The American Boy (57 page)

Carswall's colour, already dark, deepened still further. He studied the face of his watch, his chest heaving up and down. “I have rarely heard anything so nonsensical,” he said at last.

“It has the merit of explaining why the four of us are together in this room.”

Iversen coughed, reminding Carswall of his presence.

Carswall swivelled towards him and pointed at Mary Ann. “Give the drab a taste of her medicine.”

“To what end, sir?” Iversen asked. “It seems to me the young gentleman is chatty enough as it is.”

“What's it to you?”

“The girl's a servant of mine, sir, and wonderfully discreet on account of her affliction. If I crush her hands, she'll be no good to man nor beast.”

I said – at random; urgent to distract Carswall from his purpose: “There is another question that Mr Noak would give a great deal to have answered.”

“Eh?” Carswall pressed the repeater button on his watch, which emitted a minute ping. “The man is a fool: what profit does his infernal Yankee meddling bring him?”

“He wishes to know whether you realise what a laughing-stock you make of yourself when you pursue that canting hypocrite of a baronet with your bastard daughter and your ill-gotten money. Whether you know how the world sneers at you for your desire to ape the gentry. Whether you will die of natural causes, sir, or go to the gallows as you so richly deserve.”

My voice rose as I spoke, as the passion welled up from a hidden recess in my being. Noak had not asked these questions: but I did, for now there was nothing to lose that was not already lost. After I had finished, a moment of complete silence descended on the frowzy room. Iversen was watching Carswall, and on his face was an expression of detachment, almost amusement. Blotches of angry pallor appeared in the old man's cheeks. I heard, quite distinctly, another tiny chime from his Breguet watch.

With a great bellow, he rose from the settle.

“You rascal! You knave! You God-damned scrub!”

“You must know that Mrs Frant hates and despises you,” I said softly. “I wonder at the strength of your desire to possess her. Is it because she was the wife of Henry Frant? Did you hate him so very much? Did he make you feel he was your master? Yes, sir, your
master
.”

Carswall shook his fist at me, the one with the watch in it. “I shall see you suffer, I assure you. You there!” He addressed Iversen now. “Hold his hand in the door, damn you. I shall break every bone in his body. I shall – I shall –”

He broke off as a great surge of passion ran like electricity through his body, making him vibrate, and jerk, and twist like a sheet in the hands of a laundry maid. His mouth opened but no sound emerged. He stared fixedly at me but there was no longer any anger in his eyes: his face was puzzled, confused, even imploring. Then he gasped, as if he felt an unexpected pinprick. His left leg gave way and he fell into the hearth, bringing down a set of fire irons in his fall with a rattle like grapeshot.

I struggled to my feet, my eyes still on the stricken man.

Iversen screamed.

I turned sharply towards the sound, almost overbalancing. As I did so, I heard a clatter. The pistol had fallen to the floor. By a miracle it had not discharged itself and was still cocked. Now silent, Iversen bent over Mary Ann and pummelled her with hands balled into fists and then wrapped his arms round her waist.

I fell to the floor, rolled and scooped up the pistol in my bound hands. Iversen threw Mary Ann across the room. She tripped over Carswall's legs and sprawled on the bare boards, giving a great cry as her back, still raw from the flogging, collided with the leg of a chair. I wrapped my hands round the pistol's butt. My finger found the trigger. Wrenching my left arm almost out of its socket, I arched my back and rested the pistol on my right hip. The muzzle pointed at Iversen.

“Stand back,” I commanded. “Raise your hands in the air and move towards the corner.”

For a moment he looked at me, showing no signs of panic or fear. Whatever else he was, he was never a coward. A drop of blood fell to the floorboards. I saw that he was wounded in the wrist and realised that Mary Ann had spat out her gag and bitten him there, the shock of which had caused him to drop the pistol.

“Back, sir,” I repeated. “Back, I say.”

Slowly he raised his arms and retreated into the corner.

The reversal was so sudden that for a moment I did not know how best to profit from it. Mary Ann showed no such hesitation. Without so much as a glance in my direction, she knelt by Carswall. Cooing and trilling, she went through his pockets, tossing the contents on the floor, turning him over this way and that as if he were nothing more than a huge baby. He was perfectly conscious, I believe, for his eyes were open and they moved and watered as she busied herself with him. Yet he could not move. He lay there, a beached whale, an island of blubber in a fine coat now smeared with the ashes of the fire.

Mary Ann found a penknife and brought it to me with an expression on her face like that of a dog who knows she has done well. While I covered Iversen with the pistol, she sawed the cords at my wrists with the little blade, taking care not to block my line of fire.

I felt a sudden increase of pain. The cord round my wrists had broken the skin in places. I took the knife from her with my left hand and cut her own bonds.

“We must summon help,” I whispered. “The other men may still be here.”

She shook her head.

“They have gone back to town?”

She nodded.

I thought quickly. I dared not send for a constable. One look at us, and at Mr Carswall lying in the hearth, would be enough to prejudice him against us.

I put a hand on Mary Ann's arm and felt her start. “That letter I threw down to you yesterday, when you were in the yard at Mr Iversen's, were you able to pick it up?”

She nodded vigorously, then mimed a frown, pointed first at Iversen, then at herself, and finally drew a finger across her own throat.

“You were discovered? That is the reason you were brought here? To be murdered?”

“Her wits are disordered, Mr Shield,” Iversen said. “You cannot trust a word she – that is to say, what the poor girl implies.”

I ignored him. “The letter was to an American gentleman residing in Brewer-street. If I gave you money, could you take another letter to him?”

Mary Ann moved away from me and crouched by the hearth. She extended the forefinger of her right hand and wrote the word NOAK in the ashes.

“Good God! You read the note! You can read and write?”

She nodded and unexpectedly grinned at me. Then she smoothed away Noak's name and wrote instead: GIG IN YARD. I DRIVE.

“You could take a letter directly to him yourself? You can manage a horse?”

She nodded and rubbed out the words. Next she wrote: WRITE LETTER SERVANT ON ERRAND.

This exchange between us was slow and awkward, not merely because of the medium she used to express herself but also because of the necessity to keep an eye on Mr Iversen in his corner. Before we went any further, I decided to move him into the cellar which had so lately served as my own prison. Mr Iversen seemed happy to oblige. First I held the pistol to his head while Mary Ann patted him to ensure he did not have another weapon concealed about his person. Then, at my signal, he preceded us out of the room, his hands raised in the air, moving slowly, just as I had requested.

“Well, well,” said he as he descended the steps down from the kitchen. “So the girl is a scholar. Who would have thought it? She has been with us these six months and no one had the remotest idea. You will leave me a candle, will you not? No? Well, I suppose I should not be surprised.”

“Where are we? What is the easiest way for the girl to take to town?”

“Left out of the yard, right at the crossroads, and in less than a mile you come to the high road through Kilburn to London itself.”

“Whose is the gig?”

“Mr Carswall hired it from an inn – you will find the bill in his pocketbook, I believe. He drove himself, of course. If he had travelled in one of his own carriages, the whole world would have known what he was up to, and where. There are two horses in the stable, by the way – the brown mare is mine.”

“You are very obliging.”

“And why not, pray? You may trust my advice entirely, Mr Shield – after all, I have no reason to lie to you, not now, and everything to gain from obliging you in any way that lies within my power. Besides, I am hoping you will allow me a candle. I truly dislike the darkness.”

Iversen was so determined, it seemed, to bear his misfortunes philosophically that I nearly acceded to his request. But Mary Ann spat neatly on his head as he reached the foot of the stairs, slammed the trap-door down with great force and laughed as she rammed home the bolt.

We conducted a rapid search of the premises. These consisted of a large cottage with a yard on one side containing several barns and a stable and the usual offices, most of them in a dilapidated condition. It had never been an establishment of any size, to judge by the buildings; and now the buildings were all that was left, apart from the remains of a small garden at the front, with a paddock and an overgrown orchard beyond. The land round about was used principally for rough grazing while it waited for the contractors to sow bricks and raise their crop of houses.

The kitchen and the parlour were the only partly habitable rooms. The remainder of the cottage was in a parlous state, with rotting boards spattered with bird-droppings, the plaster crumbling from the walls and, in the largest room upstairs, a place where the ceiling and part of the roof above had collapsed, giving a view of a blue sky. There were three coffins stacked up in one of the barns. Another contained the gig, and the horses were in the stable beside it.

Carswall was too heavy to move very far. Between us, Mary Ann and I dragged him away from the hearth. I loosened his breeches and his neckcloth, tied his thumbs together in case he was shamming, and covered him with a horse blanket from the stable. Among his possessions was a pocketbook and a pencil. Mary Ann tore out several leaves and put them and the pencil in the pocket of her dress.

Even then I realised she had become quite a different person – which was evident not merely from the way she behaved, but also from the way I behaved towards her. When she could express herself only in bird-like trills and primitive sign language, I had unconsciously treated her as little better than an idiot: as if her inability to talk was due to a wider intellectual deficiency. Now she had found her voice, and I realised that the deficiency had been mine rather than hers.

I sat at the table in the kitchen and dashed off a note to Mr Noak, explaining as concisely as I could the situation we were in and begging his assistance and his discretion. I helped Mary Ann harness the horse to the gig and watched her drive out of the yard.

I went back to the parlour and threw another log on the fire. Carswall was breathing heavily. His eyes were still open. Every now and then his lips would tremble, but no words emerged. His cigar case was among the heap of his possessions. I took a cigar and lit it with an ember from the grate.

I bent down and uncurled the fingers of the old man's right hand, for they were still folded round the open Breguet watch, as if time itself were the last thing he would let go. His eyes followed every movement. I put the watch to his ear and pressed the repeater button. The tiny chimes rang out.

“
Ayez peur
,” I said aloud. I stared at the old man's fleshy and decayed face. “Can you hear me, sir?” I asked. “Can you hear the chime of the repeater?”

There was no response. His intelligence was imprisoned, as Mary Ann's had been, but unlike her he could not even write in the ashes. I closed the watch and pushed it into his waistcoat pocket. I left him to count the minutes, the hours, the days, and went back to the kitchen, where I knocked on the trap-door.

“Mr Iversen? Are you there?”

“I am indeed, my dear sir, though I cannot hear you as clearly as I would like. If you were to be so good as to open the trap-door a trifle –”

“I think not,” I said.

“There has been a good deal of misunderstanding in this sad business,” Mr Iversen said plaintively. “Misunderstanding piled upon misunderstanding, one might say, heaping Pelion upon Ossa as Homer so –”

“You would oblige me extremely if you would explain the misunderstandings.”

“Ah, yes, Mr Shield – but would I oblige myself? In a perfect society, all men would be honest, all men would be open: but alas, we do not live in Utopia. Nevertheless, I will do my utmost. I am the soul of candour.”

“You gave that parrot to Mr Carswall, I collect?”

“Indeed I did. The boy was mad for a bird, Mr Carswall said, a bird that talked, and as it happened I was able to oblige. I like to oblige, when possible.”

I blew out a plume of smoke. It was at that moment that a dazzling light broke over me. As a child, I remembered, I would sometimes puzzle for minutes, even for hours, at a passage my master had set me to translate: then, with a similar shock of revelation, I would see the thread of meaning that ran through it and, following it, I would have the sense in a trice. Just so, now: the clue that resolved this whole confusing matter was this, that it was only a little leap between a parrot that talked French and a rare specimen of
digitus mortuus praecisus
. Did it not follow from this simple observation that Mr Iversen had been obliging not only to Mr Carswall but also to Mr Frant?

“Do I smell tobacco?” Mr Iversen inquired.

If the finger I had found in the satchel had belonged to the embalmed body of Mr Iversen, Senior, then there was no reason to suppose that the body I had seen at Wellington-terrace had been anyone other than Henry Frant. In that case, only one person truly benefited from the confusion and uncertainty.