A Conspiracy of Paper bw-1

by David Liss

  Adelman’s companion nearly spat at the image of our complaisance. “Do you dare to threaten the South Sea Company?” he barked.

  “No more so than this Company has threatened us. Let me make you a counteroffer. This woman will sign a paper swearing never to reveal her knowledge of forged stock, and submit to you all forged issues she possesses. She will do this in exchange for five thousand pounds.”

  Miriam had not so much composure that she did not let out a gasp at the mention of that sum—an amount surely beyond what she dreamed of ever having at her disposal; she did not understand that an opulent fortune for her was but a pittance for a company that in months to come would offer a gift of millions of pounds to the government in exchange for the right to do business.

  “Five thousand pounds? Are you mad, sir?” the gruff fellow barked.

  Adelman, however, played the more diplomatic role, and I saw immediately that he was relieved to have escaped so cheap. “Very well, Weaver. Miriam, will you agree to sign a document? If you forfeit, then you will be considered to be in default of your agreement and you will owe the Company five thousand pounds, for which I can assure you we shall prosecute.”

  The lady had regained her composure. “I accept your terms,” she said calmly, though I believed ready to sing with relief and excitement.

  “Now,” Adelman said to Miriam, “would you wait outside for a moment while we conclude our business with Mr. Weaver?”

  No sooner was she out of the room than the unpleasant man began to shout at me in an animated fashion. “You must believe you are beyond our grasp to have challenged us thus, Weaver, but let me assure you that this Company can destroy you.”

  “As you destroyed my father, Michael Balfour, and Christopher Hodge, the bookseller?”

  “Nonsense,” Adelman said, waving a hand about the air. “You cannot believe that the Company orchestrated these crimes. The very notion is absurd.”

  I believed him right, but I would not avert my gaze. “Then who did?”

  “Why, I should think you would know that by now,” he said casually. “Martin Rochester.”

  I suspected they were testing me, attempting to learn what I knew. “And who is Rochester?”

  “That,” Adelman said, “we are as anxious to learn as you. We only know that it is a pseudonym used by a clumsy purveyor of false stock. He is but an insignificant forger who has fooled a small number of people—women such as Mrs. Lienzo, who know nothing of the Exchange.”

  “That is a lie,” I said. “Rochester is more than an insignificant forger, and I shall wager that he has fooled more than a small number of white-gloved ladies.” Miriam had received dividends, which could only mean that someone had helped Rochester to falsify records as well as stock. When my father saw her issues, he understood at once what they signified. This forgery can only have been perpetrated with the cooperation of certain elements within South Sea House itself, he had written. The Company is as a piece of meat, rotted and crawling with maggots. “Tell me,” I said with a grin. “What has become of Mr. Virgil Cowper?”

  “We hardly keep track of our clerks,” the South Sea man barked with unexpected venom. “I care nothing for your foolish questions.”

  “So what is it you want of me? What further threats do you offer? Need I fear more violence and theft that you can keep your secret?”

  Adelman and his companion exchanged glances, but it was Adelman who spoke. “You have correctly surmised that we wish to keep the matter of the stock quiet, but we shall not threaten you. And I know nothing of matters of violence and theft.”

  “You would impose on me to believe that you did not attempt, in any way, to suppress a pamphlet written by my father that would have exposed the existence of the forged stock?”

  They exchanged looks once again. “Until this moment,” Adelman said, “I did not know your father intended to write such a pamphlet. I cannot believe he would have been so reckless. If you have come across such a thing, I suspect it is yet another forgery.”

  I did not know if I should even credit the possibility. The manuscript had looked to me to be written in my father’s hand, and I should think that my uncle would have recognized a forgery, but my enemies were certainly expert forgers. Still, it was no forged fire that had killed Christopher Hodge, my father’s printer; and it was no forged thief who had taken the only copy of the manuscript from my room. Someone was desperate to hide all traces of this document.

  “There is ample evidence that tells me the pamphlet was real,” I announced.

  “That evidence has been planted,” Adelman said wearily, “to deceive you.”

  I shook my head. I would not believe it. “And you have nothing more to tell me that will help me find who killed my father?”

  “We are not here to help you, Weaver,” the unpleasant man spat.

  Adelman held up his hand to silence his companion. “I fear not, Mr. Weaver. Except to assure you that our enemies have been using you. I suspect the hand of the Bank of England.”

  “That is rot,” I hissed. I had been engaged in this business far too long in order to believe that I had been led astray from the first. Nevertheless, I could not quite banish Adelman’s words, and they filled me with anger at myself and him and almost anyone whose name came to mind.

  “I warned you of this, you may recall,” Adelman continued. “We sat in Jonathan’s and I told you that you could not see yourself in the maze, but the game-masters would see you and lead you astray. And so it has happened. Everything you have worked so hard to discover is a lie.”

  “Nonsense!” I proclaimed, hoping to silence their lies with the force of my conviction. “I have discovered that the South Sea Company has been violated by forgeries, and that is not a lie. I have discovered that this Rochester, who certainly killed my father, is behind these forgeries.”

  “It is more than likely that this Rochester shadow, while a blackguard, has nothing to do with your father,” Adelman said softly. “Our enemies only wished you to think otherwise that you might expose this forgery to the public.”

  “I shall not have it,” I said adamantly, as though by summoning a force of will I could dispel these ideas. I wanted to grab Adelman by the throat and squeeze until he admitted the truth. I suppose I wanted to believe that the truth was precisely that accessible.

  “You may choose to believe what you wish, but if you seek the answer to your father’s death, you cannot but know that you have been led astray. Do not grow angry with yourself; our enemies are clever and wealthy—and they surely are our enemies, for they have sought to do us both wrong. And after all, did you ever really believe that the South Sea Company, so in need of the approval of the public and of Parliament in order to transact our business, would engage in activities of so despicable and villainous a nature, to associate ourselves with murder—murder, Mr. Weaver—at the risk of losing business that would serve the nation and enrich our directors?”

  I had no answer. I could not make myself credit his words, but I could think of nothing to refute them.

  Adelman saw the expression upon my face, and believed me defeated. “And so, Mr. Weaver, this is where we find ourselves. You are not to be the Company’s ally, but that does not mean you are to be its enemy. Should you have further questions, you may call upon me. I do not wish you to make any more scenes or perpetuate these dangerous lies. You have been an effective agent for Mr. Bloathwait and the Bank of England. If by being more open with you we can make you less dangerous to our reputation, then we shall do so.”

  He opened the door. “I bid you a good day, sir.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  MIRIAM COULD NOT have been more delighted with her prize, but I had difficulty sharing in her joy. I allowed her to thank me for my help, and I placed her in a hackney and then retired to a tavern to think on my situation. If I had learned anything since beginning my inquiry, it was that these men of finance were skilled in the arts of deception, but I now found myself so deep within their il
lusions that I could no longer be sure what was real and what was mere fiction. Did the men of the South Sea Company lie boldly to my face to obscure their crimes, or was I a victim of Bloathwait’s machinations to destroy a rival company? And if Bloathwait had been willing to deceive me in order to help ruin the South Sea, was it possible that he had been willing to kill my father, Balfour, and Christopher Hodge? With millions of pounds in the balance for the company that serviced the government’s loans, was it unthinkable that the Bank of England would commit these crimes in pursuit of such profits? I had believed as much of the South Sea Company. And if my enemy were the Bank and not the Company, then was my pursuit of Rochester misguided all along?

  I attempted to drive the doubts from my mind by entering once more into the thick of the inquiry. I returned to Kent’s to discover if anyone else had come by in response to the advertisement and there received two names and addresses. Neither proved of any use—merely parasites who attempted to extort money from me by pretending to information they did not possess. After leaving the second house, I thought hard on my next move. I could not simply go back to my uncle’s; I could not remain still. I found the nearest alehouse, and drank quickly as I thought hard.

  I had to find Rochester, or find that which called himself Rochester. I knew of but two people I believed could point me toward this person or persons, and Jonathan Wild I dare not trust, so I would make the other tell me what I wanted to know. Without bothering to finish my ale, I rose to my feet and departed for Newgate once again to interview Kate Cole.

  I could offer her nothing to make her help me, and I blush to own that I did not entirely dismiss the use of violence to convince Kate to cooperate. Perhaps the idea was not fully formed, but I believed that I would not leave her cell until she told me all she knew of Martin Rochester.

  When I reached Newgate, I marched toward Kate’s cell and banged with violent intent upon her door. Nothing, no evasion on her part, would prevent me from learning what I wished to know.

  When the door opened, I found myself facing a plump fellow with narrow, slitlike eyes and a mouth stained with rich red wine. For a moment I felt some embarrassment at barging so rudely into Kate’s closet when she had a guest, but this was no time for good breeding. I ignored the fellow and pushed hard upon the door, which opened to reveal not Kate, wallowing like a sow in her filth, but a woman as plump as the man and a pair of plump children, all gathered around a little table, eating their afternoon meal.

  My embarrassment returned. There was no mistaking that this closet was Kate’s. “Where is the woman who resided here?” I asked, some conciliation creeping into my voice.

  “No idea,” the man replied, and observing that my business was concluded, he slammed shut the door.

  It was not yet time for a session at the Old Bailey, so she could not have been brought to trial. Had she sold her room for more ready cash?

  “Where’s Kate Cole?” I demanded of the first turnkey I could find. “I must see her.”

  “ ’Fraid yer can’t see ’er,” the turnkey told me, “or even if yer could, she couldn’t see yer. What with ’er being dead and all.”

  “Dead,” I sputtered. I felt, I don’t know what—faint, perhaps. I felt that death was all around me. That my enemies knew everything I knew—they anticipated my plans before I even thought of them. “Of what is she dead?”

  “Of ’anging by ’er neck.”

  “But there was no trial yet,” I argued.

  “Yer just don’t get it, do yer? She ’anged ’erself in ’er fancy cell, she did.”

  “Self-murder?” I judged it inconceivable that someone like Kate would be capable of the despair required to contemplate self-murder. And even if she were, would she not wait to see the results of her trial before abandoning hope? “You are certain it is self-murder?”

  “That’s what the coroner said it is.”

  My mind raced to ask the questions that would allow me to know who had done this. “And did she have any visitors immediately prior to her death?”

  “Not as I know of.”

  “Is there someone else who would know?” I snapped. “Another turnkey perhaps?”

  “Not as I know of.”

  I placed a shilling in his hand. “Do you know now?”

  “No,” he said, “but thank ye for yer generosity.”

  THERE WERE NOW four murders. Kate Cole had not hanged herself; if I were to think on what was probable, I could only believe that Kate Cole would rather have lived to spit in the eye of the hangman than to take her own life. No, Kate had been caught in the same web that had caught my father, Michael Balfour, and Christopher Hodge, the bookseller. I now understood more clearly than I ever had that Elias was right. The new finance had produced an unstoppable power on a scale that I could not even comprehend. I had been searching for a man, or perhaps a cabal of men, who sat somewhere plotting out evil deeds, executing them, perhaps with a chilling callousness. Now I no longer believed that one man or even one group of men were responsible. There were too many connections, too many avenues of villainy. Too many men had too much power and knowledge, but none could be made to answer for their crimes because they hid themselves in endless mazes of deceit and fiction. It was, as my father had written, a conspiracy of paper that allowed these men to prosper. They inscribed their fictions upon banknotes, which the world read and believed.

  My stomach was empty, and I felt quite lightheaded, so I stopped into a tavern to take some refreshment. When I sat, however, I found myself in no mind for food, so I called for a mug of a thick ale. And then perhaps I called for another. I suppose by the time I had my fourth mug of ale, all on an empty stomach, I had turned from dejected to morose. I now contemplated the sorrow of not being ten years younger than I was, of having brought about the death of Kate Cole, of having shot Jemmy, of having turned my back on my family. In such a mood I at last returned to my uncle’s house on Broad Court. I settled comfortably in the dark of the parlor, conveniently close to a bottle of Madeira, of which I partook as I tried once more to understand all I had seen.

  I sat in the dark I don’t know how long, but the sound of someone descending the stairs shattered my stupor. I had been in my trade and on the more dangerous side of the law too long not to recognize the sound of someone walking with the hope of making no noise, so I set my glass down upon the table and slowly pushed myself to my feet. Once at the doorway, which afforded me a fair view of the staircase, I saw Miriam creeping down the stairs. She wore a greatcoat over her gown, and she had all pulled up past her ankles so she could take each step with quiet care.

  I held myself back until she moved past the parlor and then to the front of the house, which she skillfully—and I could only assume that she was not without practice—maneuvered noiselessly and then stepped out into the courtyard.

  I waited only a moment before following, and saw that she entered a hackney that was a few yards past the entrance of my uncle’s house.

  The hackney began to roll down the street, and I then sprinted after it, making my way as best I could upon an injured leg, and, as I had done once before when following Deloney, I leapt onto the back of the coach. In the cover of the London darkness, I hardly needed to pay the coachman for my ride, so I crouched low that he would not see me, and held on as the carriage rode in the direction of Spitalfields. I hoped it would not be a long ride, for I had not the protection of an outer coat, and I grew cold quickly.

  The hackney soon stopped on Princes Street, and Miriam hurried into a public house. At least, I noted with some relief, it had the looks of a respectable place, but I could still hardly check my concern. I waited a moment, rubbed my hands together for warmth, and then entered, keeping close to the door in case Miriam was still in full sight. She was not. Here was a cozy sort of place with a warm fireplace and a collection of middling tradesmen, and some ladies too, scattered about the tables. I saw nothing of Miriam, so I approached the tapman, gave him a coin, and learned that she had met a
gentleman in a room on the second floor.

  I climbed the stairs and found the room the tapman had specified. The door was closed, but it was also none the sturdiest, so I knew that even if it were locked, I should have little difficulty making my way inside. I pressed my ear to the door, and I heard voices, but I could little tell their disposition. Another door opened, and I stepped away, that I might now look like a madman, but I think I attempted this masquerade unsuccessfully, for the gentleman who emerged down the hall cast me the most suspicious look as he squeezed past me and descended the stairs.

  I could hardly endure the thought of standing here all night, lurking in the halls while patrons cast me suspicious looks, so I formed a strategy. That is to say, I turned the doorknob, and finding it yielded to my pressure, I opened the door.

  Miriam and Deloney stood facing each other at a small distance. I cannot say how pleased I was to see that they were both red with anger and not, as I had feared, tangled in a lovers’ embrace. Both stopped speaking as I entered the room and closed the door behind me.

  “Weaver,” Deloney spat. “What is this outrage?”

  “What are you doing here?” Miriam stammered.

  I could not stand to see her uneasy, but could stand even less to think that whatever conflict they had might eventually resolve itself, so sowed some bitter seeds for Deloney. “You did ask me to wait a quarter of an hour before entering, did you not?” I asked Miriam. “Have I come too soon?”

  Miriam knew not how to respond to my ruse, but she hardly had to.

  “What do you mean by this?” Deloney demanded of her. “You so little trusted me that you felt the need to bring in this ruffian. I cannot endure this.”

  “You cannot endure?” I moved forward, and Miriam stepped out of my way. I saw at once that her rupture with Deloney was complete, for she did nothing to stop me or temper my approach. “What is it that you cannot endure, Deloney? The thought of having tricked this woman out of her money or that of having done business with a murderer?”