The Poisoned Island (4 page)

“Captain Hopkins,” says Harriott. “Welcome to the River Police Office. Please be seated.”

Hopkins takes a seat opposite Harriott, his hat in his lap, and looks around the trim office and out to the riverside window.

“Your office reminds me of a captain’s cabin, Harriott,” he says. “Though on a far bigger ship than mine.”

Harriott frowns slightly at the familiarity in Hopkins’s tone, being used to deference even from captains. But this man is a senior officer and, Harriott thinks, has earned the
right to some familiarity with a magistrate, particularly after a circumnavigation.

“All is well with the
Solander
?” he asks, which, after all, is the only question required.

“Very well, Harriott, thank you. Although I am confused as to why the Police Office is interested.”

The man is fierce and impertinent but also charming. His irritation is manifest, but so is his bonhomie. He sits in the chair with enormous relish, as if sitting in this particular chair is the most important thing in the world. A man with an appetite for life, Harriott decides.

“I take an interest in all shipping arriving here, Captain.”

“But I’ll wager you don’t call in the captain of every lugger and whaler which comes to London, Harriott. There’d be a queue of salty individuals down the stairs if you did.”

Harriott smiles at that.

“No, indeed. But you are obviously aware of the special status of the
Solander
. Sir Joseph has asked me personally to welcome you and to ensure you have everything you need, and are secure on the river.”

“Are you a friend of Sir Joseph’s, Harriott?”

This with a smile, drawing the old magistrate in. “More of an acquaintance, Captain.”

“Well, Sir Joseph’s
acquaintances
are said to run Britain, Harriott, so I will take you as a man of importance and standing, and will thank you for your kind attention. My ship’s in good heart, I would say. She is tired and in need of some loving care, but has performed admirably, as has her crew. I’ve discharged about half of the fellows, and many of them have already left. Those who remain are either preparing her for the dockyard, where she’s going to need some repairs, or else they’re looking after the cargo.”

“Ah yes. The cargo. The plants survived the passage?”

“A great many did, Harriott, a great many. I am taking the first consignment—two barges of it—down to Kew tomorrow morning, where I understand a small welcoming committee is to be assembled. How they’ve done that when we only arrived today is a mystery only Sir Joseph can answer.”

“We received news of your arrival some days ago. You put in at Portsmouth, did you not?”

“We did indeed. I do hope Sir Joseph hasn’t had a crew of lords and ladies huddled by the riverside since then.”

Harriott smiles broadly at that. He does not doubt that Banks has almost certainly done exactly that.

“So there is nothing you need of me, Captain?”

“No indeed, Harriott.”

“I would be happy to supply a waterman-constable or two to keep watch on the ship.”

“That will not be necessary. I have my own men to secure the ship, and they’re more than capable of sorting out any London mudlarks who try and get over the side.”

“Well then. All is well. Welcome to London, Captain Hopkins.”

Charles and Abigail Horton are walking down Old Gravel Lane in Wapping, at the point where the gleaming new constructions of the London Dock give way to what remains of the ancient labyrinth of streets which used to vein the whole district. The Hortons have been on a rare trip into the West End, and for an equally rare event: the final lecture at the Royal Institution by Humphry Davy, newly married and newly knighted by the newly minted Prince Regent. Abigail is a regular and enthusiastic attendee at the Institution, and Davy had not disappointed her. His lecture, like his newly published book,
Elements of Chemical Philosophy
, was a summary of his last decade of speaking and experimenting and was (or so Abigail explained to her polite but glassy-eyed husband) nothing less than a Bible of the hidden world, a set of instructions for building Everything. Abigail’s eyes shine when she speaks of these things, while her husband characteristically frets that these enthusiasms, so odd for a woman
of Abigail’s background and class, can only be explained by their failure to produce children. His wife’s profound intelligence, an intelligence which can scare him as much as delight him, must find its own outlet in the experimental observations of the Royal Institution and its older, grander sibling, the Royal Society. In the past he has joked that she must take up with a natural philosopher in need of an intelligent assistant, a Caroline to a William Herschel, but Charles Horton never really jokes, his every word laid out carefully on a bed of acute seriousness, such that this remark caught in his throat as he said it, and Abigail squeezed his arm as if in forgiveness of his mild lack of taste.

The Hortons live in Lower Gun Alley, just off Wapping Street, between the Dock and the River and close to Charles Horton’s place of work, the River Police Office. This riverside district, laced with penny-a-night lodging houses and stinking permanently of an unwashed humanity, is in marked contrast to the elegance of Albemarle Street where they have spent the evening. Horton is, on paper at least, a waterman-constable, one of dozens employed by the magistrate John Harriott at the River Police Office.

They make an attractive if not particularly noticeable couple as they walk down the old street. Horton is a tall, quiet man in his late thirties, some years older than his wife. If your eyes were drawn to them, it would be to Abigail that they’d be attracted, not so much by the prettiness of her face or the cut of her clothes (though these are by no means unremarkable) but by the energetic enthusiasm which bubbles out of her as she talks her quiet husband through the latest theories of natural philosophy. Charles Horton you would barely notice, and this is how he would want it. All you’d be left with is a vague sense of having been
measured by somebody, though to what end you would not be able to say.

They had taken a carriage to and from the West End, a luxury they can ill afford. Horton insisted on the treat, determined to make the night a special one for Abigail, and in one of the unspoken transactions which oil their marriage she volunteered to walk the last part of the journey home. She knows how much Horton likes to hear and smell the streets before retiring, to listen for anything out of kilter in the apparent chaos of the neighborhood. So there they are, the two of them, she chattering cheerfully of chemical matters, he listening as carefully and assiduously as ever while at the same time taking in the air of the Wapping streets. Horton’s capacity for listening and observing is enormous, as is his ability to make himself imperceptible. It is a skill bought dearly over the last fifteen years, as he has carefully rebuilt his life after leaving the Navy in murky circumstances at the end of the last century.

Abigail has just begun outlining the new debate in botanical classification sparked by the work of the French genius Jussieu, which Davy had alluded to in his lecture.

“So, you see, what is being suggested is a synthesis between two systems: the natural system of Ray and the artificial one of Linnaeus,” says Abigail, her hand gripping her husband’s arm, her eyes facing forward but also outward into a natural world of wonder and discovery.

“Being suggested to whom?” inquires her husband. “Who is it that decides these things? The King?”

“Of course not the King, Charles. Although he has long been interested in such matters.”

“Well, I’m confounded by it. All these so-called
natural philosophers
, hustling around and arguing with each other,
and they cannot even decide what to call”—he bends down, and pulls up a weed from between two cobblestones at their feet—“what to call
this
.”

“But why should naming a plant be a simple matter? Surely it’s a profound thing, everyone agreeing, whatever their language, that you’ve picked up a kind of burdock.”

“Have I?”

“Yes, husband, you have.”

“So, there you have it—you have told me what I have picked up.”

“But how to describe it to a Frenchman, or an Italian?”

“Well, surely they have their own words?”

“Well, exactly, Charles. But how do I know when we are talking about the same thing?”

“Why do you need to know? If a Frenchman is shouting at his horse even now in Paris, why do I need to understand?”

“What if he was shouting at his horse in a new way, and if you understood it you would be able to shout at your own horse more effectively? Wouldn’t it be good to understand what he had learned so you could learn from it?”

“The Frenchman is just as likely to eat his horse as teach it in a new way.”

“And you, Charles Horton, are impossible. You understand me perfectly.”

“Because, dear wife, we are speaking the same language, one we have grown up with, not one argued over by Swedish professors and French gardeners, and—’

A woman’s scream breaks across the dark street, coming from a small alley running off the east side of the Lane. For a moment everything is still, as if the old place had heard something it didn’t recognize and was now waiting for some confirmation. Another scream, and that spell is broken.

Horton moves immediately towards the sound, but then looks back at Abigail, ready to apologize for the disruption and to shrug in that familiar
ah, well
way which always precedes his disappearing into the night on another “bit of investigation,” as Abigail is wont to call it. But she is moving towards the sound too; they are still holding hands, even. He feels an incongruous stab of affection, and after a moment the two of them are standing in front of one of the shabbiest of the little street’s shabby buildings. The ugly place presents a confusion of windows at different heights and doors in irregular positions. This building, like many of those around it, has been blackened by coal smoke and yet retains a kind of mongrel vigor. It seems to have been assembled from the discarded parts of a dozen other dwellings. The screams come from inside. Like a river with a huge rock chucked into it, the stream of people in the Lane has already changed direction, and there is now a little eddy washing into the side street.

“Keep your distance!” Horton shouts at the crowd, and some of them stop immediately. Horton’s voice can carry a weight of authority when he so wishes, a skill he has learned from his bulldog magistrate John Harriott. Horton turns his back on the locals while they are quiet, and knocks on the door. He has dropped Abigail’s hand now, but she has placed one of hers onto his shoulder, and stands just behind him.

An old woman answers immediately, her head covered in a dirty brown bonnet, her skin cracked and dry like a neglected hull. She starts to speak, but Horton interrupts her as he pushes into the house, his wife still attached to his shoulder and swept along with him.

“Charles Horton, madam. Constable of the River Police Office.”

He has no real authority to enter the house without a warrant
from a magistrate, but such niceties are rarely observed in Wapping at times such as these. He is in the hall in an instant, and Abigail follows, turning to close the door behind them in another out-of-kilter gesture, but the old woman has already done this and now has her back to the door. She turns on them, the old, dry face angry and spitting.

“ ’Ow
dare
you! ’Oo are you to come in ’ere without me invitin’ you? This is my ’ouse, this is. It’s a bloody—”

“Madam!” She shuts up at that, just as the crowd outside her door had shut up when he shouted at them. She scowls at him but says no more. “There is a woman screaming in this house. You cannot have failed to hear it. Now, I am here to—”

A loud wail breaks out from upstairs, tailing off into a broken, sobbing rattle. It is a theatrically awful noise. Horton breaks off from scolding the old woman and turns towards the stairs, or at least to where he imagines the stairs to be. The hall of the house is dark. The window at the far end is opaque with dirt and lets in almost no light, only a smoky radiance from what little illumination there is outside. He locates the stairs somehow, and now feels his first stab of anxiety for the well-being of his wife. The stairs are crazy and unsteady, and Horton entertains a momentary vision of Abigail tumbling down into whatever dark and dingy Hades lies beneath this disgusting old residence. He almost decides to ask her to wait downstairs, but then she passes him and reaches the upper landing first, moving steadily towards the source of the screams.

It is somewhat lighter on the first-floor landing, but not much. The walls are bare and the naked wooden floor creaks like the masts of the ships in the Dock to the back of the house. There are four doors giving onto the landing, each of them closed. Abigail walks up to all of them, as it is not immediately
obvious which one contains the screaming woman, but then there is another drawn-out shriek of anguish, and she opens the correct door and goes into the room beyond, her husband following her quickly and now with mounting concern, as his old fear at Abigail’s being exposed to the darkness of his world fills his chest.