Original Sin (6 page)

It was on the second day that they had visited St. Paul’s Cathedral and later taken a river steamer from Charing Cross pier to Greenwich and he had first seen Innocent House, glittering in the morning sun, seeming to rise like a golden mirage from the shimmering water. He had gazed at it in wonder. His father had explained that the name was derived from Innocent Walk which ran behind the house, at the end of which had once stood an early eighteenth-century magistrates’ court. Defendants taken into custody after their first hearing were removed to the Fleet prison; the more fortunate walked down the cobbled lane to freedom. He had started to tell his son something of the house’s architectural history, but his voice had been overpowered by the tour guide’s booming commentary loud enough to be heard by every boat on the river.

“And here, coming up on our left, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the most interesting buildings on the Thames: Innocent
House, built in 1830 for Sir Francis Peverell, a noted publisher of the day. Sir Francis had visited Venice and had been very impressed by the Ca’ d’Oro, the Golden House on the Grand Canal. Those of you who have had holidays in Venice have probably seen it. So he hit on the idea of building his own golden house on the Thames. Pity he couldn’t import Venetian weather.” He paused briefly for the expected laughter. “Today it is the headquarters of a publishing firm, the Peverell Press, so it’s still in the family. There’s an interesting story about Innocent House. Apparently Sir Francis was so absorbed by it that he neglected his young wife whose money had helped him to build it, and she threw herself from the top balcony and was instantly killed. The legend has it that you can still see the stain of her blood on the marble which can’t be cleaned away. It’s said that Sir Francis went mad with remorse in his old age and used to go out alone at night trying to get rid of that tell-tale spot. It’s his ghost that people claim to see, still scrubbing away at the stain. There are some watermen who don’t like sailing too close to Innocent House after dark.”

All eyes on deck had been docilely turned to the house but now, intrigued by this story of blood, the passengers moved to hang over the rail; voices murmured and heads craned as if the legendary stain might still be visible. Eight-year-old Adam’s over-vivid imagination had pictured a white-clad woman, blonde hair flying, flinging herself from the balcony like some demented storybook heroine, had heard the final thud and seen the trickle of blood creeping and starting across the marble to drip into the Thames. For years afterwards the house had continued to fascinate him with a potent amalgam of beauty and terror.

The tour guide had been inaccurate about one fact; it was possible that the suicide story had also been embellished or
untrue. He knew now that Sir Francis had been enchanted, not by the Ca’ d’Oro which, despite the intricacies of its fine tracings and carvings, he had found, or so he had written to his architect, too asymmetrical for his taste, but by the Palace of Doge Francesco Foscari, and it was the Ca’ Foscari which his architect had been instructed to build for him on this cold, tidal river. It should have looked incongruous, a folly, unmistakably Venetian and Venetian of the mid-fifteenth century. And yet it looked as if no other city, no other site would have been right for it. Dalgliesh still found it difficult to understand why it should be so successful, this unashamed borrowing from another age, another country, a softer, warmer air. The proportions had been changed and surely that alone should have rendered Sir Francis’s dream an impracticable presumption, but the reduction in scale had been brilliantly carried out and the dignity of the original somehow maintained. There were six great central window arches instead of eight behind the finely carved balconies of the first and second floors, but the marble columns with their decorated pinnules were almost exact copies of the Venetian palace and the central arcades here, as there, were balanced by tall single windows, giving the façade its unity and grace. The great curved door fronted a marble patio leading to a landing stage and a flight of steps to the river. On either side of the house two brick-built Regency town houses with small balconies, presumably built to house coachmen or other servants, stood like humble sentries of the central magnificence. He had seen it from the river many times since that eighth birthday celebration but had never been inside. He recalled having read that there was a fine Matthew Cotes Wyatt ceiling in the central hall and rather wished he could see it. It would be a pity if Innocent House fell into the hands of philistines.

He asked: “And what exactly has been going on at Peverell Press? What’s worrying Lord Stilgoe apart from his poison-pen letter?”

“So you’ve heard the rumours. Difficult to tell. They’re being rather cagey about it and I don’t blame them. But one or two little incidents have become common knowledge. Not so little either. The most serious happened just before Easter when they lost the illustrations for Gregory Maybrick’s book on the Guy Fawkes conspiracy. Popular history, no doubt, but Maybrick knows his period. They expected to do rather well with it. He’d managed to lay his hands on some interesting contemporary plates, never before published, as well as other written records, and the whole lot were lost. They were on loan from the various owners and he’d more or less guaranteed their safety.”

“Lost? Mislaid? Destroyed?”

“The story is that he delivered them by hand to James de Witt who was editing the book. He’s their senior editor and normally responsible for fiction but old Peverell who edited their non-fiction had died about three months earlier and I suppose they either hadn’t had time to find a suitable replacement or wanted to save money. Like most houses they’re laying off rather than taking on. The rumour is that they can’t keep afloat much longer. Not surprising with that Venetian palace to maintain. Anyway, the illustrations were handed over to de Witt in his office and he locked them in his cupboard while Maybrick watched.”

“Not in a safe?”

“My dear boy, we’re talking about a publishing house not Cartier’s. Knowing Peverells, I’m only surprised that de Witt bothered to lock the cupboard.”

“Was his the only key?”

“Really Adam, you’re not detecting now. Actually it was. He kept it in a battered old tobacco tin in his left-hand drawer.”

Where else? thought Dalgliesh. He said: “Where any member of the staff or any unaccompanied visitor could lay hands on it.”

“Well, someone obviously did. James didn’t need to go to the cupboard for a couple of days. The illustrations were due to be delivered personally to the art department the following week. You know that Peverells have put out their artwork to an independent firm?”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“More economical, I suppose. It’s the same firm that’s been doing the jackets for the last five years. Rather well, actually. Peverells have never let their standards slip on book production and design. You can always tell a Peverell book just by handling it. Until now, of course. Gerard Etienne may change that too. Anyway, when de Witt looked for the envelope it had disappeared. Huge fuss, of course. Everyone questioned. Frantic searches. General panic. In the end they had to confess to Maybrick and the owners. You can imagine how they took the news.”

“Did the stuff ever come to light?”

“Not until too late. There were doubts whether Maybrick would want to publish at all but the book was in the catalogue and it was decided to go ahead with alternative illustrations and some necessary changes to the text. A week after they’d finished printing, the envelope and its contents mysteriously reappeared. De Witt found it in his cupboard exactly where he had placed it.”

“Which suggests that the thief had some respect for scholarship and had never intended to destroy the papers.”

“It suggests a number of possibilities, spite against
Maybrick, spite against the Press, spite against de Witt, or a somewhat warped sense of humour.”

“Peverells didn’t report the theft to the police?”

“No, Adam, they didn’t place their confidence in our wonderful boys in blue. I don’t want to be unkind but the police haven’t an impressive clear-up rate when it comes to domestic burglary. The partners took the view that they stood just as good a chance of success and would cause less upset to staff if they undertook their own enquiry.”

“By whom? Were any of them free of suspicion?”

“That, of course, is the difficulty. They weren’t then and they aren’t now. I imagine that Etienne adopted the Head Beak’s strategy. You know, ‘If the boy who’s responsible will come to my study after prep in confidence and return the documents no more will be heard of the matter.’ It never worked at school. I don’t suppose it was more successful at Peverells. It was obviously an inside job, and it isn’t as if they employ a large staff, only about twenty-five people in addition to the five partners. Most of them are old faithfuls of course, and the story is that the few who aren’t have alibis.”

“So it’s still a mystery.”

“And so is the second incident. The second serious incident—there have probably been minor mischiefs which they’ve managed to keep quiet about. This one concerns Stilgoe so it’s just as well that so far they’ve managed to keep it from him and it hasn’t become public property. The old boy really would have something to feed his paranoia. Apparently when the page proofs had been read and a number of alterations agreed with Stilgoe they were packaged and left overnight under the counter in the reception office where they were due to be collected next morning. Someone opened the package and tampered with them, changed a number of the names, altered
punctuation, deleted a couple of sentences. Fortunately the printer who received them was intelligent and thought some of the changes odd, so he telephoned to check. The partners have managed, God knows how, to keep this contretemps secret from most of the staff at Innocent House and, of course, from Stilgoe. It would have been extremely damaging to the firm if it had got out. I understand all parcels and papers are locked up overnight now and no doubt they’ve tightened security in other ways.”

Dalgliesh wondered whether the perpetrator had from the first intended the alterations to be discovered. They seemed to have been made with very little attempt to deceive. It surely wouldn’t have been difficult to alter the page proofs in a way which would seriously damage the book without arousing the suspicions of the printer. It was odd, too, that the poison pen hadn’t mentioned the alterations to Stilgoe’s proofs. Either he or she hadn’t known, which would absolve the five partners, or the poison pen had wanted to frighten Stilgoe but not to provide evidence which would justify him in withdrawing the book. It was an interesting little mystery but not one on which he proposed to waste the time of a senior police officer.

Nothing more was said about the Peverell Press until they were taking their coffee in the library. Ackroyd leaned forward and asked a little anxiously, “Can I tell Lord Stilgoe that you’ll try to reassure his wife?”

“I’m sorry, Conrad, but no. I’ll get him a note to say that the police have no cause to suspect foul play in any of the cases which concern him. I doubt whether it will do much good if his wife is superstitious, but that is her misfortune and his problem.”

“And the other trouble at Innocent House?”

“If Gerard Etienne believes that the law is being broken
and wants the police to investigate he must get in touch with his local station.”

“Just like anybody else?”

“Precisely.”

“You wouldn’t be prepared to go to Innocent House and have an informal word with him?”

“No, Conrad. Not even for a sight of the Wyatt ceiling.”

On the afternoon of Sonia Clements’ cremation Gabriel Dauntsey and Frances Peverell shared a taxi from the crematorium back to number 12 Innocent Walk. Frances was very silent on the journey, sitting a little apart from Dauntsey, gazing out of the window. She was hatless, the light brown hair a shining helmet which curved to touch the collar of her grey coat. Her shoes, tights and handbag were black, and there was a black chiffon scarf knotted at her neck. They were, Dauntsey remembered, the same clothes she had worn at her father’s cremation, a contemporary understated mourning, nicely holding the balance between ostentation and a decent respect. The combination of grey and black in its sombre simplicity made her look very young and emphasized what he most liked in her, a gentle old-fashioned formality which reminded him of the young women of his youth. She sat distanced and very still, but her hands were restless. He knew that the ring she wore on the third finger of her right hand had been her mother’s engagement ring and he watched while she twisted it obsessively under the black suede of her glove. He wondered for a
moment whether to reach out and silently take her hand, but resisted the impulse to a gesture which he told himself might only embarrass them both. He could hardly keep holding her hand all the way back to Innocent Walk.

They were fond of each other; he was, he knew, the one person at Innocent House in whom she felt she could occasionally confide; but neither was demonstrative. They lived a short staircase apart but visited each other only by invitation, each anxious not to intrude or impose on the other, or to initiate an intimacy which the other might find unwelcome or come to regret. As a result, liking each other, enjoying each other’s company, they saw less of each other than if they had lived miles apart. When they were together they spoke chiefly of books, poetry, plays they had seen, programmes on the television, seldom of people. Frances was too fastidious to gossip and he was equally reluctant to get drawn into controversy about the new regime. He had his job, his flat on the bottom two floors of number 12 Innocent Walk. Neither might be his much longer, but he was seventy-six, too old to fight. He knew that her flat above his had an attraction for him which it was prudent to resist. Sitting in the high-backed chair, with the curtains drawn against the gentle half-imagined sighing of the river, stretching out his legs before the open fire after one of their rare dinners together when she had left him to make coffee, he would hear her quietly moving about the kitchen and would feel a seductive peace and contentment stealing over him which it would be only too easy to make a regular part of his life.