Keeping Bad Company (12 page)

The flighty chestnut he was riding thought of shying at a man walking a wolfhound. The slightest pressure of Amos's leg decided him against it. It was the morning after Mr Griffiths's funeral and we were discussing the Indian gentleman.

‘Did Tom say anything to you about him after you left me?'

‘Not a word. But he was puzzled, I know that.'

As well he might be. If the man had been one of Mr Griffiths's friends in London, surely he'd have mentioned him to Tom. Then there was the question of how he'd known about the ceremony.

‘Nearly left it too late, though,' Amos said.

‘Yes. As if he hadn't known until the last minute.'

‘Or followed us.'

‘How would he have known to follow you?'

‘We tried not to attract notice when we put the old gentleman's body in the carriage, but anybody watching his lodgings might have seen.'

‘But why would he be watching Mr Griffiths's lodgings unless he knew something like that was going on anyway?' I said. ‘And you'd have noticed somebody following, wouldn't you?'

‘Not necessarily with the traffic like it is. South of the river you'd be more likely to notice, but perhaps he hung back then.'

We cantered for a good stretch, but it didn't clear my mind.

‘I'd give a lot to talk to him,' I said.

‘I'll see what I can do, then.'

I laughed.

‘Amos, even you couldn't track a perfectly ordinary carriage you'd seen just once on a dark night. It could have come from anywhere in London.'

But when I glanced across at him he had that expression which signalled something up his sleeve.

‘One of their bays had a shoe loose,' he said. ‘You could hear it clinking on the cobbles. Then when they turned the corner, it wasn't clinking any more.' Amos tapped three beats on the pommel of his saddle, the fourth one softer than the others. ‘So it had been cast.'

On these matters, Amos was as accurate as a musician. But still . . .

‘We can't go hunting all over London for a horse with only three shoes. Besides, they'll have it at the farrier's by now,' I said.

‘That's the whole point.'

He glanced across at me, grinning.

‘Well?'

‘I went up the street and found the shoe he'd cast. Not difficult. They wouldn't see many horses in a little street like that.'

‘So you're planning to take the shoe all over London until you find a horse it fits, like Prince Charming and Cinderella?'

‘That fellow could have saved himself a deal of trouble if he'd thought of asking the cobblers.'

I gave in and asked him to explain.

‘Take a shoe to any shoemaker and he'll tell you who made it,' Amos said. ‘Just the same with horseshoes. Every farrier's got his own little tricks of the trade. Show him a shoe and ten to one he'll recognize it. Maybe something as simple as the spacing of the nail holes, the chamfering of the edge, even the colour of the iron it's made out of. They're all different.'

‘Are you telling me you can look at that cast shoe and know where the horse was shod?'

He shook his head. For a minute I'd hoped. Then I saw he was still grinning.

‘I can't, but I've got a friend who can. A farrier I have a drink with now and then. He reckons he can tell where any horseshoe came from within a five-mile radius of Charing Cross. Never known him wrong.'

I thought he was being too confident. Amos never liked admitting that there might be things he couldn't find out. Still, I wished him luck. I wanted to meet the Indian gentleman and, almost as much, the possessor of that small gloved hand that had pulled down the carriage blind so smartly. On our way back, I turned the conversation to Tabby. Amos had seen her courage and recklessness at close hand, and took the business about the knife as seriously as I did.

‘If that one was after me with a knife, I'd be careful where I walked.'

Since Tabby was a foot and a half shorter than Amos and probably less than half his weight, that was a tribute of a kind.

‘Did she ever talk to you about hating rich men?' I said.

‘I've seen her spit in the gutter once or twice, when somebody tried to come high-handed, but nothing particular.'

‘Or traders in stocks and shares?'

‘Didn't even know she knew about them.'

I could tell he was turning it over in his mind and before we parted he delivered an opinion.

‘She's not stupid, that girl. She'd know you couldn't change who's rich and who's poor just by stabbing one man.'

‘As a gesture, perhaps?'

He shook his head. Perhaps he was thinking of the kind of gestures Tabby sometimes made at men who shouted remarks at her.

‘If she's thinking of putting a knife into somebody, it'll be somebody particular she's got in her mind,' Amos said. ‘Somebody intending harm to you.'

This wasn't reassuring.

‘But she's angry with me.'

‘She'd be a good sight angrier with anybody wanting to hurt you.'

‘I don't know of anybody intending harm to me,' I said. Then thought again. ‘No more than usual, at any rate.'

‘See what I mean? The things you find out, there's bound to be some people wanting to even the score. If that girl heard that one of them was planning mischief, that might explain it.'

‘But why wouldn't she tell me?'

He shrugged.

‘Maybe she didn't want to worry you.'

Or maybe, I thought, she'd been too annoyed with me about the wretched dog kidnapping business. Too annoyed to take me into her confidence but still risking her life to protect me. That would be just like Tabby. For once, talking things over with Amos had made me feel no better.

Tom didn't visit that evening, so I had too much time to think over what Amos had said. I went over all our cases – the list was not so very long – and made a mental list of people we might have left desiring vengeance. For practical purposes, it came to no more than half a dozen. True, that left some pretty big omissions. Quite recently we'd been involved in a case that had spoiled the plans of a major European power. I still wasn't quite sure which, though I had my suspicions. But governments and their secret agents tend to be practical. If a scheme fails, they don't waste time in personal vengeance, and soon move on to another one. There had been a mad old baronet who would have liked to spill my blood, and Tabby's as well, but I knew on good authority that he'd died in a private asylum a few months before, to the relief of his family.

Some of our smaller cases had offended people in society. There were several ladies who'd cut me socially at a reception, but would probably draw the line at cutting throats in an alley. In two cases, our investigations into missing jewellery had proved that a family member was responsible. A son had been sent into the army, a female cousin packed off to live abroad. It was just possible that either had returned to plague us, but not likely. There was only one likely case I could think of that left somebody vengeful enough to be a threat. A man had tried to trick me into giving false evidence so that he could divorce his wife but keep her money. I'd discovered something so foul about him that I'd gone over to the wife's side and provided her with evidence that allowed her to separate from him, keep her children and not give him a penny. I knew that the husband would gladly have seen me dead, if he'd had the nerve for it. The objection to that theory was that Tabby had known very little about the case and, to the best of my knowledge, never met the man involved. Once I'd seen the direction things were taking, I'd been determined to shield her from it. I decided that Amos was wrong for once and looked out to the yard, hoping against hope to see a light in Tabby's cabin. Nothing.

Early next morning, Tom Huckerby arrived.

‘Found your printer, I think.'

‘Wonderful. Where?'

‘Not so far from me, it turned out. Just round the corner from Ludgate Hill. Elderly gentleman arrived three days ago and asked him to print a pamphlet in a hurry. Paid in advance, of course, otherwise the printer wouldn't have accepted the work, not knowing him. Title: “Some Observations on the Trading Practices of the East India Company and Related Matters”. Does that sound like your man?'

‘Yes. Was there an author's name?'

‘The Griff.'

‘Did you get a copy?'

‘No. It was still being proofread, then they had to get it stitched together. He wanted five hundred copies done.'

Tom suggested we should go to the printer and see if a copy was ready. He took it for granted that we'd walk there. He resented spending money on coach fares and about the only time he travelled in a horse-drawn vehicle was when police or duns were arresting him. He knew every street, alleyway and short cut from Hyde Park corner to St Paul's and had a story to tell about all of them – usually of some injustice or brutality suffered. I suppose we looked an odd couple, Tom Huckerby in his unbuttoned jacket and shapeless felt hat, striding along, talking nineteen to the dozen and flinging his arms around for emphasis, I in my blue cloak and bonnet trying to keep up. We attracted some amused and curious looks, but Tom was unconscious of them and I tried to be too. Still, it was a relief when we arrived in the street off Ludgate Hill. Tom pointed to a large sign hanging over a doorway: SETH ROBINSON, PRINTER.

‘You'd told me your man was new to London, so I thought I'd take a walk round and look for the printers with the biggest signboards out. I reckoned that was what he might have done.'

Seth Robinson was a small man, his printer's paper cap perched on a totally bald head, his hands large and capacious in proportion to the rest of him, as if made for handling heavy galleys of type. A smell of warm glue as well as ink hung over the workshop. Several apprentices were working at the back of the shop, half-screened by sheets of copy hung on lines for the ink to dry.

‘I told you, not till tomorrow,' the printer said, as soon as he set eyes on Tom.

‘What about a proof copy?' Tom suggested.

Seth Robinson gestured towards the drying pages.

‘Since it's set in type now, could we please take Mr Griffiths's manuscript back?' I said.

I was guessing that the printer wouldn't have heard that his client was dead. He considered for a while.

‘Don't see why not.'

He opened a cupboard and took out a pile of manuscript. The title page was now dog-eared and ink spattered, but the handwriting was undoubtedly Mr Griffiths's. The printer found some newspaper and string to wrap it and, still at Tom Huckerby's fast pace, we carried it in triumph back to Abel Yard.

By then, I was gasping for tea. I asked Mrs Martley to make it while Tom Huckerby and I sat at the parlour table and started reading.

‘He's giving it to them good and strong,' Tom said, after the first few pages.

He certainly was. It began:

For the past two hundred years, the stewardship of the great land that we call India has been entrusted to the East India Company. The result of that stewardship has been, largely, to convert the wealth and labour of India into profits for the City of London. It has been a process of greed, short-sightedness and corruption. Recent attempts by our Parliament to restrain the Company's activities have led only to the continuation of the old abuses in new forms, mostly carried out by those same men whose rapacity led to the demands for reform. The purpose of this summary is to give examples of that rapacity, in the hope that they will arouse indignation in Parliament and public that even the opium-dulled consciences of our Indian traders cannot ignore.

After a while, Tom Huckerby had to leave to attend a meeting, but obviously found it hard to tear himself away from the manuscript.

‘Since your man's paid for having it printed, it would be a pity not to circulate it. I'll talk to a few booksellers, if you like,' he said.

‘Why not. And he wanted to send it to MPs.'

Properly speaking, it should have been a decision for my brother, as Mr Griffiths's executor, but I decided to spare him the worry. After all, he was a Company servant. Come to think of it, Mr Griffiths had been as well. He surely couldn't have expected to remain one once his pamphlet was published. I said goodbye to Tom Huckerby and settled down to read more. There was no doubt that Mr Griffiths's heart, as well as his considerable brain, was deeply involved. The first part of the manuscript concentrated mostly on land transactions and in some cases outright land theft, ranging over twenty years or so. It made the blood boil to read some of the examples and learn what had been done in our name. I wondered how much my brother knew about all this and resolved to ask him. But the blood can't keep on boiling and I was very weary from a fast walk to Ludgate Hill and back. I turned over a few more pages of manuscript, hoping to come across the name of McPherson, but my eyes rebelled against reading so much by lamplight and kept shutting. I marked my place in the pile of manuscript, stacked it up tidily and went to bed.

Around mid-afternoon next day, Tom Huckerby was at the bottom of my stairs, hat in hand, hair disordered.

‘It's gone. Somebody just rolled up and took the lot of it, every single copy.'

He was red-faced with hurry and anger. I fetched him a glass of water and made him drink before he started explaining, though I'd guessed almost as soon as I saw him.

‘You know you'd agreed I could approach some booksellers? I found three that were willing to take it and put it in their windows, all of them in Fleet Street, so it would make a stir. So I borrowed a handcart and went round to the printer to load up. Too late, he told me. A man had come in a carriage and collected all of them an hour ago.'

‘What man?'

‘Didn't know the name. Middle-aged, clerk type.'

‘Useless. So he just handed them over?'