The Poisoned Island (18 page)

“He seems to have an uncommon knack for being in the right place,” says Brown. Harriott wonders for a moment if this is a joke or only an observation. He notes that Hopkins must have mentioned Horton in his note to the librarian.

“Constable Horton was following a member of the crew when the bodies were discovered,” says Graham, aware perhaps that Harriott is both irritated and disconcerted by Brown’s dispassionate response. “The man being followed is now being held by Mr. Harriott here under some suspicion. Peter Nott is his name. He has been questioned, and claims to be the chaplain of the ship. What do you know of his character?”

“Peter Nott? I’m afraid I have never heard of the man. But, as you know, I have had little involvement with the practical side of the voyage. But wait—you consider the
chaplain
a suspect?”

Graham looks at Harriott for confirmation.

“Not quite a suspect, sir, no,” says Harriott. “But he is unable to fully account for himself. The circumstances of the killings in Rotherhithe are odd, even bizarre. The deaths were bloody and violent and are, as of yet, unexplained. There is now some urgency.”

“Indeed?”

Brown looks expectant. A question hangs in the air:
and what do you want
me
to do about it?

“I understand that Sir Joseph is the main sponsor of the ship?” says Harriott.

“He is. There are other backers, of course—including, I do believe, Mr. Graham here—but the bulk of the costs were met by Sir Joseph. It is quite a large sum of money, I am led to
understand, although again I must stress I have little involvement with that side of things.”

“Has Sir Joseph been informed of the death of Sam Ransome?”

“He has, Harriott. Although I find it unlikely he would have concerned himself much with the fortunes of the ordinary members of the crew once their employment had been ended.”

It is a brutal assertion, but Harriott sees the sense of it. Why indeed should someone like Sir Joseph Banks spend his time worrying about someone like Sam Ransome?

“The voyage was itself a success?”

Brown frowns, as if puzzled by the question.

“Oh, indeed so. Even now we are in the process of transplanting the seeds and plants to Kew. It is, as I say, a busy time.”

Harriott sees that the librarian has learned from his master. Brown is just exactly as impolite to him as he can get away with, and is making it clear with every sentence that passes that his time is limited, and Harriott is more than probably wasting it.

“My officer has investigated both the rooms of Sam Ransome and the two dead men in Rotherhithe,” Harriott says. “In both cases, it appears the dead men had consumed something before they died. A kind of drink, which left a dry residue.”

Brown stares at him.

“Mr. Harriott, I am bemused by your question.”

“It is a question of timing, Mr. Brown. Your ship returns to London. Three of its crewmen die immediately. What started out as an odd coincidence with one death now looks like a conspiracy. We would like to uncover what that conspiracy might be.”

“And you believe you will find it at the bottom of a dead man’s cup?”

Harriott’s face reddens, and Brown sees immediately the effect of his words. He raises a hand.

“Mr. Harriott, I apologize. I was horribly facetious. You must forgive me. The treasures of the
Solander
have crowded all human considerations from my mind these past few days, and I forget myself. Of course, we must help you and your officers conduct an investigation. What may I do?”

The man’s charm is clumsy and sudden but effective. Harriott responds immediately to it.

“Well, here’s the heart of the matter. I . . . we,”—indicating Graham—“would very much like to meet with Sir Joseph and discuss the voyage with him. It may be that there are matters arising which will help us discover why these deaths have occurred.”

Brown frowns at this.

“It may not be immediately possible, Harriott. As I say, Sir Joseph is much occupied with matters arising from the return of the
Solander
. But I will of course pursue the matter with him. These latest outrages sound truly terrible. If there is a perpetrator attached to the crew, we will want to discover him as much as you.”

“And in the meantime, I wish to tell you that my constable will be interviewing your captain and his crew.”

“Hopkins? By all means.”

Brown is now all cooperation, and agrees to inform Sir Joseph and discover what he can of the dead men and Peter Nott. At no time, though, does he guarantee anything; he is consistently wary. The two magistrates prepare to take their leave of him. Standing, with one hand on his cane, Harriott holds on to Brown’s proffered hand.

“I have been a student of your own voyage of discovery for some time, Mr. Brown,” he says.

“Indeed?”

Brown answers cautiously, as if he had been cornered by enthusiasts before.

“Oh, yes. You have my admiration for the great bravery it must have demanded. Your personal sacrifices must have been beyond description.”

At the sound of the word
sacrifices
something softens in Brown’s austere features, and an emotion creeps in. Sadness, perhaps.

“My sacrifices led to my successes, Mr. Harriott. Others were less fortunate.”

*  *  *

Brown watches the red-faced old man and his elegant colleague climb into the carriage out in Soho Square. The older man is clearly virtually lame in one leg, which (Brown supposes) makes his obvious determination to remain active either foolhardy or brave, or both. He had very much liked the old gentleman, although his request presents a conundrum for the librarian. Should he disturb Banks with this just now? The news of the recent deaths in Rotherhithe is shocking, no doubt, and despite what he said to Harriott it is perfectly obvious why the magistrates would connect Ransome’s death with these new atrocities.

And then this matter of the ship’s chaplain. Brown had been honest about his involvement with the practicalities of the voyage. He did not know the
Solander
had even carried a chaplain, but then he did not know it carried a carpenter’s mate or a cook, either. He simply did not consider these things.

And in any case these assuredly terrible events seem like small things in the face of other matters. Robert Brown slept little the previous night because of concerns arising from the
Solander
, but they were not concerns related to murders or chaplains. These were botanical anxieties, and the biggest of them all was that strange plant he encountered the previous evening, the one which had sprung up several feet within days and which had danced in front of his eyes throughout his interview with John Harriott and Aaron Graham.

The great prison of Coldbath Fields sits on a hill at the northern edge of the City, surrounded on three sides by fields, and facing, on its fourth side, the final paved streets of the sprawling metropolis. Beside it runs a little trickle of water called the Fleet, now tamed beneath a culvert further downstream, but once London’s second river. The fields around the prison are mainly owned by the New River Company, purveyors of a new kind of waterway, one trimmed by the hands of men and not the passage of water. The old river is made redundant as the new river emerges.

The carriage carrying John Harriott back from Soho Square stops at the prison gatehouse just off Bayne’s Row. The place bears an immediate and pressing similarity to the magistrate’s own London Dock, surrounded as it is by an enormous brick wall built barely a decade before that which encircles the dock in Wapping. One place processes goods, the other miscreants, but in both cases these transactions are
masked from an outside world by a solid, impregnable wall. It is so high that a man on foot, or even in a carriage, has little impression of what is within. The only sound from inside the walls this morning is the occasional ringing of a lonely bell, though Harriott has been here at other times when a crowd has been gathered on the little patch of grass outside the gatehouse, screaming and shouting at their brothers and fathers and even mothers within, and the prisoners have screamed back such that the place was a very Bedlam.

Coldbath Fields is the great dock for ne’er-do-wells, a massive machine of criminality dubbed by Sir Francis Burdett, with his knowing talent for a controversial epithet, the “Bastille.” Harriott has no truck with Burdett, whom he considers a slippery newt of a man capable of any iniquity, but he shares many of Burdett’s concerns about Coldbath Fields. Behind that wall, he knows full well, lies an engine of corruption as depraved as any in the Empire.

Harriott had sent the
Solander
’s chaplain Peter Nott to Coldbath Fields following the events in Rotherhithe. He did this with some reluctance, as he always does. He does not trust anyone associated with this place: not the chief warder, nor the governor, nor any of the magistrates. He believes the warders take bribes in return for giving access to prisoners, and is certain that this has materially damaged previous investigations involving his office. The governor of the prison does nothing about this criminality, asserting that his warders are hardworking men. Harriott has been in continuing correspondence with him and the magistrates of the prison for months now, but nothing at all has been done. He has become convinced during the course of this correspondence that the governor and the magistrates know exactly what is going on, and therefore must be profiting from it themselves.

Coldbath Fields has always had a stink of corruption about it. Even at the time of its construction there were stories of magistrates pocketing money meant for building supplies. It is a place neglected by the authorities and the Home Office, despite its recent construction. It has become, very quickly, an embarrassment. Harriott has heard tales from men who were imprisoned there and from honest warders who have retired from the place in disgust: tales of a vast illicit commerce inside the walls, of basements hollowed out to store illegal items, of a shared undertaking between some of the prisoners and their keepers to smuggle and to extort.

But for short periods of incarceration, Harriott has no other options. The Police Office itself has no facilities for imprisonment. So Nott had been brought here yesterday, after a preliminary interrogation by Harriott in the River Police Office. Horton had secured the room in the Rotherhithe boardinghouse, which was now being guarded by a River Police constable. His note had been waiting for Harriott on his return from luncheon with Aaron Graham, accompanied by an impatient tyke who gave him a word-perfect message and then demanded money, claiming to have agreed on the payment of a shilling with Horton. Harriott sent him on his way with tuppence and a clipped ear. He had then composed his own note to Graham, emphasizing that with three bodies now to be accounted for the need was urgent for an audience with Banks, or if not Banks then his librarian.

Horton had returned from Rotherhithe with the chaplain as his prisoner. Horton and Harriott had tried to question Nott, but without success. He had arrived in Harriott’s office in the late afternoon like a visiting foreign dignitary, albeit one who has received a bad scare. He was almost haughty in the way he spoke to Harriott, but the old magistrate saw
immediately that this was a brittle superiority, and in the young man’s eyes he could clearly discern the fear of a lonely, anxious boy.

“What is this place?” Nott had asked, and Harriott had tried to explain the role of the River Police Office and his own position, but Nott had not seemed to understand. He was a strange vision, this foreign-looking fellow in the vestments of an English country vicar, his accent unplaceable. He essentially refused to account for himself in any way, but did throw himself upon the mercies of the magistrate. He claimed he needed protecting, though from what he did not say. He also claimed to have “friends” in the metropolis who would help him if he could only make contact with them. Once again, he did not elaborate, even when pressed hard by an irritated old magistrate.

Eventually, Harriott’s exasperation with the strange man spilled over, and he told Horton to have him remanded to Coldbath Fields pending further interrogation. He and Horton had met again this morning at Wapping, arranging to meet at Coldbath Fields following their own appointments, Harriott’s in Soho Square, Horton’s in the Narwhal in Rotherhithe. Sunday or no, Harriott was not going to delay pursuing this increasingly odd saga. Three murders now, on either side of the river, a combination of the mysteriously serene and the frenziedly barbaric. Yet there seemed to be no motives for the murders, and the only suspect was this strange, dark man who seemed full of fear, as if being pursued by demons only he could see. The viciousness and suddenness of the killings reminds Harriott vividly of the Ratcliffe Highway murders; the comparison is chilling.

Harriott climbs down from his carriage and limps up to the stone gatehouse which fronts the prison. On it are inscribed
the words: T
HE
H
OUSE
OF
C
ORRECTION FOR THE
C
OUNTY OF
M
IDDLESEX
1794.