The Solitary House (40 page)

“Look sharp now, my lads,” he warns over his shoulder. “Don’t be breaking anything by your clumsiness, and mind you be watching where you put your feet.”

Knowing what we do about what has just happened here, it’s yet more agonisingly slow minutes before they reach the inner gallery, and turn the glower of the bull’s-eye on the wreck of Tulkinghorn’s treasured trove. Pieces of priceless antiquity lie in fragments about the floor and grind into red dust beneath their feet, and as the lantern beam swings round the younger constable suddenly starts and cries out as a ghostly reflection of himself rears up before his eyes. Bucket stops and turns, but even as he does so Wheeler has reached the balustrade and seen what lies below.

“Mr Bucket, sir—over here! Quick!”

In an instant the Inspector is by his side, looking down into the stone sarcophagus, and if his face was grave before, it is lined with apprehension now. Apprehension that only increases when he realises
that in this hall of mirrors and distortions even the staircases are an elaborate hoax. Every corner they turn leads nowhere, and there’s a note of panic even in Bucket’s normally unruffled manner by the time they discover the hidden steps and penetrate to the lower level. Bucket rushes to the plinth where the sarcophagus lies and lifts the lantern. In the bottom of the trough, face-down in a layer of blood, is the body of a young man. There’s a deep gash on the back of his head, but he’s breathing—he’s alive. And when he stirs slightly and raises his head, we can see that it’s Charles, and Bucket can see that it’s Charles, and there’s a look on the older man’s face now that seems to spring not just from relief but a deep affection. Something that might also explain the gruffness of his voice when he calls to the constable and tells him to fetch a doctor and be quick about it.

“There’s a reputable man lodging at Portugal Street, no more than a step from here,” he calls after him, then turns to Charles. “Hold up, my lad,” he says kindly. “Hold up. I will stay with you until the doctor comes. Now you grip tight to me, there now, and we shall see if we can sit you up. Because that’s what a strong lad like you will want to do, of that I’m sure.”

His plump arms go round the young man’s shoulders with an almost fatherly tenderness, and eventually, slowly, Charles is not only upright, but able, holding hard to Bucket’s hand, to climb out of the coffin and sit heavily on the floor. By some miracle there seems to be nothing more wrong with him than bruises and cuts. But his speech is slurring slightly, and Bucket begins to wonder whether the injury to his head isn’t rather worse than it appears.

“Did you see him?” demands Charles, his chest heaving as if he’s struggling to breathe. “Did you see that boy? Tulkinghorn’s groom. He was here. He must be here. There’s no other way out.”

Bucket nods. That much he has guessed already. And indeed it is not so very difficult to deduce that there has been a desperate struggle in this place, and that Charles did not hurl himself over the balustrade on the whim of the moment.

“Take the bull’s-eye, Wheeler,” he says, beckoning to him, “and
have a good look hereabouts. We’re after a stable-lad. Small and lean and pale-haired he is, but don’t you be under-estimating him for all that.

“There now,” he says amiably to Charles, after Sam has gone. “There’s no need to fret yourself over that lad of Tulkinghorn’s. We will find him, and we will discover what is at the bottom of all this.”

“I had it there,” says Charles. “In my hand. In the box. The letters. What Tulkinghorn’s been doing. What they’ve all been doing. I was piecing it together. And then—and now—”

He strikes his hand against the floor, angry and impotent, tears starting in his eyes as they have not done since he was a little boy.

Bucket watches him for a moment. “Two heads are often better than one. That’s my experience. How’s about you tell me what you found?”

“That’s the whole point. I didn’t find
anything
—there wasn’t enough time. There were some references to an address in Hampstead, and to money being sent there, but I don’t know why, or even what sort of place it was. That box I had, the papers related to a baronet—I saw him tonight. His arms are a black swan—”

“I know him,” interrupts Bucket quietly. “I know him.”

“Whatever Tulkinghorn did for him, he appears to have done exactly the same for Cremorne, some time before. God knows what—those damn lawyers seem to practise to deceive, but I do remember a letter from Tulkinghorn that said something like
based on both my own experience and that of my clients over many years, I can confirm that the establishment in question is ideally suited to dealing with delicate cases such as yours
. But as to what that
delicate case
actually was, I am none the wiser. Though I do know that there is something vile at the bottom of all this. Vile, and far-reaching, and of long standing. There is no other explanation.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” says Bucket, in that careful way of his. “And yet I agree there would be no call for any of this—no need to have Boscawen done away with, or employ a villain like Robbie Mann, if there were not more to it than we have yet discovered.”

“The stable-lad—is that his name? You know him?”

“Aye,” replies Bucket, “I’ve had my eye on Robbie Mann for a good while. Abandoned in the Whitechapel workhouse he was, by a mother no better than she should be. I first came upon him when he was taken on suspicion of setting fire to a warehouse, down at Essex Wharf.”

“Like at the rag-and-bottle shop.”

Bucket nods. “And from what I heard, the exact same method was employed on both occasions. After all, even a lad can lay his hand to a flagon of camphene, and no questions asked.” He sighs. “No more than ten years old, Mann was, when he first crossed my path.”

“But if he’d committed arson—”

“Oh, I knew it, and he knew it, and he knew I knew it. But I had no
evidence
. I’ve kept half an eye on him always from that time, knowing I was likely to pick up his trail again, if I looked sharp.”

“And since?”

“Nothing as could be laid to his charge in a court of law. Petty pickpocketing mostly. Even if he do frequent inns like the Sol’s Arms that you and I both know to be the haunts of far rougher thieves.” Bucket’s face darkens. “Though bad rumours have come to my ear in the last few months. Seems Mann’s natural cruelty has been sharpened of late by a vicious and most unnatural pleasure in inflicting pain.”

Charles glances at him, then looks quickly away.

“There was an incident with a poor half-starved cat I will not distress you with,” continues the Inspector, “but there was nothing
then
to suggest it would go further—no hint he would turn his malice on his fellow men. Or women.”

“What I don’t understand is what could possibly have induced Tulkinghorn to employ such a blackguard?”

Mr Bucket waves his fat forefinger, which has lain quiet for much of the previous exchange. “Now that, my lad, is the pertinent question, if you don’t mind me saying so. For he knew, did Tulkinghorn,
all about this lad. I told him so myself. It troubled me, at the time, so it did, why he should want such a scoundrel in his service, but I could not work out the why of it. Now, it seems, we may be nearing our answer, and it may be the
service
Tulkinghorn had in mind had very little to do with the upkeep of his carriage.”

“So you believe me? You actually believe me—even with no proof?”

Bucket sighs. “There was a time, my lad, when you’d not have needed to ask such a question. But recent events being what they are, you have become mistrustful, and I don’t rightly blame you. But you know me, and you should know that I could never condone anything crooked, and as to concealing it—”

There is a drilling ache in the side of Charles’s head and his vision is slightly blurred. “I’m sorry. I assumed that—”

“—that because I was assisting Tulkinghorn with one matter of a rather delicate nature, I must, of necessity, be doing the same with another, and worse. Nay, lad, all I have done, I have done for the other.”

He takes a deep breath. “And since all seems aright between us, I’ll tell you a thing I couldn’t tell you before. Though a brave lad like you will do me the justice of recalling that I tried to give you a hint on it, at the time. Suspicions I did have and that’s a fact, but they were of quite a different order. I knew about Cremorne and his friends, with their titles and their estates and their fine ways, but I believed their crimes to be crimes of greed. Greed and greed alone, mark you. And I had my reasons. There’s an old inspector friend of mine in the City New Police division who has been head over ears in a fraud case these three months now, and from what he told me—in confidence, mind—I was ready to lay a hundred pounds that these men were mixed up in the very same business. So I bide my time, and I watch ’em. And when Tulkinghorn asks my help in identifying a mysterious woman seen one night by that young crossing-sweep, then naturally I accept, even if I wonder why such a minor matter should concern so mighty a man. But I told myself his motives were not my business,
and
my
business was to fathom the fraud. But it seems all the while I was a long way off the mark, and the right direction was another way entirely.”

It’s the closest Bucket has ever come to admitting he’s wrong, but Charles scarcely notices. “I heard that there had been irregularities at Sir Julius’s bank, but as far as I could discover, his own associates lost larger sums than almost anyone else.”

“Ah!” says Bucket sharply, raising his portentous forefinger and tapping it against the side of his nose. “That was indeed what you were designed to think. And no doubt all sorts of pieces of paper can be brought for’ards to prove it. But from what I’ve been a-hearing, they have contrived very nicely to line their own pockets and all the money lost has made its way to their own private purses. And not before time, at least for some of ’em. That baronet you mentioned has so encumbered his estate by debts got by gaming, he inveigled an innocent young woman to marry him, merely to lay his hands on her fortune. A young woman who has now died not long since, and all unexpectedly.”

Charles frowns, as the memory returns to him: “A girl cruelly used, and cruelly wronged.”

Bucket turns to him with a question in his eyes, but it’s at that very moment that they hear the rush of footsteps and Wheeler returns with the lantern, alarmed and out of breath, to tell them that he has searched both gallery and house and of Robbie Mann there is no sign. Charles is on his feet before Sam has even finished.

“And where do you think you’re going, my lad?” asks Bucket sharply.

“God knows how that scoundrel has managed to evade us, but if he
has
, there’s only one place now where we can hope for any answers—that address in Hampstead. We may be somewhat early for polite visiting hours, but to be frank, courtesy is the very least of my concerns.”

Bucket consults his pocket-watch, suddenly aware that the light seeping through from the hexagonal dome above them is not the sharp silver of moonshine, but the slow grey of a winter dawn.

When he looks up again at Charles he sees that there is colour now in his cheeks even if the cut to his head is still bleeding. Now where, thinks the Inspector impatiently, has that doctor got to?

“Will you come with me?” asks Charles, and there is possibly just the faintest hint of pleading in his voice.

Bucket shakes his head and gets to his feet. “The man who was once master here is to be buried this afternoon, and I have an official appointment to attend, as well as reasons of my own that require my presence. But I know, and you know, that this may not end well, and that being the case you had better be accompanied. Sam here will go with you. And all things duly considered, you had better have this.” He reaches into his pocket, and we can see now that he has had Charles’s gun about his person all this time. Something else he must have brought with him with an exact purpose in mind. They look at each other for a moment, then Charles gives a slight bow of his head and stows the pistol in his coat.

They make their way back to the entrance-hall and find, much to Bucket’s relief, that the doctor has finally arrived. It’s the same young surgeon who attended the crossing-sweeper, and he seems just as startled as Charles to see who his patient has turned out to be.

“I knew you lodged nearby,” says Bucket matter-of-factly, though in due course Woodcourt will wonder how, and indeed why, the Inspector has furnished himself with this information. “I’m reluctant to let this lad go a-rushing hither and thither without the say-so of a medical man—”

“I’m perfectly recovered now,” says Charles quickly, motioning Sam to go out into the square and look for a cab, “and I don’t have time for this—”

“I’m afraid I agree with this gentleman,” says Woodcourt, eyeing the fresh blood seeping through the bandage round Charles’s hand. “That
injury alone looks to me to need further attention. If you wish, I will come along with you and the constable, and examine it on the way.”

And so it is that the three of them are in a carriage before sun-up, rolling swiftly north under a heavy sky, where a haunted light glows in the east. The streets are almost empty, save here and there a ragged child huddled in a doorway, and a few coke fires still glowing on street corners, ringed by a shabby crowd of beggars, some smoking, some sleeping on the cold ground, and some already beginning the grim business of survival, picking over the heaps of rubbish for bones, rotting fruit, or oyster shells. Bucket, for his part, and for all his talk of obsequies to attend, and preparations to make, turns back into the house when the carriage has gone, and makes his way back to the hidden door and the gallery below. Alone now, as is his preference, there is no nook, no shelf, no compartment, no drawer he does not examine and inspect, keeping his own mental account of everything he finds, and a memorandum on occasion in a large black pocket-book. And then he leaves everything exactly as he found it, and goes back up the stairs to the clerk’s hall, and the desk, and the door to the street.