A Conspiracy of Paper (41 page)

I thought on this for a moment. Elias had observed that the danger of inquiring into conspiracy is that all manner of misdeeds seem equally implicit. It was surely conceivable that I made too much of my uncle’s business with Mendes.

“I have never had any dealings with Wild,” he continued. “And I have always known Mr. Mendes to behave honorably. I understand your concern, but I could hardly refuse to allow him to pay me what he owes me because you mislike the man. But if you prefer, I shall engage him for no more business until this matter is resolved.”

“I would be most appreciative.”

“Very well, then,” he said cheerfully. “I am glad we resolved this business. I know you did not intend to be overly harsh, but you have worked far too hard upon this matter. I know you do not wish to abandon your inquiry, but you might set it aside for a few days and allow your thoughts to clear.”

I nodded. Maybe he was right, I thought. A few days’ rest might do me some good, but whether they did or no, I thought, I should have little choice, for I could not think of how to proceed until I found out what my advertisement might yield.

Believing the tension had passed, my uncle arose and poured us both a glass of port, which I sipped with some pleasure. I had finished nearly half of it before I realized that I had said nothing about my business at the
Daily Advertiser
and that I had no intention of doing so. It was not that I misbelieved my uncle when he described his dealings with Mendes, but I was not sure I precisely believed him either. He could be the victim of deception as much as any man, and his insistence upon conducting his affairs as he saw fit could blind him to certain truths.

I spoke cheerfully with my uncle, and I enjoyed his conversation, but I declined to inform him of many things: of my suspicions of Sarmento, of Miriam’s wayward and inexplicable behavior, of the attempt upon my life, of the advertisement I had placed, and now of Mendes’s revelation of my father’s communication with Bloathwait. I did not wish to believe that my uncle’s behavior stemmed from anything more than a lifetime of having his own way indulged, but for the nonce my silence felt disturbingly wise.

I
LIVED UPON THE
rack until the next Thursday, when I should see who appeared to respond to the advertisement I had placed. I could ill think of how to occupy my time in this inquiry, and I had no desire to accept new business. Instead I spent my time brooding incessantly over what I already knew and watching the swelling about my face subside. I took notes and made lists and drew diagrams—all of which helped me to understand better the complexity of my search, and none of which, I feared, brought me any closer to a solution.

I chastised myself viciously for not having fully read, fully understood, my father’s pamphlet while I had the chance. I convinced myself all the answers had been therein contained, but even if that were not so, it did contain the words of my father, speaking, if only indirectly, upon the matter of his own death. Now it was lost to me.

At Elias’s invitation I passed one of my free mornings at the theatre at Drury Lane, where I found myself almost entirely distracted. While I watched one scene of Elias’s comedy rehearsed perhaps fifteen times until I felt I could have played each part myself, I found it witty and cleverly acted. Elias strutted about the stage as though he were the theatre manager himself, suggesting to the players different poses and different deliveries. When I was leaving, he gave me a copy of the play, which I later read and found strangely delightful.

I spent that afternoon with my Aunt Sophia, attending her on her social calls and meeting other prominent Iberian Jewesses of Dukes Place. Some of these women were quite young and quite unmarried, and as I spent these stressful hours attempting to make myself understood in Portuguese, I could not but wonder if my aunt was trying to settle me in marriage.

In an effort not to let my investigation run cold in this period of waiting, I visited Perceval Bloathwait’s town house on several occasions, but each time his servant denied me. I left several messages for the Bank of England director, but I received no replies. I greatly wished to know more of this message that Mendes had told me my father had sent to his old adversary, but Bloathwait, it would seem, had decided to have no more to do with me.

I ruminated on how to remedy that situation while I kept myself busy in more mundane tasks: news of my move to Dukes Place had circulated, and a few men made their way to my new home to ask for my help. So I distracted myself by finding a few debtors while I awaited what I hoped, and hoped correctly, would be a fruitful return of our advertisement.

My relations with Miriam had continued to be cool, especially after her inexplicable accusation at the masquerade. I attempted on several occasions to speak with her, but she always assiduously avoided me. One day, after a silent breakfast with her and my aunt, I followed her from the table and into the parlor.

“Miriam,” I began, “tell me why you are angry with me. I do not understand how I have betrayed you.” The only explanation I had summoned was that she was angry that I had discovered her relationship with Deloney, but as I had not circulated the information or used it to harm her, that knowledge could hardly stand as a betrayal.

“I have nothing to say to you,” she announced, and began to depart.

I grabbed her by the wrist—as gently as I could. “You must speak to me. I have searched my memories for something I did that may have hurt you, but I can think of nothing.”

“Do not attempt to deceive me.” She tore her arm from me, but did not move away. “I know why you are here in this house, and I know the nature of your inquiry. Are a few guineas from your uncle—or is it perhaps Mr. Adelman?—worth having established a false intimacy with me? I thought you had returned to your family for some greater purpose than to expose it.”

She ran out of the room; I might perhaps have followed her if I had been able to formulate some idea of what to say. I could think of no reasons or explanations, and I wondered if I should ever understand. I could not have known then that my next conversation with Miriam would clarify far more than the reasons for her anger with me.

A
T LAST
T
HURSDAY
was upon me. The weather had turned significantly cooler, and in the crisp morning air that smelled of impending snow, I made my way to Kent’s Coffeehouse. I arrived an hour earlier than the advertisement indicated that I might establish myself before anyone came to call. I let the servants know who I was, and I sat down with the papers to busy myself until I should be called for, but I found myself too distracted to read with any absorption. I must say that the events at the masquerade had left me apprehensive, for I saw that there was nothing these villains would not do to protect themselves, and there was certainly something reckless about my publishing my defiance of them in the
Daily Advertiser
. Yet I knew that Elias was right, for if I followed up only on the evidence that they had left behind, they would know my thoughts even before I did. Here, at least, was something they had not anticipated.

Every few minutes I looked up to see if someone sought me out, and on one of those occasions I noticed a grim gentleman at another table. He held a paper before him, but it was obvious that he did not read it. Although this man dressed neatly, there was something about the way he wore his wig, the way his coat hung upon his shoulders, and, most strikingly, the fact that he wore thick leather gloves inside the coffeehouse, that made him conspicuous and strange. I felt certain that if I were to remove his wig and look square into his face, I would see someone I had encountered before.

Feeling bold, and perhaps overly animated by a bit too much of Mr. Kent’s coffee, I approached the table and sat down, and as I did so, I knew the man at once. I recognized the hard, cruel, stupid look, as well as the left eye that sat useless in a sea of yellowish rot. For his part, he knew not how to respond to my direct assault and pretended to continue with his reading.

“How is your hand, Mr. Arnold?” I asked. He no longer appeared the same ruffian from whom I had so violently retrieved Sir Owen’s amorous letters. He had cleaned himself up considerably, but the mark of villainy still stained him thoroughly. I was certain he felt no small amount of fear of me, and his fear was not misplaced. We both knew that the violence I had once visited upon him I would not hesitate to repeat.

I sought in my mind to recall if it had been the right or the left hand I had stabbed, for that was the hand I wished to grab. Arnold, however, took advantage of my moment of contemplation, leapt to his feet, tossed a chair at me to slow me down, and ran out the front door. I followed, only a few seconds behind him, but those few seconds were sufficient for him to take the advantage. When I emerged onto the street he was nowhere in sight. With little to lose, I picked a direction and ran, hoping that fortune would favor my search, but such was not the case, and after a quarter of an hour of fruitless searching I abandoned the cause and returned to the coffeehouse.

It was well that I had engaged in that frustrating encounter with Mr. Arnold, for when I returned, winded and looking all askew, I saw the coffee girl in conversation with a young lady, and I overheard her conversation just enough to learn that she was describing my appearance. Had this young lady entered the coffeehouse and seen me in waiting, she would certainly have departed before I knew she had been there, but now I stood, breathing deeply, absently dusting off my coat, while our eyes made contact.

Miriam had come in response to my advertisement.

TWENTY-EIGHT

I
N A STRANGE
mirroring of my motions, Miriam began to wipe her hands upon the hoops of her gown. She looked at me. She looked at the door. She could hardly hope to escape, but the thought, as absurd thoughts do in moments of confusion, surely crossed her mind.

I asked the girl for a private room and a bottle of wine, and we retired into a small and neat closet that offered little more than a few oldish chairs scattered around a table. It was a room of business, and I appreciated that. From the wall, crudely rendered portraits of Queen Anne and Charles II stared at us; there was no mistaking Mr. Kent’s Tory politics.

Miriam sat stiffly in her chair. I poured a glass of wine and set it in front of her. She wrapped her delicate hands around the glass but neither lifted it nor tasted the wine. “I did not expect to see you here, Cousin,” she said quietly, not meeting my eye.

I proved myself less shy than Miriam about the drinking of wine. After taking a long sip, I sat down and tried to decide if it was more comfortable to look at her or away from her. “What is your connection to Rochester?” I said at last. I had hoped to moderate my tone, to sound relaxed, concerned, simply curious. It came out as an accusation.

She let go of her glass and met my gaze. She had the frightened and outraged look of a parish beggar. “What business have you speaking to me thus? I have responded to your notice in the paper. I do not believe that to be a crime.”

“But I assure you murder is a crime, and a very serious one, and it is in connection to murder that I seek Mr. Rochester.”

She gasped. She moved to stand up, but then sat again. Her eyes darted about the room in search of something that would comfort her, but she could find nothing. “Murder?” she breathed at last. “What can you mean?”

“I shall withhold nothing from you, Miriam, but you must tell me what you know of Rochester.”

She shook her head slowly, and I watched her spotted green bonnet sway with her movements. “I know so little of him. I bought—that is to say, I had some funds bought through him. That’s all.” She now drank of her wine, and drank vigorously, too.

“South Sea funds,” I said.

She nodded.

“How did you buy these funds? It is very important you tell me everything. Did you meet him, correspond with him, talk with a servant of his? I must know.”

“There’s so little,” she said. Her fingernails gently scratched on the roughhewn surface of the table. “I—I had no contact with him myself. I had someone who dealt with him for me.”

“Philip Deloney.”

“Yes, it’s been clear to me for some time that you know we . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“That you are lovers, yes. And that he is some kind of petty gamester and jobber.”

“He has bought and sold at Jonathan’s for me,” she explained quietly. “I have so little money, and I needed to try to secure more that I might afford to establish a household of my own.”

I could not but laugh. Elias should have been delighted to hear about this odd commingling of hearts and money, of romance being bought and sold upon the ’Change. Miriam looked at me in puzzlement, and I shook off my mirth, for it was a kind of panicked laughter.

“What is the nature of Deloney’s relationship with Rochester?”

“I know that it is a distant one. Philip has been searching for him and unable to find him.”

“And why has he been searching? Indeed, why are you looking here today?”

“Philip arranged to have Rochester buy South Sea stock in my name. In his name as well.”

“But why? You have a connection, albeit a strange one, with Adelman. Surely you did not need a third party to secure you stock.”

“Mr. Deloney told me that Rochester could get stock at a discount—fifteen, even twenty points below market. I know from Mr. Adelman that the stock is soon to rise, so with the discount, I thought I could secure enough money to move from your uncle’s house. But Philip grew tired of waiting, and needed to convert his stock to ready cash. The agreement was that we were not to attempt to convert the stock for a year from the time of purchase—something having to do with the way in which we received the discount—but Philip wanted silver. He tried seeking out Rochester to find out how he might go about the conversion, and I know not the nature of the correspondence, but I do know that it agitated him severely. He would hardly speak to me of it, only to say that the stock was now but dross. So when I saw the advertisement in the paper, I thought I might learn more.”

“Do you own—that is to say—possess your South Sea stock?”

Miriam nodded. “Certainly.”

I pressed my hands together. “I have hardly heard such good news.”

“Good news? Why should my stock prove good news for you?”

“Take me to the stock, and I’ll show you.”

We left the coffeehouse in a hurry, after telling the girl there to collect the names of anyone else who came in search of me. We returned to the house at Broad Court, and Miriam invited me into her dressing room, where she removed a gold filigree box containing a large pile of thick parchment paper. I first looked at the thinner documents—projecting shares, mainly for the construction of two new bridges across the Thames. I had seen Elias deceived with his projects often enough to recognize mere stuff when I saw it.

“I believe Mr. Deloney has fooled you with these. They are but empty promises.”

“Fooled me?” Miriam stared at them. “Then where has the money gone?”

“To the hazard table, I presume.” I found myself asking the question that I had not thought to articulate. “Is it for this thief that you wished to borrow twenty-five pounds of me?”

“I had given him all I had of my remittance, and I had promised him future remittances,” she said quietly. “I was worth less than nothing after purchasing these.” Miriam’s hand trembled as she then produced the South Sea issues. These were an impressive set of documents, written on the finest parchment in the finest hand. They bespoke their authenticity to all who would but take a moment to glance in their direction.

Nevertheless, I was entirely convinced that they were false.

I knew that Rochester sold false stock, and I knew that Deloney had dealings with Rochester. The inexplicable
discount
that Miriam received only confirmed my suspicion.

From what little I knew of the price of shares, I could see why Miriam was so short of ready money. She had spent five or six hundred pounds on issues not worth five or six farthings. It pained me to tell her that she had destroyed her savings. “I believe these stocks are but forgeries,” I said softly.

She took them from me and stared at them. I could see her thoughts. They looked so very real. She had been a fool to believe those project shares, but these—these looked official, embossed, approved. “You are mistaken,” she said at last. “If they were forgeries, I would not have received a dividend payment, as I did last quarter.”

I felt a kind of cold terror. I slowly lowered myself onto Miriam’s divan and attempted to understand what I had heard. A dividend payment! Then the stocks were not false, and if she had bought them of Rochester, then perhaps Rochester sold only true stock. After all, Virgil Cowper, the South Sea clerk, had told me he had seen Miriam’s name in the South Sea records. I clenched my fists and attempted to understand what Miriam’s dividend payment might mean—and how it might not mean what I most feared: that Rochester was no villain and that I had been mistaken all along.

I reached out and took the papers back from Miriam. My eyes wandered all about the parchment, looking for something I knew not what, some kind of evidence of their falseness, as though I would recognize such a thing were it right before my eyes. I feared my ignorance had led me to this moment—to this revelation of my foolishness. Elias’s probability had yielded nothing but failure.

Miriam took the issues from me again and replaced them in her box. “How can they be false?” she asked, unaware that her information had devastated me. “I would think that if they were forgeries should not a stock-jobber such as your father have seen their falseness at once?”

I pulled myself out of my misery. “My father? He saw these?”

“Yes. He happened to pass by one afternoon when I had them out of the box. I suppose I was daydreaming, thinking about the house I might rent when I sold them. He asked to look at them, and I dared not refuse. I asked him to tell no one, that I wished to keep my speculation a secret, and I hoped he would understand.”

“What did he say?”

“He was very strange. He gave me a kind of knowing look, as though we shared a secret, and said that I might depend upon his silence. I will admit he surprised me because I feared he should tell your uncle about the secret just for the pleasure of doing so.” She lowered her eyes, feeling some sudden shame at having insulted my father. “I’m sorry,” she said.

I would have none of it. Had she told me my father had revealed himself a secret Mohammedan I should hardly have cared. Instead I grabbed her hand and smothered it with kisses. In the hours to come I would think back and laugh at myself, for in that moment I hardly thought of Miriam as a beautiful woman, but as a beautiful bearer of news. My father had
seen
the stocks. And if I had not studied his pamphlet, if I had not read enough of it to even remember it well, I had read enough to understand the nature of Miriam’s stock, and how it was that she had received dividends.

More to the point, I understood now that I had not been a fool and that Elias’s philosophy had served me well—better than I could have imagined.

Miriam pulled her hand from me, but she only just managed to stifle a burst of genuine amusement. “You are either mad or the most changeable man in the world. Regardless, I should thank you to cease drooling upon my hand.”

“I beg your pardon, madam,” I almost shouted. “But you have given me the very news I needed, and I am most grateful.”

“But what is it? Can there be some connection between this stock and your father? What could he have—” She stopped. The blood drained from her face and her mouth slowly slid open into an expression of understanding and horror. “Your search for Mr. Rochester. It’s about your father, isn’t it? Mr. Sarmento was wrong.”

It only then occurred to me that she did not know. I had been so deep within my own inquiry that I thought its nature obvious to all. But Miriam had not known—and she had wondered what my uncle and I spoke about in his study, and she had wondered why I had moved into the house.

I nodded, for I now understood Miriam’s odd behavior had been based upon groundless speculation—her own failed exercise in probability. “Aye. You thought I inquired into a different matter, didn’t you? Sarmento told you something. That is why you were angry. You thought I inquired into you—your money, your intimacy with Deloney.”

She sat down slowly upon a divan and slowly lifted a hand to her mouth. “How could Philip have been involved with something so hideous?”

“That is what I must find out. He may have been in league with Rochester to deceive you, and I don’t know how many others. Perhaps he was deceived himself and never meant any harm.”

“But how could he have been deceived? He himself falsified stocks.” She gestured at the shares of the absurd projects she held. “I knew they were false when I bought them. It was only five pounds now and again, and I could not bear to embarrass him by refusing.”

“You can see these South Sea holdings are of a superior quality. Perhaps the biter was bit. But we cannot take the time to concern ourselves with Deloney. Not now. Our first concern must be to take these shares to South Sea House.”

Miriam put a hand to her mouth. “Surely that is dangerous. If they know we have false stock, will they not act against us?”

“They know we have not falsified this stock ourselves. I believe they have suspicions about Rochester and his forgeries, but until now I have had no proof that these falsifications exist. And I believe they will pay you handsomely for them, for they wish to suppress all evidence of their existence.”

“Would it not be better to try to sell the stock than to risk bringing it to South Sea House?”

I shook my head. “We dare not hold on to these issues. The sooner you remove them from your hands and turn them into ready money, the safer you will be. I believe I may have endangered you, Miriam, and this household, for the entire world now knows that I seek the truth behind Samuel Lienzo’s death, and the world now knows that Samuel Lienzo was my father. Whoever forged the stock may know some of it is in the name of Miriam Lienzo. We must be rid of it at once.”

I allowed Miriam to hold two of the issues, and put the rest upon my person. We then went to the street and procured a hackney to take us to the Exchange.

“You are uncomfortable,” I said, as we approached Threadneedle Street.

Her hands trembled slightly. “I fear something terrible will happen in there,” she said. “That I am to lose everything. You have told me so little.”

“You have done nothing wrong, Miriam. You were cheated, and it happens that in this matter I believe some very wealthy men may be willing to pay for you to keep this cheat to yourself. I have my own interests to pursue in South Sea House, but I am committed to assisting you.”

She nodded, I think more resigned than comforted. And so we made our way into the building. I gently guided Miriam to the office I had previously visited and there I asked to speak to Mr. Cowper, but one of the clerks in the office told me that Cowper had not been in the office in some days. “It’s almost a week since I’ve seen him,” he muttered. “Strange. He used to come to work so regular.”

“Then I should like to speak to someone else on a matter of the most urgent business.”

“What business is that?” His haughtiness told me he liked not my voice. So much the better.

“That of forged South Sea Stock.” I handed the clerk one of Miriam’s issues.

I might have stabbed this clerk through the heart for the reaction my pronouncement generated. Clerks let go their pens in mid-sentence. A pile of ledgers fell to the floor. The man to whom I spoke pushed back his chair, producing a tortured squeal of leg against floor.