The American Boy (21 page)

I swung round to the old woman. “And you, madam? Did you remark his appearance?”

She burst out laughing, exposing a fine set of false teeth, made of what might have been ivory. “Bless you, sir, there's not much I see clearly nowadays.” She lifted her face to mine and the light from the window fell in full upon it. All at once, her meaning burst upon me. The eyes exhibited a singularly blurred and unfocused appearance, as different from healthy eyes as a stagnant pond is from running water.

I turned from one to the other, my frustration mounting. “Pray, can you tell me what his voice was like?”

The man shrugged but the woman nodded vigorously. “A deep voice. There might have been a brogue in it. Later he sounded more like a West End gentleman. But I don't know: all the time he was most indistinct.”

“Indeed, Mother, that was on account of the toothache.” The dentist snickered. “Afterwards, he had no time for talking and too much blood in his mouth to speak at all.”

“He couldn't get away fast enough,” the dentist's mother confided. “They're often like that. Bless you, sir, they're so terrified we have to strap them into that chair. And when we unstrap them, they're away like a startled rabbit.”

“If you know where he lodges, you could take his bag,” the dentist said.

“His bag, sir?”

“He had several with him. But he was in such a hurry to depart that he left a satchel behind.”

“Sobbing, he was,” the woman observed, and smacked her lips.

“Hush, Mother,” said the dentist, turning to me, and once again the torrent of words began to flow. “In my profession, sir, it is inevitable that even the most skilled practitioner must inflict the occasional moment of pain upon his patient. Laudanum and brandy may blunt its edge, but they cannot resolve the difficulty altogether. And operations involving the removal of a wisdom tooth can be particularly painful. The posterior molars are invariably the most difficult to extract.”

I felt a sympathetic twinge in my own teeth. “If you would like, sir, I will undertake to reunite my friend with his satchel.”

“You will be doing us a service, sir,” said the dentist.

“But you must give us a receipt,” the woman said sharply, turning those unsettling orbs towards me.

“Of course, madam.”

Taking out my memorandum book, I scribbled a receipt while the dentist fetched the satchel which had been hanging all this time from a peg on the back of the door. It was made of brown leather, much scuffed, and its straps had broken so the flap was now secured with string. I tore out the page with the receipt and took my leave. The dentist begged me to consider his services should I need treatment for my teeth, and even offered to give me an examination,
gratis
, upon the spot. I declined and hurried away.

I walked rapidly to a tavern in Charlotte-street, where I found an empty booth and ordered ale. When the girl had gone I tugged at the knots that secured the satchel. My hands were cold and the knots obstinate. I lost patience and sliced through the string with my penknife.

The fog outside seemed to serve as a pretty metaphor for the fog inside my own mind. I opened the satchel, and the first thing I saw, traced in blotched ink on the inside of the flap, was the name
David Poe
. The letters had faded to the colour of dried blood.

The satchel's contents spilled on to the scrubbed surface of the table. My fingers explored the little heap of possessions – a small flask which had once contained brandy, a shirt of fine quality but in need of a wash, a grubby neckcloth and a cigar case made of leather. I opened the case and shook out its contents.

As I did so, I was thinking that, every time I turned up what I thought was a fact, it seemed that the more I inspected it, the more it retreated into the realms of hypothesis. I longed for certainty, for indisputable facts. Now it seemed probable, but of course by no means certain, that the dentist's patient had indeed been David Poe, the American. In this case, of course, it followed that there was no longer any reason to suppose that the dead man in Wellington-terrace had been anyone other than Henry Frant. But such speculation was as fragile as a dandelion's feathery pappus. A breath of wind would suffice to destroy it.

Behind me, and above my shoulder, came a sharp intake of breath. I turned quickly. The girl had brought my ale. The tray was trembling in her hands. She was staring not at me but at an object on the table.

There followed a moment of superhuman clarity, of prodigious ratiocination: my mind accelerated and packed into an instant thoughts which would normally fill a minute, an hour, a day.

“I am a student of medicine,” I snapped. “What are you gawping at? It is nothing but a rare specimen of
digitus mortuus praecisus
lent me by the professor himself. If you value your position, do not spill beer on it.”

I covered it with the neckcloth – casually, as though making room for her to set down her tray without risk of spillage. The girl laughed – still nervous, but the reassuring opacity of the Latin words had soothed her alarm. Despite my warning, though, a few drops of beer slopped on to the table. Her hand flew to her mouth; she muttered an apology and scuttled away.

I took a long pull of ale. When I was alone, and safe from observation, I twitched aside the neckcloth. The object was rust-coloured in part, but mostly dirty yellow. On one end was a long fingernail spotted with what might have been ink.

The trouble with wishes is that they sometimes come true. I had at last found something which no matter how long I looked at it would not dissolve into a mere speculation. I had discovered an indisputable fact. And I wished with all my heart that I had not.

“My dear young fellow,” said Mr Rowsell, bouncing to meet me with his hand outstretched. “How delightful to see you. Mrs Rowsell was asking if I had news of you only the other day.”

He shook hands most cordially and pressed me to take some refreshment. My mind was in a whirl. At this juncture in my affairs I would have given much for the advice of a disinterested friend. I was sensible of Mr Rowsell's recent kindnesses to me, and I was sorely tempted to lay the whole matter before him. But I was not sufficiently intimate with him to know whether I might trust him entirely.

My own position had become delicate, and indeed susceptible to misinterpretation. In the last two days I had pursued the trail of David Poe, telling packs of lies as I went. I was by no means certain that I was not compounding a felony by my failure to alert the authorities to what I already knew and suspected. I needed the comfort of a friend's company, but not a friend's counsel. Or rather – I needed counsel badly, but I dared not ask for it. It was possible that Mr Rowsell would feel it his duty to alert the authorities himself. Nor would it be fair to him to ask him to keep a secret that might place him on the wrong side of the law.

“Well, dear boy, I must say – and do not think me impertinent, I beg – but you seem in low spirits.”

“It is the fog, sir. It gets into my lungs.”

“Very true,” he said comfortably. “Is that a bruise I see upon your temple?”

“I – I must blame it once again upon the fog. I tripped and fell against a railing.”

“And what brings you here?”

I explained that I had been asked to spend a few days in London with Charlie Frant, and that we were staying at the house of his cousin, Mr Carswall, in Margaret-street. “Mr Carswall sent me on an errand, and finding that I had a few moments I might call my own, I decided to see whether you were at leisure.”

“Mr Carswall? You are staying with him?”

“Not for long. The family intend to remove to the country in a day or two.”

“To Mr Carswall's estate in Gloucestershire, no doubt. And will the boy and Mrs Frant go with them?”

“I believe so, sir.”

Rowsell shook his head sadly. “I feel for Mrs Frant and her son. How are the mighty fallen! I understand they have not sixpence to call their own.” Mr Rowsell opened a corner cupboard and took out a decanter and glasses. “It is an unlucky family. Mr Henry Frant brought the bank down around his ears because of his appetite for gambling, and his father and his uncle were the same. Forty years ago, the Frants were considerable landowners, both here and in Ireland.”

I looked up sharply. “I had not realised that the Frants had Irish connections.”

“Oh yes. I believe the Irish estate was the last to go.” Mr Rowsell set down the decanter and glasses on the table and stood there for a moment, stroking his stomach, which as usual looked as though it were on the verge of bursting out of his waistcoat. “For your aunt's sake, Tom, I must tell you that Mr Carswall's reputation is not entirely unblemished. I would not wish you to injure your prospects by associating with him. He is very rich, of course, but riches are not everything, particularly riches gained as his are said to have been gained.”

I was calmer now, my agitation to some degree soothed by Mr Rowsell's familiar voice. On the floor by my chair, however, was David Poe's satchel. Inside it was the cigar case with its dreadful contents. Mr Rowsell poured the wine and handed me a glass.

Before I drank, I said, “They are withdrawing Charlie Frant from the school. There is no reason why I should see any of them again. So Mr Carswall has a reputation of being a gambler, as his partner was?”

“He's not so foolish as Frant. No, but there were rumours about his dealings during the late war with the United States. Nothing was ever proved, you understand, but it is certain that he came out of it much richer than he went in. As did Frant himself.”

We drank in silence for a moment. Then Mr Rowsell got up and went to the window, and peered down at the fog which lay as thick as clotted cream, as poisonous as choke-damp in a mine, obscuring even the ground below.

“Mr Frant acted as Wavenhoe's agent in North America for a while,” Rowsell said, picking his words with care. “In the early years of the war. He was made a partner in the bank on his return. Then there was some sort of falling out, and Carswall withdrew his capital.”

“These rumours, sir: may I ask – what did they amount to?”

“There is no secret about it – the matter is widely spoken of. The bank purchased an army contractor's business in Kingston, in Canada, and it is said there were irregularities about the sale of supplies. And a story went the rounds – and I hardly like to repeat it in case walls have ears, for it would certainly mean an action for slander – a story that some of the supplies purchased for the use of our troops found their way eventually into the hands of the Americans. And not just supplies, either. In some quarters, accurate intelligence about our intentions and the dispositions of our troops commanded a very high price indeed.”

“Surely Mr Carswall –”

“Would not have been so foolish? On the other hand, Frant was in Canada and in those days Frant was Carswall's creature. In any case, that is why not everyone is happy to receive Mr Carswall.”

I promised I would be on my guard. Rowsell returned to his chair and his wine.

“Do not mind my saying so, Tom, but you look quite fagged. Mrs Rowsell has it that you do not eat enough. Which reminds me, if Mr Bransby permits, would you care to eat your Christmas dinner with us? Mrs Rowsell was most pressing that I should attempt to secure your company.”

“My duty and best compliments to Mrs Rowsell, sir. I shall be happy to wait on her.”

“Good, good. It will be just ourselves and some of Mrs Rowsell's family.” He paused in raising his glass to his lips, and stared at me, a frown cutting into his smooth pink forehead. “There is nothing amiss, I trust?”

“Nothing in the world, sir.”

“And you are quite settled at Mr Bransby's?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“I rejoice to hear it.” He swallowed a mouthful of wine. “Should you ever desire a change of profession, you could do worse than try the law. I believe I could put you in the way of something with fair prospects of advancement. In Holborn, perhaps, or the City. It would take time and application, of course. As for the matter of lodgings, why, I am sure Mrs Rowsell would be glad to see a respectable person in our front garret.”

I was still weakened from the day before. I felt tears fill my eyes at this undeserved kindness. “Thank you, sir,” I said and lowered my head.

Neither of us spoke. Mr Rowsell paced up and down, pausing to look at the fog when he reached the window. It seemed to me that for a moment my own inner fog had lifted.

“What infernal luck,” Stephen Carswall said. “A man who looks only inside mouths, and a woman who sees the next best thing to nothing at all.”

“The woman thought she might have heard a brogue. And then the accents of a gentleman.”

“That's neither here nor there. Frant could slip into a brogue as soon as look at you. When he was a boy, he used to visit the family's place in County Wicklow, and he could sound like a regular Paddy if he wished. So the mere fact of a brogue does not allow us to distinguish between Frant and Poe. As for sounding like a gentleman, who is the judge? The mother of a tooth-puller? Her opinion is not worth having.” He paused and stared down at the object in his palm. “But this is something else.”

“It does not appear to come from a gentleman's hand.”

“True. But there is nothing to say that it belonged to Poe, either.” Carswall tilted his palm and slid the finger into the cigar case, his face betraying no emotion other than weariness. He hobbled to the open bureau – his gout was painful that day – and slipped the case into a drawer. “Let us assume that the man who had his tooth extracted is Frant, and that in order to make the world believe he was dead, he killed Poe and mutilated the corpse. But why should he hold on to the finger he had cut from Poe's hand?”

“That I do not know, sir. Unless he was biding his time until he found a safe place to destroy it.”