The Meaning of Night Part 6

Thus I imagined as I continued to stroll slowly up and down the path, as if in sober contemplation of my surroundings. I took out my watch. A few moments later the church clock tolled three.

I turned back towards the gates to see a hea.r.s.e pulled by four horses ostrich-plumed and richly caparisoned enter the grounds, followed by two mourning coaches and a number of smaller carriages swathed in rich black velvet. I counted four mutes in their gowns, and a little group of perhaps half a dozen pages. A moderately expensive affair, I reflected, in spite of Mr Trendle's plain theology.

A little knot of villagers, not of the family party, followed the procession a little way behind. I scanned this group closely, moving nearer, and as quickly as I dared, to try and make out my man.

The cortege entered through one of the arches of the Chapel; the coffin was removed by the bearers and taken inside; the mourners descended and followed the doleful burden.

I waited a little distance off. His mother there for sure; a slight figure holding for support against the arm of a tall younger gentleman, perhaps his brother. I did not detect a wife or children, for which I was grateful. But the sight of his poor mother unnerved me momentarily, as I saw again in memory the rictus smile her son had given me as I had withdrawn the knife from his neck.

As the members of the family party took their places in the Chapel, I surveyed the accompanying group of neighbours and others for a second time. Jukes must be amongst them, but his distinctive squat figure was not apparent to me. Then the thought strikes me that he might send an agent; though it seems unlikely, I sweep my eye once more over the onlookers, and move closer, until I am a part of the little crowd.

'Were you acquainted with Mr Trendle, sir?'

The plaintive enquirer was a little person of some rotundity, who gazed up at me through pale grey-green eyes from behind a pair of gold spectacles.

'Slightly, ma'am,' I replied.

My companion shook her head slowly from side to side. 'Such a wonderful man wonderful. So good and generous, so adoring of his mamma. You know Mrs Trendle, I dare say?'

'Slightly.'

'But perhaps not her late husband?'

'No, indeed.'

I did not wish to keep up the conversation, but she came back again.

'You are of the Chapel, perhaps?'

I replied that I had known the deceased only through business.

'Ah, business. I do not understand business. But Mr Trendle did. Such a clever man! What the dear people in Africa will do without him I cannot think.'

She continued her lament for some time, animadverting in particular, with a curious kind of wistful relish, against the wickedness and certain d.a.m.nation of the person who had thus deprived the Africans of their great champion.

Eventually, unencouraged by any response from me, she smiled faintly and waddled away, her fluttering mourning clothes making her seem like a great aggregated ball of soot escaped from the prison of fog that still lay in a dark looming bar across the murmuring city at our back, pressing down on the poor souls beneath like the weight of sin itself.

No sign. Nothing. I moved about the crowd, anxious to be part of it but wary of any individual contact. When would he come? Would he come?

In due course, the Chapel bell tolled out and the coffin, followed by the mourners and their attendants, was carried back out to the awaiting hea.r.s.e. Slowly, the procession wound its way to the place that had been prepared.

The ceremony of interment was duly performed by an elderly white-haired clergyman, and the usual displays of grief and abandonment were displayed. I found myself unwillingly regarding the coffin as it was lowered gently into the receiving earth, the last mortal home of the unfortunate Lucas Trendle, late of the Bank of England. For I had put him there, and for nothing he had done to me.

The party began to disperse. I looked once more at his mother, and at the gentleman I had seen accompanying her earlier. From beneath the rim of his hat peeked a narrow curtain of red hair.

Eventually, I was left alone at the graveside with the diggers and their a.s.sistants. Of Fordyce Jukes there was not a trace.

I waited for nearly an hour, and then made my way back towards the Egyptian portals, with darkness coming on. The gatekeeper tipped his hat as he let me through a smaller side entrance. I took a deep breath. The wretched Jukes had played me for a fool, sending me all the way out here as a prank, for which he would pay dearly when the moment of reckoning came.

But then, just as I was pa.s.sing beneath the deeply shadowed arch into the outer world, I felt a tap on my shoulder as a person a man pushed past me. I had instinctively swung to the left, towards the shoulder on which I had received the tap; but he had gone to the right, quickly becoming absorbed in a remaining group of mourners standing just outside the gates, and disappearing into the deepening gloom.

It had not been Jukes. Taller, broader, quick on his feet. It had not been Jukes.

I returned to Temple-street dejected and confused. As I pa.s.sed through the staircase entrance, the door of the ground-floor chamber opened.

'Good evening, Mr Glapthorn,' said Fordyce Jukes. 'I trust you've had a pleasant day?'

6:.

Vocat1 _*

The conviction that Fordyce Jukes was my blackmailer would not leave me; and yet he had not been at Stoke Newington, and no attempt had been made by any other person or persons to make themselves known to me except for that tap on the shoulder: that unsettling sense of gentle but firm pressure deliberately applied. An accidental brush by a hastily departing stranger, no doubt. But not the first such 'accident' I still thought of the incident outside the Diorama and not the last.

Why had he sent me out to Stoke Newington, if he had not intended to reveal himself to me there? I could reach no other conclusion but that he was biding his time; that the second note, summoning me to the interment of my victim, had been designed to apply a little additional torment, which would be repaid with compound interest. Two communications received. Perhaps a third would bring matters to a head.

I kept a close eye on Jukes from that moment on. From my sitting-room window, if I placed my face close against the gla.s.s, I could just see down to where the staircase gave onto the street. I observed him carrying in his provisions, or pa.s.sing the time of day with the occupants of neighbouring chambers, sometimes taking the mangy little dog he kept out for a walk by the river. His work hours were regular, his private activities innocent.

Nothing happened: the expected third communication did not come; there was no soft knock on the door, and no indication of an unravelling plan. Slowly, over the following days, I began to gain ground on my enfeebled self, and, with returning strength and concentration, emerged one morning after a sound night's sleep the first for a week or more to rededicate myself to the destruction of my enemy.

Of his history and character you shall know more much more as this narrative continues. He was ever in my mind, even throughout the recent crisis arising from the anonymous notes. I breathed him in every day, for his fate was anch.o.r.ed to mine. 'And I shall cover his head with the mountains of my wrath, and press him down,/And he shall be forgotten by men.' This is an untypically fine line from the epic pen of P. Rainsford Daunt (The Maid of Minsk, Book III); but there is a finer by Mr Tennyson, which I had constantly before my mental eye: 'I was born to other things.'2 On the Sunday following the interment of Lucas Trendle, I had called at Blithe Lodge, as arranged, and had been shown into the back parlour by Charlotte, the Scottish housemaid. I waited for some little time until, at last, I heard the sound of Bella's distinctive tripping tread on the stairs.

'How are you, Eddie?' she asked. She did not take my hand, or kiss me spontaneously, as she might have done once, or even proffer her own cheek to be kissed.

We exchanged the usual pleasantries as she sat down on a chaise-longue by the tall sash-window that looked down over the dark garden below.

'Well, then,' she said, 'tell me what you've been doing. Things have been so busy here. So much to do, and so many things to think about! And with Mary leaving you know of course that Sir Charles is going to marry her! Such excitement and so brave of him! But she deserves it, the dear girl, and he does love her so. Kitty has a new girl coming tomorrow, but of course we never know how these things will work out, and then Kitty herself has gone back to France, and so it falls to me to conduct the interview, as well as everything else, and you know that Charlie is to go to Scotland for her sister's confinement . . . '

She twittered on in this inconsequential way for some minutes, laughing from time to time and curling her fingers around in her lap as she spoke. But the old light in her eyes had gone. I saw and felt the change. I did not have to ask the reason. I could see that she had considered, in the cold light of day, what I had told her at the Clarendon Hotel, and had found it wanting fatally so. A tale told to a child; a demeaning, absurd fantasy of a paste-board villain and his mysterious henchman one of my mother's stories, perhaps, dusted down for the purpose. All to hide the truth whatever hideous truth it was about Edward Glapthorn, who was not what he seems. It was only too apparent that she had taken 'Veritas' at his word.

Charlotte brought us tea, and Bella continued with her trivial banter I sitting silently, smiling and nodding from time to time as she went on until a knocking on the front door announced the arrival of some member of The Academy to whom she had to attend.

We stood up; I shook her unlingering hand and left by the garden door. She had been a dear friend and companion to me; but I had not loved her as she had wished me to do. I had sought, out of deep regard, to protect her from hurt; and, if my fate had been otherwise, would have married her gladly, and been content to give myself to her alone. But my heart had never been mine to bestow on whom I pleased: it had been ripped from me by a greater power and given to another, against my will, and would now remain in her possession, a poor forgotten prisoner for all eternity. My poor Bella had looked for a.s.surances where none could be found; and, after considering what I had laid before her at the Clarendon, had made her mind up about me. When we next met, it would be under very different circ.u.mstances.

The next day I sent a note over to Le Grice proposing a spin in the skiff I kept at the Temple Pier, to which he immediately agreed. Our plan was to row down to the Hungerford Pa.s.senger Bridge, take a little lunch at his club, and then row back. The weather had been against us on our first attempt, leaving me cooped up in my rooms and him in his club, and making us even more eager to be out on the water. But on the Thursday the morning broke fair, though with a brisk wind, and I sallied forth to meet him with a l.u.s.t for exertion.

At the bottom of the stairs, the door to Jukes's room stood ajar. I stopped, unable to help myself.

Across the street I saw the distinctive figure of my neighbour, his rounded back towards me, disappearing towards the Temple Gardens with his little dog in tow. He had not meant to leave his door open, of that I was sure, a careful, crafty fellow like that. But it was open, and it was an irresistible invitation to me.

The sitting-room was a large, panelled apartment, with a little arched door in the far corner leading to the sleeping area and wash-room. It was comfortably furnished, with evidence of taste and discernment that seemed to sit ill with the walking, breathing Fordyce Jukes. I had often wondered, as I gazed down on his comings and goings from my room in the eaves, what interior world the funny little creature inhabited; to see such wholly unsuspected ill.u.s.trations of that world palpably adorning the walls and shelves momentarily distracted me from my immediate purpose.

Adjacent to the door of his bedchamber stood an elegant gla.s.s-fronted cabinet containing several exquisite items: miniatures from the Tudor period (a Hilliard?), little painted boxes of the highest quality workmans.h.i.+p, Chinese ivory carvings of the greatest delicacy, Delftware, Bohemian goblets; a dazzling miscellany of objects linked only by the refinement of taste and sufficiency of income that had a.s.sembled them. On the walls, carefully mounted and displayed, were equally startling indications of the unexpected character of Fordyce Jukes's interior world. Works by Altdorfer, Durer, Hollar, and Baldung, a Callot; even it could not be? a sketched self-portrait by Rembrandt. Books, too, which drew my especial attention. I gazed in wonderment at the first edition of Thomas Netter's Sacramentalia (folio, Paris, Francois Regnault, 1523),3 which I had long wished to own, and at other sweetly choice items that stood arranged in glowing ranks in another locked cabinet aside the desk.

My amazement was complete. That such a man as Jukes could have a.s.sembled this collection of rarities, beneath my very nose, as it were, seemed inconceivable. How had he come by it all? Where had he acquired the taste and knowledge? And where the money to dispose on these treasures?

I began to consider the idea that blackmail and extortion might be Jukes's real trade, his secret profession, slyly exercised away from the workaday light of his duties at Tredgolds, though with a success that I could hardly credit. Taste and knowledge can be acquired; money, if it be not naturally to hand, demands other skills to ama.s.s. Perhaps his talent, in which his employment at Tredgolds would place him in a helpful position, was to extort money from clients of the firm who had something to hide from the world at large.

It seemed fanciful at first, but the more I thought on it, the more it seemed to const.i.tute a sort of possibility, an explanation for what I had found in this treasure cave that had lain, unremarked, for so long beneath my feet. Was I, then, merely the most recent of his victims? Did he suppose that I had the means to satisfy his demands, and so enable him to acquire one more rare and beautiful item for his walls or cabinets? But I would be no victim of Fordyce Jukes's, or of any man's. From these thoughts, I recalled myself to my present task and turned towards the desk, which, like mine three floors above, stood before the window looking out into the street.

The polished surface bore nothing except a fine silver inkstand. The drawers were fast locked. I looked about me. Another locked cupboard in the corner. No papers. No note-books. Nothing to show me the character of Jukes's hand for comparison with the notes Bella and I had received. Another sign, I thought, that my renewed suspicions were well founded. A man who had acquired so much through extortion would not be so careless as to leave such evidence easily open to view.

Then, on a small side table by the fireplace, I saw an open book. Approaching nearer I saw that it was an octavo bible of the seventeenth century, though of no especial beauty or rarity. The t.i.tle-words of the opened recto met my astonished gaze: The Book of the Prophet EZEKIEL I had found no evidence of the creature's handwriting, but this seemed to provide the proof I needed that he was the blackmailer.

I turned to leave, standing at the half-open door for a moment to see if he was returning; but the street was clear, so I stepped out and headed down towards Temple Pier.

7:.

In dubio1 _______________________________________________________________________.

Le Grice was waiting for me, lounging against a wall, cheroot in mouth, in the feeble but welcome sun.

'G.o.d d.a.m.n you, G.,' he cursed, good-humouredly, as I approached. 'Been waitin' for you for fifteen minutes or more. Where the devil have you been? The tide will be out before we get off.'

We pulled the skiff down to the water, stowed our coats in the stern, rolled up our sleeves, and pushed off into the inky brown water.

Behind us were the myriad masts of the Docks, London Bridge, dense with its morning traffic, and the looming dome of St Paul's; before us, the distant line of Waterloo Bridge, and the slow curve of the broad stream down towards Hungerford Market. All around were vessels of every type and size, plying up and down, and on each bank the city bristled in silhouette against the pearly grey light, brushed over with the always present haze the metropolis exuded. Past vistas of dark lanes opening out towards the river's edge we went, past the crazy lines of chimney pots and jagged tenements etched against the sky, and the n.o.bler outlines of spires and battlements, past watermen's stairs and landing stages, warehouses and gardens. All about us gulls wheeled and circled, their raucous cries mingling with the river sounds of waves slapping against moored hulls, the flap of sails and pennants, the distant toot of a steam-tug.

We rowed on steadily, saying nothing, each enjoying the sensation of pulling against the mighty stream, glad to be out on the open water even foul Thames water on a November day. For my part, I felt sweet release from the many nights I had spent staring at the skylight above my bed. In front of me, the muscles of Le Grice's great back pulled and stretched the oyster-coloured silk of his waistcoat almost to bursting, and for a moment my mind started back to my former dream of rowing down a hot summer river behind the m.u.f.fled form of Lucas Trendle. But the image pa.s.sed, and I pulled on.

Just below Ess.e.x Wharf, a woman dressed in tattered and filthy clothes, a hamper suspended by her side from a leather strap about her shoulders, the remnant of a ragged bonnet on her head, was prodding and poking along the sh.o.r.e, serenely seeking objects of value in the ooze and foetid slime of the river's margin. She looked up and, ankle-deep in the mud, stood watching us, her hand s.h.i.+elding her eyes against the sun, as we glided past.

After tying up below Hungerford Stairs, I reached into the stern to retrieve our coats. On doing so I noticed, some way behind us, a single figure in a small rowing boat, oars down in the water. He had clearly been proceeding upstream on a similar course to ourselves, but now, like us, he had come to a rest, though he remained some distance out from the sh.o.r.e.

'Did you not see him?' asked Le Grice, twisting his great neck back towards me and looking over at the solitary figure. 'He joined us soon after we saw the woman at Ess.e.x Wharf. Friend of yours?'

No friend of mine, I thought. He presented a threatening silhouette, his tall hat standing up starkly black against the light that was now breaking westwards down the channel of the river.

Then it struck me. I had been a fool to believe that Fordyce Jukes would think of following me himself, knowing that I would instantly have recognized him. He must have some accomplice and here he was, the man in the boat, grimly biding his time; the man, perhaps, who had tapped me on the shoulder outside the Diorama; and the man who had pushed past me under the Egyptian portals at Abney Cemetery. No longer invisible; no longer shadow-hidden: he was here, in full daylight, though still out of reach. But sweet relief washed over me on seeing him; for now, I hoped, I could begin to turn the tables. Come a little closer, I whispered to myself, just a little closer. Let me see your face.

'What's that you say?' Le Grice was reaching back for me to hand him his coat.

'I said nothing. Here.'

I threw his coat at him, then turned again to look back at our pursuer. If I could lure him from the safety of his boat on to dry land, then I might contrive an opportunity to confront him. I pulled on my coat, feeling the rea.s.suring weight of the pocket-pistols I always carried with me. Then one more look astern, to fix the distant figure of the watcher in my mind.

He was exceptionally tall, with broad shoulders even broader, perhaps, than Le Grice's; clean shaven, as far as I could tell, though his upturned coat collar might conceal whiskers; and his large ungloved hands gripped the oars purposefully as he contended with the current to maintain his stationary position. But the more I scrutinized him, the more anxious I became. A formidable opponent, doubtless; but I am also a big man, and was confident that I could give a good account of myself, if it came to it. Why, then, this anxiety? What was it about this bobbing figure that discomfited me?

We gained the street and proceeded to Le Grice's club, the United Service. He had been kicking around for some years with no fixed prospect in view; but the opening of hostilities in the East earlier in the year, and the despatch of the expeditionary force to the Crimea, had suddenly stirred him to buy into the Guards, though he had yet to take up his duties. He talked excitedly of his impending military career. Like everyone at that time, his head was full of the great events in the Russian campaign, especially of the Light Brigade's heroic charge at Balaclava, soon to be so memorably evoked in Mr Tennyson's great ode.2 For my part, I was happy to let him talk on, for my mind was occupied with our friend from the river. I'd expected to catch sight of him by now, but, to my surprise, no one appeared to be following us.

We reached the steps of the club, crowded with arriving members, without incident. Lunch was excellent in every respect, and Le Grice, in fine form, called for another bottle of champagne, and then another; but I wished to stay alert, thinking still of our pursuer, and so let him have the lion's share. After an hour or so had pa.s.sed, it became apparent that my companion was in no fit state to row back with me; and so, after putting him into a hansom, I walked back down to the river alone.

Stopping every few yards to make sure I was not being tracked, I finally arrived at Hungerford Steps, retrieved the skiff, and prepared to row back. My head was racing. Where was he? I set off, turning my head from time to time, expecting to see him, but the sun was bright in my eyes and I could see nothing. Arriving at Temple Pier, I stood up to moor the craft, lost my balance, and fell back into the river. As I sat there, in two feet of cold stinking water, the amused object of attention of a number of pa.s.sers-by on the embankment above, I saw the dark figure of the solitary rower, a hundred yards or so downstream. Once more he stopped his craft mid-stream, laid back his oars, and sat looking straight ahead with ominous concentration. Again, no features were discernible, simply this alarming att.i.tude of acute attentiveness.

Cursing under my breath, I slopped and splashed my way back to Temple-street. At each corner I stopped and looked back, to see if the mysterious rower had disembarked his craft and was following me, but there was no sign of him. Unable to bear the water in my boots any longer, I tore them off in frustrated fury and walked the last few yards to the staircase of my chambers in just my stockinged feet.

And so it was, my sodden stockings m.u.f.fling the sound of my footsteps on the stairs, that I came upon Fordyce Jukes bending down at my door, preparing to slip something underneath it.

He screamed like a stuck pig as, throwing my dripping boots on the stairs, I grabbed him by his miserable neck and hurled him to the floor.

Holding him still by the scruff, like the cur he was, I unlocked the door and kicked him inside.

He cowered in the corner, his hand across his face.

'Mr Glapthorn! Mr Glapthorn!' he whimpered, 'whatever is the matter? It is I, your neighbour Fordyce Jukes. Do you not know me?'

'Know you?' I snarled back. 'Oh yes, I know you. I know you very well for the villain you are.'

He leant back a little into the corner, letting his hand drop away from his face to reveal a look of genuine alarm. I had him now.

'Villain? What can you mean? What villainy have I done to you?'

I advanced towards him, as he frantically forced himself back yet further into the corner, the heels of his boots sc.r.a.ping noisily on the boards, in a futile attempt to escape the beating I was now preparing to administer. But something held me back.

'Well, let us see now,' said I. 'Perhaps this will serve as an instance.'

I turned away from him and went back to the door, picked up the paper he had been pus.h.i.+ng under it when I'd arrived unnoticed behind him, and began to read it.

It was written in a highly distinctive hand; but it was the distinctiveness of the professional scribe, the practised hand of a solicitor's clerk. It bore no resemblance at all to either of the notes Bella and I had received. And the message it contained? An invitation for Mr Edward Glapthorn to join Mr Fordyce Jukes, and a few other friends, at a dinner to celebrate his birthday, at the Albion Tavern, on Sat.u.r.day evening, November the twelfth.

I stood in silent befuddlement.

What on earth could be happening? I had caught the rogue red-handed, or so I thought; and now this! Was it some kind of diabolical variation on his usual game to throw me off the scent? And then, as I considered the matter, the clearer became the possibility that I might have been mistaken dangerously mistaken about the ident.i.ty of the blackmailer; but if not Jukes, then who?

My stomach tightened as the threatening figure of the solitary rower rose up before my mind's eye. The anxiety I had earlier experienced returned; and then, gradually, like blood seeping slowly from a wound, the truth began to form itself, and I saw what I should have seen when I had tried to force the blackmail note to give up the ident.i.ty of its author.

Still Jukes cowered in the corner, but he had seen my discomposure on reading the invitation, and his att.i.tude had relaxed somewhat.

'Mr Glapthorn, please. Allow me to stand.'

I said nothing, but walked instead over to my armchair by the fire and threw myself down, still clutching the piece of paper.

I heard him pick himself up from the floor, dust himself down, and walk across to where I was sitting.

'Mr Glapthorn, please, I meant no harm, no harm at all. Perhaps coming on me like that it is quite dark on your landing, is it not? I can see that is, I expect you mistook me for some house-thief or such. A shock, I'm sure, to find someone here. But no harm intended, sir, no harm at all, no, none at all . . .'

And so he went on, repeating the same sentiments over and over, and wringing his fat little hands to emphasize his contrition and regret at the trouble caused.

Fordyce Jukes: a mystery to me still. Was he my blackmailer? Perhaps I had misconstrued the glimpses of his private pa.s.sions I had obtained. By what means he had managed to a.s.semble his little museum of treasures, I could not tell; but I no longer felt as sure as formerly that he had been plotting to augment them at my expense, by exploiting his knowledge of the doings in Cain-court. This uncertainty cut through me keenly, and made me fearful. The business I had been about that night had clearly affected my judgment more than I'd thought. I must be on my guard for any such lapse in the future, for it might prove fatal.

I took a deep breath, rose from my chair, and faced my neighbour.

'Mr Jukes, I apologize. Sincerely and completely. It is I who have done you wrong. Much wrong. You are right. In the gloom of the landing I thought that someone was attempting to break into my rooms. I have been on the river, you see, and am a little fatigued and dizzy from the exertion. I did not recognize you. Unforgivable.'

I screwed up all my willpower and held out my hand.

He limply reciprocated, at which I immediately withdrew myself to my work-table and sat down again.

'I thought that we see so little of each these days, Mr Glapthorn,' I heard him say, though my mind was already far away from the stunted figure in old-fas.h.i.+oned breeches and tailcoat standing on my Turkey rug, wringing his hands still, and looking about him nervously. 'You are so rarely in the office now, and I used to so enjoy our little chats. Not that we have ever been friends as such, I realize, but we are neighbours, and neighbours, you know, should be neighbourly. And so I thought, perhaps Mr Glapthorn is in need of some company? And then I thought, couldn't I bring together a few friends to partake in a little celebratory dinner it being my birthday on Sat.u.r.day and invite Mr Glapthorn '