The Grenadillo Box: A Novel (22 page)

I
lay on the bed, wretched, half insensible, and chastised myself heartily for the weakness of my resolve. The room spun round my head faster than a whirligig, and with so much wine in my belly all I could do was pray and trust my penitence would keep me from retching. In vain I now regretted my chute from diligent research to drunkenness. How I wished I could undo my dissipation.

My transgressions had begun midafternoon, when I’d returned from the hospital flaming with good intent. I’d meant to show my face at the workshop and carry out my duties before retiring to my lodgings to think over all I’d unveiled. Instead, as I walked down St. Martin’s Lane, fair Fanny Harling spied me from her window. She sped out like an enthusiastic puppy to halt me and, declaring I was just what she needed, implored me to come in with her. The reason for this fervent entreaty, so she said, was a tallboy. Its drawers were sticking and her linens impossible to arrange in an orderly fashion. Her husband, a silversmith who was well known to me, had presently gone to Deptford on business, leaving her alone, helpless, needful of my ministrations.

Of course I wasn’t so green as not to recognize this invitation for the lure it undoubtedly was. I reviewed my difficulties with Alice and shuddered at the thought that my actions might cause a repetition of our troubles. Such a visit was impossible, I declared, I had important work to do. “Take a stub of tallow,” I suggested, “and rub it several times over the base. You’ll find it’s the very thing to ease the runners.” She chuckled naughtily, bubbles of laughter more infectious than any contagion, and begged me again. Now I found myself laughing back and my spirits becoming so violently exhilarated that to reject her seemed pointlessly cruel. Alice vanished like a phantom from my consciousness. I did what seemed right at the time, and the only thing I could think of. I succumbed.

We both had a terrible hunger and went first to the Shakespeare, where we regaled our bellies with oyster pie and doses of champagne, while our fingers kept busy with caresses under the table. When we had eaten and drunk and stroked our fill, she led me back to her dwelling. “This way for the ‘tallboy,’ ” she said saucily, squeezing past the door to drag me upstairs, brushing the contours of my manhood beneath my breeches as she did so.

I had forgotten how lithe she was, how slender was her waist, how plumply her buttocks filled her petticoats. I could span her waist with my hands, and the champagne made her more ticklish than a salmon. She squirmed enticingly as I held her, placed a butterfly kiss on my mouth, and took my hand and placed it where I should toy with her. “Now tell me,” she whispered as she leaned alluringly against her tallboy, “can you think of no other means to ease my problem?”

Neither of us was in a mood to wait. “Show me what you think might loosen it,” I murmured as I clamped my mouth on hers, unbuttoned myself, and gathered her onto me. We thrust together, damp and desperate as storm-tossed travelers battling a gale, until we fell back on her bed to oblivion.

Some time later I was rudely awakened to find her shaking me by the shoulder. “I believe I hear Samuel’s step downstairs,” she said, suddenly matter-of-fact. “For God’s sake go to the closet before he comes in.”

Nothing is so sobering as the imminent arrival of a husband. Once before, on a memorable occasion I’d prefer to forget, I’d encountered Samuel Harling in a rage. It was not an experience I was ready to repeat. I leaped from her bed, grabbed my clothes and boots, and concealed myself while she descended the stairs to distract him. Five minutes later, having dressed inside the closet, I clambered through the window to the stable roof, from where it was a fortunately short drop to the street. But the effects of the champagne and burgundy and brandy I’d consumed made me maladroit. My ankle twisted beneath me, and I landed in a pool of mud. I yelped with pain, but mercifully the damage was slight and I recovered myself. With a prayer of thanks to a kindly Lord for allowing me to escape my transgression with such minor inconveniences as soiled breeches and a bruised foot, I limped home to my lodgings.

As soon as I lay on the bed, the effects of my debauch returned. The room swam, I fell into semioblivion, and my head pounded even more urgently than my loins a few hours earlier. Eventually, realizing there would be no possibility of sleep in such a state, I rose, took a drink, and vomited copiously into the chamber pot.

Now, somewhat clearer in the head, I lay down again and dozed. But my sleep was fitful and I was roused some hours later by the clatter of the night-soil wagon in the street outside. I opened my eyes and looked around me. Moonlight filled my bedchamber. My mouth was furry and foul-tasting, and my body was racked with cold. In my drunkenness I’d discarded my soiled clothing and lain on the counterpane without bothering to cover myself. I sat up, pulled on a nightgown, and crawled beneath the covers. Even with the weight of bedclothes upon me, I trembled so violently I couldn’t close my eyes.

Thoughts of Partridge and Madame Trenti and Chippendale disturbed me, but I consoled myself that, prior to my lapse, I’d made some small advances. The letter I’d received from Partridge supported Trenti’s claim that it was she who had sent him to Montfort. But, as I’d guessed, there had been nothing at the hospital to show that Partridge was Trenti and Montfort’s child. Thus, although I still suspected Partridge was just a convenient substitute, I now comprehended the
reason
he had gone to Cambridge. He had gone at Trenti’s behest, to petition Montfort for financial assistance. I also knew, thanks to Alice, that grenadillo wood was a rare timber sometimes known as partridge wood. This, together with the skill with which the box was made, was enough to convince me it was Partridge who had carved the grenadillo box and given it to Montfort as a signature piece, whose wood bore his own name. In this sense it was also an obscure calling card, identifiable only if you knew the name of the wood. Partridge loved conundrums, and this curious puzzle was entirely in his character.

But there was still much that perplexed me. First, the timber. I wondered where on earth Partridge could have laid hands on such rare material. And if I assumed Partridge was responsible for making the box and giving it to Montfort, did that mean he had entered the library on the night Montfort died to give it to him? I remembered the pool of blood on the windowsill, and the terrible mutilation of Partridge’s hand. I suspected the blood was Partridge’s rather than Montfort’s, yet I couldn’t begin to comprehend why anyone would injure him in such a way.

A shaft of silver light flooded the window, illuminating the top of my dressing table and on it Partridge’s sketchbook, which I had recovered during my search of his lodgings with Alice. I had yet to examine the pages thoroughly, but a brief glance had shown me that they contained no more than designs and sketches for furniture.

The moment Alice’s name returned to my consciousness, I was overcome with remorse for my antics with Fanny Harling. I tried valiantly to reassure myself. I was unattached, I’d made no commitment to Alice, such random connections were necessary for my equilibrium. To enjoy a woman hungry for the pleasures you offered could not be entirely wicked. One might even construe it as a form of generosity.

Yet deep down I felt uneasy. I suspected that Alice would not agree were she to discover the episode, and now I thought over it, I knew I’d been a fool. My coupling with Fanny had roused my body but not my spirit. I felt remorse rather than satisfaction. And this led me to a further disturbing point:
was
I unattached? Had Alice somehow inveigled her way into my consciousness and spirit without my recognizing or endorsing it? Was that why I now felt a disturbing rectitude, an amorous scrupulousness that was entirely foreign to my nature? Of course, in my heart I knew the answers to all these questions. I had done what I had never believed possible: I’d let myself become intoxicated with a woman who viewed me with suspicion. Alice had me ensnared.

With such perplexities tormenting my brain, it was little wonder sleep continued to elude me. At length, realizing that it was pointless to lie there thrashing and shivering and fretting, I rose. I wrapped myself in a blanket, took up the notebook, and in a pool of moonlight, began to peruse its pages.

I passed briskly over designs for cabinets, chests, moldings, and curlicues, marveling at Partridge’s astonishing eye for detail and proportion as I viewed each page. Halfway through the book was a drawing for the inlaid panel we’d discovered in his tool-chest lid. It depicted the same two figures in classical costume, one old, one young, one standing, one lying before a Grecian temple, with a bird flying off in the distance. Underneath was a small inscription,
Daedalus and Talos, after Cipriani.
The title meant nothing to me, although Cipriani, an Italian artist lately arrived in London and enjoying success for his toga-clad maidens, was familiar enough.

I looked further. The next page was bare save for a more detailed study of the temple that formed the background for the vignette. I turned another page. This time a detailed drawing, which it took me several moments to decipher. I decided at length it depicted the same temple, in equal detail, but viewed from a strange perspective. My predilection for studying and dismantling structures made such an alternate view strangely fascinating. I turned back to the previous page to verify the accuracy of each study. It was as I was flitting between the two, scrutinizing the pen work, that the full significance of what I’d stumbled on came to me. This was not merely a sketch for the scene inlaid in the tool chest. It was also a design for a three-dimensional object. The design for the grenadillo box.

Anticipation clenching at my innards, I turned to the next page and found further drawings that explained the mechanism inside. There were details of every join and hinge. I could now see that the middle section of roof was a sliding panel, which would be released only by pressing on a tiny corner of veneer. When this was drawn back, another slide at right angles to the first was uncovered. Beneath was the cavity where the key was hidden. The lock was similarly concealed: by pushing down on the opposite wall, one of the columns could be retracted to reveal it, and thus the entire side of the temple hinged open to reveal the compartment—and contents—within. The mechanics of operation were straightforward but effective, an adaptation of methods used to conceal a compartment in a writing desk or cabinet. And, as I’d discovered, unless you knew precisely where to press, and in what order to proceed, the box was impossible to open.

I put down the book. The excitement of my findings had raised my pulse, and now that I’d unearthed the secrets I was in a fever of impatience to put them to the test. Alas! Where was the subject of this research, where was the mysterious box Foley had entrusted to me? I cursed myself roundly. I had returned it to him at our previous meeting on the bridge when I’d confessed myself incapable of discovering how it opened. It was two days since I’d heard from Foley, and I didn’t know if he was returned to Cambridge. How fervently I prayed he remained in London. I’d half a mind to go immediately to his house and try to rouse him. But as soon as I’d thought of the idea I dismissed it. The chimes of the hall clock told me it was not yet four in the morning. If I woke Foley now he’d hardly be in a mood to receive me.

In this state of agitation I forced myself to close my eyes, even though I was convinced sleep would never come. Yet strangely my earlier restlessness no longer troubled me, and almost immediately I fell into a profound and dreamless slumber. When I awoke the clock was striking seven. Dawn was breaking, a clear cold morning that had deposited a veil of frost over my window.

I leaped from my bed, broke the ice in the washbowl, and washed Fanny’s musky scent from my skin. The soreness of my head and ankle seemed to have vanished with the dark, and my mind was surprisingly clear. I splashed myself with rose water and dressed quickly—clean linens, brown breeches, and gray coat—scarcely noting my awkward reflection in the looking glass, relieved only that the anxieties that had troubled me last night had vanished along with the symptoms of my debauch.

The reason for my miraculous cure was obvious. I believed I held a key to the deaths of Partridge and Montfort here in my hand. For surely, I told myself, once the contents of the box were revealed, the fog shrouding these events would begin to melt away.

En route to Foley’s, I made a detour to the workshop. I’d decided to explain this morning’s absence—it would take an hour or two, no longer, of that I was convinced—by persuading Chippendale I must visit Foley on the pretext of checking a measurement for a drawing. To say the truth, while I felt slight qualms in this deception, these were snowflakes compared with the blizzard of my disillusionment at his deception. Partridge’s letter had revealed how poorly Chippendale had used him and, as I saw it, had nullified the loyalty he was due. Ever since I’d read the letter I’d struggled to reconcile his guise of uprightness with what I now knew his true character to be. I recoiled from my master; my heart was irretrievably hardened, although I own even then a childish part of me still longed to believe in him as I once had done.

Chippendale’s reaction to my petition was predictable. His overriding concern was that I should remain on good terms with Foley, and thus he drank up my excuses readily. So it was that by eight, having breakfasted on bread and cheese and a tankard of porter, I set out for St. James’s with my master’s blessing, and soon after I was knocking on Foley’s door.

He was still in his nightgown, eating rolls and marmalade and seed cake on a porcelain plate, when his footman showed me to him.