The Scent of Death (16 page)

In their haste to flee, the inhabitants of this place had abandoned their possessions – among them, a coarse blanket, a knife with a broken blade, a small fire whose embers had been made into a nest for a blackened pot containing brown, watery liquid and a selection of bones. I had seen a little of the slums of Whitefriars and St Giles in London, but the poverty of Canvas Town was of a different order. Here, in the heart of this crowded city, the poor lived like wild animals, without rights, without shelter and, worst of all, without hope.

From the ruins to the right came the sounds of shouting and running footsteps. Marryot was now twenty or thirty yards in front, his head swinging from side to side. As well as his pistol, he carried a stick weighted with lead.

Suddenly, with a great cry and clatter, Scarface leapt from a gap in the brickwork overlooking the lane. Marryot staggered and fell beneath the negro’s weight.

I broke into a run. Afterwards I could not understand why I had not run in the other direction. It was as if someone else were controlling me. I had no more ability to choose which way to move than a horse does with an experienced rider tugging at his reins.

I ran clumsily down the road, waving my stick and shouting. Marryot was on his front, pinned down by the negro’s body. He was heaving like a landed fish and bellowing with rage.

Scarface wrenched the pistol away from him. He struck Marryot on the head with its butt, a powerful backhanded blow that elicited a howl of pain. The Major slumped into the ground and lay still. Scarface swung the pistol up and cocked it with the heel of his free hand.

The muzzle was pointing at me. I was now no more than a couple of paces from the two men on the ground. For the first time I saw the negro at close quarters. His face was impassive. His features were European as much as African. The pink weals on his cheeks curved up from the lips like a gigantic, joyless smile.

I hit out with the stick in a blind, sweeping arc. Scarface’s finger tightened on the trigger. The hammer cracked down. The pistol went off. All these things in the same instant.

The shot came so close to me that I felt the wind of it on my cheek. But I saw nothing for – shamefully but with a child’s absurd logic – I had shut my eyes so that I would encounter Death in the dark, and perhaps he might not see me and therefore pass me by.

A jolt ran up my arm. Someone cried out. I tripped and fell. I lost my hold on the stick. Someone groaned. There were more footsteps, more shouts.

At last I opened my eyes. Marryot was beside me. He was on his hands and knees, swaying and moaning. His hat and wig had fallen off. Blood dripped from his face. The wig lay in a muddy puddle of water and ice with splashes of red dropping into it and dissolving.

Scarface had gone.

‘How I loathe New York,’ Marryot said. ‘How I wish this abominable town was at the bottom of the sea.’

We were sitting opposite one another in a booth at the Bunch of Grapes. We had the curtain drawn across to discourage intruders and a bottle of brandy on the table. Marryot had refused to have his wound dressed by an army surgeon: it was only a damned scratch, he said, and if that negro hadn’t run off he’d have made the cowardly fellow suffer for it.

The butt of the pistol was ornamented with chased steel. It was this that had caught Marryot’s cheek, gouging out a graze along the cheekbone. The broken skin was already scabbing over. But the wound must be painful, judging by the swelling it had caused. The bruise was growing darker and angrier by the moment.

He set down his glass and cleared his throat. ‘I have to thank you, sir,’ he said in a voice better suited to making an accusation.

‘It was nothing, sir.’

‘Indeed it was something. That scoundrel could have killed me. But now what are we to do?’

He stared into the flame of the solitary candle on the table as if looking for the answer there. I leaned against the padded back of the booth. On the other side of the blue curtain, in the body of the room, men were talking and laughing, spitting and smoking, reading newspapers and playing games. The air was hazy with smoke from pipes, cigars, lamps and candles. But here in the booth we might have been alone on the surface of the moon. There was nothing to distract us from the difficulty we faced.

‘This is a damnable business, is it not?’ Marryot went on, splashing more brandy into the glasses and a few drops on the table between them. ‘Nothing for a man to get hold of. It’s like chasing … chasing clouds.’

‘At least a man can see a cloud,’ I said.

‘Eh?’ Marryot glared at me. Then the meaning hit him and he gave a harsh laugh. ‘Yes, very droll, I am sure. And what about this box of curiosities? What’s a man to make of that? What the devil has it to do with Scarface?’

For a moment we drank in silence. I kept to myself the knowledge that Captain Wintour had mentioned a box of curiosities too, when we played backgammon two months ago. For him, as for Roger Pickett, a box of curiosities had promised some great reward.

All our troubles will be over.

But Wintour had been drunk at the time and I myself had been a long way from sober. There was no possible link between him and Pickett’s murder – why, the Captain had been in Canada at the time, and his family had not known if he was alive or dead. It was a coincidence, nothing more, but I made a mental note to discover whether the two men had been acquainted.

We knew one thing for certain: Lord George Germain was taking this matter seriously. He had not only ordered Mr Rampton to commission me to look into it, but he had also added a postscript on the subject in his letter to General Clinton, the Commander-in-Chief in North America himself. Clinton had sent down the word to General Jones, the Commandant of the city, who had naturally delegated the task to Marryot as th
e officer w
ho had originally been charged with the investigation of Pickett’s murder.

Did that imply that Germain knew something about Pickett’s claim? Or was he merely trying to oblige Lord North as a dog will do his best for his master, however unreasonable his demands?

‘Do you think you’ll find him, sir?’ I asked, breaking the long, despondent silence.

‘Scarface? Maybe.’ The Major dabbed his wound with the corner of his handkerchief soaked in a little brandy. He winced. ‘But New York has more leaks than a colander. Ten to one he’ll slip away to Long Island or the Debatable Ground. Still, perhaps it don’t matter one way or the other.’

‘It’s true that we don’t know that he can assist us,’ I said. ‘And we have nothing to tie him directly to Mr Pickett. But he’s put himself about too much in this matter for us to ignore him. We need to talk to him.’

‘That’s all very well, sir,’ Marryot said, ‘but I doubt he’ll grant us the opportunity.’

‘There are other lines of approach. Mr Pickett was in Philadelphia for a few weeks before coming here. He may have confided in someone there. We should also call at his lodging in Beekman Street. And of course we must ask the Wintours about him again.’

‘I don’t believe it’s necessary to trouble the Wintours. It would distress them.’

‘They are the only people we know that he called on,’ I said.

‘They barely exchanged half a dozen words.’

I noticed a ripple running through the curtain at the end of the booth. ‘Are you hungry, sir? I believe I should like a biscuit or a slice of pie.’

‘Food?’ Marryot slammed down his glass on the table. ‘We haven’t time for—’

I reached out a hand and pulled back the curtain. There, not a yard away, was Mr Townley, smiling pleasantly and with his hand raised and balled into a fist, as if the curtain had been a door and he had been about to knock on it.

‘Ah – I am rejoiced to see you!’ he said. ‘Noak told me I should find you in the Bunch of Grapes, and it is most convenient because I wanted particularly to speak to you both.’

Marryot blinked at him. He half-rose and bowed. His bruised cheek was on the side away from Townley, towards the back of the booth. ‘Your servant, sir. But—’

‘You will not mind if I join you?’

Townley waved to a waiter and slid on to the bench beside the Major. I wondered how long he had been standing on the other side of the curtain and how audible our conversation had been.

‘But why do you wish to speak to me?’ the Major said, slurring his words.

‘To you both, to be precise.’ Townley smiled at me. ‘I am come to invite you to the theatre.’

‘What? Why?’

‘I have taken a box for Friday. The Wintours are coming – well, the Judge is and the Captain, and Mrs Arabella, of course. I fear Mrs Wintour may not find it convenient. It’s a small return for their kindness the other evening and Mrs Arabella happened to mention to me that she had seen nothing at the theatre since
Venice Preserv’d
last year. And I thought – naturally I cannot leave out Major Marryot and Mr Savill from our little party. Afterwards we shall go on to supper at Fraunces’s.’

‘How delightful,’ I said. ‘And what’s the play we are to see?’

‘
Othello
. One cannot outdo Shakespeare for elevated sentiments, though sometimes the language is not as genteel as one would wish, and the construction not as polished.’ Townley smiled and gave a shrug, as if inviting us to join with him in mocking his essay at dramatic criticism. He turned to Marryot. ‘Will you join us, sir? I know the Wintours will be as glad to see you as myself.’

‘Yes, sir. Thank you – I – I’m obliged.’

The waiter arrived. We ordered more brandy, another glass and a plate of biscuits.

‘Well – this is very agreeable,’ Townley said when the waiter had withdrawn. ‘I do not usually drink spirits until later in the evening. But the weather is so raw outside that one needs a little fire in the stomach.’ He peered at us. ‘But why so serious, gentlemen? You look as if you had been plotting something.’

Marryot had turned his head. The flame of the candle flickered over his discoloured cheek.

‘Good God, sir,’ Townley blurted. ‘What the devil have you done to your face?’

I was not quite sober when I returned to Warren Street before supper, which had a bearing on what happened. Alcohol unleashes the tongue. I was not drunk, though – unlike Marryot, whom Townley and I had been obliged to manhandle into a coach when we left the Bunch of Grapes.

I found Mr Wintour studying a map. He had unrolled it on the big table in the middle of the library and was examining it by the light of a candle in his hand. The only other illumination in the room came from the small fire and from a second candle. This was guttering in the socket of the candlestick that stood in lieu of a paperweight on one corner of the map.

‘Ah – good,’ he said. ‘I shall have a gentleman to take a glass of wine with at supper. My son is abroad and will not be back until late.’

I glanced down at the map and saw the name written at the top. ‘So this is Mount George, sir?’

‘Yes – this was Mr Froude’s plan of the estate. Or rather of the house and its desmesne. The estate as a whole is much larger. John mentioned it the other day, and Noak, too. I said I would look it out for them.’

‘Noak?’

‘Yes – my books and papers are in a sad pickle and he is helping me sort them out. It seems to be taking an age but Noak believes that the map may clarify some aspects of his classificatory system for the Froude estate.’

The Judge lifted the candle. The light was too poor to see the details clearly. The house, the stable block and the farm buildings were over to the right. There was what looked like a large patch of woodland behind it. Otherwise the estate consisted of a patchwork of enclosures, of pastures, fields, paddocks and gardens. Unlike the painting in the drawing room, this was a purely practical representation of Mount George, something for farmers and lawyers and agents to pore over.

‘Mrs Wintour and I passed several months there, the summer that John and Bella became betrothed,’ the Judge said. ‘It is a most agreeable spot, and the land is extraordinarily fertile. Poor Froude. I remember at the time I thought him the luckiest of men.’

‘He died soon afterwards?’

‘Early in the war. A sad business.’ Mr Wintour moved away from the table. ‘Was there something you wanted?’

‘I had a letter from Mr Rampton this morning, sir. My commission has been extended, probably until the autumn.’

‘And will you continue here with us, Mr Savill? I’m sure you would be very welcome.’

The business was arranged in a moment, though the Judge said that, as a matter of form, he should consult the ladies about it.

‘Bella says I must treat this house quite as my own,’ he said. ‘But I do not like to take advantage of her good nature. There’s no time like the present – I believe we shall find them both in the drawing room.’

‘First, sir, may I mention something else? I regret to say that Mr Rampton has desired me to look into Mr Pickett’s death again. It appears he had a sister in England.’

‘Pickett?’ Mr Wintour picked up the second candle and the map instantly constricted itself into an untidy scroll. ‘That poor young man who was killed last summer?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Yes – Roger Pickett, was it not? They hanged a runaway for it.’

I nodded. ‘You know what government departments are, sir. They move like snails and they want everything five times over.’

‘I fear I cannot help you – I met Mr Pickett only once – in this house. We never had these dreadful murders before the war, you know.’

‘No, sir. Did you have much conversation with him?’

‘Hardly any. I was obliged to go out, you see – if I remember right, Judge Jones and I were meeting to talk over what we might do to urge the re-establishment of New York’s courts. The Government will achieve nothing if they do not allow us that.’

I bowed, unwilling to be drawn into this familiar discussion. ‘Can you remember what you talked about with Mr Pickett? How he seemed?’

‘It’s so long ago now … He tried to make himself agreeable enough, I fancy – though I believe he was not comfortably situated, but that is true of so many of us nowadays. But I hardly had time to say “how do you do” to him. You must ask Mrs Arabella. She was still there when I left, and of course she knew him a little beforehand, which I did not.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I’m afraid you may think me unchristian, but I remember wondering if he was come to ask for a loan.’