The Grenadillo Box: A Novel (20 page)

I got up beside her—what choice did I have? But I was damned if I’d let the matter go without a few words of warning. “I doubt you understand the danger you are putting yourself in, Miss Goodchild,” I said solemnly. “If you must come, for God’s sake stay close to me at all times.”

She looked sideways at me. “If I believe your reputation, it is you I should fear, Mr. Hopson,” she said slyly, “not the shadows of Fleet.”

Observing this charade from his platform, Fetherby cackled. “She knows her own mind. There are few like her, Mr. Hopson, and she’s saucy enough to be a match for you.”

“Shall we leave before our blood freezes, Fetherby?” I said pointedly. “Or have you further wisdom to bestow?”

We rumbled ponderously along Fleet Street and across the bridge to Ludgate Hill. Here we left the main thoroughfare and wound our way past the butchers’ stalls and slaughterhouses of Smithfield, into the labyrinthine alleys and courts within courts that mark the meanest London streets. Anyone familiar with our city will know the Fleet is famed in our time for its dreadful debtors’ prison, and that the inhabitants of that place have become so numerous as to spill over into the surrounding streets. Thus the reek of poverty was all around us, a stench of dung and blood and entrails unwashed from the gutter. The unlit streets were lined with gin shops, bawdy houses, pawnbrokers, and stalls, within which I imagined all manner of harlots, thieves, and beggars to reside. Sometimes the mud through which we rolled was so deep it seemed we meandered through a sea of tar. Sometimes the lanes were so narrow the wheels brushed the sides of the hovels and shacks that lined them. Whenever we spied pedestrians in the gloom ahead, we called out for them to flatten themselves or be crushed by the wheels. Through all this Alice showed no obvious sign of fear. She sat upright, silent, although when the cart jolted her cloak apart I caught sight of her hands clenched so tight that the nails must have bitten into her skin. Taking this as a sign she might be more fearful than she showed, I endeavored to distract her.

“You never told me what it was you wanted to say.”

“What?” She started, as if she’d almost forgotten I was there.

“When you let me in you said it was because there was something you wished to tell me.”

“So I did,” she replied. “It is curious, and I meant to tell you of it yesterday, only I believe my anger made it slip my mind.”

But I never discovered what it was, for at that moment Fetherby drew the wagon to an abrupt halt. “I can take you no further. You’ll have to go on by foot,” he announced, spitting a large globule of phlegm to the ground.

“But which way is it now? You must give us directions,” I said.

Fetherby swiveled round in his seat and sucked noisily on his gums. “Well now, let me consider. As I recall you take this lane till Foubert’s Court. Go through to the far end. There’s a yard, turn to your left. Across from the entrance to Mitre Court is an alehouse—Blue Boar, it’s called. Go in. Ask for Grace Webb—landlord’s wife, lets out rooms in her garret and cellar. That’s where I took the chest.”

Before I could hand Alice down she’d descended into the mire, lifting her skirts in one hand and holding the lantern aloft in the other to make it easier for me to avoid the potholes. I jumped down beside her, misjudged my step, and the mud oozed into the crevices of my shoes. I fancied I saw the corners of her mouth twitch, but she turned immediately to lead the way as Fetherby had directed.

We passed through a honeycomb of beggars’ lodging houses, brothels, rookeries, garrets, and night cellars. Most resembled heaps of rubbish rather than dwelling places, with wood or paper substituted for broken panes of glass, and holes in the walls stuffed by rags.

“What could have possessed him to choose such a vile place?”

“The answer is surely that no one would reside here from choice,” replied Alice. “He came, like everyone else here, because he had
no
choice.”

“Not necessarily. He might have wished himself untraceable—to lose himself in this maze. Was that what Chippendale forced him to?”

“It wasn’t essential to endure such squalor to lose himself. He could have left London, gone to the country.”

“But London was all he knew.”

By now we’d arrived at the threshold of the Blue Boar Alehouse, a miserable tumbledown mound of rotten beams and damp walls blackened by the surrounding filth. How Alice must have regretted her decision to accompany me as we turned the rusty handle in the door and entered. I thank God never to have entered such a hole of a place before or since and even now can barely dare to contemplate what she made of it all. The walls were as dark and putrid as those outside; in places great slabs of render had fallen from them, leaving the bricks and beams beneath leprously exposed. Spanning one wall was a crude counter hung with numerous tarnished tankards, bowls, jugs, cups, and flagons made of pewter, iron, and leather. Behind it a couple of harassed pot boys were busy filling these various receptacles from vast barrels and kegs, while an older man, a cutthroat rascal whom I presumed to be the landlord, leaned on the counter smoking a pipe. The whole room was in an uproar for, in the far corner, I now became aware, a couple of she-devils were engaged in combat. Their scratching and biting and hitting engagement had bloodied and bruised their faces and shredded their clothes so that their bare bosoms were exposed to view, much to the delight of the cheering crowd of men surrounding them.

At our inquiry the landlord crossly tore himself away from the spectacle and shouted at one of the pot boys to call his wife, who was presently occupied in the kitchens. Grace Webb, a small stout woman with a vast globular bosom suspended over a corpulent torso, appeared some minutes later. Her generous proportions did not reflect an amiable temperament. She emerged from her kitchen scowling furiously, sausage fingers braced upon fleshy hips.

“What the devil is this about? I’m up to my elbows in suet and tripe and you summon me?”

“I do beg your pardon, my dearest,” said the landlord with mock gentility. “There’s two fine people who wish to speak with you.”

She snorted with disdain. “Why should I be interested in their questions, pray?”

“It’s this lady and gentleman here.” He winked and added in an undertone, “I’ve a feeling they’ll be generous with those that help them. ’Tis the gentleman with the chest they’re after. The one who’s not paid his dues for two weeks.”

She reconstructed her expression from fury to shifty curiosity.

“What is it then?” she demanded.

“Madam,” I replied, bowing slightly and pressing a shilling in her hand, “I believe you recently gave lodgings to a man by the name of John Partridge, and that his work chest was delivered here a fortnight ago?”

She looked at the shiny coin and then back at me. “And what of it?”

“John Partridge was an acquaintance of mine. I would like to see his things—and make arrangements to remove them.”

“Was?”

“He died recently, in tragic circumstances.”

“Damnation if you will! How dare he die without paying my rent. I should’ve known better than to take him in the first place. There’s four shillings due and you’ll not touch anything till it’s paid. I’ll ’ave to sell his things to cover my costs.”

“Madam, be assured I’ll willingly pay the outstanding amount, and more for your trouble, for I entirely comprehend your inconvenience,” I said. “Meantime here’s another shilling if you’ll let me just look at his room tonight.” I could see from the glare she shot at me she thought I was an idiot to offer so much when a couple of pennies would have done as well, but she wasn’t about to tell me so.

“Very well. Follow me,” she snarled, snatching the second coin from my fingers.

She led the way through a maze of small rooms, each heaving with foul-smelling bodies. The sounds of the sparring women and the roistering audience followed us up a staircase leading four stories, to the garret. Mrs. Webb was grunting from her exertions by the time we reached the top landing. She took a key from her chain and unlocked the left-hand door. “This is it,” she announced. “Everything there’s like when he left. I’ll give you ten minutes, no longer. You may look but take nothing with you. You’ll come back with the monies owing before you take the stuff away.”

She stood there blocking the doorway, waiting for us to respond. We stared mutely back. “I’m presuming the lantern’s not enough?” She gestured towards Alice’s lamp. “You’ll be wanting a light or two more to see by,” she said crossly, thrusting two tallow stubs at us. “In which case, that’ll be sixpence.” Money was incidental. I simply wanted to see Partridge’s effects and be gone from this foul place. Without remonstrating at the exorbitant cost of this transaction, I produced another coin, which she stowed with the rest before mercifully clumping down the stairs.

The room was meagerly furnished: a bed and bolster—the covers little more than unwashed rags; two old cane-bottomed chairs; a cracked looking glass in a deal frame hanging from the wall; a small wainscot table, on which was an empty iron candlestick. There was only one object here I recognized as belonging to Partridge. Under the eaves beneath the window stood his work chest.

Alice placed her lantern on the table and holding her candle in one hand began rifling through the contents of the table drawer with the other. I meanwhile tried to open the chest but succeeded only in burning my hand with molten tallow. I set the stub on the floor and shook my hand about to cool it.

“Locked.”

“Is this what you’re looking for?” She held out an intricately wrought brass key.

I slotted it into the keyhole. Cautiously I turned the key in the lock and lifted back the lid. Partridge had spent many an idle hour adorning his chest with as much care as if he were decorating the richest commode. Within the unremarkable bitumened exterior were ranks of mahogany compartments, sliding tills and drawers in which chisels, gouges, files, planes, rules, and saws were neatly stored. In the center of the chest was a well divided into three sections: one holding the molding planes, another containing fretsaws, and a third covered with a panel. I retracted the panel and lowered my candle stub into the dark cavity. Here was something that might conceivably be of interest: a slender booklet in a card cover, Partridge’s sketchbook. Before I’d time to examine its pages, Alice knelt beside me. I heard her gasp loudly. She was holding her candle close to the center of the lid, staring fixedly at it.

Last time I’d seen Partridge’s chest, the lid had been lined with plain mahogany. Now an oval had been cut from the center of it and an intricate marquetry picture inset. “Partridge must have made this recently,” I said, “for while I’ve often seen his chest, I never saw this before.”

She was still gazing at the picture. “It’s a curious subject. D’you recognize it?”

I studied it carefully. It was, as she said, most curious: a temple, a bird, and two figures clad in classical robes, one standing, the other prostrate before him.

“I don’t believe I do,” I replied. “But plainly it’s taken from antiquity. Partridge was fascinated by ancient legend. I daresay he took the design from a print.” I squinted again, and then it was my turn to be thunderstruck. I shook my head, unable to believe the evidence before me.

“Why do you look so? What is it you are staring at?” demanded Alice.

“The wood. Look here.” I pointed to the columns of the temple, the robes of the prostrate figure, and the wing feathers of the bird. “Is this not the very same grenadillo wood as the box taken from Montfort’s hand?”

Alice leaned forward. Four stories below I heard a creak as Grace Webb began her ascent of the stairs. She was approaching with surprising stealth and rapidity. There was no time to lose. Without a thought for what I was doing, I stuffed the booklet of sketches in my pocket, slammed down the lid, locked it, and replaced the key in the drawer where we’d found it. Alice remained frozen in her crouched position. I offered my hand to help her, but she ignored me. “Miss Goodchild…Alice…stand up. She’s coming, and I don’t wish her to suspect we’ve taken anything from the chest.”

Alice stood slowly, stiffly, head bowed, as if she’d scarcely heard me but was absorbed in some great problem.

“What’s the matter? Do you not concede that it is the same timber? You have only to regard the figuring to see—”

Abruptly she raised her head and stared frankly into my eyes. “Of course I agree. It’s that very matter I’m considering. It confirms more than you know.”

Plainly my face must have shown astonishment and bewilderment, for she shook her head as if she was impatient with herself. “I owe you an apology, Nathaniel. I should have told you before now. You recall I said I had something to tell you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s all the more remarkable in the light of this. What I wanted to tell you was this: I looked for grenadillo wood in our ledgers yesterday. The timber came from South America; it was popular a century ago but has recently become scarce. And…”

“And?”

“I consulted another encyclopedia. It seems that when the timber was fashionable, it was termed something else.”

I frowned at her, not following her drift at all.

“Nathaniel, grenadillo was also commonly known as partridge wood.”

I stared back at her, feeling more dazed and giddy at this information than if I’d drunk a bottle of wine. “Are you certain?”