The American Boy (60 page)

“Why should I strike a bargain with you, Mr Poe? I have it in my power to compel you.”

“With that pistol? I think not. You do not strike me as having the temperament that allows one to kill a man in cold blood.”

“I would not be obliged to. Once help arrives, you can be overpowered and searched without any need to shed your blood.”

Mr Poe laughed. “I see two difficulties with that plan. In the first place, if a committee searches me – yourself and Mr Noak – that nigger of his, perhaps, the slut, the constable and any Tom, Dick or Harry who happens to be in the vicinity – then the whole committee will read the letter. Miss Carswall's name will be sullied for ever and to no purpose. Is that really what you wish? In the second place, and this argument is even more cogent, if we cannot strike a bargain, I shall simply threaten to destroy the letter. It is only a sheet of paper, and not a large one. By the time you raised the trap-door and reached me, it would be in a dozen pieces and descending into my stomach.”

“Perhaps that would be best for Miss Carswall.”

“It would depend entirely on whether I had in fact carried out my threat. You could not be absolutely sure that I had eaten the letter without searching me, and for that you would need your friends' assistance. Also, if the letter had been destroyed, there would be no chance of your deriving any benefit from it.”

“I do not understand you, sir.”

“I think that you do, Mr Shield. Forgive me if I trespass in places where I have no right to be, but I do not think you have prospered of late. This letter would give you the power to change all that.”

I felt light-headed, and as dry as a man in a desert, a man who sees a mirage trembling before him. “I would be a fool to let you out without seeing this letter. I have only your word that it even exists.”

“Ah – spoken like a man of sense. I applaud your caution. I believe I have a suggestion that will deal with the point you raise. Suppose that I tear the letter into two pieces of unequal size. I shall push the smaller portion through the crack. It will contain enough to confirm what I have said, though for it to be of any use to you, you will also need the larger portion, which I will happily surrender up to you when you release me. You will of course have me covered with the pistol at all times, so there will be no danger to you whatsoever.”

Poe's audacity astonished me. Here was a man who had kidnapped and mistreated me, who almost certainly intended to have me killed, and who now was proposing in the coolest way possible that I should set him free in return for a compromising letter which would enable me to blackmail a lady. I licked my lips and longed for a pot of strong coffee.

I said, “Very well. Let me see part of the letter.”

He passed a scrap of paper through to me. It was four-sided, but only one side was straight, and contained a few scrawled words, the ink blotched as if with tears.

When I read those words I abandoned prudence. I wanted the whole of that letter. At that moment, I had no thought of self-advantage. I wanted the letter so I could avert the danger of others reading it. I wanted to show it to that old man lying in the parlour and kick his helpless carcass.

I opened the trap-door. Mr Poe blinked up at me. After that, matters moved swiftly and I observed them as one in a dream. A little later, I remember how Mr Poe leaned down from the horse and shook my hand with the utmost cordiality. “God bless you, my boy,” he murmured.

It cannot have been much more than twenty minutes after Mr Poe left the cellar that I found myself standing in the yard behind the farmhouse listening to a distant bell striking one o'clock in the afternoon. Nearer by far was the sound of hooves on the lane, gradually receding.

The sun came out and turned the mucky water in the horse trough and the puddles between the ruts into things of beauty. I turned and went back into the house. In the parlour, Stephen Carswall had not moved. Whistling and squeaking as the air slid in and out of his lungs, he lay on the floor near the dying fire. His eyes were open; they followed my movements. He knew what I was about.

I held up the letter so this rotting mound of flesh and bone could see it by the flickering light of the last candle. “I know,” I said. “I know.”

I crossed the room to the window, threw open the shutters and flung wide the casement. I looked across a little garden which had been given over to brambles, nettles and thistles. There were buds on the trees of the overgrown orchard, and somewhere a blackbird was singing.

April gave way to May. I remained at Mrs Jem's house in Gaunt-court. I earned enough for my keep and a little more. I should have been happy, for a great fear had been lifted from me, but I was not.

I dined once or twice with Mr Rowsell who thought he might be able to put me forward for a clerkship with a friend of his. It would be respectable employment, with the hope of something better in the long run. I saw Salutation Harmwell on several occasions – we would stroll through the parks and watch the world go by, neither of us feeling the need to speak very much.

It was Harmwell who told me that Mr Carswall's life was no longer despaired of. But the old man had not recovered the use of his limbs, and he was still unable to speak. His physicians believed it probable that the apoplexy had affected his mind as well as his body.

“He has become a great baby now,” Harmwell said. “He does nothing but lie in his bedchamber. Everything is done for him.”

“And Miss Carswall's marriage?”

The Negro shrugged. “She and Sir George are still willing, but it is now a question of settlements and of who is to assume the direction of Mr Carswall's affairs. A matter for the lawyers, in other words. So in the meantime Miss Carswall and Mrs Frant remain with the old man in Margaret-street. Though how long that will last for I cannot tell.” He hesitated and added, “Mrs Kerridge tells me that Captain Ruispidge is in town and has called on several occasions.”

The world knew nothing of what had transpired in that tumbledown farmhouse beyond Kilburn. It was given out that Mr Carswall had hired a gig and taken Mr Noak to view the building land nearby, as a prospect for a joint investment. Mr Carswall had been taken ill on the way, and the two gentlemen had found shelter in the farmhouse. No one questioned this story. No one had any reason to do so.

Early in May, Mr Noak invited me to dine with him in Fleet-street, at the Bolt-in-Tun. We ate a frugal meal of mutton chops and caper sauce, washed down with thin claret. Mr Noak looked careworn.

“There is no news of the man Poe,” he said abruptly as he pushed aside his empty plate. “I have had a constant watch on the premises in Queen-street and instituted other inquiries. The place is in great confusion – the bailiffs have been in. But the man himself has vanished. I suspect he has fled abroad.”

“What of the stolen bills?”

“I have found no trace of them. We must presume that Poe took them with him. None has been presented for payment since the one in Riga earlier this year. I am tolerably certain how that was managed, by the way. Carswall has – or had – a man of business in Paris. He has a clerk named Froment: and it was a Monsieur Froment who passed the bill to the notary in Brussels, who then passed it on to the others whom I had already traced. But of course Poe does not have the advantage of Carswall's commercial connections on the Continent. That is –” He leaned across the table and said in a low, urgent tone, “You are perfectly convinced as to the identity of the man in Kilburn?”

“Yes, sir.” I was saddened by the desperation I detected in his voice. “There is no possible doubt. The man I talked to was David Poe, not Henry Frant.”

Noak leaned back against the settle. “It is a thousand pities you allowed him to escape.”

I smiled, affecting a nonchalance I did not feel. “He tricked me, sir. But perhaps it is for the best. What matters, surely, is that the finger I was encouraged to find in the satchel had been removed from the hand of the corpse of his father-in-law. There can be no doubt about that. In that case, it was simply designed to throw me off the scent, to make me believe it possible that the corpse in Wellington-terrace was not that of Henry Frant. But of course it was.”

“I wish I had brought Frant to the gallows as he deserved,” Noak said after a silence. “I shall regret it always. My son's murderer unpunished.”

I repressed a shudder. “If you had seen Mr Frant's body, sir, you might not think him unpunished. All in all, he did not have a happy ending. He had been reduced to a bankrupt, an embezzler in fear of the gallows: and then, at the last, he lived to see his schemes confounded, and when he died he was beaten to a pulp. No, he did not die an easy death.”

Noak sniffed. He took up a toothpick and toyed with it for a moment. Then he sighed. “Carswall, too: I do not think I can touch him.”

“Surely Providence has already judged him? He is living imprisoned in his own body, and under sentence of death.”

Mr Noak did not reply. He summoned the waiter and paid our reckoning, carefully counting out the coins. I thought I had angered him. As we were walking out into the Strand, however, he stopped and touched my arm.

“Mr Shield, I am sensible of the great service you have done me. The matter has not turned out exactly as I would have wished, but I have achieved most of what I set out to do, one way or the other. I shall return to America in a week or two. And what do you intend to do with your life?”

“I do not yet know, sir.”

“You cannot afford to leave the decision too long. You are a young man of parts, and if you should find yourself in the United States, I may be able to put you in the way of something. I will write to you before we sail, and give you my direction.”

I bowed and began to thank him. But he turned on his heel and without even a handshake walked rapidly away. In a moment he was lost to sight among the crowds.

At the end of May, after Mr Noak and Mr Harmwell had sailed from Liverpool, I presented myself at the house in Margaret-street. I was freshly shaved, my hair was trimmed, and I had bought a fine black coat in honour of the occasion.

The door was answered by Pratt. I saw doubt flare on his thin, sallow face; perhaps there was a tinge of fear, too. I took advantage of his hesitation and stepped past him into the hall. I held out my hat and gloves and, without thinking, he received them.

“Is Miss Carswall at home? Pray give her my compliments and inquire if she can spare me a moment or two.”

He considered me for a moment, his eyes narrowing.

“Do not delay,” I said softly, “or I will reveal to her the lengths you were prepared to go to satisfy Mr Carswall.”

He dropped his eyes and showed me into the parlour where Mr Carswall had questioned me, and drunk his wine, all those months ago. Though the furnishings were unchanged, the atmosphere had altered entirely. The room was lighter and airier. The masculine paraphernalia of cigars, glasses and newspapers had been swept away and the furniture was uncluttered and freshly polished. I had not waited more than a couple of minutes when the door opened. I turned, expecting Pratt, and saw Flora Carswall.

Careless of convention, she was alone. She closed the door behind her and advanced towards me with her hand outstretched. “Mr Shield, I am rejoiced to see you. I find you well, I trust?”

We shook hands. She sat on a sofa, and patted the seat beside her. “Pray sit here, where I can see you.” She was dressed soberly in grey, as befitted her situation, but there was nothing sober about her face and she had an assurance about her that was new. “Charlie is at school, of course – he will be mortified to miss you.”

She did not mention Sophie.

I asked after her father, and learned that his condition was unchanged. Miss Carswall went on to volunteer the information that both Sir George's lawyers and Mr Carswall's were sanguine that the marriage would be able to proceed on the terms previously agreed.

“As for Papa,” she went on with a gurgle of laughter, “I have such a delightful scheme for his welfare. When I am married, of course, I shall have to devote myself to my husband. But I have arranged for Sophie to stay with him, and play the daughter's part when I am not there.” She smiled at me, and her lashes fluttered most becomingly. “Is that not a delightful plan? Poor Sophie will have a home and dear Charlie, too: and as for Papa, he always doted on Sophie.” She glanced sideways at me. “After his own fashion.”

I could not conceive of a scheme more calculated to bring distress to the two principal parties concerned. I said, “And Mr Carswall? Does the plan please him?”

“I do not mean to be unfeeling, Mr Shield, but I have no idea. He simply lies there, up in his chamber, without moving. Three times a day, they raise him up and give him broth or something of that nature. He can still swallow, you know. Whether he knows what – or even
that
– he is swallowing is another matter. It is very sad, of course, particularly when one remembers the man he was, so vigorous, so determined!” She smiled. “So amiable, too! One must make the best of it, however, must one not? But to turn to happier subjects, I am so glad that little misunderstanding of my father's concerning the mourning ring has been dealt with. He was sometimes inclined to be hasty, particularly when agitated. I know Papa felt Mrs Johnson's death keenly – as did we all, of course – and no doubt it affected his judgement.”

“I saw the account of Mrs Johnson's inquest in the
Morning Post
,” I said. “A sad accident.”

“Indeed.” Miss Carswall's face was suitably grave. “The family was so worried about Lieutenant Johnson – he doted on her, you know – and he was always inclined to melancholy. But Sir George made interest with the Admiralty, and soon the poor man will have a ship of his own. Quite a little one, I understand, but at least it is something, and it will take his mind off his sorrows, will it not?”