by Peter Carey
“I do not have time for this,” said Henry Phipps abruptly. He peered around the curtains, then sat immediately down again.
“Ask me the verdict,” Mr Makepeace demanded.
Henry Phipps pointedly ignored him, and turned up the lamp.
“What was the verdict, Mr Makepeace?” asked Percy Buckle.
“English law has always held that you cannot profit from your own crime. A chap cannot inherit the estate of a person he has unlawfully killed.”
“Unlawfully. That is your point, I warrant.”
“Indeed it is,” said Mr Makepeace. “The law has always held that reasonable force may be used in defending one’s own home. Mrs Forsythe was found not guilty.”
“It is too late for this,” said Henry Phipps, but his manner was very sad, and when Mr Buckle advanced upon him, he seemed to have lost all will to resist.
“In a short while,” announced Mr Buckle, “a criminal will break into your house.” He then produced, from the depths of his tweed jacket, a large pistol. “You will shoot him through the heart.”
Henry Phipps stared with horror upon this weapon.
“For God’s sake, man. Are you mad?”
Mr Buckle continued to hold him with his eyes. There was a fixed sort of grimace, almost a rictus, on his face.
“You have a very nice house,” said Mr Buckle, laying the weapon on a nearby table. “It is natural that you would wish to keep your hands on it, so to speak. If Jack Maggs breaks in your door with an axe, you are allowed to shoot him.”
“Why would you think he would carry an axe?”
“What I know, I know,” said Percy Buckle.
“You are certain he will come?”
“I have spoken to his travelling companion’s wife. They are expected in London today or tomorrow. You should wait upon his arrival.”
“I do not know the man.”
“When you are a soldier, Sir, you will be called upon to fight many men you do not know, and for less reason than this.”
“But he has done nothing to me that I should harm him.”
The oil lamp sputtered, and went out. Mr Buckle could see the huddled dark shape of Henry Phipps not three feet from him in the gloom. He was all bent over himself, like a great round boulder that must be somehow levered off the hillside and sent plummeting onto the enemy below.
80
THE RAIN HAD BEEN heavy this last half-hour, but as Mercy let herself in through the kitchen door, it began falling in sheets, flooding the street and cascading down into the area. She leaned her dripping umbrella beside the door, and a small yellow rivulet began to invade the gloomy kitchen. It crossed the floor, making directly for Miss Mott, who was standing at the deal table not more than a yard away.
“I’m very sorry, Cook.”
Miss Mott continued to sprinkle flour, and roll out pastry.
“I was running a message for the master.”
There was a mighty clap of thunder. At this, Miss Mott raised her tightly braided head like a turtle.
“I was on an errand, Miss. It ain’t my fault.”
Mercy now cut her path wide around the cook.
“And where might you be off to now?”
Mercy hesitated. Then, as lightning flashed through the window, she set off briskly up the stairs.
“You come back here.”
“I’ll be back in a moment.”
Whereupon Mercy ran. She left tracks of mud in all six groundfloor rooms without finding the object of her search. The house was unusually cold and dark. She took one of the small wax dips Mr Constable kept in a china bowl in the hallway, but did not light it as yet. She ascended the stairs to the second floor which was queerly deserted. The door to the snuggery was shut.
Please God, let Jack Maggs be returned.
She opened the door. Though it was very dark inside, she had the feeling of someone present. There was a small sound, clear above the sound of the storm: tap, tap, tap. She lit the dip and held it up.
A single sad sheet of paper lay upon the bureau. It was from here that the tap was emanating, like a whispering ghost. She touched the paper, then felt a sharp shock as a drip of water hit the back of her hand.
The roof was leaking. This is what she tried to explain to Miss Mott when the angry cook came to fetch her back to work. The box gutter was blocked again. It was what she told the master when he arrived, soaking wet, a moment behind Miss Mott. Indeed, she stood on his chair and held her finger up to the drooping fabric canopy. She showed them: the drip became a trickle running down her arm.
Then Mr Buckle sent Miss Mott back to her kitchen. He held out his wet hand so he might help Mercy down off the chair.
“He’s back, ain’t he?” he asked Mercy.
“Is he?”
She watched him as he brushed away the mud her shoes had left upon his chair.
“What are you doing skulking round here?”
“The roof’s leaking, ain’t it.”
Mr Buckle took an altar candle from the bureau drawer; it burned with a smoky yellow flame which gave his face, wet from the rain, a strange and ghoulish appearance.
“You tell me where Jack Maggs is hiding or by God I’ll make you sorry, Missy.”
Although rain was now pouring through the ceiling, Mr Buckle did not seem to notice.
“I don’t wish him harm,” he said.
Mercy laughed incredulously.
For answer, he hit her. She did not see his hand but felt the jolt, saw the explosion of sparks inside the darkness of her skull.
She fell back, steadying herself against the paisley drapery. He knelt down with her, bringing the candle so he might peer into her eyes. She saw molten wax spilling onto her apron; she felt the snuggery curtains as wet as sheets upon the clothesline. Resting her cheek against them, she began to cry.
He was sitting upon the little ottoman from which she herself had watched Jack Maggs write his history. Mr Buckle’s moustache was sodden, and his brown eyes glistened with tears. As the water cascaded through the paisley he patted down his side burns, as if to still whatever beastliness had been awakened in his heart.
“I’m sorry, Missy, very sorry. I can’t bear the damage he has done to us. I swear to God I will never hit you again, only tell me: is he hiding in the house next door?”
The water had plastered his hair dark close upon his head, and she could see, through the wet poplin of his shirt sleeves, his dreadful ropy wrists. He made as if to touch her knee. She drew back into herself. He was vile.
“You must not leave me, Mercy.”
“How could I leave you?”
She had a vision of the filthy water sliding behind the wallpaper, creeping down into the dining room below. She pictured all the house below her to be wet, spongy, beyond repair.
“Where would I go? You’ve ruined me.”
“You will always be my Good Companion,” said Percy Buckle with much emotion. “I have taken care of you, have I not? When you have been naughty, have I not forgiven you?”
“I was not naughty,” said Mercy angrily. “And I never would have been alone with him if you had stayed with me in the snuggery. It was not my fault what happened.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“I’ll kill him,” said Percy Buckle quietly.
Mercy rose to her feet. “I know where you was just now,” she said. “I know what you was up to. You went sneaking down to Covent Garden to talk to Mr Phipps.”
Mr Buckle remained seated upon the ottoman. He placed his large hands on his bony knees. “Say you didn’t follow me. That’s all. Say that to me.”
“I didn’t need to follow you. I heard your wicked scheming before you put a step outside. You were plotting with that lard-bag from the Inns of Court again.”
Percy Buckle cocked his head on one side. “My, my.” He made a small round O with his mouth and then covered it with his hand. “You seem to have lost all of your respect.”
“I heard what harm you wish to cause that man.”
“You can have no idea what I intend. I never said what I intended.”
“You just said it, then. You’re going to murder him.”
Mr Buckle did not deny this. “So, something did occur between you?”
“I kissed him,” she responded fiercely.
“In my house?”
“Aye, I kissed him, and he held me here inside this very room. When you left me like the coward you are, I kissed him. And I am not sorry that I did.”
“You are a very brave little miss,” said Percy Buckle with a dangerous smile.
“Hit me again.”
“No, Miss, I will not hit you.”
“Then what will you do?”
Percy Buckle removed the key to the snuggery from his pocket, and held it out to her. “Why, I will present you with this key.”
The water had eased off and was just dribbling down onto the desk. Mercy looked at the key lying in the master’s hand.
“What is this?” she asked. “What would I do with this?”
“It’s the key to the city,” said Percy Buckle sarcastically.
“What do you mean?”
He dropped the key back in his jacket pocket. “You are dismissed,” he said, and remained staring at her with his horrid smirking face until Mercy turned and left the room. She had nowhere to go. As she trod the dark staircase to her attic, she reflected that she was now worse off than when she first arrived.
She bolted the door behind her. She opened the window and climbed out onto the roof.
81
AT THE MOMENT THE two travellers entered that deep green drawing room, Elizabeth Warriner was sitting in a straight-backed chair by the window. She was wearing a dress which was very bright and luminous, like the whites in Henry Bone’s enamel portraits. There was light also in her eyes and this, combined with the angle of her head, immediately bespoke a very intense kind of interest in her visitors, as if she knew that her fate was to be decided by the pair of them.
She placed her tea cup carefully on the sill and rose to meet them. Tobias then came to the fore. He approached her, his hands still manacled inside his pockets.
“Hullo.”
“Hullo.”
She was exceptionally agitated, and for a moment it seemed to Jack Maggs that she would rush into her lover’s arms, but then he saw her gather herself in. She stretched out a hand to tug at the arm of her brother-in-law’s travel-stained coat.
“Something is the matter with your hands, Toby?”
“No, no.” His red lips twisted into a lopsided smile. “A little prank of Master Maggs. Where is my wife, Lizzie?”
“I rather think she will sit with Grandma Warriner until the storm is over.”
“Yes,” said Tobias Oates, staring at her expectantly.
“It will be a big storm,” she said. “The sky is extremely dark. I have been watching it.”
“You are not frightened?”
“Of the storm? Oh no.”
“There is a spot of business I must transact with Master Maggs.”
The girl looked briefly at Jack Maggs, but quickly returned her frank gaze. “Tobias, we really must discuss my trip to France.”
“Yes, I will drink a cup of tea with you the moment this business is concluded. Is the pot fresh?”
“It is rather bitter, as a matter of fact. Mary insisted on making it herself. I tell her she is poisoning me, but she says it is from Rajasthan.”
“Mr Maggs, come up to my office, and we will deal with the contents of the tin box.”
While Jack Maggs judged the gentleman very hard for this offhand behaviour with his beloved, he obligingly followed him up the stairs. It was not until they were both inside the writer’s office that he took Tobias Oates roughly by the arm.
“Go back downstairs,” he demanded. “Kiss her.”
Tobias attempted unsuccessfully to shake himself free.
“She is still a girl,” said Jack. “She is in a terror. Tell her you have the pills, and you will take care of the situation.”
“Then release my hands, Sir.”
“Do not give me orders, mutt.”
“If you do not release my hands I cannot do as you wish, for I do not have hands to give her the pills.”
Jack Maggs took out his dagger, and did that which was required. He cut roughly and watched while Tobias did up his buttons.
“Give her two pills, and when you have done that come back to me. If you run away or leave the house, I will have to hurt her.”
Petulantly, Tobias rubbed the red marks on his wrists. Jack Maggs despised him for a sissy. “Go,” he said. “Do it now.”
“Why would you have me tread this path?”
“You would be a very stupid lad to argue with me.”
“But is this not the very path that brought you and Sophina so much pain and anguish? Is this not what I hear you howling about each time the magnets touch you?”
Jack Maggs put his mangled claw upon his face, clamped his nose, his chin, his jaw, as if he were a dog whose life could be shaken from him. The convict’s rage was very great, and he brought his vile cracked lips very close into the other’s face.
“What else can she do? If she has your baby her life is ruined. This is the only path she has available.”
“I cannot take it.”
“It is not for you, Nokes. It is for her.” And with that he pushed Tobias out the door. Half-way down, the reluctant writer turned and saw Jack Maggs’s massive shadow on the landing.
He made a venomous, impatient sound, which Tobias would remember later as a kind of hiss.
82
IT HAD ALWAYS BEEN Tobias’s method to approach his subject by way of the body. When he had set himself the task of writing about Jack Maggs, he had first produced a short essay on his hands, pondering not merely the fate of the hidden tendons, the bones, the phalanges, the intercarpals which would one day be liberated by the worms, but also their history: what other hands they had caressed, what lives they had taken in anger. He began by picturing the newborn hand resting briefly on its mother’s breast, and then he sketched, in the space of four pages, the whole long story leading towards and away from that “hideously misshapen claw.” This essay he knew to be a jewel, and he had hoarded it like a clock-maker, setting it aside for its small part in his grand machine. Now, with his wrists raw and red from bondage, he had, to put it very mildly, lost interest in his subject: the Criminal Mind had become repulsive to his own imagination.
Yet it was the Criminal Mind which now controlled Tobias. It was at its directive that he must now, this instant, hold his sister-in-law in his arms. Under its orders he placed two pills in that tender white hand and spoke as confidently, nay, as reverently, as if they had been communion wafers. Yet even as he calmed Lizzie’s fears he saw, in the pills’ brown misshapen form, not the salvation he promised, but the excrement of something abominable and verminous.
Then came three loud thumps on the floor above his head. Returning to his office, he found the murderer, legs wide apart, demanding to be presented with his “secrets.” He showed the writer no particular respect; indeed, he occupied his office wholly, the rank oil-skin odour of his coat possessing every corner of the room.
Later Tobias mourned the manuscripts he then so readily destroyed, for he very soon forgot how badly he had wanted Jack Maggs gone from his life. He might have contrived to hold back the best of his treasures, but no, he jumped up and down on chairs and ladders, divesting himself of everything related to Jack Maggs. Here— pigeon-holed at “H”—was the essay on the hands. Beside it, folded in four, were another two pages labelled “Hair.” This Jack Maggs received incredulously.
“This is my hair? All this about my bloody hair?”
“Yes.”
“But nothing else?”
“That only.”
There had been eight magnetic sessions in all, and the record of each one was tied and bundled in
good neat order as you see the clerks do at the Inns of Court. Toby had to stand on his desk top, on tip-toes, to reach, and then he threw them at their subject.
“All this is me?”
“One way or another.”
Jack Maggs, for his part, untied each bundle and, although he did not read everything, he did read a good deal, enough to cause a very great embarrassment to show upon his face.
“My boy must not read this,” he said.
“We burn it,” agreed Tobias Oates. “We burn it now.”
The thunder echoed in the streets. Wind and rain rushed round and round the little garden.
83
LIZZIE SAT IN HER CHAIR. She sat with her novel open on her lap while she endured her terrible thoughts. Sometimes she read a line or two, but there was not a word in Castle Rackrent that could not in some way lead her back to her situation, to that homunculus which, being a creature of her own heart and blood, must be at least dimly aware of its fate. Did it not then, as she did, wait in dread, knowing that its last small hope had been taken from it?
She could not feel the poor creature any more than she could feel the presence of God or His angels, and yet she knew every moment of her life to be ruled by its presence, and even as the storm descended upon them and a mighty wind rushed down Lamb’s Conduit Street, pushing an empty wooden barrel before it, Lizzie sat with her hands resting over her belly.
When she heard Toby’s footsteps on the stairs, she felt no great expectation of comfort from that quarter. He had talked; she had listened. She did not blame him. She had done as he said.
But then she saw he brought that wretched convict back with him, and that the pair of them were carrying all manner of scrolls and piles of manuscript which they dropped, carelessly, before the fireplace. They did not look at Lizzie, or acknowledge her. Thus there was, in their general busyness, a kind of heartlessness.
