The American Boy (45 page)

The last of the daylight had long gone by the time we reached London. The familiar stench and taste of the metropolis oozed into the coach. The glare of the gaslights in the West End loomed out of the fog. We set down the knitting lady in Piccadilly. I let the
Regulator
carry me a mile or so eastwards to the Bolt-in-Tun, its terminus in Fleet-street.

In the yard of the inn, they were bringing down my luggage from the roof when I felt a tap upon my arm. Turning, I recognised with surprise the face of Edward Dansey.

“How very glad I am to see you,” I said. “How do you do?”

“Very well, thank you. Is this all your luggage?”

“Yes.” By now I was puzzled, for the strangeness of the situation had become apparent to me. “How did you know that I was travelling on this coach?”

“I wasn't sure you were,” he said. “It was a probability, no more than that.”

“I – I do not understand.”

Dansey presented me with the grimmer, graver aspect of his Janus face. “We must talk, Tom. But we cannot do so here.”

I left the luggage to be collected at the coach office and followed Dansey out into the murky bustle of the evening. He took my arm and guided me through the fog to a chophouse filled with lawyers' clerks in one of the streets running into Chancery-lane. I did not see him clearly until we were sitting in a booth and waiting to be served. It struck me immediately how pale and drawn his face had become. The two vertical lines scored in his forehead were deeper than I remembered.

We were quite private in the booth, and the buzz of conversation insulated us from the rest of the world. Despite my curiosity, I wasted no time in ordering steaks and porter. I had dined on the road not long after midday but my stomach still obeyed Mr Carswall's domestic timetable.

“And now,” said I, “how did you come to meet me? Not that I regret it – far from it – nothing can be more pleasant than the sight of a friendly face at the end of a journey.”

Dansey stared glumly across the table. “I am afraid there will be little pleasure about this meeting.”

“I do not understand you.”

“Mr Bransby received a letter early this morning. It was brought by one of Mr Carswall's servants riding post.”

“From Monkshill?”

He nodded. “Where else? The man had travelled overnight. He could hardly stand by the time he reached Stoke Newington. It was he who told us you were travelling up from Gloucester, by the way, and which coach you were likely to be on. But the –”

He fell silent as our drinks arrived.

When we were alone again, I said, “Was Carswall's man a groom? A bandy-legged fellow with a tiny head on a thick neck?”

“Yes. You know him?”

“It must be the same man who drove me into Gloucester yesterday morning.”

“Very probably.” Dansey pushed back his wig and scratched his scalp. “Tom – there is no easy way to say this. When Mr Bransby read the letter, he flew into a great passion, and began shouting so loud I could hear him on the other side of the school. At length he sent for me: and he gave me the letter.”

I sat very still, watching him. I did not speak, for there was nothing to say.

“He – that is to say, Mr Carswall – accuses you of habitual neglect of your duties, and says that when you were with the boys, you rarely taught them but joined in their sports and played the fool and encouraged them to do likewise.” He held up his hand, to prevent my interrupting. “He alleges you were often the worse for drink.”

“My dear Ned –”

“There is more, and worse: he says you made improper advances to the ladies, to both Miss Carswall and Mrs Frant.”

“That is quite untrue,” I snapped. But my voice sounded false even to myself, and I felt my cheeks grow warm.

Dansey regarded me coolly for a moment and then went on: “I leave the very worst till last, Tom. Mr Carswall says that shortly after your departure, he discovered that a valuable ring was missing, an heirloom.”

“There certainly was such a ring,” I said. “A mourning ring commemorating a lady named Amelia Parker, the grandmother of Henry Frant. Together with Mr Noak's clerk, I was instrumental in finding it on the day before I left. The circumstances of its discovery were –”

“How it was found is beside the point,” Dansey cut in. “We are concerned with how it was subsequently lost. When did you last see it?”

“On the evening of the same day. In the small sitting room at Monkshill.”

“Mr Carswall alleges that while he and the others were at dinner, you slipped into the room where the ring was and stole it.” He paused and licked his lips. “It was a room you had no right to be in, either, he said, but you were seen coming out of it by one of the servants, and no one saw the ring after that.”

I shook my head. “The groom who brought you the letter drove me into Gloucester: in other words, Mr Carswall cannot have discovered the ring's loss after my departure. If his tale is true the theft must have come to light beforehand. And if we admit that circumstance, the whole tale becomes suspect.”

Something like hope leapt and died in Dansey's face. “You are assuming it is the same groom. But even if it were the same man, there are obvious reasons why Mr Carswall did not charge you at once with the crime. Is it not probable that he would wish to spare the ladies from scandal? And there was Mr Bransby to think of, not to mention the boys and Mr and Mrs Allan. No, the more I think of it, the more his conduct shows a very proper delicacy.”

“Then it is evident that you do not know Mr Carswall.”

“That is unnecessary, Tom. And unkind.”

“But it is true.”

Dansey's lips tightened. His face wore the expression it had when he was about to beat a boy. He said quietly, “There is one further particular. According to the letter, when he discovered the loss, Mr Carswall immediately made inquiries; and a footman said he had come across you mending your coat, your topcoat, with a needle and thread during the evening, a circumstance which struck him as unusual: in the ordinary course of things, he thought, a man in your position would have asked one of the maids. Moreover, the servant claimed, you appeared embarrassed to be caught with the needle in your hand and thrust the mending away from you.”

I smacked the palm of my hand against the surface of the table. “It is a fabrication concocted by that villain Carswall with the aid of an equally villainous footman. I wondered at the time at the servants' kindness to me on my last evening.”

“The coat, Tom,” Dansey said quietly.

“What of it? It is hanging over there.”

“Bring it here.”

I stared at him in silence, while thoughts rushed in an angry torrent through my mind. After a moment, I fetched the coat from its hook and, still without a word, laid it on the table between us. Dansey explored the pockets, and methodically felt the lining. His fingers paused when he reached a place at the bottom of the coat, close to a spot where a seam ran down from the waist to the hem. Slowly he raised his head and looked at me.

“There is something here.”

“That may be so. But that is not to say I put it there.” They were the wrong words: they made me sound defensive, like a rogue squirming in the dock. I went on quickly, “Here – take my penknife, see what it is.”

Dansey opened the knife and sliced through the stitches of the seam with the tip of the blade. The thread was black but some of the stitches were darker, as if recently renewed. He worked his fingers into the gap and folded back the lining.

“It is tucked into the hem itself, I fancy,” he said. “A few of the stitches are cut so it forms a little pocket.”

He drew out a paper that had been folded into a compact square. He laid this on the table and opened it. I saw a scrap of writing on the paper, my own writing, and there at last was the ring in all its glory. I pushed my hand across the table and picked it up. Dansey made no move to prevent me. My head was swimming.

“Yes, Ned: it is the very ring that Mr Carswall describes. Underneath the stone is a scrap of Mrs Parker's hair. You see?” I dropped it on the table.

He let it lie. “It is your handwriting on the paper, is it not?”

“Indeed it is.” I took up the paper and examined it under the lamp.
Caesar commanded the legions to march to their winter quarters
. “Yes, it is part of a translation I set Charlie and Edgar, one of the last tasks I gave them. Look – the paper is crumpled. When they finished they must have thrown it away.”

“You suggest that someone found it and used it to wrap the ring, knowing that it would implicate you further?”

“I cannot think of any other explanation.”

The waiter was approaching. Dansey dropped his glove on top of the ring. Neither of us spoke again until the dishes had been laid on the table, and the man was gone.

“Mr Carswall begged Mr Bransby to examine your coat when you arrived back at the school,” Dansey said. “If the ring were found, he wrote, he regretted that he might be obliged to press charges. He added something to the effect that he would see that neither Mr Bransby nor the school should suffer.”

The food grew cold on our plates. Around us the noise rose and fell like waves breaking on a beach. Carswall had manufactured a neat little plot. Involving Mr Bransby as his agent was particularly astute. Who would doubt the word of a clergyman, and one who had so benevolently offered me a position as a favour to an old servant, my aunt? And if public scandal resulted, it would do so from Stoke Newington, not Monkshill-park.

“Carswall is a tyrant and a lecher in his own house,” I said. “Particularly when drunk. The other evening, I restrained him from paying unwanted attentions to Mrs Frant.”

Dansey cut into his meat. “Were there witnesses?”

“None that I know of, apart from Mrs Frant. It is possible that Miss Carswall and some of the servants heard our altercation, but that would not answer.”

“Would Mrs Frant testify to that effect?”

“I would not ask her to do so. I could not ask it of her, Ned, you must see that. Besides, she and Charlie are dependent on Carswall for the clothes on their backs and the roof over their heads.”

“I see.”

I picked up my knife. For a few minutes we ate in silence. If the case came to court, and if it went badly for me, I might find myself facing transportation, or even the gallows. My fate hinged on Edward Dansey.

“What do you intend to do?” I asked.

He continued chewing, slowly, very deliberately. He was a fastidious fellow, Dansey. I could not hurry him and I could not persuade him. There, on the other side of the table, sat my judge and jury: and all I could do was wait to hear the verdict and the sentence.

“I tell you fairly, Tom, it looks black.”

“I am not a thief.”

The Janus face saw both ways. “Mr Carswall is a respectable citizen, a man with a considerable position in the world,” Dansey said. “And Mr Bransby is both a man of the cloth and our employer.”

“Mr Bransby is anxious to oblige Mr Carswall.”

Dansey did not reply. All of a sudden, I knew I might have added
And you in turn are anxious to oblige Mr Bransby
. There at last was the nub of the matter: Dansey did not want to imperil his position; on the other hand, his conscience was a tender organ and, despite the ring now lying under his glove, he could not be sure that I was not speaking the truth. Indeed, I think he wanted to believe me.

“Mr Bransby does not know you are here?”

He gave a little shake of the head.

“If Mr Carswall were to lay charges against me, everything would depend on the ring,” I said. “Without the ring, there would be no case to answer.”

“Very probably.” Dansey pushed aside his plate. “Believe me, Tom, I do not know what to think.”

“You mean whom to believe.”

He darted an imploring glance at me. “If I did, it would be so much easier.”

“Then you must do as you think right.”

He took out his purse and laid a few coins on the table. He picked up his gloves and slid along the bench and out of the booth. He did not once look at me, but I watched him. He put on his coat and hat and wound his muffler round his neck. At last he pulled on his gloves, nodded to the waiter and left.

My eyes were hot, and I could have wept for the injustice of it all. Instead, I cupped my hand over the ring and drew it towards me.

I slept – or rather lay – that night in a lodging house in an alley off Fetter-lane. It was a daedal maze of chambers like evil-smelling cupboards; but I paid to have a room to myself and wedged the palliasse against the door. The only intruders were rats and insects, though the house around me was never still, never quiet.

My mind was equally restless. Even if I disposed of the ring, I did not think it would be wise for me to return to Stoke Newington. Mr Bransby was not a corrupt man but he was zealous in attending to the wishes of wealthy parents and guardians. I had little doubt he would dismiss me from his employment; leaving aside the accusation of theft, either of the other accusations was sufficiently grave to justify him in dispensing with my services.

Dansey's conduct saddened me, though by warning me of what was afoot, he had saved me from almost certain arrest. I was grateful for his kindness, but I own that his unwillingness to trust me rankled. I had not expected that of him. For all his kindness, there seemed something mean-spirited about his behaviour.

Now, as perhaps never before, I needed the advice of a disinterested friend. As the night wore on, the conviction grew that my best course was to find Mr Rowsell as soon as possible and lay the whole matter before him – or almost the whole, for I did not wish to elaborate on what had passed between Sophie and myself, or even between myself and Miss Carswall. As a lawyer, he would be well placed to advise me, and as a friend he had always treated me with kindness.