The Scent of Death (17 page)

‘One more thing, sir – I suppose he did not mention a box of curiosities?’

‘A box of curiosities?’ Mr Wintour frowned. ‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘I gather that his sister believes he may have had one.’

‘Very likely he did – many gentlemen do. It was all the rage before the war. My poor brother had one, I remember – when he was in Europe he collected miniature antiquities – seals and coins and the like – and he had a case made for them in London. I wonder where it is now. Was Mr Pickett’s box valuable?’

‘Perhaps. But I do not even know what he collected or whether his box ever existed.’

There was nothing more to be said on the subject. We went along the hall to the drawing room. The ladies were sitting over the fire. Mrs Arabella was reading aloud to her mother-in-law, who appeared to be asleep.

It took only a moment to settle my extended stay in Warren Street. The Judge wandered away, pleading a need to tidy his papers before supper; otherwise Noak would have something to say to him when he next called.

‘Your daughter will be sad,’ Mrs Arabella said to me.

‘Hetty-Petty,’ Mrs Wintour murmured, addressing the fire.

‘Yes, poor Lizzie,’ I said. ‘She will be disappointed, and so am I.’

‘Have you considered bringing her here? And your wife, of course.’

‘The child is very young, ma’am, and she and her mother are comfortably settled where they are. If I sent for them, they would not arrive for at least three or four months. And Mrs Savill does not find sea voyages agree with her and she dislikes to leave London at the best of times. Besides, where would they live?’

‘They could stay with us.’

‘You are very kind, but New York is not the best place to bring a child. Not at present.’

Mrs Arabella looked down at her lap. ‘That is true, sir. Forgive me. I allowed the heart to outweigh the reason.’

‘There’s no shame in that, ma’am.’

She raised her head. The firelight flickered in her eyes. ‘There may be,’ she said.

‘That has not been my experience.’

I spoke more bitterly than I had intended. I turned away, holding my hands to the fire. Mrs Wintour’s chin drooped to her chest. Her mouth fell open and she emitted a gentle snore. Dear God, I thought, what a fool I have made of myself in marrying Augusta.

‘I am heartily sorry for it,’ she said.

‘Sorry?’ My voice rose. ‘Sorry?’ I knew I should not direct my foolish anger with Augusta and Rampton at Mrs Arabella, and I tried to moderate my tone. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am. In any case, I wished to speak to you of something quite different, if I may. Mr Pickett.’

‘Mr Pickett?’ she echoed. ‘Why?’

‘I have been commanded to look at the circumstances of his murder again.’ I glanced at her, but she had turned away to put her book on the table beside her. ‘I believe Mr Pickett’s sister has petitioned Lord North about it.’

‘I know nothing of that, sir.’

‘He called here a few days before his death.’

‘Yes, but he was only here for a few minutes, and I hardly knew him to begin with. That was the long and the short of it.’

‘Forgive me, ma’am, I do not wish to pry but it is my duty to ask for particulars of your conversation. What did you talk about?’

‘It was months ago,’ she said with a touch of anger, which was hardly to be wondered at since I was coming it so high and mighty with her. ‘There was nothing of importance. Oh, I believe he said he had been in Philadelphia before he came here, and everything was in confusion there because of the evacuation.’

‘Did he ask for anything?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A loan, perhaps,’ I suggested.

She shook her head.

‘Or talk of his plans? Or of his friends in the city?’

Another shake of the head. ‘He said nothing of consequence, sir. To own the truth, I did not much like him and I was glad to get rid of him. I thought it impertinent that he should call on so slight an acquaintance. As I told you, my father was acquainted with him over some small matter of business, nothing more. He had no conversation except about himself and no breeding. I dislike men like that and would rather not talk to them.’

I felt the blood rushing to my face, for the words were aimed at me as much as Mr Pickett.

‘I beg your pardon, ma’am. One more question and I am done. Did he say anything of a box of curiosities?’

‘No, nothing at all,’ she said, raising her voice; Mrs Wintour whimpered in her sleep. ‘Pray have the goodness to ring the bell, sir. I cannot think what they are doing downstairs. They should have announced supper by now.’

Two days later, on Wednesday morning, Marryot and I revisited the house in Beekman Street where Pickett had briefly lodged in the last days of his life. Our shared commission engendered a fragile intimacy between us.

The woman who kept the house, Mrs Muller, was a blowsy wide-bodied widow with thick forearms, a large chin and a forehead like an ape’s.

‘Pickett?’ she said. ‘The man got himself killed by the negro?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said. ‘We came to search his room if you remember.’

‘I know you did, but you didn’t pay his reckoning, did you?’

‘This is not to the point,’ Marryot said. ‘Did he have any callers while he was here?’

‘I don’t know, and I don’t much care.’

Marryot said, ‘If you don’t keep a civil tongue in your head and answer our questions, I’ll have your licence to keep a lodging house revoked.’

‘I told you, I don’t know if he had any callers.’

‘What about your servants?’ I asked.

‘There’s only the girl. But she did hardly nothing for him because his pockets were to let, and my gentlemen have to pay if they want to be served. Besides, she’s sixpence short of a shilling and—’

‘We’ll talk to her,’ Marryot interrupted. ‘Call her.’

Mrs Muller grumbled but shouted down the stairs until the maid came, wiping her hands on a filthy rag. She was a mulatto, as broad as her mistress, barefooted despite the cold and with eyes like sloes. She dropped a token curtsey when she saw us. Then, quite unafraid, she stared first at Marryot, then at me.

‘Do you recall Mr Pickett who was here in the summer?’ I asked.

She nodded.

‘No money,’ Widow Muller prompted, keeping to the essentials of the matter. ‘Got himself killed in Canvas Town.’

‘Hold your peace, ma’am,’ Marryot said.

‘Did you talk to him?’

The girl stared boldly at me. ‘He wanted me to do his linen, your honour. Mistress said no, so I didn’t.’

‘Quite right too,’ said the widow.

‘Did he have any callers while he was here?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Did anyone ask for him or bring him anything? Try to think.’

‘No, sir. Well – only that beggar.’

Marryot loomed over her. ‘What? Eh? What’s that?’

I pushed between them. ‘What did the beggar want?’

‘Just asked if Mr Pickett lived here, your honour, and then he give me the letter.’

‘A letter for Mr Pickett, you mean? What was this man like?’

‘Big negro,’ she said. ‘Red coat. Someone had carved up his face like a leg of mutton.’

We got no more out of the girl or her mistress. They knew nothing of Pickett’s sister, nothing of a box of curiosities.

‘The fool might as well not have existed for all the trace he left behind him,’ Marryot said as we walked back to Fort George. ‘What the devil do they expect us to do?’

‘What about the negro with the letter?’

The Major didn’t answer. The negro in the red coat must have been Scarface. But why should he have called at Beekman Street? Who had the letter been from? If he had killed Pickett, why call on him beforehand as if to announce a connection between them?

In the next few days we found answers to none of the questions. Nor did our enquiries throw any light on the whereabouts of the scar-faced negro. He had – almost literally – slipped through our fingers.

Both Marryot and I talked to gentlemen who had encountered Pickett during his brief stay in Philadelphia; but their acquaintance had been superficial; and in any case the withdrawal of the British from the city had been on everyone’s mind to the exclusion of anything else. The town had been full of strangers.

We were hampered at every turn by the need to pursue the investigation with discretion. We could not have bills posted about Pickett offering rewards for information or advertise in the newspapers. We discussed whether we should enlist Mr Townley as an ally but decided, in the end, that even with him we would risk more than we might gain.

‘A man never quite knows where he is with Townley,’ the Major said in an uncharacteristic burst of frankness. ‘I – well, I sometimes wonder if he’s laughing in his sleeve at us. He’s an odd fish, even though he drinks the King’s health as cheerfully as a man could wish. To be candid, I do not altogether trust him.’

‘Perhaps it’s because he’s American,’ I said. ‘At home people think the colonists are a species of inferior Englishmen who labour under the misfortune of living among savages on the other side of the world. But I believe they are in the wrong of it. An American may call himself a Whig or a Tory but in this respect at least a man’s loyalty to His Majesty is neither here nor there. The point is, sir, however loyal an American may be, he is not a Englishman any more. He is become quite a different animal.’

New York had only one theatre, which was in John Street. Sometimes in an access of loyal enthusiasm it was referred to as the Theatre Royal, a misleading grand name for an ugly red building little better than a barn. It stood twenty yards back from the road; a covered way led from the street to its double doors. This was a ramshackle, wooden affair, and in wet weather the roof leaked. Indeed, there was something provisional about the entire establishment.

But I soon discovered that the very act of patronizing the theatre was in itself considered meritorious, a token of one’s loyalty to the Crown. The dramatic entertainments were put on by the gentlemen of the army and the navy for the impeccably charitable purpose of relieving the widows and orphans of those who had fallen during the war. The ladies of New York were particularly happy to support a theatrical enterprise in which the dramatic roles, both male and female, were acted to such perfection by our brave soldiers, many of whom were young, handsome, well connected and unmarried.

On Friday, 26 February, Mr Townley sent his carriage to collect us from Warren Street. It would have been faster to walk for the distance was not great and the crush of carriages was such that we were obliged to queue for a quarter of an hour before we could enter John Street from Broadway.

Mr Townley and Major Marryot had made their own way to the theatre and were there to greet us when we arrived. We pushed our way through the lobby towards the stairs to the boxes. Mr Townley said that at least eight hundred tickets had already been sold, and more people were pressing to get in.

There were two rows of boxes. Mr Townley had taken one of the larger ones, which were on the lower tier. The box contained two rows of spindly gilt-legged chairs and afforded a splendid view of both stage and the pit. In theory these boxes could seat eight, but in practice ours felt crowded even with six of us.

The interior of the theatre was ablaze with lights and very warm. People came here to see and to be seen. Townley waved to his acquaintances as we settled ourselves. He placed himself at Mrs Arabella’s right hand. Major Marryot was on her left, with the Judge beside him.

Captain Wintour and I sat behind. He chatted to me with hectic animation. This evening, he had dined well and was not, as he whispered to me, looking forward to seeing this fanciful piece of nonsense. He believed it to be about a woman who should have known better and an upstart negro who should have been whipped and sent to the galleys, or whatever they did to them in those days.

When the play began, however, nature came to the Captain’s rescue: he nodded off. By the start of Act II, he had begun to snore. Mrs Arabella turned in her seat and nudged him in the ribs with her fan, which made him splutter and then breathe a little more quietly.

She caught my eye as she did so and we exchanged a smile. I was glad of it, for there had been a coolness between us since I had quizzed her so clumsily about Roger Pickett.

I confess that I did not pay a great deal of attention to the play after that. I was distracted by Mrs Arabella’s nearness in the relative gloom of the box. My eyes were drawn towards the back of her head, the curve of her neck, the line of her shoulders.

I was shocked to find myself playing in a small way the part of a Peeping Tom. I was married to Augusta, who (as she often reminded me) was a lady of refinement and firm Christian principles who tried unceasingly to further my career; and who was, more to the point, the mother of my child. And now I was sitting in a theatre and ogling a married woman whose husband was snuffling and grunting on the seat beside mine. My behaviour distressed me. But I did not turn my eyes away. Sometimes a man does not cut a very admirable figure, even to himself.

All this while the tragedy of
Othello
unfolded beneath our noses on the stage below. The management had hired a professional actress from London to take the part of Desdemona, a break with tradition that irritated Major Marryot for the other actors were officers in His Majesty’s service.

‘Gentlemen who hold the King’s commission should not tread the boards with women of that sort,’ I heard him say to Judge Wintour in a whisper so loud it must have been audible on the stage. ‘It flies in the face of the spirit of the thing.’

‘It is hard to quarrel too harshly with it, sir, if it helps to raise money for our widows and orphans,’ Mr Wintour said. ‘But I would not wish to do it myself. And I do not think Mrs Wintour would find it an agreeable spectacle.’

I heard a tap on the door behind me. It opened, and Miriam put her head inside the box. She grimaced and made a token reverence. She edged past me and handed her mistress a note.