The Custodian of Marvels (24 page)

“Then why did you come here?” he asked.

“She came to see me!” said Julia.

“Yes. I came to see you. But someone else as well.”

A flicker of hurt crossed her face as I turned to Richard.

“Me?” he said, in surprise.

“I didn’t know who else to ask. I’m sorry. I have two questions about the Patent Court.”

“Then I’ll do my best to answer.”

“First, I need to know where the records of cases and investigations are kept. Where would I go to see them?”

“I’m afraid you can’t see them. They could only be accessed by a barrister or a judge.”

“You’re a barrister. Where would you go?”

“I wouldn’t go anywhere. The records would come to me.” He pointed to the brass tubes from which I’d earlier seen him withdraw a canister. “I’d write my request, saying which room I’m in. Then I’d load it into that machine and pull the lever. It’s a pneumatic system. The request shoots away. And when you hear the compressed air rushing back through the tubes, it means the reply is waiting.”

“Where do the pipes run from?”

“They’re everywhere in the building – here in the courts, also the judges’ chambers and the barristers’ mess. I don’t know where they start. But I’ll tell you this, it must be a warehouse of enormous size. The records of this place go back over a hundred years.”

“Whatever you request is found?”

“Indeed. And swiftly.”

This was the confirmation I’d come to hear. The records of my case were in the building. From everything Fabulo and Jeremiah had told me, the warehouse of enormous size must indeed be in the basement level, accessible only from the rear of the building. The pneumatic messaging system conveyed the records back and forth. I wondered at the number of workers who would be required to service a great archive with such speed and efficiency.

“Thank you,” I said. “That answers my first question.”

But Julia reached out and took his hand. “Could you request a record now?” she asked.

Close up, the brass tubes were more substantial than they’d appeared from the gallery. Touching the metal, I felt my fingers tingle with a slight vibration. A thought had come to me: this piece of metal ran all the way to a room in which lay the records of my family’s ruin.

On a small shelf next to the pipe lay three of the canisters and a small pile of blank cards.

“Do you know a case number?” Richard da Silva asked, taking one of the cards.

Momentarily unable to speak, I shook my head.

“Does that matter?” asked Julia.

“There are different ways to search. We might put in the name of the judge, the name of the defendant, the place where the case was filed, the date it was filed, the date of the court case. The more we know, the fewer records they’ll have to search.”

“Gulliver Barnabus,” I said, giving voice to my father’s name for the first time in years.

“That’s the defendant?” Richard asked, having transcribed the name.

I nodded.

“Place?”

“The case was lodged in Northamptonshire,” I said. “It came to court on the twelfth of June, 2003.”

He wrote the place and date. “That should be enough. I’m requesting the judgement. That’ll give us the case number. Then we can go for the documents of investigation. That’s where the real information is.”

He printed his name at the bottom of the card, before slipping it inside one of the canisters. I watched as he screwed on the lid.

“How will they know where to send the answer?” asked Julia.

“The cards have the court number printed on them,” he said. Then, turning to me, “Would you like to do the honours?”

I pulled the lever and a section of the pipe opened with a sigh of escaping air. He slotted the canister in place and nodded. I pushed the lever back, resealing the tube.

“Now what?” I asked.

But before he could answer there was a whooshing sound and I heard what I imagined was the canister rattling away downwards inside the pipe.

“Now we wait,” he said. “It’ll be twenty minutes or so.”

So we waited and I talked about the storm and the heat before it and the food in London and the extraordinary mix of nationalities and races mingling in the streets. I talked about anything, in fact, that would avoid what I was really thinking about.

If I could access, with Richard’s help, all the records of my father’s case and all the records of the blacksmith’s case which so resembled mine, then I might get everything I needed without ever breaking into the storerooms beneath the Patent Court. The prospect thrilled me. But, in a corner of my mind, I felt also an inexplicable disappointment.

Five minutes had passed. Julia took my hand and stroked it. Richard told me how well she was progressing in her studies and how proud he was of her. And such was the love in his eyes that I decided I wouldn’t mind so very much if he did marry her, though the thought shot another pang of loneliness through my chest.

He had just begun to ask about the practicalities of life on a houseboat when he was interrupted by a rumble and a whoosh of air. Only seven minutes had passed. He pulled the lever and extracted the canister, which he handed to me.

“How do we know it’s the right one?” I asked.

He pointed to a small glass window in the canister, through which his name could be read.

I twisted the lid, which unscrewed smoothly. But instead of a rolled court document, inside I found another card.

Gulliver Barnabus

Northampton

12 June 2004

Court Judgement Restricted

“What does it mean?” asked Julia, who had taken the card from my hand and passed it to Richard.

“It means the documents are there, but, as a barrister, I can’t get access.”

“Could a judge?” I asked.

“Perhaps. There are different levels of restriction.”

Julia hugged me. “Oh, Elizabeth. I’m so sorry.”

But, just as I’d felt a pang of disappointment before, I now experienced excitement. I would break into the storerooms, after all. And it came to me that something of Fabulo’s compulsion had infected me. I wanted to see the secrets of the Patent Office laid bare before my eyes.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, extricating myself from Julia’s embrace. “Thank you for trying, Mr da Silva. You’ve been very kind.”

“It was nothing,” he said. “But you said there were two questions. What’s the other one?”

This was the question that had driven me to take the risk of seeking him out. It would surely provoke his suspicion. “There’s an official of the Patent Office that I want to learn more about,” I said. “Could you tell me everything you know of the Custodian of Marvels?”

But Richard da Silva stared blankly back at me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I’ve never heard of him.”

We agreed that I should leave first and they would follow ten minutes later. I stepped out of the courtroom and began walking down the long corridor, which was eerily empty. Then a single figure came into view at the very end. He began walking towards me, as I was walking towards him. Time seemed to congeal around me. It was not his features, which I could not discern at that distance. Nor was it his clothing, which seemed little more than a silhouette. It was his movement – that easy, open stride, so unlike a British man.

We had closed the distance to perhaps half the corridor’s length. He slowed, then stopped. I continued to walk towards him, recognition washing through me – fear and sorrow mixed with a pang of affection that I neither wanted nor knew how to control.

“John Farthing,” I said. “Please… I…”

But, instead of answering, he turned and hurried back the way he had come, first walking and then breaking into a run.

CHAPTER 21

October 9th

Choose a comely face from the thousand and address that one alone. When the lights go up and all the faces disappear, still picture that one in your mind.

The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

John Farthing’s appearance and disappearance had each been so unexpected that for a moment I stared along the empty corridor, doubting he’d been there at all. Then I remembered the words he’d spoken to me in Nottingham:
If we meet again, it will be as enemies.

I ran.

My feet made hardly a sound on the thick carpet as I pelted back towards the stairs. Whatever Agent Farthing was doing at that moment, I needed to get away or bad things would happen.

Rushing down the marble steps that led to the entrance hall, my footsteps echoed and reverberated. People below turned to look. Immediately I slowed, only speeding up again once I’d reached the floor of the hall. My shoulders bumped one visitor after another. An African woman in a green and gold dress called out angrily. But in the midst of the crowds I was hidden to some extent.

Away behind me, almost masked by the hubbub of movement, I heard heavy footsteps advancing at speed. Jinking past a party of schoolchildren, I stepped out through the giant doorway and into the sunlight. Instead of running directly away from the building down the stairs to the plaza, I jagged left and tucked myself behind a group of Chinese tourists, who were being directed to look up at the portico above our heads.

“Note the Doric capitals,” said the tour guide, “and the false perspective given by the tapering columns.”

Two men burst from the building and were immediately searching. Advancing to the top of the steps, they looked down on the crowds arrayed below them. One raised a hand to shield his eyes as he scanned. I knew they were agents from the crisp focus of their every movement, the dour grey of their suits, and the appalling sense of authority and entitlement that they radiated.

I sidestepped behind the base of one of the giant columns and counted to ten under my breath. Then I set off directly away from where they’d been standing, hoping I’d be shielded for long enough to get away.

I chose a family group that was descending the steps and followed close behind so that it might seem I belonged. But three quarters of the way down, they stopped in their tracks to consult a map. I bumped into one of the children, stumbled and continued on my way, alone and exposed.

Then I was heading across the plaza towards the line of yellow bricks, beyond which street vendors made the crowd thicker. I glanced towards the court one final time to assure myself I was not being followed. But when I turned back I was confronted by a man of dark complexion, dressed in the same austere grey.

He spread his arms, as if to stop me trying to break past him. “Miss Barnabus,” he said. “Would you be so good as to accompany me?”

I did not try to escape. The agent stood too close for that, as he escorted me across the road and along the other side of Fleet Street. From his accent and appearance, I guessed his home to be on the Indian subcontinent. At all times he was polite and attentive – though it seemed to me his attention was readiness against the event that I should run.

From the outside, the building appeared to be like any other Georgian townhouse. That this was an illusion became apparent once we were inside and through the entrance hall. There were no pictures, no patterned wallpaper, no lampshades. Thick walls and bare corridors gave the impression of a fortress. The room into which I was pushed was unmistakably a prison cell.

There being no window, all light came from six wall-mounted lamps. The walls themselves were plain and whitewashed. The floor was tiled. The only break in this monotony was a mirror, some three feet along the base and two feet high. This had been built into the wall itself, arranged so that it left no overhang. The furniture consisted of a table, topped with silvery metal, and three white painted wooden chairs.

It was a room that offered no relief for the eye and no distraction from fear.

John Farthing may have said we would be enemies, but he had no reason in law to detain me. None that I knew. The Patent Office was bound to remain aloof from any legal case beyond its jurisdiction. He could not deliver me into the custody of the Duke of Northampton’s army. But, staring at my reflection in the mirror, I wondered if he might be so bent on my injury as to let the duke know the place and time of my release.

I worked to dismiss this thought with reason. He had no cause to be vindictive. Conflict of loyalties had riven his feelings. But it was hard to believe he would place me in active harm. I became aware that my heart was drumming and my skin had become clammy with sweat.

I chose one of the white chairs and sat, waiting for him to appear. I wondered whether he would be alone to confront me. The image of his face came to my mind, unbidden. Which, I wondered, would hurt me more – for him to shout and rage or to be questioned without emotion?

Coming upon him so unexpectedly, I’d assumed our meeting had been by chance. I’d been in the International Patent Court – a place I would expect him to frequent. But, sitting in that white cell, my racing mind seized upon another possibility. One agent had already questioned Richard da Silva about me. Farthing could have been on his way to do the same. Then a more terrifying thought struck. I’d asked for the records of my father’s trial. If that had triggered some alarm, which had called Farthing to investigate, it would have brought Richard da Silva to the attention of the Patent Office once more. And then, by implication, my dear friend Julia.

My thoughts began to tumble, uncontrolled.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, folded my arms on the table and rested my head on top of them. Farthing’s image was hard to banish, so I focused on my boat, the
Harry
, picturing it moored on the canal bank somewhere deep in the Northamptonshire countryside.

In my mind, I walked the length of the hull from prow to tiller. Then I stepped up onto the steering platform and ran my hand over the edge of the roof. Stepping down past the engine I entered the small cabin. Then, starting with the cot, I moved around the space, touching each item until I was facing the Spirit of Freedom statue. As ever, she leaned from the metal plate, powerful in her nakedness. I was reaching out to stroke her hair when a loud clunk jolted me back to the present.