Keeping Bad Company (21 page)

I
t was tantalizing to think there were probably only two people in the world who knew what had happened on the night Mr Griffiths died, and I'd been standing the width of a doorstep away from one of them. There must be some way of speaking to Anil, but I couldn't think of one. By next morning I'd decided to forget that approach for a while and try some other way. I walked to Piccadilly and took the omnibus to the City of London. The house where Mr Griffiths had lived so briefly looked just the same, with no sign of any new tenant. Perhaps the men from the Company were still keeping it locked up. I walked past and glanced down into the basement. The porter was outside, filling a coal scuttle with his back to me. I was glad about that, because I wasn't sure whether I believed his story about sleeping too deeply to have heard anything on the night of Mr Griffiths's death. If he'd been bribed to say nothing, he was in the enemy camp and would certainly be suspicious of a second visit from me. The house on the left looked a long time empty, with shutters over the windows. The one on the other side was inhabited, with a maid in a mob-cap cleaning the downstairs windows. She gave me a long look as I passed, glad of any distraction from her work. The place had a buttoned-up look about it that was useless for my purpose. I needed to find somebody who might talk to a stranger.

Then the gods sent me just what I needed in the shape of two Dandie Dinmont terriers. They came down the steps of a house opposite, along with a Dalmatian, the leads of all three of them in the hands of a middle-aged woman. Just stepping out of her front door on a calm spring day, she managed somehow to look windswept. You could tell she was a country and not a city person. She wore a cape of rusty-looking black wool, a plain bonnet with the ribbons tied unevenly and ankle-length black boots. I liked the look of her, and the dogs even more. When she turned right and walked briskly along the pavement, I fell in behind them, not close enough to be obtrusive but keeping them easily in view. They seemed to be making for a small square with a few plane trees. I was relying on one of the great laws of the natural world: that two terriers of any breed can't go more than four hundred yards without causing trouble. I was wrong. By my reckoning it was closer to five hundred yards before it happened.

They'd almost reached an open gateway into the square when a manservant with a spaniel approached from the opposite direction. The well-trained Dalmatian pretended they didn't exist, but the two terriers set up a barking like stones rattling into a tin bath. The manservant can't have been concentrating because the spaniel twitched the lead out of his hand and made straight for the terriers. By now they were racing in circles on their leads, spinning their owner like a top and tangling with the Dalmatian. She almost fell and, in saving herself, dropped one of the leads. The spaniel and the liberated terrier turned into one sphere of fur that whirled and growled while the other terrier yelped blue murder, struggling to join in the fight, and the Dalmatian started barking. Both the woman and the manservant were yelling at their dogs without effect. As soon as I saw how things were developing, I'd started unfastening my cloak. I hurried up to the spinning dogs and dropped it over them. It brought them to a halt just long enough for the manservant to grab the larger dog. He lifted the spaniel, still swaddled in my cloak. The terrier, clinging with its teeth to the hem of it, was snatched off its feet. I moved in and caught it. It came away, still snarling, with part of my cloak lining in its teeth. One of its ears was bleeding.

‘Crispin, you worm,' the woman said to it.

I untangled the lead from round the terrier's legs and restored it to her.

‘I don't think he's badly hurt,' I said.

She inspected the ear. ‘Nothing that can't be cured.'

The manservant, standing at a safe distance, had unwrapped the spaniel which also seemed largely undamaged. He held out my cloak. I fetched it and walked back to the woman.

‘Oh dear,' she said. ‘Your poor cloak.'

I told her not to worry about it, though part of the hem and lining were torn. I only hoped it would be worth the sacrifice.

‘It really was uncommonly resourceful of you,' she said. ‘How lucky you came to be there. I'm so sorry. It's London, you see. They're not used to it.'

So I'd guessed right. By the time we were back at her doorstep, with me leading the combatant terrier and she the other two dogs, I'd learned that her name was Miss Sand, she was from Kent, spending time in London nursing her sick brother, a lawyer, that he was on the road to recovery and not a moment too soon for her. She'd learned from me my name and the fact – which was true – that I had a friend who bred Dandie Dinmonts.

‘You positively must come in for a sherry,' she said. ‘It's the least I can do.'

The maid who opened the door to us was sent for sherry, dilute carbolic and cotton gauze. They arrived on a tray together and the girl went away with my cloak to brush.

Miss Sand poured generous glasses of what turned out to be good dry sherry, tucked the terrier under her arm and efficiently bathed its ear. I asked if she liked this part of London. As much as she liked any of it, she said. It was quiet at least.

‘A relative of mine knew the gentleman opposite,' I said. ‘The one who died.'

I liked her and had decided not to lie to her.

‘How dreadful. The man who killed himself? Did you know him?'

‘I met him twice. Did you see him at all?'

‘No, but then he'd only just moved in, hadn't he? Somebody said he'd come over from India.'

‘Yes.'

‘He was lonely perhaps, poor man. If my brother had been well, I'm sure he'd have gone across and left his card. Not that it would have helped much, I suppose.'

‘Did he get many visitors?'

‘Not that I saw, but then our sitting room and my brother's bedroom are out at the back.'

So I'd sacrificed my cloak in vain. Then she sipped her sherry and thought about it.

‘Except for the Indian man.'

I nearly spilled my sherry.

‘Indian man?'

‘Yes. It was quite extraordinary. A brougham drew up and this Indian got out, quite like any gentleman paying a visit, except he was dressed all in white and had this – what is it you call it? – turban round his head.'

‘And he went into the house opposite?'

‘Yes. Another Indian, only a boy, opened the door to him. It looked as if the Indian man was giving the boy a card in quite the normal way. Then he waited on the step for a few minutes and the boy opened the door again and let him in.'

‘When was this?'

‘The Saturday night. It was on the Monday morning that we heard the poor gentleman was dead.'

‘Late at night?'

‘No. It can't have been late because it was still quite light. Half light at any rate.'

‘Did he stay long?'

‘I don't know. I looked out about half an hour later and the brougham was still there, but my brother wanted to play cards so I didn't see when it went. My brother said if the gentleman opposite came from India, he might have an Indian butler. Are there Indian butlers?'

‘Did you see the man again?'

‘No. Of course, there were a lot of comings and goings from the house once they'd found the poor gentleman, but I never saw the Indian man again.'

‘Nor the boy?'

‘No.'

Miss Sand was looking surprised at my questioning. Not wanting to be trapped in explanations, I turned the conversation back to dogs and escaped as soon as politely possible. She thanked me again and urged me to call on her if I was ever near her village in Kent.

I took the omnibus back, wondering what to do with this unexpected piece of information. There was no reasonable doubt that the Indian man who'd called on Mr Griffiths and the unexpected arrival at his funeral pyre were one and the same man. A second Indian gentleman, living in the cottage once occupied by Mr Griffiths and employing his servant boy, would be too much of a coincidence, so the same man again. And a man who had a great deal of explaining to do. The certainty that McPherson, or one of his agents, was responsible for Mr Griffiths's death was beginning to crumble. Above all, I needed to know more about that household out at Richmond and couldn't see how to set about it. With nobody else available, it looked as if I'd have to do the job of observing it myself. I walked into Abel Yard turning over various desperate ideas, like disguising myself as an elderly woman selling apples, wishing heartily that Tabby were there to take on a task she did so much better. Then, for the second time in the day, the gods were good. There she was, standing just inside the gateway talking to the urchin leader, Plush.

Goodness knows what the conversation was about. Both looked guilty when they saw me and Tabby was a hair's breadth from bolting.

‘I need you,' I told her. ‘I have a job for you.'

She followed me reluctantly to the bottom of my stairs. I guessed that if I started questioning her about where she'd been, she'd be away as quickly as a cat. The best hope was to hold her interest.

‘There's a young Indian boy I think may have been kidnapped. He's in a house out at Richmond with an Indian gentleman. We need to find a way of speaking to him on his own.'

A glimmer of interest in her eyes, though her face was still sullen. She was wearing her respectable grey dress but her standards of cleanliness had slumped; hair dull and dirty, shoes scuffed.

‘We'll get the next coach out to Richmond and I'll show you what's to be done,' I said.

We stayed long enough for her to wolf down the cold beef sandwich I brought her and to collect her cloak from her cabin. That was my suggestion, because her appearance meant we'd be riding on the outside of the coach. When we got down at Richmond the sullen expression was still in place.

‘That's the cottage over there,' I said. ‘I don't want to go any closer, because they might recognize me. If you . . .'

A carriage went past at a walk. It was an ordinary brougham of the sort that might come from a livery stables. Nothing remarkable about it at all, except for the flash of white from inside. A white turban.

‘Oh confound it.'

I turned away as quickly as I could, hoping the person inside hadn't noticed us. We watched as it went on then passed out of sight near the cottage.

‘He's going home,' I said. ‘I wonder where he's been.'

‘That the man what's kidnapped the boy?'

‘Probably, yes.'

Her grammar had slipped too, but at least she was showing some interest. I explained the nearest thing I had to a plan.

‘We need to know if he has a regular routine for going out and coming back, and whether the boy ever goes with him. There's at least one Indian woman in the house, probably two. Do they ever go out and are there any servants apart from the boy? Once we know that, we can work how to approach him.'

She nodded. I seldom had to explain anything to Tabby twice.

‘So we'll go home and I'll book a place on the first coach back here for you tomorrow morning,' I said. ‘The sooner you start, the better.'

She gave me a cool look.

‘What do I need to go back for? It's here I'm supposed to be, isn't it?'

‘But you've got nowhere to stay.'

Looking as she did, there'd be no room at an inn for the likes of Tabby.

‘I'll find somewhere. Any road, I'll be watching all night as well, won't I?'

‘The day should do. They must sleep sometimes.'

‘No point if I don't.'

I was going to protest and insist on taking her back with me, but it struck me that this would be the certain way of losing her again. By the look of her, she'd gone back to her old habits, sleeping in whatever nooks or crannies she could find. At least this way I knew approximately where she was and what she was doing.

‘Very well, but I want you to come back and report to me tomorrow evening. Will you do that?'

A brief nod.

‘And whatever you do, don't approach any of them directly and try not to be noticed.'

Another nod. I put a couple of half-crowns into her hand for food and the fare and began walking back to the inn for the coach to town. After a few dozen yards I turned to look back at her, but she'd already disappeared.

My brother arrived the following evening, heavy-eyed. He'd spent his spare time at the Suters' house, reading Mr Griffiths's manuscript.

‘I can hardly believe it, Libby. It's not the man I knew.'

‘You knew an old man. He was younger then.'

‘Not so very young with that business of the princess. About twenty years ago.'

‘He was thirty or so. That's not so old for a man to fall in love,' I said.

‘It would have been treason, encouraging mutiny in the Company's army.'

‘Would it, legally speaking? It's not the same as the British army.'

‘Pretty much the same thing. At the very least, gross disloyalty.'

‘To a Company that had behaved very badly.'

‘They were hard times, Libby, not like now.'

‘I wonder. In his place, would you have behaved very differently?'

He stared at the fire. I waited, dreading his answer would widen the distance between us. It came as a relief.

‘Probably not, in some ways. I hope I'd have tried to stop the war, as he did.'

‘Good.'

‘But it's the business with the woman that's surprising. I can't believe he let himself be led by the nose like that.'

‘She was beautiful and wronged. That's a powerful combination.'

‘Even so.'

I looked at him while he went on frowning at the fire. So my little brother hadn't fallen in love yet. He'd learn.

‘That aside, what did you make of the business of The Merchant and The Soldier?' I said.