Theft of Life (23 page)

As they descended the stairs, the main door was being opened by another man in livery. Randolph Jennings and a younger man tumbled into the hallway, their arms round each other’s shoulders, and unless Jennings owned two waistcoats with a mauve stripe, he was wearing the same clothes he had had on, on Saturday morning. The pair shrieked with laughter as they staggered in, and Harriet could swear the stink of sour spirits reached her even halfway up the marble stairs. The footman in front of her hesitated. Below them, a door opened and Sir Charles, calm and controlled as ever, came to meet the new arrivals. Randolph tugged on his rumpled waistcoat.

‘Randolph, wait for me in my study. Oxford, a word with you, please.’

Randolph did not make any farewell to his friend, only lowered his head and went off into one of the rooms on the ground floor. His eyes flickered up to Harriet as he passed her, but he gave no sign that he marked her any more than the surrounding servants. The other young man approached Sir Charles and the latter spoke to him briefly. It could not have been more than a sentence or two, but the effect on Oxford was considerable. He turned on his heel and the footman only just managed to open the door before he flung himself out into the street. As soon as he was gone, Harriet’s guide continued down the stairs in front of her, and by the time they reached the hallway, Sir Charles had disappeared.

O
XFORD WAS NOT DIFFICULT
to overtake. Harriet’s coachman, David, slowed to a walk and she leaned out of the carriage just far enough to introduce herself and ask the young man if he needed driving anywhere. He looked at her with deep distrust, then admitted he was making his way to Brooke Street.

She nodded and he opened the door and had jumped inside before Philip could get down from the back of the carriage to assist him. David clucked to the horses and they were on their way once more.

He was slouching opposite her, his ankles crossed and biting his nails.

‘Were you part of the party who saw the balloon on Saturday?’ Harriet asked politely.

‘I was.’

‘And you have been playing cards ever since.’

His smile became cunning, and curious. ‘How did you know?’

‘You still have your coat on inside out.’

He looked at his cuffs, aghast, then burst into peals of laughter. ‘Oh, that is famous!’ He pulled off and turned it rightways again. ‘I always do that for luck.’

‘And does it work?’ Harriet asked, raising her eyebrows.

‘Most of the time. It worked last night, anyhow. If I could have kept Jennings at table another hour,
I
would be inheriting the estates in Jamaica, not him.’

‘Perhaps next time.’

His face fell again. ‘Not if Sir Charles has anything to do with it. There is to be no more gaming for us, or I will suffer the wrath of the sugar baronet himself. I find that rich, when it was Sir Charles himself who told me to keep Randolph out of the way for a while. He sent a note to my club. I found it when we got back from chasing the balloon. It’s not my fault, is it, if the only way to keep Randolph from women is cards and drink.’

‘Can they stop you gaming? You are both grown men, after all.’

He sank still further into his seat. ‘Oh, Sir Charles is not a stupid man. Don’t let all that virtue fool you. He knows how to apply pressure when he wishes to, and he is not one for half-measures. If I stay away he’ll pay off my tailor or something of the kind. If I defy him, I’ll be thrown out of my club, or all the mamas of this year’s heiresses will hear all kinds of terrible stories about me. And it is time I married. Not that he said that, of course, but I know what he means. He won’t even do it himself. Drax will go to a ball or two and have his monkey do tricks for the old crones and drop a little poison at the same time.’ He yawned.

‘Have you known Randolph Jennings long?’

‘Since he came back to England to go up to Cambridge. He’s not bad fun and he has deep pockets. We lived together in Rome for a year or two afterwards until his temper got us thrown out of the city.’ He frowned over her name. ‘Westerman … You know that slave-lover Graves, don’t you? That man is a disgrace. He should have stuck with scribbling for newspapers like a good boy.’

Harriet pulled the cord and the carriage came to a stop.

Oxford sat up a little. ‘We are nowhere close to Brooke Street as yet.’

She glanced out of the window. ‘No, we are not. It seems you will have to walk home in those filthy clothes, after all.’ The footman, Philip, opened the door and stood by it. ‘Goodbye.’ Oxford did not move, but stared at her as if still suspecting some joke. Harriet leaned forward. ‘You stink, Oxford,’ she said clearly. ‘You are also drunk, and I am bored.
Goodbye
.’

He clambered out onto the roadway. ‘Bitch,’ he muttered, She half-turned towards him, and drew in her breath to reply when there was a stifled exclamation and Oxford disappeared from view.

‘Oh dear, sir,’ Philip’s voice said very kindly. ‘Took a tumble in the muck there, did we?’ Harriet held her tongue and instead watched Oxford struggle to his feet and stumble into the shelter of the houses away from the road. He had obviously fallen into something unpleasant. ‘Berkeley Square, Mrs Westerman?’

‘Thank you, Philip.’

When Francis returned to the booksellers after the inquest, he found an African man in livery leaning against the spiral staircase to the upper gallery and reading one of the histories of London that were kept on the shelves. The man straightened when Francis entered and bowed slightly from the waist. ‘I am William Geddings,’ he said, ‘come from Berkeley Square to gather up Master Eustache.’ He added something else in Yoruba.

Francis put out his hand and smiled briefly, but said: ‘I know nothing of the language of my fathers.’

William shook his proffered fingers carefully, avoiding the bandages. ‘You are Yoruba though, I think,’ he said. ‘It is a beautiful language – you should try and remember it.’

Francis nodded, but said nothing. William looked confused then went on: ‘Master Eustache would not leave without wishing you good evening and finding out what hour you require him to return in the morning. He is still bent over your papers in the back office. I was sent out to wait for you here. The young man did not wish to be disturbed.’ There was the twitch of a laugh at the corner of his mouth.

‘Shall I say eight o’clock?’ Francis asked. William pursed his lips and examined the rafters. ‘Nine, then,’ Francis amended.

‘Good. I have left a parcel of cures for you with the compliments of Mr Graves. The lady who makes them knows her business and puts her good soul into them. You should make use of them.’

‘I shall, Mr Geddings. Will you send Mr Graves my thanks?’

Eustache had heard them speaking. He came into the shop with a confident step, his face very earnest. ‘You are here, sir! Good evening. I have read such a lot today – and written out what I thought.’

William grinned at him. ‘You are a regular ink-drinker, Master Eustache. Why Mr Graves thought it would be a punishment to put you to work in a booksellers, I have no notion.’

Eustache looked wary. ‘You shan’t tell him, shall you, William?’

‘No, no, Master Eustache.’ The footman put his finger to his lips. ‘Not a word, on my honour.’

Eustache gave a quick smile, looking relieved, and Francis was touched to see he took his teasing from William with a lot more grace than he had the gibes of Susan Thornleigh.

Francis bowed them both out of the shop and examined the parcel that had been left for him. There was a cordial for his throat and a lotion for his hands. He poured a draught of the first and drank it. It had a bitter taste to it, but felt like silk in his throat. Then he sat down behind the counter and slowly unwound the bandages from his hands. They stung as he pulled them free. It was growing darker now and the shop was nothing but a cluster of tobacco-stained shadows. The lamp beside him caught some of the gold on the bindings of the most expensive sets of volumes and sent them glimmering like eyes in the undergrowth. For a moment he felt the heat of an African evening, and the laughter of a pair of women on the street outside became the voices of his aunts gossiping as they prepared the evening meal. He felt the low sweet pain of the memory. The noises of his childhood retreated again into the dark. He opened the jar of ointment and scooped some out with his fingers. It was pale and viscous and smelled of Mr Hinckley’s flower garden after the rain. He smoothed it over the dozen or so cuts on each palm and it felt as if he were dressing his wounds in cold air. It seemed to suck the anger from them. She must be a good soul indeed, whoever made this. As Eliza had been a good soul. He let this pain too flower in his heart for a moment, then returned the stopper to the jar, took his rags and threw them into the fire in the back parlour then went in search of Joshua.

He found Eliza’s apprentice upstairs and alone, just finishing up the dampening of the sheets required for the next day’s printing. Mr Ferguson and the others had shrugged into their coats and left for the night. Their day’s work – great sheets of printed words – hung up and down the length of the room, drying and shifting in the air, a low conversation. Joshua looked tired, and Francis noticed the shake in his limbs as he set the weights down on top of the piles of dampened paper. He had not heard Francis climbing the stairs towards him.

‘Heavy work, Joshua?’

The boy started. ‘No, no, Mr Glass! That is to say – yes, a little. But I can do it, sir!’

Glass smiled and leaned against the bannister at the top of the staircase.

‘Don’t fret, Joshua. I know you have the heart for the work.’ He looked about him. ‘Have you done all that was asked of you?’ The boy nodded. ‘Then I shall buy you some supper from the bakehouse and we may watch the boats on the river while you eat it, if you wish. As to your lodging, will you be scared to sleep here alone? The girl who comes to clean lives out. You’ll have a bedroll in the back kitchen. The shop itself will be locked and the back door, but you may unlock the window from the inside if you need to get out to the necessary house. Will that suit?’

The apprentice looked relieved and took a step towards him. ‘Yes, sir. I would like that. We used to be so many to a room at the Hospital. I feel like a king when I’m on my own.’

‘Come along then. Mrs James makes a pastry that is the only cure for sore limbs.’

The examination of the remains of Mrs Smith took some considerable time. Crowther was working in a section of the stables behind the Black Swan. He could hear the horses moving uneasily in their stalls some yards from him.

Crowther treated every corpse he encountered with a detached respect. He had no faith in those men of his profession who behaved and acted like butchers. Their bravado, he thought, concealed a lack of learning at best, and was frequently an attempt to hide their own fear of mortality. He went about his work then in as measured and considered a way as he knew how. The surgeon who had had sight of the body before him had not even opened up the woman’s chest. He had seen the external injuries and made the same guess a child would have done, then sought no evidence to support it. There was no sign of soot in the lungs or throat. The tissue was that of a healthy young woman whose last breath had been of air, not smoke. The front of the skull had been broken with extreme force: a great weight falling from some height while the woman lay on her back – a roof beam in all probability. He thought at first that he would not be able to give Bartholomew’s jury the definitive answer they wished from him, since any injury to the head would have been hidden by that later damage, and there was no evidence of any piercing injuries on her internal organs. Nor indications of throttling – the hyoid bone was intact.

Bartholomew mentioned that a witness had spoken of a wound in the eye. Crowther carefully cleaned the skull fragments until he found what he was looking for: a v-shaped mark on the delicate inner curve of the bone, at the back of the skull.

It was growing dark while he wrote and drew up his notes with only the body and the horses for company. Then he washed away the signs of his work, cleaned himself, covered the body, put his notes in his pocket and prepared to leave. As he closed the door behind him, some noise made him turn around. The figure of a man, broad and heavy, reared up out of the darkness of the yard. Crowther dropped his bag and swung his lamp at the man, but his attacker was too close for him to connect with much force. Then a second pair of hands grabbed him and forced his arms behind him. The man in front of him swung at his stomach, fierce punches which drove the air out of his lungs. Crowther collapsed – then swung his head back as hard as he could. He felt the back of his skull connect and the grip on him slackened, but the man in front was too quick; he struck a blow under Crowther’s jaw that sent him sprawling. He felt his body hit the ground, then darkness and silence.

E
VEN AS THE LIGHT
began to fade there was still sound and activity on the river, but the evening seemed to dull the sound. Sunset turned the river red and gold, barges sailed goods further upstream towards the last of the light, and the wherries and rowboats crossed back and forth across the tide. Some had already lit lamps in their prow. To the east, the masts of the great sailing ships loading and unloading the wealth of nations became a black and bare forest, swinging gently as the waters tugged on them.

‘You all think it was Penny,’ Joshua said suddenly. ‘I hear the others talking when they think I can’t hear them.’

Francis looked at him sideways. The boy had a narrow pinched little face, high cheekbones and a thin nose that could have been rat-like, but his eyelashes were long and dark, which made him oddly pretty. He was frowning now as he took a mouthful of Mrs James’s pie.

‘She has disappeared, Joshua. Don’t you think that strange? Constable Miller has been asking in her old haunts, and there is no sign of her. Why would she hide herself so completely if she is not guilty?’ Francis spoke wearily. He hated the idea that someone Eliza had trusted had hurt her, but it was what he believed had happened.