Mr. Timothy: A Novel (25 page)

--I was only wondering, Tim, if you still see your father.

--Yes. Here and there.

A great expanse of air issues from his throat--more air than I would have thought that shrunken chest could hold. His head tips to one side, and it looks as if it might keep tipping all the way to the floor, but then, like a flat, bony pillow, his hand rises to meet it in a trembling stasis, and it is from this nearly recumbent angle that he gazes at me and says:

--I used to see spirits, too, Tim. Terrible things. How I miss them.

At the age of eleven, I was persuaded, for about ten minutes, that I was destined to be a bobby. It was Peter who informed me, as gently as he knew how, that even were I able to walk someday without a crutch, I would very likely fall short of the height requirement. In fact, that would indeed prove the case--I tapered off just shy of sixty-eight inches. And so to my adolescent mind, the members of the Metropolitan Police came to seem like another race altogether: stiff-lipped, fat-necked giants, bestriding our narrow streets like colossi.

So here I am at last, in the colossi's den, stepping into this disreputable cluster of buildings off Whitehall Place and finding not giants but a hive of discombobulated bees: sergeants in top hats and swallowtail coats bustling past on no discernible trajectory, vaulting over piles of books, tripping on stray saddles and blankets, smacking their knees on balustrades. The air sings with din and velocity and confusion, and with the crackle of my own foreboding.

This is Scotland Yard....

Inspector Graham Surtees, to whose office I am ushered, bears as much resemblance to the rest of the constabulary as a salmon does to a school of herring. He is not so much bigger as more concentrated: tall and stretched thin, with eyes at once stern and watery, and a chin that slopes imperceptibly into his neck, and long, skeletal fingers that he interlaces across his chest. This last gesture gives him the air of a slumming don, and even so, the donnishness seems rather carefully constructed. Squint hard enough, and you can see the vowels and consonants and inflections and mannerisms piled atop one another, brick by brick, according to someone's blueprint. Piled, perhaps, too high. The air is thin where Inspector Surtees now lives.

He asks me first if I would like some licorice, and looks chagrined when I decline. He compensates by jamming a piece into his own mouth and clamping down on it with all the force of a bear trap. Through clenched teeth, he asks after my uncle.

--How is good Mr. Drood? Still slaving away at the law?

--Banking, actually. And the name is--

--Ah yes, the counting house. Getting and spending.

--And the business, such as it is, has been handed over to his nephew. His blood nephew, I mean.

--Blood, yes.

He snatches up a piece of paper just to the right of his elbow, reads it with a show of great interest, then crumples it and tosses it over his shoulder, where it joins a great cairn of paper snowballs by the grate. All of them apparently waiting to be consumed by fire, although the strands of cobweb across the grate testify to months of disuse.

Without warning, Inspector Surtees slams down a hand on the desk.

--Well, Mr. Cratchit, you profess to have urgent business. Will you do me the kindness of proceeding? But stop...you're quite sure you won't take some licorice? No? Well, proceed then, by all means.

He looks me square in the eye to begin with, but as the tale unfolds, his eyelids grow swollen and listless, and his head sinks very gradually towards his chest, and one would think him asleep were it not for a curious galvanic current, which manifests itself in an agitation of the fingertips and in jerks of the head that leave me feeling, each time, like a burglar caught with his fingers in the eaves.

It takes me longer than I expected to finish, and perhaps in deference to my labour, the good inspector allows a cloud of silence to build up round us before he offers his thoughts.

--I wonder, Mr. Cratchit. I sometimes wonder if papist blood runs in my veins.

--Sorry?

--I'm so enormously attracted to trinities, you see. I simply dote on them. And here, as a kind of early Christmas gift, you have given me the most remarkable trinity. Three girls, Mr. Cratchit. Compellingly triangulated, but each intriguing in her own right. And so we take them, for no good reason, in sequence. This first one...you found her body where?

--In an alley off Jermyn Street. --Ah, Jermyn. Did you know--why this should come to mind, I can't say--Newton lived there.

--Did he?

--Can't think of the house number right off. Hardly matters, does it? Now this aforementioned girl. If I recall correctly, there were constables on duty at the time.

--Two of them. I assume, as a consequence, there is some record of the crime.

--Record. Mm.

He flutters his fingers towards the wall behind him. My eyes take in the half-open cabinets, all of them vomiting paper--paper of every colour and thickness, poking out at all angles and sprouting long tendrils of dust. On the floor behind me, still more paper, crammed pell-mell into biscuit crates and flowerpots and already yellowing with antiquity.

Inspector Surtees gives his fingers another flutter.

--For economy's sake, let us move with lightning speed to the second girl. The one you and your friend found downriver. May I ask where you left the body?

--With the coroner's office in Rotherhithe.

--Did you stay to make a report?

--No.

--How peculiar. Why ever not?

--I don't know. My friend wanted to. I don't know.

His eyes fog over.

--Friends, yes. They...redoubleth joys, and they...and they cutteth griefs in half. Something along those lines. Bacon, I think. Neither here nor there, but tell me, if you please. The name of your wise friend?

--I'd rather not say just now.

--It would be most helpful to have corroboration.

--I know it would.

He pulls down one of his grey eyes, regards me for a cool half minute.

--Your friend is perhaps engaged in an unorthodox profession. You'll note I do not say "illicit," I say only "unorthodox."

--He is a retired seaman. How he earns a wage currently, I couldn't say.

--And how do
you
earn a wage, Mr. Cratchit? --I am a tutor.

--In what subject?

--Reading.

--And whom do you instruct?

--That is not for me to say.

This draws from him the most amiable smile of our brief acquaintance.

--It is vexing, Mr. Cratchit. You come to me for assistance in prosecuting a crime, and yet you decline to answer any of my questions.

--Because the questions do not pertain to the crime. If I may remind you, Inspector, we are talking about three girls--at
least
three, quite possibly many more--all of them, by my reckoning, abducted, branded in the most horrible fashion, almost certainly cozened into prostitution, and in some cases murdered. If you would care to direct any inquiries to me on
this
subject, I should be delighted to answer them.

For whatever reason, he chooses that moment to dive behind his desk. An angry rattle, the scraping of a drawer--more licorice?--and from the same general vicinity, the inspector's disembodied voice, asking:

--How old were these girls, Mr. Cratchit?

--I can speak for the one who is alive. She is ten.

--You mean that is what she told you.

--I mean that is what she is.

His head reappears above the horizon of his desk.

--And the ages of the other girls? The ones you found?

--I have no way of knowing.

--Your best guess, then. Have a go.

--Ten or eleven. Twelve at most.

His eyebrows pinch together; his lips push outwards.

--I ask only--why do I ask? Oh! Because the age of consent, you see, is thirteen.

--I wasn't aware that murder victims needed to tender their consent.

--Ah, but we don't know that these are murders, do we? You said yourself there were no marks other than...bloody hands, was it?

--Yes.

--A certain look of terror in the eyes, was that it?

--Yes.

--Anything else?

--No. No, that was quite enough.

And now he is up on his feet, strolling through his office as though it were a village common. Sniffing the air, pumping his arms. Sliding his boots through the drifts of snow-paper.

--You mentioned a man in a carriage. With rings and whatnot. Let us fasten on him for a moment.

--I don't know who he is, Inspector.

--Not a clue?

--I have...I have a frustrating sense of having seen him somewhere, but I can't recall where.

--Perhaps there's something else you recall. A stray nuance. I adore nuance.

--I've told you everything. There was...there was a coat of arms on the carriage.

--Can you describe that for me, Mr. Cratchit?

--I didn't get much of a look.

--Anything at all.

--There was, I think, a lion in it.

--A lion.

--It seemed to be a lion. A lion's tail, at any rate. Haunches. That kind of thing.

--Ah, yes, haunches.

It doesn't matter how often I come back to that coat of arms. It's always muddle. And the muddle never clears, although it does brighten. Indeed, it becomes extraordinarily vivid in my mind, and this vividness is somehow indivisible from the muddle, as though the image acquires, in the act of breaking down, a prodigious and supernatural power. Can things do that, Inspector?

--There was another man, Mr. Cratchit. The one who pursued you with the blade.

--Yes.

--Perhaps you could describe him for me. --I can do better.

The drawing looks quite small, spread across the expanse of Surtees' cherry desk. It seems almost to be shrinking before my eyes--awaiting the fate that must come to all paper in this place.

--Did you sketch this yourself, Mr. Cratchit?

--My young friend.

--And is it a good likeness?

--An ideal likeness.

He pushes his face to within six inches of the paper. And there is something about the way he holds his pose, something about the way his eyes fix on the image, rather than glancing away, something that makes me say:

--You recognise him.

He studies it awhile longer, then raises his head.

--Sergeant William Rebbeck.

And as he speaks the name, his eyes dart towards the doorway, in a rush of expectancy, and I swivel round in my chair, fully expecting to see Mr. Bowler himself, bearing down with his gleaming blade, and I am already heaping curses on myself--the credulity of you!--and my arms have crossed in front of me, bracing for the blow, but they are not braced for
this
blow, which is simply a gale of surprise. For the doorway is empty, empty.

And from behind me comes the inspector's soothing voice.

--My apologies, Mr. Cratchit, I have led you astray. Sergeant Rebbeck is nowhere in the building. Indeed, he no longer bears the title of sergeant, being no longer affiliated with Scotland Yard.

I fix him with my best interrogative glare.

--Was Sergeant Rebbeck employed by the Detective Department?

--Like most police, he regarded this department with an implacable hostility. In which I take a sort of morbid pride.

--And when did he leave the force?

--Three years ago this past September.

--And was he asked to leave?

--That, I'm afraid, is confidential business, Mr. Cratchit. Not for idle bruiting, I'm sure you understand.

--I
would
understand if he hadn't taken to chasing people with wood-carvers' blades.

Eyes shining, Surtees jabs an index finger into the air. A quality of childish gloating suffuses his face.

--Primitive Methodist.

--I'm sorry?

--Willie's late father. Methodist minister. Don't know why I should recall that.

Why indeed? I find myself gripping the arms of my chair just to cram down the anger. Uncle N's words rattle in my ear:

One thinks he's not quite attending at first....

--You refer to him as Willie, Inspector. Am I to presume you are friends?

--Oh, that's just the fragment of an old nickname, Mr. Cratchit. Not one I coined. But here you are, in need of assurances, so may I offer you one? This very day, I promise you, I shall do everything in my power to locate Mr. Rebbeck and call him in for inquiries.

--Inquiries?

--Why, yes. If in fact there is some larger criminal enterprise at work--a point I don't necessarily concede, but for argument's sake--and if certain malfeasants are indeed preying on young girls, then surely we should begin by questioning the one man who is known to have some connection to them.

--In the hope that he will confess on the spot? Is that the presumption?

--I have learnt never to presume anything, Mr. Cratchit.

--And whilst you are posing polite inquiries of your friend Willie, his employer will simply take on a replacement and continue his operation unimpeded.

--Mr. Cratchit, as soon as I am persuaded that such an operation exists, I will move like an Arabian steed to close it down. I've never seen an Arabian steed, but I fancy it moves very quickly indeed.