The Hidden Man (26 page)

‘Did he come back again?'

‘Yes.'

‘And did he have any visitors?'

‘No.'

‘Not even any messages? Think hard, Houndsworth. This is very important.'

‘I tell you solemnly, Mr Cragg, I don't know of any message or letter delivered for him that evening. But then, fact is, I weren't here. I left my sister in charge while I went for a few jugs at Cowley's Tavern.'

‘I see. Is your sister here? Can I speak to her?'

‘She's married, at Kirkham. She just comes here Wednesday nights to help me. I need my weekly respite, Mr Cragg. This place is very hard to keep going when a man's on his own. I can't afford a maid or even a boy, because I'm—'

I cut him off.

‘What other guests were there at the inn that night?'

‘Oh, er, let me see.' He rubbed his chin. ‘We don't get many…'

‘For God's sake, Houndsworth, this is only last night! Don't you have a register of arrivals and departures?'

‘Oh no, we don't bother us heads with one of those. Too much work, and I'm not that handy with a pen, myself.'

‘What about your sister?'

‘Oh, Betty, she writes with a lovely hand. She is much cleverer than me, like our old mam used to say, she—'

‘I mean, did she say anything to you about arrivals or any other events at the inn, when you got back from the tavern?'

‘She might have. I were not thinking too straight on account of the ale I'd supped, y'see. I think I remember that she said some sharpish words to me and then she took herself off to her bed, and I to mine.'

‘So when was the last time you yourself saw Mr Jackson in person?'

‘When he came back from going out – to the post office as I thought.'

‘So that would be at about half past four yesterday afternoon?'

‘Yes.'

‘And when was the last you saw the negro child?'

‘I didn't. I mean I'd seen it curled up on the bed in the room at dinner-time. I never saw it after. What's happened to it?'

I ignored the question.

‘So this morning there were no guests at the inn, no one to give breakfast to?'

‘If there were, Betty saw to them. I didn't waken up till half of eleven, me, and by then she'd shot off back to Kirkham. I were that far gone in the drink, y'see, that I—'

‘So there might have been visitors who came last night while you were at Cowley's Tavern, or even guests for the night who left this morning while you slept off your drinking session?'

‘Might have.'

‘May I see this White Room that Mr Jackson occupied?'

‘Yes Sir.'

He led me, with a shambling rheumatic gait, up the stairs and along a dusty corridor. He opened a door about half way along and gestured me to go first inside.

Houndsworth lingered just inside the door, his small eyes watching me as I went to the window, threw it open and looked around. It was an upstairs room and its brownish walls had once, possibly, been white. Otherwise it was a little larger, but no less dingy and fetid, than Houndsworth's apartment downstairs. There was a travelling valise on the floor, open and spilling some linen under-clothes. On a chair by the bed were a candle-holder and two small books, one being, as I could see from the cross on its cover, a pocket New Testament. On the small table were smoking and writing materials, though nothing written. The waste-basket was empty.

I squatted down to look into the fire-grate. Jackson had not lit himself a substantial fire but, from a heap of black ash, I saw that he had burned some paper. The ash lay in deformed charred sheets, which crumbled to dust as I touched them. Were they a rough draft of the letter he wrote? Who had he been writing to? It was too late to go to the post office tonight, but it would be worth paying a visit to Richard Crick the postmaster in the morning. It was too much to hope that the letter might still be there. But Crick was young and keen: he would remember the letter posted by a stranger less than two days ago, and maybe the person it was sent to.

Next I turned out the valise, but it contained only clothing. I peered under the bed and saw a thick and undisturbed layer of dust. I surveyed the whole of the open floor, but did not see what I was looking for – Jackson's missing shoe.

Next I picked up his Testament and opened it where the ribbon marker indicated – the gospel of Matthew, chapter six, where the famous words were underscored: ‘
No man can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.
' I could see how this might apply to Jackson. One of his masters was undoubtedly Mammon, in the shape of the insurance company that had sent him to find out about the voyage of
The Fortunate Isle
. But what was that other Master? What, in his life, was God?

Then I opened the other book at the title page and was astonished to see it was the
Essays
by Montaigne, and that Jackson had evidently been reading ‘On Cannibals'. After the passage in which the author lists all the things in our lives which we think necessary to society, such as employment, money, letters and numbers, none of which the cannibals have need for, there were again some underscored lines, that evidently meant much to Jackson himself. In these lines Montaigne says that ‘
among them the very words that signifie lying, treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy and detraction
were never heard of.
'

At that moment my whole idea of the dead man changed. He was a fellow reader, and he was occupied with the very same author whom I had been so much enjoying. I felt an entirely new kind of sympathy for Tybalt Jackson. When I had first seen his destroyed face I had felt ordinary human pity for him. But I now began to see him, and especially the views he had expressed about slavery the previous day, in a different light. The lines of Montaigne that he had picked out were so admiring. They spoke of cannibals as people that surpassed even the legend of the Golden Age: surely one who underscores those words does not in his heart support the buying and selling of such people into servitude – whatever he may feel obliged to say in public.

I riffled the pages and noted that Jackson had underlined other sentences here and there. Thinking they would be worth more study, I slipped both books into my pocket.

‘Thank you, I have seen enough,' I said, slipping out past Houndsworth and heading for the stairs.

‘I've just thought,' said Houndsworth as he followed me down to the hallway. ‘What about my money for two nights' rent, and his bread and cheese on Tuesday night and his dinner on Wednesday? He owes me for all that, does Mr Jackson. Who's going to give it me?'

‘No one, I am afraid,' I said, making haste to pull open the outside door. I had had more than enough of breathing the stale air of George Houndsworth's sorry establishment.

‘But I must have my money, Mr Cragg!'

‘Death trumps debt, I'm afraid. Now, there is just one more thing I need from you, Mr Houndsworth.'

‘Yes Sir?'

‘The married name of your sister in Kirkham, if you please.'

 

Chapter Twenty

‘I
T ALL PROVES
she can hear and understand English,' I said, as Fidelis and I walked back together that afternoon to the House of Correction. I had been telling him of the extraordinary revelation at the Mayor's court in the morning, and how it confirmed his own opinion of the African servant's sex. ‘But she still has not spoken, and we know nothing about her.'

‘You will need her as a witness, Titus. That will present difficulties if she proves a mute.'

‘Elizabeth took her some breakfast this morning and indeed found her mute, but when she drank the soup there was a tongue in her mouth. Besides, George Houndsworth claims he heard her speaking.'

‘There is muteness and muteness, Titus. In all probability this negro girl has had the words frightened out of her. They may return at any moment. And it is good that she seems to know English.'

‘Yes, but the really good thing,' I said, as we arrived once again at the Porter's Lodge of the House, ‘is that she is no longer incarcerated in this Godforsaken place.'

I am usually present when Fidelis examines a body though if there is to be any cutting open I sometimes retire to a distance until he has made his various incisions, separations and removals. He told me he would attend first to the rough piece of wood that still protruded from the body – the ‘stake' that the body's discoverers had described.

‘You may prefer to look away,' he said, picking up a large butcher's knife and shears of a size roughly between those of scissors and hedge-trimmers. I went for a walk around the yard and when I returned he had opened the chest by cutting through the sternum with the shears, and separated the two sides of the ribcage.

By pulling the ribs apart and peering inside with a lit candle he was able to see how far the stick had penetrated. It was not very far.

‘The stick was not the primary method of attack. It went in on the heart's side but did not hit it.'

He pulled the stick out from between the ribs and held it up. It was about eight inches long in all so that three or four inches had penetrated the body.

‘In fact, I think this was done
post mortem
. Let's look at the head. There are terrible wounds to the features but I would say the fatal one is here.'

He pointed to a four-inch split in the skull, scabbed along its length with dried blood. With his fingers he carefully took off the scab and felt within the split.

‘I would say a metal edge did this. It must have made him unconscious and more than likely killed him outright. Note the position a little below and to the side of the crown.'

‘Meaning?'

‘Meaning he was hit from behind as well as in front.'

‘He was attacked by more than one person, then.'

‘Either that, or Jackson turned away to protect himself during the assault.'

‘What weapon? A sword?'

‘If it was, a very heavy one.'

‘The same could have been used to damage the face.'

‘Yes. It was a thorough job, but see here? This ear was not sliced through with a sharp blade like a knife. It has been roughly severed by a chopping, blunt blow. I think this is more likely the work of an axe than a sword.'

I looked the length of the body, still clothed, still with one stockinged foot.

‘If we can find the missing shoe, we may find the weapon too,' I said. ‘But where do we look?'

‘Your little black girl might tell us, I fancy.'

‘Aye – but how to get it out of her? This is the same blind alley that we face with Adam Thorn in the matter of this treasure, is it not?'

‘Not at all the same. The girl's tongue may spring loose by itself. Thorn's silence is buried deeper, and it is bound to his paralysis.'

‘Oh dear. I have been hoping Adam's tongue might just spring loose, as you put it.'

‘It's possible, but not likely. However there may be other ways of unearthing what he knows.'

‘You have a treatment for him?'

‘I did not say that.'

*   *   *

‘By the way, you should see this,' said Fidelis. ‘I received it this morning.'

We had quit the House of Correction and, at my insistence, called at the Friary Bar Inn. I wished to make sure that the same room I had used for the Pimbo inquest would be available on Saturday for the Jackson hearing. The landlord, delighted at the prospect of a second day of prodigious takings, poured out a gift of two bumpers of his best claret. After Fidelis had savoured this liberality, he had taken from his pocket a letter, which he handed to me, adding as if casually ‘It is from Mrs Butler in Liverpool.'

I unfolded the paper and read:

‘
Dear sweet doctor
',

‘Your musical acquaintance is very fond,' I remarked.

Fidelis coloured.

‘That is her nature. Please read on.'

I am grateful for yours of 7th inst. You say you are unsure about Mr Canavan's suitability to be my husband and that you wish that I knew him better before entering into marriage. I protest I have done much in that regard. Since he proposed that we marry I have written him a note every day – leaving him I hope in no doubts as to my affection – and he replies most kindly. I have invited him to Edmund Street many times for tea and, on several occasions as you know, he has honoured me by accepting, being on these occasions sweet and charming. His last letter assured me of his own honourable intentions, and that too has much encouraged me. Your fears, dear doctor, do you credit but I am sure they are groundless.

Mr Canavan has never spoken or written to me of the Mr Jackson you enquire about. I have had the opportunity to make mention, as you asked me to, of Mr Moon. Mr Canavan was very curious to know how I had heard the name and I had to tell him of the paper I found. He says he is a business acquaintance who has gone out of Liverpool on business and does not expect to see again in the town for several days. Mr Canavan has not told me where he is gone. Mr Canavan too is being kept very busy.

Please do not distress yourself on my account, dear doctor, and assure yourself that I am your vy affectionate B. Butler.

I lowered the paper.

‘Moon is not in Liverpool. That's interesting. Where is he?'

‘I have been thinking he could be somewhere hereabouts.'

‘Who I wonder is his accomplice?'

‘Accomplice?'

‘I am sure two men killed Tybalt Jackson.'

I drained my glass and sprang to my feet, suddenly full of energy.

‘So shall we walk up to the Stone,' I proposed, ‘and see if we can find any trace of these villains and their activities?'