The Scent of Death (52 page)

I expressed my sympathy for her loss.

‘Yes,’ she said briskly. ‘Mr Carne says he cannot say exactly how my husband died but he inclines to the theory that it was the work of Mr Noak.’ She looked directly at me and sometimes looks say more than words. ‘Still, we shall never know for sure, shall we? Perhaps it’s better that way.’ She gave me the ghost of a smile. ‘At all events we who are left must get on with our lives.’

When the compliments and condolences were done, she asked me what my plans were. I told her I should soon return to London and that I would be leaving the American Department.

‘I thought as much, and so did Mr Ingham.’ Her colour rose. ‘Forgive me for asking, sir, but do you have another position in mind?’

‘Not as yet.’

‘Then may I put a proposition to you? As it happens, I have some property in London, including a warehouse we use ourselves. It was my father’s. We have an agent to manage it but Mr Cumnor is elderly and Mr Townley was not able to oversee his work as closely as my father had. The rents have declined quite markedly. There’s an acre of market garden, too, just north of the City. They say the town is expanding at a great rate so I wonder if the land might be ripe for development in some way.’

‘What would you wish me to do, ma’am?’

‘To assess the situation, look over the accounts and, if Mr Cumnor agrees, perhaps take over some of the work if we find we suit each other. I cannot say what may happen in the future, but Mr Cumnor will eventually retire and I shall need another man of business there.’

Mrs Townley and I agreed terms, which were adequate rather than generous, and also subject to various safeguards. The lady had a generous spirit but she drove a hard bargain. Mr Ingham would draw up a contract and write the letters of authorization. We fixed a day for me to return for the documents.

I hardly recognized the self-assured little creature at the other side of the desk. It was as if her husband’s death had freed her from invisible chains. Moreover, Mr Townley’s death seemed not to have damaged her circumstances in any material way. A widow, of course, is unique among women in that she has the power to control her own affairs without reference to husband or father.

‘I’m sensible of your kindness, ma’am,’ I said as I was about to leave. ‘But why me?’

‘My husband once told me you were a capable man. And an honest one, too.’ She hesitated and for an instant I glimpsed the shy, awkward creature I had encountered at our first meeting. ‘And because you were kind to me once, sir, which is always a powerful recommendation.’

My replacement arrived on 13 March, a man named Thorpe. I had never met him before and I did not meet him now because he communicated solely in writing with me.

There were letters from England on the same ship. Mr Rampton, of course, had not yet heard of what had happened on the ice of the North River in the early hours of 20 January. He merely instructed me to hand over everything relating to my office in New York to Mr Thorpe and to return home as soon as possible. Once in London, I was to report to the American Department to account for the monies I had disbursed and for a final interview. There was no mention of Augusta. Nor, to my relief, was there anything about her in the London newspapers.

Both Lizzie and my sister had written. Their letters made happier reading.

Since I was still travelling on official business, I was able to take passage on a frigate, HMS
Lydmouth
, bound for Canada and then England. It would be a long voyage, but I would rather be at sea than linger in New York.

I went aboard the night before we sailed because we were to leave with the tide before dawn. That evening after supper I wrapped myself in my cloak and walked on deck, looking at the lights of the city across the water and the lanterns bobbing up and down on the other ships that crowded the harbour.

Many of the ship’s company had been granted shore leave. A boat passed to and fro between the ship and the city, bringing them back. One of them was a very young midshipman, no more than twelve or thirteen years of age. I watched him climbing the ladder up the side with much assistance from his friends.

When he was safely on deck, however, he looked about him, saw me and then staggered towards me, pursuing a zigzag course as if tacking against the wind. He stopped beside me and leant heavily against the rail. He sketched a salute.

‘Mr Savill, sir?’ he said. His voice had not quite broken and went from low to high in three words.

I agreed that I was. The ship twitched unexpectedly beneath our feet, as ships are wont to do, and the boy lost his grip on the rail. I steadied him.

‘A gentleman asked me to give you this, sir.’

The boy felt inside his coat and drew out a small package. As I was thanking him, he turned aside and vomited copiously over the rail.

I did not open the little parcel until I had returned to my cabin. The packet was irregular in shape, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. It yielded slightly to the touch.

I cut the string and unwrapped it. Inside I found about half a pound of tea. There was also a scrap of paper with a few lines written on it.

Pray remember the value of a piece of pork with the fat on it, swallowed again and again until it comes up no more.
Later, Souchong tea with a little rum in it, taken by the spoonful.

It was the remedy for sea-sickness that had restored me on
the voyage out. There was neither salutation nor signature on
the letter. The handwriting was unfamiliar. But I knew who had sent me this parting gift from America. I knew that Mr Noak had said goodbye.

The British deserved to lose the American War of Independence for many reasons, not least because they fought it with remarkable ineptitude and they were woefully slow to understand the real issues.

From their point of view, however, the defeat could have been much worse. First, this was an unnecessary war that many of them hadn’t wanted to fight. Second, in the context of Britain as a whole, her burgeoning economy and her rapidly expanding empire, the fate of the Thirteen Colonies was a significant blow to pride rather than to the national interest.

The real losers of the Revolutionary War were those Americans who had supported the British. In one sense, this was a civil war, with all the bitterness and internal contradictions associated with the term. When it was over, yesterday’s rebels became tomorrow’s patriots. Yesterday’s loyal Americans were driven from the country they had helped to create, only to find that they had become something of an embarrassment to the British government whose claims they had tried to support.

Loyalist opinion had many shades, from hardline Tories who hankered for a form of government which no longer worked to those who welcomed change and wanted a negotiated peace that would leave intact the formal ties between Britain and America. After the war, some went north to Canada to build a new life in difficult conditions. Others went to Britain, where many of them received neither the welcome they deserved nor the compensation they had been promised. Still others found ways to reach an accommodation with the new order.

One of the aims of this novel was to give a glimpse of these unfortunate Loyalists, many of whom thought of themselves with some justification as patriotic Americans. Their loyalty cost them all they had.

Loyalty is generally accounted a virtue but the war and its bitter aftermath revealed it for what it truly is: not an absolute but a relative quality, contingent on external factors, changeable as the weather.

For most of the war, His Majesty’s superficially loyal city of New York was the British Headquarters in North America. Before the war the city covered an area of about a square mile at the southern tip of Manhattan and may have housed about twenty thousand people. During the first phase of the war, many of the original inhabitants fled. But Loyalist refugees poured in from other parts of America. It has been estimated that at one point the city contained over thirty thousand civilians, many of them black.

New York was also an occupied city – first, at the beginning of the war, by the army of Congress and later by British and Loyalist troops. Though the soldiers (and sailors) were, in the main, billeted outside the city, thousands of them swelled the numbers of those who ebbed and flowed through the streets.

To make matters worse, the two great fires of 1776 and 1778 destroyed nearly six hundred houses. There was no significant rebuilding during the war. The temporary slums of Canvas Town spread over the blackened ruins.

The city and the British-held hinterland around it were surrounded by hostile territory that was held, more or less, for Congress. The entry of the French navy into the war seriously hampered Britain’s ability to supply New York from the sea. Starvation was a very real danger, particularly in the long and exceptionally hard winters of the war.

Conditions were hard; life was precarious. Still, until the British were resoundingly defeated at Yorktown in October 1781, Loyalists in New York had considerable grounds for optimism. Britain was then the world’s leading power, with the ability to devote enormous financial and military resources to the war. It must have seemed inconceivable that the rebels could win.

Even after Yorktown, Britain in theory had the option to fight on, though the Americans and their French allies had evolved into a formidable opponent. What was lacking was the will. The Government had at last come to realize just how expensive and how difficult it would be to win this war. British public and political opinion had never wholeheartedly supported it. Perhaps Britain’s leaders also sensed that, even if they achieved victory, it would only be a fragile and partial one.

History had moved on. The war had redefined what it meant to be a loyal American.

Congress was desperately in need of gold, not least to pay and equip its own soldiers. In 1799, only sixteen years after the end of the war, a substantial deposit was found on a farm in North Carolina. There’s an irony in the fact that it was discovered by John Reed, a former Hessian mercenary who had fought for the British but settled in America after the war.

Novels are joint efforts. It’s a pleasure to thank the team at HarperCollins again – in particular, Julia Wisdom for her superhuman patience and very valuable suggestions; Anne O’Brien for her meticulous copy-editing; and Emad Akhtar for coping so courteously with the production process. The book wouldn’t have emerged at all without the encouragement of my agent, Vivien Green of Sheil Land, and, as ever and most of all, my wife, Caroline.

The Anatomy Of Ghosts

Bleeding Heart Square

The American Boy

A Stain On The Silence

The Barred Window

The Raven On The Water

The Roth Trilogy: Fallen Angel

The Four Last Things

The Judgement Of Strangers

The Office Of The Dead

The Lydmouth Series

The Blaines Novels

The Dougal Series

Andrew Taylor is the author of a number of novels, including the Dougal and Lydmouth crime series, the historical thrillers
Bleeding Heart Square
and
The Anatomy Of Ghosts
, the ground-breaking Roth Trilogy, which was adapted into the acclaimed drama
Fallen Angel
, and
The American Boy
, his No.1 bestselling historical novel which was a 2005 Richard & Judy Book Club choice.

He has won many awards, including the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger, an Edgar Scroll from the Mystery Writers of America, the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award (the only author to win it twice) and the CWA’s prestigious Diamond Dagger, awarded for sustained excellence in crime writing. He also writes for the
Spectator
.

He lives with his wife Caroline in the Forest of Dean.

www.andrew-taylor.co.uk

@AndrewJRTaylor

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright © Andrew Taylor 2013

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013

Jacket images © Galina Samoylovich/Alamy (quill); Shutterstock.com (blood)

Andrew Taylor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007213511

Ebook Edition © 2013 ISBN: 9780007493074