Charles Palliser (112 page)

“What?” I exclaimed. “After what you have told me?”

“Oh, not in the way that you fear. When he left the house he was unable to secure the street-door behind him since it had no spring-lock. Someone must have seen him leave, entered the house immediately, taken down the sword as he passed through the side-lobby and gone into the plate-room. He must have found the two gentlemen standing over the strong-box, struck Mr Escreet from behind, killed your grandfather, ransacked the box, and then left by the way he had come. This must have happened so soon after Mr Escreet had spoken to your father that it is not to be wondered at that in his confused state, after recovering his wits, he should have incriminated him.”

“Yes,” I said. “That is entirely possible. Yet it still leaves some of those other questions unanswered. And I believe that regaining the will was the motive for the murder, and therefore that the explanation cannot lie simply in a chance intruder.”

“But my dear young man, I did not mean to imply that your father believed for a minute that the murderer was a mere speculative housebreaker. On the contrary, he suspected …”

He suddenly broke off as we realized that there were people approaching along the passage from the left, for we had been too engrossed in our conversation to hear them until they were almost upon us.

Mr Nolloth moved swiftly away along the passage in the other direction out of my sight. But to my horror, just as lights appeared from the left, I heard Rookyard’s voice from my right say:

“So that’s your game, is it? I guessed there was something of this kind afoot. You’ve been a-bringing him wittles, ain’t you?”

He had crept up upon us while we had been distracted by those arriving from the other direction. As they rounded the corner their lanthorns illuminated him as he pressed himself and Mr Nolloth up against the grille of my door to let them pass. The newcomers — who were the turn-key, Stillingfleet, and a man 516

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I had not seen before — were carrying a heavy burden between them which was hidden from my view by the door.

As they passed us Rookyard, with a nod of the head towards me, said to the stranger:

“This is his boy.”

The man looked at me curiously. “Looks like he’s aimin’ the same way,” he commented.

Rookyard laughed shortly and began to push Mr Nolloth in the other direction. As they went the old gentleman turned back to me an agonised face on which there seemed to be written a feeling much stronger even than regret at his having been discovered. A moment later the passage was deserted and veiled in impenetrable darkness again, and I was left to speculate on how I would survive now, to worry about how my friend would be punished, and to brood on the words that had passed between Rookyard and the stranger.

What had the old gentleman been about to say? That Peter Clothier had suspected that the murderer was someone who had been watching the house on his father’s orders? That made sense for Silas Clothier wanted both to capture his son and regain the codicil — and the will, too, if he knew of its presence in the house. I thought again of Barney! He had hinted that he had killed a gentleman at exactly this date. Perhaps his connexion with the Clothiers went back as far as that. Could he be the murderer of my grandfather?

There continued to be unusual sounds from somewhere far away in the house for an hour or two — gates clanging, feet running, shouts — then the night returned to its earlier silence and I managed to fall into an uneasy sleep.

The Release

Let me return you to that mournful place by the riverside, that area of tumble-down wharves and abandoned warehouses and delapidated landing-stairs — in short, that district which my colleague’s eloquent and fashionable pen could describe so much more vividly than mine.

What a comfortable, not to say absolutely charming scene! The boy is sitting with his feet on the fender and roasting chestnuts on a toasting-fork held at the fire while Mr Vulliamy is slumbering at his desk with his head resting upon his papers.

Then the street-door slowly opens and their employer enters softly and steals on tip-toe across the room. When he is upon the boy he cuffs him suddenly about the side of the head.

At his cries of alarm Mr Vulliamy wakes up and looks around in confusion.

“Damn you, Vulliamy, you were asleep again!” the old gentleman cries. “I don’t pay you to sleep in my time!”

The clerk mumbles blearily and rubs his eyes: “Bless me, sir. I was dreaming about toads and then I wake up and see your face. It’s most upsetting.”

“What in the name of the devil has got into you, Vulliamy?” the old gentleman asks.

“You’re constantly falling asleep these days.” Lowering his face to within a few inches of his clerk’s he sniffs: “Yet you seem not to be fuddling as much as before.”

“I’m sure you’ll find that I’m as wide-awake as you could wish me, Mr Clothier,” the clerk answers. Then he mutters under his breath: “Maybe a deal more so.”

“Eh, what?” the old man asks sharply. “What are you whispering to yourself about?”

But the clerk merely smiles and begins to mend his pen.

“Wide awake!” the old gentleman sneers. “You weren’t wide awake when you stopped Ashburner raising those rents in Hatton-garden.”

“It’s too much, sir.”

“Too much? What gammon is this? It’s my property, isn’t it, to let as I 517

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choose? If they don’t want to pay they can go elsewhere. That’s fair, ain’t it? All I want is justice.”

He breaks off and, lowering his voice with a glance at the boy, asks: “Has it come yet?

Has he sent a message?”

“Who do you mean?”

The old gentleman scowls and whispers: “Him. My son.”

“Why, you know he don’t write to you,” the clerk exclaims.

His employer flinches and seems about to retort, but at that moment a ticket-porter enters the outer office bearing a letter.

Seeing this, the old gentleman grins at his clerk, seizes it and, while Mr Vulliamy settles with the porter, looks at the direction: “It’s from him!” he cries. He glances slyly at his clerk: “You see? He hasn’t forgotten me.”

He beckons him into the inner office where he tears the letter open. As he scans it his face lights up: “The boy is safe! He is safe!”

And yet strangely enough, Mr Vulliamy does not look very pleased at the spectacle of his employer’s exultation.

I awoke early and lay for hours hardly aware of the faint traces of the dawn that crept sluggishly in through the grating. Late in the morning another turn-key, a thick-set man with a pugnacious expression whose name was Skilliter, brought me food. Though I decided that I would hold out a few hours longer, I knew that before the end of the day I would have to eat, let the consequences be what they might.

Just as I was reflecting that it seemed to be my fate to bring misfortune upon any who tried to help me — first Sukey, then Miss Quilliam, and now old Mr Nolloth — I became aware of distant noises. Or were they inside my head? I could not determine this, and then they seemed to recede. The passage in which my cell was located remained silent and deserted until, a little after midday, I heard footsteps approaching and hurried to the grille. Rookyard and Skilliter passed towards my door and I strained to hear their words:

“So the doctor didn’t git the roastin’ what he was a-feared on?” Rookyard asked.

“No, the crowner wasn’t too hard on us. I suppose he reckons he’d miss his Christmas box.”

“Even so, an inkwich don’t do the house no good,” Rookyard commented as they moved out of my hearing.

I could make little of these words. However, my hunger-pangs had by now become so fierce as to drive all other considerations from my mind. I reasoned with myself over and over again: I had no certain proof that an attempt was being made to poison me, while what was certain was that I was facing death by starvation. I was doing my enemies’

work for them!

By late afternoon I had resolved to eat some of the porage and was just on the point of doing so when I heard steps approaching, and in a moment Skilliter had unlocked my door and swung it open for Dr Alabaster to enter.

He looked at the untouched platter and said: “You still persist in your obstinacy?

Then so be it.”

THE RELEASE

519

He smiled unpleasantly and nodded to the turn-key who seized me and pushed me before him. Followed by Dr Alabaster, we went along the passage in the direction of the main block of the house, climbed some stairs, and then passed quickly through a day-ward. A number of inmates were assembled there, some writing letters, playing cards, or reading, but others sitting alone and staring blankly before them. One old man was rubbing his hand up and down his face so savagely that the skin was quite red and raw with the friction. Several were wearing strait-waistcoats and one gentleman was chained to the wall and peaceably reading a newspaper as if at his own club.

Just as I was shoved out through the door, I caught sight of Mr Nolloth, who was sitting in a corner alone. He looked up and I saw from his red and swollen eyes that he had been weeping. Worse than this, he directed towards me a gaze of such sadness that I shuddered as if at an ill premonition.

I had turned my head and dragged my feet to watch him for as long as I could, but Skilliter, with an oath, hit me on the side of the head and I had to turn away from the last sight I ever had of the brave old gentleman.

We passed along a draughty passage into a cold, damp outbuilding that might long ago have been a dairy, and came to a locked door. While Skilliter fumbled to find the right key from those on his chain, I stood on the cracked flag-stones shivering in my night-shirt that the Porteouses had given me and trying to blot out the memory of a valiant soul reduced to tears, which both chilled me and disappointed me.

Skilliter swore and muttered: “My fingers are so damn’ froze I can hardly hold the keys.”

Dr Alabaster laughed drily and said: “There’s no call to hurry, Skilliter. He won’t go away.”

Skilliter snorted in a toadyish manner to indicate his appreciation of this piece of drollery, and as he finally managed to unlock the door Dr Alabaster said to me with a sneer: “We thought you would probably care to see your dear papa again.”

My emotion at the prospect of another interview with the pitiable being was tinged with surprise at the venue for our meeting. When the door swung open and I was pushed in, my bewilderment increased for since it was a small, well-lit chamber I could see immediately that it had only one occupant. This was a large woman dressed as a laundress who had her back to us at the far end of the room. She was bent over something on a table or sideboard at about the height of her waist, but straightened up and turned her head as we came in.

“Thank you, my good woman,” Dr Alabaster said. “You may stand aside now.”

“It’s ‘Mrs Silverleaf ’ if it’s all one to you, Doctor,” she answered.

As she moved aside I was able to see what the object on the table was, and before I saw the face I knew who it had been. I halted where I was, not wanting to see more, but Skilliter gripped me from behind and shoved me forward until I was standing over the dreadful thing, and at the moment that I saw the features — looking even more than before like the youthful countenance I bore in my memory — I saw that the throat was jaggedly slashed. The wound had been washed and crudely stitched, but that only made the ugly red tear in the pale skin the more horribly apparent.

I heard the voice of Skilliter from the other side of the room: “He don’t seem too keen to pay his respecks.”

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At that moment a dark mist clouded my vision and my legs ceased to bear my weight.

However, my slide to the ground was halted by a strong hand beneath my shoulder and I felt myself being assisted into a chair that stood against the wall. As the dark circles of black mist cleared away I found the face of the woman looking at me with an extraordinarily intense expression of interest and concern.

“Respects, Skilliter!” came the doctor’s jeering response. “To such a father?”

“What!” exclaimed Mrs Silverleaf. “You mean this boy is the poor creatur’s son?

That’s beyond everything.”

She muttered something to herself but I could not catch it.

Dr Alabaster said: “Did you say something, my good woman?”

“You didn’t ought to have broke it to him so sudden,” she said.

“finish the work for which you have been paid and be on your way,” he replied.

She sniffed and went back to the table. I saw that she was holding a linen cloth and that a bason of water stood on the table with a folded length of cotton whose shape and purpose I recognised from my memory of Mrs Lillystone.

Then turning to me, Dr Alabaster said: “I regret to have to inform you that your esteemed parent destroyed himself last night. I assume it was in grief at the news you conveyed to him of the death of your mother.”

“You really didn’t ought to have let him know,” said Skilliter sarcastically.

“Indeed, I fear that you are to blame for your father’s death,” Dr Alabaster said. “It seems to be a family tradition. Be that as it may, the coroner sat on the body this morning and his jury returned a verdict of self-murder.”

“I never heerd on sich a cruel thing as the way you’re treating this boy,” said Mrs Silverleaf.

I, however, had no strength to be angry at their taunts. All my thoughts were for the lonely, wasted life that had just come to so premature an end.

“That’s enough from you,” Skilliter said to her.

“Why,” she went on, “to break it like that! I never did!”

I looked at Mrs Silverleaf ’s broad red face and it came to me that I knew her from somewhere.

“That’s almost as cruel,” she continued as if unstoppably impelled by the force of her indignation, “as to lock him in here alone with the poor thing all night.”

“Why, listen to the good soul,” said Dr Alabaster with a kind of malign delight. “I believe she may have hit upon something you and I have neglected to think of, Skilliter.