had bothered him, but the cob had scarcely moved. We’d been travelling for some time before Tom spoke.
‘If you’re right about the opium smuggling, Griffiths would have been furious if he found out.’
‘Even if it was Indians doing it? He might see it as appropriate revenge for the British foisting the poppy on India.’
‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have seen it that way.’
‘So if Mr Griffiths found out somehow and tried to stop it, that might have been a reason for killing him?’
Tom didn’t answer, but I knew he must be thinking, as I was, about that late-night visit by the Indian gentleman. We dropped him off at Mr Tillington’s house, where he was staying. The attack on the old man hadn’t been repeated, but Tom said he was still shaken. He was sorry to have left him alone so long. Tom promised to come to Abel Yard in the morning. There were no lights showing in the house, so Amos and I said we’d wait while he made sure that all was well inside. He was to signify it by waving a candle at the window of his room on the first floor. He let himself in with his key. A few minutes later the candle moved from side to side and we went slowly on our way, the horse as tired as we were. I’d asked Amos to draw up outside the gateway to Abel Yard, so as not to wake anybody inside. It was nearly midnight by then. He got off the box to help me down.
