The Detective and the Devil (10 page)
Read The Detective and the Devil Online
Authors: Lloyd Shepherd
Lamb’s stammer did indeed smooth out, the jagged interruptions to his speech giving way to his own personality. He was a man of Horton’s age, perhaps a little younger, with a
handsome, open face which was quick to take delight. Lamb watched the other people in the Prospect, which by now was crowded, with the same appetite as Horton.
‘Well, constable, I must say this. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last.’
‘I thank you, sir,’ said Horton, somewhat disturbed by this. ‘You knew my name at East India House. How did that come to be?’
‘Know your name? Of course I know your name! The famous Charles Horton, Wapping’s lonely investigator. The
éminence grise
of crime and its detection. The man who
solved the
Solander
case!’
The mention of the
Solander
murders brought Horton up short, ale or no ale. How did an East India Company clerk come to know, and what is more, to obviously care about that particular
case and his involvement in it? But Lamb was not yet done.
‘And the Sybarites? An
unusual
case. Though not as uncommon as the London Monster of 1811. Was John Williams really involved, constable? Or was there a darker power at
work?’
Lamb’s handsome, intelligent face now had hunger in it. He had seen a similar appetite in the faces of newspaper men, though Lamb’s interest surely could not be for financial gain,
as theirs was.
‘You have me at a terrible disadvantage, Lamb,’ was all Horton would say. Lamb laughed delightedly.
‘Perfect! Your reputation is well earned. A man who keeps his own counsel. Coleridge will be delighted.’
‘Coleridge?’
‘He wanted to come to meet you, but was occupied with another obligation. But I shall report back in detail.’
‘Lamb, this grows tiresome. Who are you, please, to know so much of me?’
‘My name is Charles Lamb, constable. As well as clerking at the Company, I write a bit. The odd essay, the occasional tragedy, even a play for Drury Lane some years ago, though it was met
with precious little fanfare. Coleridge, though. You must have heard of Coleridge.’
‘The name is familiar.’
‘Familiar! He is one of England’s finest thinkers and poets!’
‘I read little poetry. In fact, none at all.’
‘No. Of course you do not. But Coleridge has heard of
you
, sir. We all have. Your name has been discussed several times among us. We find you, and your works, continually
fascinating. De Quincey speaks of little else. He is preparing a monograph on the Ratcliffe Highway murders.’
Horton had no idea what to say. This man was obviously well educated and no doubt financially secure – East India House clerks were well paid and vacancies were subject to ferocious
competition. Yet despite his charm he talked of Horton as if he were a subject for study, seemingly unconcerned by this impertinence. Who were these poets and writers, to speak of him so?
‘Mr Lamb, I thank you for your enthusiasm,’ he said. ‘But I swear, there is nothing particular or special about me. I am only pursuing the tasks which my magistrate lays in
front of me.’
‘No indeed, constable. I think there is a good deal more to you than that. And I think it right that you look into the strange death of poor Ben Johnson and his family. There is a good
deal more to that than meets the eye, as well.’
‘Perhaps you can enlighten me.’
‘I have worked as a clerk to the private trade committee for barely a year, constable. And I do believe my presence there to be in the nature of an accident – I am not as bovine as
most of the clerks who go through that office.
Lamb sipped his gin more gently, his stutter gone under the drink’s earlier ministrations.
‘I believe Ben discovered something. It was a day some months ago. Putnam had given him a task to complete – he wanted to calculate the market rate for cattle sold in St Helena to
Indiamen on the track home, or some such triviality – and gave him certain ledgers from which to gather the information. Ben became agitated at the completion of this task.’
‘Agitated? In what way?’
‘Nothing dramatic. He was a phlegmatic individual. And he didn’t say anything explicitly. Most people would not have noticed. It has been a time of general agitation at East India
House; somebody is always worried about something.’
‘Why has there been such agitation?’
‘There are some who think the Company is coming to the end of its time. Two years ago a law was passed which opened trade in India to interlopers, and this has sparked much dismay. Ben
told me that he had noticed another change, in recent weeks, relating to St Helena directly. It was as if the Directors expected the island to slip from their grasp. He was deluged by requests for
information. St Helena is an oddity in the Company’s holdings. It has never paid its way, you know; it has only ever really served as a staging post for Indiamen returning home. Its loss
would, one would think, bear little weight on the Company.’
‘So what did Johnson discover?’
‘He did not say, explicitly. But he said he thought he knew why the Directors wanted to hold on to St Helena.’
‘When was this?’
‘Three months ago, initially. I tried to ask him about it again later, to speak to him about his progress. But he denied having found anything of interest at all. He grew positively heated
when I raised it.’
‘When was this second conversation?’
‘Six weeks ago.’
The man was determined to see a story here, even if none existed. He imagined Lamb perched at his clerk’s desk, bored out of his wits, his mind spinning flights of fantasy from the
slenderest of threads.
‘Mr Lamb, it is important that we do not see things that are not there.’
Lamb’s face turned sour.
‘Constable, my understanding is perfectly solid. I find your suggestion impertinent. I have told you of my suspicions, and my admiration for you. I think I have done all I can.’
Lamb drank down the remainder of his gin.
‘I will take my leave of you, and my imperfect understanding will accompany me. Good night, constable.’
Horton watched the clerk’s thin, long shape make its way out through the crowds in the tavern, and wondered what he had said to offend him so.
St Helena, 22 November 1677
My dear Sir Jonas
I hoped to write to you before now, but have had little to report on the main matter of my voyage. I hoped that we might have some clear weather when the
Sun came near our Zenith, so that I might give you an account that I had near finished the Catalogue of the Southern Stars, which is my principal concern; but such hath been my ill fortune, that
the Horizon of this Island is almost covered with a Cloud, which sometimes for some weeks together hath hid the Stars from us, and when it is clear, is of so small continuance, that we cannot take
any number of observations at once; so that now when I expected to be returning, I have not finished above half my work.
Such hath been my frustrations in staring at the Skies, I have had to turn my attentions to the Island itself, and the People upon it. There are about four hundred Whites in
the place, almost all of them planters, and a quantity of Blacks who are slaves. These Whites appear healthy enough, for the climate is astonishingly mild, but the Blacks are appallingly treated.
But I do not speak of these. This day I encountered a creature who seems neither Planter nor Slave, an ugly Creature whom I take for a Portuguese. He has neither nose nor ears, and one of his hands
is entirely missing. I spied him by my observatory, which he was much intrigued by. He had no English, and I no Portuguese, but by a sequence of attempts I concluded he could speak Dutch. When I
asked him how he had come by such a tongue, he said he lived with a Dutch family on the Island. There are some such families, a holdover from when the Island’s status was disputed between
England and Holland.
Then he began to speak of the Island. He spoke of a time when the Island was covered in forest, though it be now as bare as one of our Moors. The Portuguese had brought
goats to the Island, he said, and these had multiplied to such an extent that they destroyed much of the forest; men, too, cut down trees for firewood and for distilling alcohol, in their monstrous
way. I began to realise, then, that he was describing a change which had happened over decades, and this man, despite his deformities, seemed to me no older than forty years. I asked him when he
had arrived on the Island, and he gave me the date of 1516. More than one hundred and sixty years ago.
I was astonished, yet he seemed undisturbed by his Revelation. I asked him how a man could live so long, and he said only that ‘it is the Island’, as if this
explained everything. And yet there is something about this place, something I cannot fathom or fully explain. The climate is extraordinarily beneficent. I can speak of a vicar who sailed here with
me with his wife, both of whom were over fifty and childless. The wife is now pregnant with child, at an age so advanced that such a condition must seem a Miracle. I have spoken to her of it at
length; indeed, certain loose Tongues have begun to wag about who the true father of her astonishing child is, such is the time I have spent with her.
I would not have this Fancy shared with your fellow Royal Society councillors, Sir Jonas. It is probably no more than the idle speculation of a man grown frustrated with his
work, a man stymied by Clouds. But I cannot deny that there is something inexplicable about this Island, something alien which made me give credit to the ogre’s story.
I have also detected a significant Variation in the Variation of the Magneticall Needle, if such a verbal construction be not too confusing. I have been fascinated by the
way Magnetic North varies as one travels south across the ocean, and am developing a theory that these Curve-Lines of Equal Variation can be mapped, and may join each other, such that a Map of
Variation might be possible covering the entire Globe.
The most interesting of these is the Line of No Variation, which I conjecture from my own observations runs in a gigantic sweep from the north-west to the south-east along
the central Atlantic Ocean, joining Florida and passing through St Helena to the Icey Sea beyond. However, on this Island itself, this Line of No Variation disappears, and the Variation to Magnetic
North jumps to almost 10 degrees. The effect disappears a mile off the coast, such that it is barely ever noticed by navigators, as they have no need of their Compass when they can navigate by
Eye.
I have no explanation for this odd behaviour of the Magneticall Needle. It worries at me like a sore Tooth, and paints the entire Island in a fog of Mystery as thick as the
real fog which obscures the peaks.
I may grow fanciful. This talk of Magnetic Variation may just be down to faulty Apparatus, and my ancient ogre just a fictive Caliban, and I a Trinculo who has drunk too
much of Prospero’s wine. But not all discovery is made merely by Observation. There may be more here than can meet the Observer’s eye. We should send more men to St Helena, and we
should not limit our Gaze to the Skies.
Yours, in continuing gratitude
HALLEY, E.
The following morning, Horton took his drink-addled head and the things he had learned to the River Police Office. Despite Markland’s dire warnings, it was still to
Harriott that he owed his loyalty. He reported in full to the magistrate on his meeting with Charles Lamb, rehearsing the clerk’s stories of Johnson’s hidden discoveries within the East
India Company’s ledgered innards.
‘What do you know of St Helena, Horton?’ asked Harriott.
‘I confess very little, sir.’
‘The extent of my knowledge, also. I stopped there myself, on my return from India, but saw precious little of the island. I could barely walk at the time. An extraordinary prospect,
though. Like a rocky fortress alone on the ocean.’
A look familiar to Horton passed over his magistrate’s face, like the shadow of a cloud on blue waters. An old seaman’s look, salty with memories.
‘I also spoke to Mr Markland last eve,’ Horton said, carefully. ‘He was much exercised with our visit to East India House. It appears that he is a Proprietor in the
Company.’
The wistful expression disappeared from Harriott’s face, which immediately went an old and worrying shade of red.
‘A Proprietor? Markland?’
‘Yes, sir. He has only one vote, which suggests he may only be in possession of a small holding . . .’
‘Why, this is a disgrace! Wait a minute. You met him in the Prospect?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘He found you in there?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘He went to look for you! He warned you off, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, sir. In a manner of speaking. Or rather, he intimated that I would find things difficult if I did not immediately report any developments to him.’
‘Scandalous! The Home Secretary will be informed of this.’
Horton wondered if he should add what Markland had told him about Harriott’s personal circumstances: how he was ill, how he was poor. But would an outbreak of hostilities between the
magistrates make his investigation easier or more difficult? Harriott had always been something of a loose cannon and this had on occasion made things more difficult than they might have been. For
now, Markland was more use as an ally than an enemy.
‘Sir, I wonder if we should not perhaps leave Mr Markland’s revelation alone.’
‘What? How so? It is a clear and flagrant breach of the essential integrity of his office.’
Horton didn’t know if that were true or not; he had certainly encountered a number of magistrates for whom
integrity
was no watch-word.
‘Sir, Markland knows the Company, or at least aspects of the Company which are unfamiliar to you. He may provide us access we would not otherwise achieve. And it is his case, not ours. He
may simply decide to keep it to himself.’
