‘And have you? Discovered something, I mean?’
‘Perhaps. This gold necklace holds a key. It unlocked a drawer in the dressing table in Mrs Johnson’s bedchamber. That drawer was empty when I searched the house.’
‘Meaning the killer emptied it?’
‘That was my initial conjecture. The necklace has some blonde hair tangled within it. Mrs Johnson also had blonde hair.’
‘Ergo, the key was hers, and whatever was in the drawer was hers.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Ergo, whatever she had in there she kept secret from her husband.’
‘Possibly, sir. Even probably.’
‘Such as correspondence with Captain Suttle.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘A love affair?’
‘That is possible. Mrs Suttle alluded to the possibility of inappropriate encounters in the past. As I said, I thought at first the killer must have taken the contents of that drawer. But now I wonder if Amy Beavis removed them, and was killed for it.’
‘Eh? This did not come out at the inquest.’
‘It is mere speculation on my part. But something was taken from the girl’s home, I am sure of it. An etching had been hung on the wall, recently, which has now been removed. I wonder if Amy, on discovering the bodies, removed the key from her mistress’s neck, opened the drawer and took the letters, hoping to make use of them. She may even have written to Captain Suttle’s widow. I would wager that whoever killed Amy went to see her with the pretence of paying for whatever she had placed behind that etching. He offered a celebratory drink but then poisoned it, and left with whatever Amy had hidden.’
‘The letters, perhaps?’
‘Yes. The letters.’
‘Which must, surely, have revealed a plot of some kind.’
‘Such would be my estimation.’
Horton was acutely aware of Abigail’s presence. She had not been in this room before now, and he was astonished to find how discountenanced he was by her being there. This was the room in which Horton and Harriott did their work. He felt himself watched and considered.
‘It seems clear, does it not, sir, that there is conspiracy here?’ he said to Harriott.
‘Clear? Nothing about this is clear.’
‘But the Company . . .’
Harriott bristled a little.
‘The Company is very much like a nation unto itself: its own governance, its own army, its own rules,’ he said. ‘It must be expected that any encroachment from outside authorities will be resented.’
‘Indeed so. But I suspect that this goes somewhat further than that. There seemed to be a determined effort to hide anything unusual that might have occurred in the private trade office.’
‘And your hypothesis is that this may relate to the correspondence removed from Mrs Johnson’s dresser.’
‘Yes, sir. I have become convinced that the Johnsons were taken away and killed and then returned. Perhaps the killer wanted to stop Johnson investigating certain Company matters. Or perhaps he wanted information on what Mrs Johnson did or did not know. But whatever he was after, he wanted that search hidden beneath the outcry that the return of the Highway killer would spark. The maul was left for us to find, but this maul was new. I suspect its first use was in this act. It did not kill anybody. They were already dead.’
Rat sat in the chair by the fire, snoring softly to himself. His clean skin glowed orange and white in the flickering light. The parlour which had seemed darkly alien to Horton as he’d searched it for signs of violence was now cosy. That odd whiff of domesticity that had come to him in the magistrate’s office had accompanied them home. The former mutineer, the former nurse, the street urchin. An odd family indeed.
‘You will not apologise, Charles Horton,’ Abigail said, putting her hands over his as they sat at the table by the window. A candle sputtered light into the room, and danced in the glass of the outside window.
‘Your safety has been endangered by my activities,’ said Horton, looking at the shadows which danced around her young-old eyes that had seen so much these past few years. ‘If I had known it was so dangerous being my wife, and so unfruitful, I would never have married you.’
‘Ah! I see. You married me, husband. But what if I married you?’
She sighed. There was a sadness in here tonight, one he could not quite explain.
‘Charles, our story began with me tending you, did it not?’
Horton nodded. It had. She had been a nurse, he the victim of an attack. He had almost died.
‘Did you woo me, husband? Did you read me poetry or sing me ballads?’
Horton shook his head. Indeed, he had not.
‘No. You lay there barely talking. You were lost and lonely and terribly unhappy. But you noticed things. You noticed the other patients. You remembered the names of the doctors and the nurses. And you noticed me, Charles. I saw you reading my face, taking in my words, placing me in that capacious library which sits between your eyes. I began to think that you had given me a special place in that library. I know not why. And that’s when I began to woo you, Charles Horton. I wanted to see where you had placed me.’
Rat snored, gently.
‘I chose you, Charles Horton. And you were not an auspicious choice, all those years ago. You have improved, somewhat, like a good wine. And yet you persist in believing you press-ganged me from a happy life into a dangerous one. Not your choice, husband. Mine.’
‘And yet – you are in danger.’
‘We are all of us in danger, husband. You as much as anyone. Would you have me run away and hide?’
‘A few days in Sheerness would . . .’
‘Oh, you and Sheerness!’
She smiled, but was angry nonetheless. Brown eyes gazed at him from under blonde hair.
‘You mentioned nothing of Dr Dee today, husband.’
‘Indeed not. Mr Harriott does not react well to talk of wizards.’
‘You do not believe Dee’s life to have a bearing on the case?’
‘How can it? Most likely, Johnson came across a reference to Dee’s time in St Helena, and decided to investigate further.’
‘Most likely.’ She smiled a wicked smile. ‘But – is it not intriguing?’
‘I have the most unyielding sense that I am being passed messages by whoever is behind all this. Have you discovered anything new in your reading today?’
She sighed, and he remembered how unhappy she had seemed the previous day when Rat first came, as if something unpleasant had occurred to her while he had been at his work.
‘Only that I understand nothing of what these Elizabethan men believed,’ she said. ‘I cannot unwrap the odder parts of the Mathematicall Preface. I have resorted to the work of a man Dee refers to with admiration – but only because his book has been translated into English. I wish I had Latin!’
‘Who was this other man?’
‘He was called Henry Cornelius Agrippa. He was German, and denounced as a black magician during his lifetime. I could try and relate to you his cosmological view, but it would make as little sense to you as it does to me. He asserts truths rather than proves them – it is as if he is describing a different reality. He believes the stars and planets revolve around the Earth, and exert influence on everything here below by their rays. He thinks he can talk to angels. His life seems to be a mess of secret texts and hidden meanings and arcane symbols. He was, it seems, a profound influence on Dee. I think they both believed that man could be perfected somehow; that he could become one with God.’
‘A blasphemous suggestion, no? Where did you discover all this?’
Abigail smiled, a secret expression that worried him profoundly.
‘I asked certain people.’
‘You should be careful, wife. We may be modern in our thinking, but such talk of dark arts may attract the wrong form of attention.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly, Charles. No one takes notice of one such as me talking of things like this. I am not By
ron.’
Arcane symbols, Abigail had said, and he remembered the bodies in the Police Office, that strange symbol which had disturbed him so.
‘You may not be Byron,’ he said. ‘But five people with links to each other are now dead, and I have no conception as to how they were killed, or indeed even why they were killed. There may be secret meanings in the works of this German, Agrippa. But there are secret meanings in the works of our own perpetrator, wife.’
She nodded at that, sadly, as if he had expressed a hidden but melancholy truth.
‘Perhaps these dark arts are as dangerous as you say, husband,’ she said. ‘I shall return to my Bible and my lectures.’
‘Is all well with you, wife?’
She looked out the window, and did not answer at first.
‘I do believe so, yes,’ she replied, unsatisfactorily.
CONSTABLE HORTON LUNCHES WITH MR LAMB
The next day, Horton met with Charles Lamb at a coffee house just around the corner from East India House. He had written to Lamb the previous day to arrange the meeting, and had received a letter in reply with surprising alacrity. Lamb, it appeared, had been waiting to hear from him.
It was a little place, an adapted residence with tables and chairs in what must once have been the parlour. Lamb was sitting in a private room at the back of the place, to which Horton was led by a waiter with some display of subterfuge.
‘You are worried lest you be seen with me,’ said Horton as he sat down.
‘In duh-duh-deed,’ said Lamb, smiling happily through his stammer. ‘And wuh-wuh-we are just two men among duh-duh-dozens here.’
Lamb had ordered wine. He was excited. After downing an entire glass of wine, and pouring himself another, he winked at Horton.
‘The suh-story is beginning to fuh-focus, constable. Last night my house was broken into.’
It was an unexpected statement, and an alarming one given the events at Horton’s own home, but Lamb did not seem at all vexed by his news.
‘Was anything stolen?’ Horton asked.
‘No. But my no-no-notebooks and ledgers were looked at. Some old stories and essays of mine is all they would have fuh-found. The contents amount only to whimsy and confusion.’
‘Are you married?’
‘No. I live with my sister. She, fortunately, was not at home. They may have been watching the house, waiting for her to leave.’
More eyes were watching more houses than he had thought. It was not a happy idea.
‘Has anything like this ever happened before?’
‘Of course not! This is obviously a direct consequence of my enquiries. Someone has noticed.’
‘You have been making enquiries? Into what?’
‘I have been busy, Constable Horton! On your behalf!’
‘Lamb, I have no wish to . . .’
‘Now, now, now, constable, enough. I have my bolt holes, you know. Southey is in the Lake District. If things become too hot, I shall make for the North.’
‘But will that not cost you your position with the Company?’
‘Not if I have information which can protect me, it won’t.’
He pulled out a piece of paper.
‘I have discovered something interesting. In your letter of yesterday, you told me this Captain Suttle had been an assistant treasurer in St Helena. As it happened, I had already discovered that.’
‘When?’
‘Just in the last day or two. I should add that I had never heard of the position of assistant treasurer. It has never been mentioned in any correspondence I have seen relating to St Helena, and I believed I had seen it all. I have never heard a similar title in any of the Company’s territories.’
‘So, Suttle was lying?’
‘No. He was not lying.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because, earlier this month, the Company sent a new assistant treasurer to St Helena. He left on the Arniston, sailing from the Isle of Dogs on May the third. I found the order requisitioning a berth for a Captain Burroughs, and some related correspondence. I do believe it was hard for whoever organised this to keep things quiet – it is unusual for an Indiaman to stop in St Helena on the outward track.’
‘Wait a minute – did you say Burroughs?’
‘Yes.’
‘The same name as Alderman Burroughs?’
‘Robert Burroughs? The gold broker? Ah, I had not considered that possibility. The name is a common enough one.’
‘Alderman Burroughs is a Proprietor of the Company.’
‘Indeed. One of the greater ones, too.’
‘Tell me, what is the role of this assistant treasurer?’
‘Constable, I have no idea.’ Lamb sipped from his wine again, the mouthfuls smaller now his stammer had been calmed. ‘Absolutely none! The Company keeps copious records of all its personnel, and everyone has a job to do, in the service of the Company’s chief aim.’
‘Which is?’
‘The enrichment of the Proprietors, of course.’
‘But there is no account of the role of assistant treasurer?’
‘There is no official record of it whatsoever. It is only alluded to, in passing, in other documents – ships’ requisitions, property deeds and the like. As far as I can work out, Captain Suttle travelled to St Helena in 1808, and returned in 1814. He seemingly replaced a fellow called Captain Thomas Campbell. This Campbell had himself travelled out in 1801, replacing Captain Robert Fox, and the ledger says he was to take up Fox’s position but doesn’t mention what that position was. Fox went out in 1792, replacing Captain Stephen Jenkins, who went out in 1780. That’s as far back as I’ve been able to go in the time, because I also wanted to see what had happened to these men.’
Lamb had written the names and dates down carefully on a single sheet of paper. He was, thought Horton, now the very model of the clerk, if a slightly inebriated one. A waiter came in with food.
‘I looked back into the records of payment for these officers, Horton. It makes for interesting reading.’
Another swig of wine, and then Lamb spied the food. He wolfed down a forkful, which he swallowed with yet another swig. His manic excitement was smoothed beneath the clerical detail he had unearthed. Horton looked at the piece of paper Lamb had handed him. Names, numbers, titles and dates swirled before his eyes, like a Bath ball in which everyone was dancing to a different tune.
‘The Company pays wages and pensions to all its officers, and these are all recorded,’ continued Lamb. ‘All these men received pensions on their return, but there is something very unusual about those pensions.’
‘And what is that?’
‘They were astonishingly large.’
‘By what standards?’
‘By any standards you care to choose. These men were rich, Horton. Such men as these are not supposed to be rich. They were militia men, essentially. They did not involve themselves in private trade. They were enriched by the Company itself. There is no whiff of embezzlement or fraud about this matter. These men were simply paid huge sums. It is not immediately obvious in the records, for the sums are distributed across several ledgers. There has been a careful attempt to hide the payments. But if you know they are there, they can be found.’
‘Could Benjamin Johnson have found them?’
‘He did find them, Horton. Ledgers have to be signed out of the Archives. On each of the ones I looked at, the last man to sign them out was B. Johnson. I requested a list of all the ledgers Ben had signed out in the last twelve months. There are dozens and dozens of them. It will take me months to read them all. But I am starting today.’
‘Lamb, you must not put yourself in any danger.’
‘Do be quiet, Horton, you are not my aunt. And besides – there is one other thing. It may be my imagination running away from me – it has a tendency to do so – but I find it striking that none of these former assistant treasurers is receiving a pension any longer.’
‘The Company has stopped paying the
m?’
‘Yes, Horton. The Company has stopped paying them. Because they are all dead.’
He sat waiting in the same place he had waited with magistrate Harriott, inside the throat of the Leviathan. It was some days after his lunch with Charles Lamb and, once again, East India House had swallowed him up. The same clerks scurried in and out of the gigantic doors, and he tried to see into their faces, tried to calculate the odds of any of these men being paid to follow him, or Abigail, or even Charles Lamb. What was known about what he knew? Did the Company perceive him clambering about upon and within it? And how might it respond?
He didn’t wait very long. Elijah Putnam appeared within two minutes of his arrival, his heron’s head nodding as he walked. Horton calculated Putnam’s private trade office, deep within the guts of the building, was a good deal further than two minutes away. Perhaps the man had been waiting for him, watching as Horton showed his card to the same servant he had spoken to with Harriott?
‘Constable,’ said Putnam. His face was cold. The welcoming fellow from his last visit was gone forever it seemed, replaced by the careful individual he had said farewell to on the previous occasion. Putnam now reminded Horton strongly of Alderman Burroughs.
‘Putnam,’ he replied.
‘You have questions to ask me? You left somewhat precipitously last time.’
‘Certain matters have come to my attention, Putnam. Regarding the assistant treasurers of St Helena.’
Putnam smiled. He was not surprised. He knew what Horton had discovered. Horton found himself wondering where Charles Lamb was, today.
‘Come with me, then, if you please,’ said Putnam.
Horton looked at him, and at the crowd of clerks that flowed around them. He thought of the long corridors down to the private trade office, the anonymous doors off the corridor, the shadows and the corners.
‘I think, if you please, that we should talk here,’ he said. ‘We have no need of a private room.’
The Detective and the Devil Page 12
