The Man of Gold (23 page)

‘What must I not do?’

‘Oh, nothing, nothing. I spoke without thinking.’

Then the meal that Richard had ordered was served, and with it a great magnum of champagne.

Once again Miss Unwin nearly forbade the man she loved doing something. He, who had had almost as little opportunity as herself to drink wine, must not, she had almost said, even with her assistance drink so much. But this time she succeeded in keeping quite silent, though she felt a tiny sinking at having wished to speak.

Indeed, as the dinner unrolled its huge length, she was tempted more than once to rebuke the man who she knew was, at its termination, going to ask her to be his wife. Even the thought that she was now fully determined to postpone her answer until she and the whole world was
aware who had poisoned Richard’s father did not make the temptation any less to speak out about his wild extravagance.

But at the turtle soup, rich and rare, she refrained. When vol au vents and cold salmon were placed before them she held back. Lobster omelette and shrimp curry renewed her wish to protest, but again she checked herself. Then there came whitebait, the speciality of the Greenwich taverns, and she acquiesced to that.

Stewed quail was brought in by the smiling and scraping waiters and she longed to be able to tell them to take back such a superfluous luxury. She did indeed decline to eat any herself.

‘But, Harriet, this is a time to eat, to drink, to be merry.’

‘And why, sir?’

It was a daring question, since it might have seemed designed to provoke another and a more important one in return.

But Richard answered the direct query without a second thought.

‘Oh, because I am freed of a great burden, of a terrible suspicion. And because I owe that freedom to you.’

‘But, sir, you are not free of it.’

‘Nonsense, nonsense. That dreadful Redderman will never haul me into his presence again.’

‘I think he might, sir. He said as much.’

‘He had to say something, just to keep himself in countenance.’

‘No, I think not. I do not see Inspector Redderman as a person who would feel much need for that.’

‘Everybody feels as much. Everybody, high or low.’

‘Perhaps to some extent, sir. But there are those who know themselves well enough not to seek to justify an error by attacking the person who points it out. And I believe Mr Redderman is such a one. If he said to you, as he did in the clearest terms, that he might have to look at
your defence again then he meant just that. And – And, sir, I cannot see now who else may have been responsible for your father’s death. Be sure the Inspector is considering whether he ought to take you to the police office once more.’

‘No, no. I won’t believe it. And you shan’t talk of it. This is an evening marked out from any other.’

And he leant forward and rang vigorously at the bell for yet more delicacies to be brought up.

In fact, however, the next course set before them was not as much of a delicacy as stewed quail or curried shrimps. It was a joint of honest mutton.

Miss Unwin saw no reason to protest against that. She allowed Richard to carve for her, and even when he put a truly monstrous slice on her plate she cut a piece from it cheerfully and ate.

‘Well, sir,’ she said, ‘this is a great deal better than the first piece of mutton you and I ate at the same table.’

She saw in her mind’s eye that first dinner at the Harrow Road house with old Mr Partington grudging every mouthful that she and Richard, Captain Fulcher and Cousin Cornelia and the twins consumed.

‘Why, yes,’ Richard answered, ‘this tastes very different from those appalling joints Mrs Meggs managed to buy for us, when she was not buying for my father alone.’

‘Oh, I think, sir, to do her justice, she bought meat as cheaply for him as for any of us. I often wondered at the odd taste –’

She came to an abrupt halt.

‘The odd taste,’ she repeated slowly. ‘The odd taste and – And what was it Vilkins called it? Yes, Cor Rosy Subjec’ Mate.’

‘What on earth are you saying? Vilkins, who is Vilkins? And what in heaven’s name is Cor Rosy whatever it was you said?’

‘That last, sir, is simply enough answered. It is Corrosive Sublimate.’

‘I’m little the wiser. What is Corrosive Sublimate?’

‘Why, of course, a gentleman would hardly know. But it is a liquid much used to keep floors and suchlike sweet. It kills offensive odours.’

Slowly a look of understanding grew on Richard’s face.

‘Kills offensive odours,’ he repeated at last. ‘On cheap tainted meat, you suggest?’

‘Yes, sir, I do. I suggest that Mrs Meggs in her ignorance and her parsimony used Corrosive Sublimate to make the tainted meat she bought for a few pence palatable. And that is why your father, who ate meat more often than any of us, was so often ill. Why, you yourself once tried to persuade him to allow me meat. If he had agreed I might have become as ill. I am sure that in the end was why your father died.’

‘But how can you be so sure?’

‘The symptoms,’ Miss Unwin said. ‘The symptoms fit the bill exactly.’

‘But how on earth do you know that? Isn’t it mere wishful thinking?’

‘No, sir, it is not. Corrosive Sublimate is chemically mercury bichloride. If taken, its effects are notably similar to those of arsenic poisoning. So Doctor Sumsion can be excused for his diagnosis.’

She laughed a little.

‘What mercury bichloride does,’ she went on with recaptured earnestness, ‘is produce gastric disorder with inflammation of the gums giving a characteristic blue-black line. And, sir, I noticed just such blueness on your father’s gums the day I had to tell him how I had come to see his hoard of gold.’

‘And this is in that professor’s book? The one you told Doctor Sumsion you had read for my sake?’

‘Yes, sir, it is the words of Professor Potherton himself.

But I read them only this morning when I thought I ought to consult the book again.’

‘But then, Harriet, we must telegraph Inspector Redderman immediately.’

And that was an extravagance which Miss Unwin did not feel inclined to forbid Richard Partington.

After the telegraph message had been despatched and the rest of the gigantic meal offered by the Trafalgar had been more or less disposed of, out on the iron balcony above the swift-flowing moonlit Thames Richard Partington did at last put the question to Harriet Unwin she had known was sooner or later to come.

But she did not in a moment of fervent delight give him that answer ‘Yes’ which she had without any doubts foreseen of herself when once she knew that Richard was finally cleared of the shadow that had rested over him. Something prevented her, something deep in her mind which she found hard to pin down.

Surely, she told herself, the mystery of old Mr Partington’s death is a mystery no more. Surely that cloud, which once in my lack of faith I almost believed must hang over Richard, surely it has now for ever dispersed.

Yet, despite all this, when she gave him his answer it was not one of unambiguous assent.

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘I know that I owe you much. I would wish, too, no maidenly modesty to delay my answering you. But – Sir, may I have the space of a day, of twenty-four exact hours from this moment, before I give you my reply.’

Richard did look, in the strong moonlight, a little put out at this. But he paused hardly a moment before he spoke.

‘Yes. Yes, of course. Yes, you shall have longer if you wish.’

‘No, sir. I will not ask for one half-hour more. But – But, I know not why, I must have that amount of time before I do make my answer.’

So it was a much less jocose pair who made their way back in the threshing paddle-steamer to London Bridge and by fleet, rattling hansom to the Harrow Road house and their beds.

In hers, to her surprise, Miss Unwin fell at once into a deep, deep slumber.

She was awakened from it next morning, rather earlier than her usual hour, by Vilkins hammering thumpingly on her door and thrusting her head, capless, inside.

‘Vilkins, why, what is it?’

‘It’s ‘im, Unwin. It’s ‘im.’

‘Who, him? It – It isn’t Richard?’

The idea of some terrible catastrophe came into Miss Unwin’s mind.

‘Well, yes. Yes, it is the Master. And it aint.’

‘Vilkins, pull yourself together. What has happened?’

‘It’s the Inspector, Unwin. That Mr Redderman. An’ ‘e wants your precious Richard again.’

Miss Unwin felt the tension flow out of her.

‘Well, and have you told Mr Partington that he is wanted?’

‘No. No, I daresn’t. I come up to you straight away.’

‘Then you must go down and wake the Master. Straight away.’

Then Miss Unwin relented.

‘And, Vilkins, dear …’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s all right. Everything’s all right. Inspector Redderman will be coming to tell the Master just exactly that. Last night we hit on what it was that had been poisoning old Mr Partington. It was Corrosive Sublimate, Vilkins. Mrs Meggs had been using it to take the smell from tainted meat. That was all. Corrosive Sublimate by mistake.’

‘Cor Rosy Subjec’ Mate. Well, I never ‘eard o’ that used for meat.’

‘And I hope you never do. Now, go and wake the Master.’

Vilkins went.

And in ten minutes Richard and Miss Unwin together faced the once formidable Inspector.

‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘I have telegraphed Professor Potherton – you know his reputation, I believe, Miss – and his answer is clear as a bell. The symptoms are all in accord with the regular administration of small quantities of Corrosive Sublimate, and his investigations confirm that decease can be attributed to that cause without a shadow of doubt. May I congratulate you, sir?’

‘It is Miss Unwin whom you should congratulate, Inspector. Without her resolute study of a subject that a woman should not be asked to know about we should none of us have ever had the answer to the riddle of my father’s death.’

Inspector Redderman considered this for a moment. Then he spoke.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘I believe you may be quite right. Without Miss Unwin here and her endeavours the mystery might have remained just that for ever.’

He gave Miss Unwin a self-contained little bob of a bow, bade farewell and was seen at the house in the Harrow Road no more.

Miss Unwin and Richard Partington stood where they had listened to him, in the bright and newly furnished drawing room, in long silence. Both, it seemed, were too overwhelmed by this final and definite end to their fears to have a word to say.

Perhaps Richard remained for even longer in that stunned state. But Miss Unwin did not. Gradually her powers of thought had come back to her in all their old full force. She considered her situation as it had now come to be.

And she found she had come to a certain conclusion.

‘Sir,’ she said, when she had looked at that conclusion up and down in her mind. ‘Sir, last night you asked me a question, and I begged you for a period of twenty-four hours to consider my answer.’

‘I did, I did,’ Richard said, coming out of his stupefied reverie with a start.

‘Well, sir, I feel able to give you my answer now.’

Richard’s round face lit up.

‘Then – Then, Harriet, you will?’

‘No, sir,’ said Harriet Unwin. ‘I will not.’

‘Not? Not? But I don’t think I understand. Are you saying – can you be saying that – that you will not marry me?’

Miss Unwin gave a deep, deep sigh.

‘It is what I must say,’ she answered.

‘Must? But I see no must. Why? Why cannot you marry me? It is the dearest wish of my heart.’

‘Yes, sir. I know that to be so.’

‘Then why, Harriet? Why? Why? Why?’

‘You wish me to tell you? It will not be the most pleasant hearing.’

‘I must know. I must.’

‘Very well then, sir. I cannot marry you because in doing so I would tie myself for ever to a man who is – I have known this for longer than I have been prepared to admit even to myself – to a man who is an incurable spendthrift. Oh, sir, I know that you have every excuse. Your father’s impossible miserliness must have driven you to the other extreme. But that is where you are, sir. I have hoped, without quite knowing I was hoping, that after a while you would show signs of moderation. That – that your wild extravagance would prove only temporary. But it is not. You, sir, know it, do you not?’

Richard Partington was pale as a man of ivory. But he slowly lowered his head.

‘Yes. Yes, you are right. Now I have money that I can
spend I shall spend it,’ he said. ‘I know that I should not. I knew yesterday when I ordered that great feast at Greenwich that it was something that I ought not to be doing. But I did it. I did it.’

There were tears, bright tears, now in his eyes.

‘Harriet, Miss Unwin,’ he said, ‘I know you are right. I cannot, I must not, lay claim to you. It – It is time for us to part, is it not?’

There were tears, too, in Miss Unwin’s eyes.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, ‘it is time for us to part.’

This electronic edition published in July 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

Copyright © H.R.F. Keating

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ISBN: 9781448203246
eISBN: 9781448202911

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