Jack Maggs (21 page)

48

AT THREE O’CLOCK ON this first afternoon of May, Jack Maggs found the little grocer hidden far from the spring sunlight, in front of a sad and smoky fire in his bedroom. The curtains had been drawn and the candles lit, and Mr Buckle, dressed in an embroidered silk smoking jacket, had his pointed nose deep in a book. The unsavoury smell of cheese was strong about the room, and this smell, Jack Maggs soon saw, had its source in a yellow wedge of Stilton which, together with a glass of wine, was set up on a tray beside his elbow. When Mr Buckle finally became sensible of Maggs’s presence in the room, he leapt up so quickly he almost sent this tray flying.

“Whoa there,” cried the footman.

As he fled towards the fireplace, Mr Buckle’s slippers flashed beneath the turn-ups of his trousers, like the prow of an oriental boat. They were queer and sparkly, and nearly distracted Maggs’s attention from the war-like poker which Percy Buckle had picked up and was holding secretly behind his leg.

“Do not fear me, Mr Buckle.”

“Fear!” scoffed Mr Buckle, backing himself up against the mantel.

“Please sit down, your Lordship.”

Mr Buckle brought the poker out of hiding and, by way of justifying his attachment, poked the fire with it.

“Sit.”

Mr Buckle sat abruptly down. “Yes?”

“It is Mr Spinks’s rattle, Sir.”

“Rattle?”

Maggs was surprised to see the fearful eyes become more distant, his manner harden. “You mean a cough?”

“A rattle is a rattle. There ain’t no doubting what it is. We had best get a doctor to him very quickly.”

“What else beside the cough?”

As Jack Maggs told the symptoms, Mr Buckle listened, his head a little to one side, his hands clasped in his lap. He appeared most sympathetic in his demeanour but it was soon clear that, contrary to all his earlier fright and agitation, the master had little anxiety on Mr Spinks’s behalf.

When Jack Maggs offered to drag him to his butler’s bed where he might inspect the patient for himself, Mr Buckle responded by pushing his bony little backside deeper into his chair.

“Then what of Mr Oates?” he cried. “What do we do there?”

“In what respect?”

“I would be a very foolish man to go running to a doctor without asking Mr Oates’s permission.”

“Why’s that?”

“It is Mr Oates who should call the doctor,” continued Mr Buckle. “He’s the one responsible for the injury.”

“He laid the spell?”

“He laid the spell. That’s it exactly.”

“Very well,” Jack Maggs granted. “Then let me run the message to Mr Oates.”

“But it was only a prank, see,” said Percy Buckle, rattling the poker on the hearth. “That’s what alters it. That’s where you should watch your
P
s and
Q
s. What will Oates think if I say my man is dying of his prank? He will think me trying to blame him for something which I have no right to blame him for. You may not know this, but I am a student of the Law. Oates could sue me for a slander. And if he could, he would. I hear he is a fierce gent about his reputation.”

“You tell him that Mr Spinks has the Mesmeric Fluid on his lung, and he will die of it unless Mr Oates be so nice as to take it away.”

“No, no.”

“Damn you! I’ll fetch him myself.”

“He may not be at home,” cried Percy Buckle.

But Jack Maggs was already checking his fob pocket to find a shilling for a cab. “One more thing, your Lordship.”

“I am listening,” said the other, beginning to preen his moustache again.

“You will hear me drawing nails from the front door.”

“Very good, Master Maggs.”

“But I would have to kill anyone who left your house.”

“Yes, yes,” said Percy Buckle, so distractedly that Jack Maggs would later wonder whether he could possibly have been understood.

Mr Buckle, however, had heard very well indeed, and as the criminal ran down the stairs of his house, he sat looking into the fire, watching Goats and Demons dancing in the flames above the coals.

49

MR BUCKLE LOVED HIS HOUSE, and he celebrated his Great Good Fortune, not merely on the fourteenth day of each month (when he retired to the snuggery to re-read the will) but at almost every moment of almost every day.

He had been often observed to stand and stare off into space, in what his servants imagined was a kind of rapture
.
It was, as Miss Mott said, as if the master could see an angel in his hallway, but Mr Buckle saw no angels, it was his house he worshipped, and what a miracle it was that he should own that dark-green wallpaper, the stained-glass fanlight, the gloss of polish on the oaken floor.

You could have fed him rancid bacon and he might not have complained. You could leave the sheets unlaundered for two weeks at a stretch. But Heaven help you if the floors weren’t polished, if the mantelpiece wasn’t dusted every day. He liked his inheritance to shine. Consequently, to see the fresh injury which Jack Maggs’s departure had caused to his front door was more disturbing to the owner than even he—who had seen the rusty nails first breach that lustrous black surface—might have anticipated.

He knelt before the door as if winded. The nails had been ripped out roughly. In their place were jagged wounds: gouges, dents, raw splinters. Tenderly, he laid back the splinters inside the wounds, but the hurt was too savage for such ministrations.

Back in his sitting room, he repeatedly pulled the bell for Constable. When he was not answered, he returned to the front door and picked up the horrid nails himself. He dropped them into his jacket pocket, and hurried down the breakneck stairs into his kitchen. Here he found the fire dead and a queer pink-grey mouse eating a crust of bread on the table. The three thin lines between Mr Buckle’s eyebrows deepened. At first it seemed that he might strike the mouse, but then all his energy emerged in a violent shiver. He went quickly back up to the ground floor and then up the back stairs.

And there, in the snuggery, he discovered Mercy and Constable sitting side by side on the ottoman, chatting contentedly like dowagers at a ball.

He spoke to them politely. They were lazy and familiar in return.

He requested them to come downstairs to sweep up the mess of nails and splinters. He did not wait to see how this order was received, but descended straight away to the drawing room and picked up—he could have chosen anything—a recent pamphlet from the Workingman’s Association. Although he made a convincing show of reading, he was far too upset to study anything. All his attention was focused upon his servants who, even as they came down the stairs, were chatting as familiarly as before.

When they had swept up the dust and splinters, they were cool enough to enter the drawing room without an invitation.

Mercy
sat
in the embrasure of the window. Constable stood. And there they stayed, busy at
waiting
, he realized, for the return of the criminal whom they seemed to expect at any moment.

“I’ve got to tell him, Mercy,” whispered Constable. “It ain’t right for me to keep this secret from him.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Eddie. It’s not fair you have to decide.”

Mr Buckle did not know what secret they meant, nor did he care. He turned the page of his pamphlet.

“Who else could decide?” asked Constable. “I’m the one what knows.”

Behind the pamphlet the master’s face was as drained of blood as their shining countenances were hot with it. Mercy whispered something. He could not make it out. In reply Constable said, with uncharacteristic passion: “Whatever Henry Phipps has sworn, it ain’t worth spit.”

Mr Buckle put aside his pamphlet.

“Mr Constable,” said he, “you’ll not speak of a gentleman in that tone.”

Mercy then presumed to raise an eyebrow.

“What mean you by
that,
Miss?”

“I was surprised, Sir,” said she, just as saucy as if it were midnight and the door were locked.

“Why would you be surprised?”

“No reason, Sir.”

“Answer!” he cried, and she realized, at last, how angry he was. Her tone became more sober.

“I recall you did not think much of that gentleman next door.”

“You value your position, girl?” hissed Percy Buckle.

She stood up straight, putting her hands behind her back. “I’m sorry, Sir.”

There was a silence then, for a while.

“I do beg your pardon, Sir,” said Mercy.

“I also beg your pardon, Mr Buckle,” said Constable. “I forgot myself.”

Percy Buckle looked at the maid with his eyes narrow and his mouth now exceeding small. She had, finally, a frightened look about the eyes. He stroked his moustache and then folded his pale dry hands carefully upon his lap. “Did you attend to my bathroom yet?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir. I did it the moment you first asked me.”

Someone in the street cried
Whoa-up.

“Is it him?”

“No, Sir.”

“What is that you have there in your apron, Mercy? What is it that you’re playing with?”

“Nothing, Sir.”

“Then bring your ‘nothing’ here.”

The girl came a little closer and Percy Buckle suddenly took her wrist and wrenched her violently towards him.

“Why,” he said, prying her hand open, “it is a little lock of children’s hair.”

“Two locks.”

“Two locks,” he agreed. The wool around the hair was old and faded.

“They was in his jacket pocket, Sir.”

“So our convict is a family man,” he said, looking into her agitated eyes. “How got you to have such a personal item, my girl?”

“Why, Sir,” she said quickly. “It was very clever of me as you’ll see. He had taken his jacket off to write his letters. Then Mr Spinks was took. Then Mr Maggs left me to help with Mr Spinks. They were in a little envelope in the breast pocket. It
is
baby hair, Sir, ain’t it?”

“Perhaps,” Constable suggested, “it is Mr Phipps’s hair.”

“Don’t be daft,” said Mercy. “How could it be Phipps? These babes have dark hair.”

The footman abandoned his post at the window, and asked if he might be permitted to touch the two locks of baby hair.

Mr Buckle could not decide if this was impertinent or not, proper or not. He stayed in his chair, watching uneasily as his footman held the locks of hair in his nimble long-fingered hands. This was how they were grouped, three of them clustered around these sad remains, when there came a sudden knocking on the front door.

50

TOBIAS DUTIFULLY BEGAN his report for the
Morning Chronicle
. He wrote a headline: “A Fire in Brighton.” He underlined this twice and then laboured on a small distinctive flourish beneath the underline.

The ink on the flourish was still wet when his first interruption arrived: a rather chatty little bailiff with muddy boots and three promissory notes signed by John Oates on the strength of his son’s good name.

Toby exchanged these three notes for one of his own, in which he promised to pay seventy-eight pounds twenty days hence.

Then he took out a sheet of fresh paper and wrote a painful letter informing his father that he could be no longer responsible for his debts. This took less than five minutes, but he then spent almost half an hour composing a more cautious public announcement to the same effect. He planned to deliver this advertisement to the newspapers when he handed in his report to the
Chronicle
, and when he had composed the announcement to his satisfaction, he made three fair copies which he placed in individual envelopes addressed to
The Times
, the
Observer,
and the
Morning Chronicle
. The unexpected expense of these advertisements then led him to take a fresh sheet of paper on which he made a revised estimate of his expenditures and incomes for the following quarter. These totals were very bleak indeed, so he put aside his Brighton Fire and set out to produce a quick Character Sketch for the
Observer
. This newspaper now paid five pounds for such pieces, and he was soon standing on his chair, looking for his notes for the “Canary Woman of Islington,” “Old Tom Wicks of Camden Town,” and other
Types
and
Characters
which he had collected for this very purpose. He finally settled on a Crossing Sweeper and sat himself at his desk where, on one more clean sheet, he began:

Those readers familiar with McKenzie’s Chop House in Fetter Lane have doubtless had the benefit of the broom of Titchy Tate, without ever imagining that he who wields this instrument with such violent effect, believes himself to be the luckiest little boy in all of London.

He would have executed both “Titchy Tate” and “A Fire in Brighton” by lunch time, except that he was pushed into a furtive conference with Lizzie (although what that conference was to be about he could not determine, for she had fled the room before it had half begun).

Next came his wife in a state of great distress on account of an angry red pustule which had emerged on their baby’s breast. Toby was considerably alarmed by what he saw, but when he suggested bathing the infection in salty water his wife seemed to think this very wise advice indeed, and he was able to return to his study, and once more take up the quill.

Whereupon Jack Maggs appeared at his doorway, demanding a doctor for a sick butler. He had no choice. He pushed “Titchy Tate” aside and took a fresh sheet of paper on which he composed a note to Dr Grieves of Gray’s Inn Road, requesting him to please be so kind as to attend to a butler at 29 Great Queen Street. This letter he gave into the care of Mrs Jones, asking the sturdy old lady to put on her shawl and take it up to an Inn in Chancery Lane where he knew the doctor ate his lunch.

He doubted the butler’s condition was dangerous, but he was a cautious man and, given his little joke about the quarantine, he thought it politic to be present at Great Queen Street to introduce the patient to his doctor. Thus he went to dress, and all the while he went about this business he had to endure the sound of the criminal’s hectoring footsteps pacing in the hall below.

Some minutes later, as he followed Jack Maggs back down through the drizzling streets to Holborn, he reflected that the man had as good as stolen five pounds from his pocket. He therefore, consciously, recompensed himself.

Tit for tat, he memorized the hard shine to Jack Maggs’s skin as it cleaved close to the bones of his cheek and jaw. He would use those bones, perhaps tomorrow. On the following day he would return for those deeper, more painful items which must still be cut free from the softer tissue of Jack Maggs’s memory.

He was developing, with every passing hour, giddy ambitions for this novel.
Captain Crumley
had been a comedy, a pantomime, broad strokes, great larks, a rowdy tale of old London that had Mr David-son the butcher in a fever while he waited for the next instalment. But in all of English literature there was nothing like the dark journey he now planned to take inside the Criminal Mind. He began, as he walked, to chisel away at its plot. He charted a course by abstract reasoning, almost algebraically. From Birth to Death, from Light to Dark, from Water to Fire. It was with some irritation that he found the walk had ended, and he must abandon this activity in favour of the real world.

In Percy Buckle’s drawing room, he found the physician had already arrived, and was standing with his back to Mr Buckle’s fireplace. Dr Grieves was a neat, well tailored man and in spite of being nearly fifty, of a markedly athletic appearance. He had always seemed a quiet fellow, almost excessively polite in his manners, so when Tobias saw the doctor’s stern face, his compressed mouth, he began immediately to apologize for dragging him from his luncheon.

“It were better you had dragged me from my breakfast.”

“The patient is very ill?”

“Very dead. To put it bluntly.”

In the silence that followed this announcement, Oates could hear the most piteous chorus of wailing descending from the upper floors.

“Oh dear,” said Toby.

No response from the doctor.

“A nice old chap,” offered Toby.

Mr Buckle nodded his head vigorously in agreement.

“He came down quickly?” Toby inquired of Percy Buckle.

Before the master of the house could supply this intelligence, the doctor turned to him and asked the privilege of a moment alone with Mr Oates.

Once Mr Buckle had departed, the doctor sat himself down in a wing-back armchair by the fire. There he put his hands upon his knees, and gazed long and hard at the black and smoky logs.

“Your shirt is showing, Sir.”

Tobias Oates followed the motion of the doctor’s head and saw a three-inch twist of bright green shirt sticking out from his flies. He coloured furiously. Dr Grieves continued as the writer attended to his shirt.

“As to the other business, I am damned if I know what to say to you.”

“Who else was I to send for, if not my own doctor?”

“Oh, dear God, Mr Oates, you cannot go around killing people.”

“I assure you—”

“You cannot come into this household, Sir, impersonating a member of the College of Surgeons. How do you think it would be, for you to be charged? What would the judge say, upon hearing that you had convinced the deceased that you were a surgeon?”

“It was a prank, a joke.”

“Mr Oates, the old fellow is dead.”

“But not of my prank.”

“Mr Oates, it is not as if you were a Balliol undergraduate . . .”

This, to Toby’s ear, was only another way of saying that he was not a gentleman.

“And on account of this lack,” he smiled bitterly, “I am a murderer?”

“I will write pneumonia on his death certificate, but if you really want my true opinion, it is that you bewitched him.”

“Sir, you are a man of science.”

“A man is known by his deeds, Sir. And you bewitched him. Just, Sir, as you bewitched the cook and the housekeeper who—although you have not asked after their health—are, whilst upset to learn of their companion’s death, not in any present danger themselves.”

“But surely, he was an old man. A pneumonia might have arrived in any case.”

“Do not, please, tell me my business, Mr Oates. I was pleased to have you a guest in my house. I enjoyed our evenings together.”

“As did I.”

“But I cannot thank you for having me commit a perjury on this death certificate.”

“Perhaps, Doctor, it is not a perjury. I do not say that I was not remiss, but—”

“A perjury. I cannot forgive you for it.”

Tobias put his head in his hands.

“I beg your forgiveness,” he said at last. When he looked up, his face showed his grief.

“But it is your God who will forgive you,” said the doctor, severely. “It is with Him that you have your business to settle. I have no thirst for ruining you.”

This last sentence was not without its effect.

The young man looked up at the physician, curly hair dishevelled, eyes swimming with tears. “I would do anything to undo this.”

The doctor stood up. “Then you must pray. In the meantime, you may know that the death certificate protects your reputation at the same time as it threatens mine: you will understand me, I am sure, when I say that I cannot serve your family any longer.”

“But what if my babe is ill?”

“Then you will take your babe to a doctor, and the doctor will cure your babe, and you will be a lucky man.”

“But I know no other doctor. He had, this morning, a kind of pustule . . .”

“Mr Oates, London is a big city . . .”

“I know London, Sir. I know it perhaps better than even you do. It is an exceedingly big city, and if my babe is ill . . .”

“A big city, in which you will find many excellent doctors.”

“You will give me an introduction?”

“Please, Mr Oates, how could I do that? I have already played loose with my good name.”

“You are casting me out?”

For answer, the doctor stood and pulled on the bell.

“Who else would I turn to?”

It was the criminal, in all his wild and slovenly dishabille, who answered the call. Toby, in the midst of his own distress, noticed the doctor’s astonishment as he asked the soiled and spotted man to fetch his coat and bag.

“If my wife is ill, who would I call?”

For answer, the doctor made a small formal bow, then walked out into the hall where Jack Maggs had his great-coat ready. He slowly donned the coat and buttoned it, then, without a word to anyone, he left the house.

The criminal closed the door behind him, then stood in front of it.

“Thank you,” said Toby, meaning that he would also take his leave, but the criminal did not move. He stood unnaturally straight, with his eyes straight ahead.

“Mr Oates,” said he. “I need a word with you.”

“I can’t think of that now . . . ,” said Tobias Oates.

The criminal then stepped so close to him that Tobias could smell the rum on his breath. Then the novelist found himself being lifted from the floor and shaken so his teeth rattled in his head.

He was next replaced carefully on the floor, but still held very hard by the shoulders. The smell of alcohol was very strong again. He could see the pores of his tormentor’s nose, the iron whiskers, the twitch in his cheek, the black fury in his eye.

Tobias Oates’s life was unravelling.