The Meaning of Night (9 page)

apply a little additional torment, which would be repaid with compound interest. Two

communications received. Perhaps a third would bring matters to a head.

I kept a close eye on Jukes from that moment on. From my sitting-room window,

if I placed my face close against the glass, I could just see down to where the staircase

gave onto the street. I observed him carrying in his provisions, or passing the time of day

with the occupants of neighbouring chambers, sometimes taking the mangy little dog he

kept out for a walk by the river. His work hours were regular, his private activities

innocent.

Nothing happened: the expected third communication did not come; there was no

soft knock on the door, and no indication of an unravelling plan. Slowly, over the

following days, I began to gain ground on my enfeebled self, and, with returning strength

and concentration, emerged one morning after a sound night’s sleep – the first for a week

or more – to rededicate myself to the destruction of my enemy.

Of his history and character you shall know more – much more – as this narrative

continues. He was ever in my mind, even throughout the recent crisis arising from the

anonymous notes. I breathed him in every day, for his fate was anchored to mine. ‘And I

shall cover his head with the mountains of my wrath, and press him down,/And he shall

be forgotten by men.’ This is an untypically fine line from the epic pen of P. Rainsford

Daunt (The Maid of Minsk, Book III); but there is a finer by Mr Tennyson, which I had

constantly before my mental eye: ‘I was born to other things.’?

On the Sunday following the interment of Lucas Trendle, I had called at Blithe

Lodge, as arranged, and had been shown into the back parlour by Charlotte, the Scottish

housemaid. I waited for some little time until, at last, I heard the sound of Bella’s

distinctive tripping tread on the stairs.

‘How are you, Eddie?’ she asked. She did not take my hand, or kiss me

spontaneously, as she might have done once, or even proffer her own cheek to be kissed.

We exchanged the usual pleasantries as she sat down on a chaise-longue by the

tall sash-window that looked down over the dark garden below.

‘Well, then,’ she said, ‘tell me what you’ve been doing. Things have been so busy

here. So much to do, and so many things to think about! And with Mary leaving – you

know of course that Sir Charles is going to marry her! Such excitement – and so brave of

him! But she deserves it, the dear girl, and he does love her so. Kitty has a new girl

coming tomorrow, but of course we never know how these things will work out, and then

Kitty herself has gone back to France, and so it falls to me to conduct the interview, as

well as everything else, and you know that Charlie is to go to Scotland for her sister’s

confinement . . . ’

She twittered on in this inconsequential way for some minutes, laughing from

time to time and curling her fingers around in her lap as she spoke. But the old light in

her eyes had gone. I saw and felt the change. I did not have to ask the reason. I could see

that she had considered, in the cold light of day, what I had told her at the Clarendon

Hotel, and had found it wanting – fatally so. A tale told to a child; a demeaning, absurd

fantasy of a paste-board villain and his mysterious henchman – one of my mother’s

stories, perhaps, dusted down for the purpose. All to hide the truth – whatever hideous

truth it was – about Edward Glapthorn, who was not what he seems. It was only too

apparent that she had taken ‘Veritas’ at his word.

Charlotte brought us tea, and Bella continued with her trivial banter – I sitting

silently, smiling and nodding from time to time as she went on – until a knocking on the

front door announced the arrival of some member of The Academy to whom she had to

attend.

We stood up; I shook her unlingering hand and left by the garden door. She had

been a dear friend and companion to me; but I had not loved her as she had wished me to

do. I had sought, out of deep regard, to protect her from hurt; and, if my fate had been

otherwise, would have married her gladly, and been content to give myself to her alone.

But my heart had never been mine to bestow on whom I pleased: it had been ripped from

me by a greater power and given to another, against my will, and would now remain in

her possession, a poor forgotten prisoner for all eternity. My poor Bella had looked for

assurances where none could be found; and, after considering what I had laid before her

at the Clarendon, had made her mind up about me. When we next met, it would be under

very different circumstances.

The next day I sent a note over to Le Grice proposing a spin in the skiff I kept at

the Temple Pier, to which he immediately agreed. Our plan was to row down to the

Hungerford Passenger Bridge, take a little lunch at his club, and then row back. The

weather had been against us on our first attempt, leaving me cooped up in my rooms and

him in his club, and making us even more eager to be out on the water. But on the

Thursday the morning broke fair, though with a brisk wind, and I sallied forth to meet

him with a lust for exertion.

At the bottom of the stairs, the door to Jukes’s room stood ajar. I stopped, unable

to help myself.

Across the street I saw the distinctive figure of my neighbour, his rounded back

towards me, disappearing towards the Temple Gardens with his little dog in tow. He had

not meant to leave his door open, of that I was sure, a careful, crafty fellow like that. But

it was open, and it was an irresistible invitation to me.

The sitting-room was a large, panelled apartment, with a little arched door in the

far corner leading to the sleeping area and wash-room. It was comfortably furnished, with

evidence of taste and discernment that seemed to sit ill with the walking, breathing

Fordyce Jukes. I had often wondered, as I gazed down on his comings and goings from

my room in the eaves, what interior world the funny little creature inhabited; to see such

wholly unsuspected illustrations of that world palpably adorning the walls and shelves

momentarily distracted me from my immediate purpose.

Adjacent to the door of his bedchamber stood an elegant glass-fronted cabinet

containing several exquisite items: miniatures from the Tudor period (a Hilliard?), little

painted boxes of the highest quality workmanship, Chinese ivory carvings of the greatest

delicacy, Delftware, Bohemian goblets; a dazzling miscellany of objects linked only by

the refinement of taste – and sufficiency of income – that had assembled them. On the

walls, carefully mounted and displayed, were equally startling indications of the

unexpected character of Fordyce Jukes’s interior world. Works by Altdorfer, Dürer,

Hollar, and Baldung, a Callot; even – it could not be? – a sketched self-portrait by

Rembrandt. Books, too, which drew my especial attention. I gazed in wonderment at the

first edition of Thomas Netter’s Sacramentalia (folio, Paris, François Regnault, 1523),?

which I had long wished to own, and at other sweetly choice items that stood arranged in

glowing ranks in another locked cabinet aside the desk.

My amazement was complete. That such a man as Jukes could have assembled

this collection of rarities, beneath my very nose, as it were, seemed inconceivable. How

had he come by it all? Where had he acquired the taste and knowledge? And where the

money to dispose on these treasures?

I began to consider the idea that blackmail and extortion might be Jukes’s real

trade, his secret profession, slyly exercised away from the workaday light of his duties at

Tredgolds, though with a success that I could hardly credit. Taste and knowledge can be

acquired; money, if it be not naturally to hand, demands other skills to amass. Perhaps his

talent, in which his employment at Tredgolds would place him in a helpful position, was

to extort money from clients of the firm who had something to hide from the world at

large.

It seemed fanciful at first, but the more I thought on it, the more it seemed to

constitute a sort of possibility, an explanation for what I had found in this treasure cave

that had lain, unremarked, for so long beneath my feet. Was I, then, merely the most

recent of his victims? Did he suppose that I had the means to satisfy his demands, and so

enable him to acquire one more rare and beautiful item for his walls or cabinets? But I

would be no victim of Fordyce Jukes’s, or of any man’s. From these thoughts, I recalled

myself to my present task and turned towards the desk, which, like mine three floors

above, stood before the window looking out into the street.

The polished surface bore nothing except a fine silver inkstand. The drawers were

fast locked. I looked about me. Another locked cupboard in the corner. No papers. No

note-books. Nothing to show me the character of Jukes’s hand for comparison with the

notes Bella and I had received. Another sign, I thought, that my renewed suspicions were

well founded. A man who had acquired so much through extortion would not be so

careless as to leave such evidence easily open to view.

Then, on a small side table by the fireplace, I saw an open book. Approaching

nearer I saw that it was an octavo bible of the seventeenth century, though of no especial

beauty or rarity. The title-words of the opened recto met my astonished gaze:

The Book of the Prophet EZEKIEL

I had found no evidence of the creature’s handwriting, but this seemed to provide

the proof I needed that he was the blackmailer.

I turned to leave, standing at the half-open door for a moment to see if he was

returning; but the street was clear, so I stepped out and headed down towards Temple

Pier.

7:

In dubio?

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Le Grice was waiting for me, lounging against a wall, cheroot in mouth, in the

feeble but welcome sun.

‘God damn you, G.,’ he cursed, good-humouredly, as I approached. ‘Been waitin’

for you for fifteen minutes or more. Where the devil have you been? The tide will be out

before we get off.’

We pulled the skiff down to the water, stowed our coats in the stern, rolled up our

sleeves, and pushed off into the inky brown water.

Behind us were the myriad masts of the Docks, London Bridge, dense with its

morning traffic, and the looming dome of St Paul’s; before us, the distant line of

Waterloo Bridge, and the slow curve of the broad stream down towards Hungerford

Market. All around were vessels of every type and size, plying up and down, and on each

bank the city bristled in silhouette against the pearly grey light, brushed over with the

always present haze the metropolis exuded. Past vistas of dark lanes opening out towards

the river’s edge we went, past the crazy lines of chimney pots and jagged tenements

etched against the sky, and the nobler outlines of spires and battlements, past watermen’s

stairs and landing stages, warehouses and gardens. All about us gulls wheeled and

circled, their raucous cries mingling with the river sounds of waves slapping against

moored hulls, the flap of sails and pennants, the distant toot of a steam-tug.

We rowed on steadily, saying nothing, each enjoying the sensation of pulling

against the mighty stream, glad to be out on the open water – even foul Thames water on

a November day. For my part, I felt sweet release from the many nights I had spent

staring at the skylight above my bed. In front of me, the muscles of Le Grice’s great back

pulled and stretched the oyster-coloured silk of his waistcoat almost to bursting, and for a

moment my mind started back to my former dream of rowing down a hot summer river

behind the muffled form of Lucas Trendle. But the image passed, and I pulled on.

Just below Essex Wharf, a woman dressed in tattered and filthy clothes, a hamper

suspended by her side from a leather strap about her shoulders, the remnant of a ragged

bonnet on her head, was prodding and poking along the shore, serenely seeking objects of

value in the ooze and foetid slime of the river’s margin. She looked up and, ankle-deep in

the mud, stood watching us, her hand shielding her eyes against the sun, as we glided

past.

After tying up below Hungerford Stairs, I reached into the stern to retrieve our

coats. On doing so I noticed, some way behind us, a single figure in a small rowing boat,

oars down in the water. He had clearly been proceeding upstream on a similar course to

ourselves, but now, like us, he had come to a rest, though he remained some distance out

from the shore.

‘Did you not see him?’ asked Le Grice, twisting his great neck back towards me

and looking over at the solitary figure. ‘He joined us soon after we saw the woman at

Essex Wharf. Friend of yours?’

No friend of mine, I thought. He presented a threatening silhouette, his tall hat

standing up starkly black against the light that was now breaking westwards down the

channel of the river.

Then it struck me. I had been a fool to believe that Fordyce Jukes would think of

following me himself, knowing that I would instantly have recognized him. He must have

some accomplice– and here he was, the man in the boat, grimly biding his time; the man,