A Fatal Likeness (28 page)

“I suspect, all things considered,” he says instead, “that I should talk of these matters with Mr Shelley myself. Information from a third party—however well intentioned, or indeed intelligent—is never the best way to obtain and analyse evidence.”

She is caught now, he can see that, and one of his suppositions is confirmed: This visit of hers has been taken on her own initiative, and in secret.

“That is,” he continues steadily, “if you are indeed decided to commission my services. Have you been informed as to my rates?”

She flushes again. “I have—that is, that man—”

“George Fraser. One of my close assistants. He will keep an account and render a copy to you each week for payment. I trust you are in a position to honour such a debt? My time is valuable and I do not care to waste it on clients who cannot pay.”

It was, perhaps, a little condescending, and he sees at once that she will not brook such disdain. “Mr Shelley, sir, is the son of a baronet. He has ample means at his disposal.”

“I am very glad to hear it. You may, then, expect a call from me in two days.”

“You could come tomorrow if you wish, we will be at home.”

Maddox shakes his head, and goes to the bell. “I regret I have other business that will claim my attention tomorrow. But I will call promptly on Saturday morning.”

He has, in fact, no plans of a definite nature to absorb his Friday, but he makes a point of conducting an investigation of his clients before embarking upon any such investigation on their behalf. And there is something about this case that is already making him uneasy. He cannot define what it is, but it is there, and he has learned that such intuitions are not to be despised.

Fraser appearing now at the door, Maddox makes a bow. “Good day to you, Miss Godwin.”

• • •

Friday dawns clear and bright, and begins with a breakfast of chocolate and hot rolls, followed by a brisk walk up the Strand to Bow Street. So it will surprise you, I think, that when we next find Maddox he is not in consultation with his former colleagues among the Runners, but seated in a stiff gilt chair in an extremely imposing panelled room in Whitehall, in the company of the Home Secretary. Also in attendance we have a short man in a dour and anonymous suit of black, who gives his name as Sir Henry Pearson, and has before him a large pile of notes and correspondence. Opening pleasantries have clearly been conducted, and it is time to attend to business.

“Here is the first reference to the individual in question,” begins Sir Henry, scanning the papers. “It appears in a report describing a meeting of revolutionary subversives in Dublin in February of the year ’12. A certain ‘young boy’ seems to have made quite an impact, speaking for over an hour on the crimes supposedly committed by the corrupt English Crown upon the Irish. A people, incidentally, the same young man was shortly to describe as a ‘mass of animated filth.’ ”

The words are sardonic, but the tone curiously flat. He turns a page. “I also have a copy of a pamphlet by the aforementioned boy, and an incendiary letter written by the same to the
Dublin Weekly Examiner.
It appears this young radical was showing all the signs of becoming a veritable thorn in our sides, but only six weeks after his arrival in Ireland he decamped on a sudden to Wales, sending ahead of him a large box of frankly treasonable material, which thanks to chance and a signal failure to pay adequate postage, we intercepted at Holyhead. I believe, my Lord,” he says, looking up over his spectacles at the Home Secretary, “that this was the first time the name
Shelley
came to your attention?”

“Indeed,” says Lord Sidmouth. He is a parched, thin-cheeked man with sallow skin and narrow rather simian eyes. “I determined, upon advisement, and in consideration of his legal minority, that no prosecution should be put immediately in train, but that the subject should be monitored for further evidence of seditious intent.”

“An agent was accordingly assigned,” resumes Sir Henry, “to gather intelligence as to this Shelley’s associates, and intercept his correspondence. However, it seems he may have become aware of this surveillance, since he soon moved once more, this time south to Lynmouth, where his party attracted considerable attention on arrival, due to the large number of heavy wooden chests in his possession, and the vast number of letters he dispatched about the country. Our agent was here able to observe his insurrectionary activities at first hand, since Shelley elected to convey his inflammatory messages either by launching them upon the sea in bottles and toy boats, or floating them into the air by means of—” He stops a moment, and scans the page again, as if distrusting his own eyes.
“—fire balloons.”

He coughs; a small sound, but one he manages to endow with a whole world of disdain. “Other such material was posted about the countryside on trees and farm buildings, though this particular task—whether from guile or indolence—he consigned to his luckless servant, who was promptly arrested and fined. The sum of two hundred pounds being clearly far beyond the foolish man’s purse, he was committed to a six-months’ imprisonment. The true purpose of this proceeding was, as you will no doubt have guessed, to smoke Shelley from his lair. But contrary to all expectation—and his own sanctimonious rhetoric as to the necessity of assisting the ‘opprest and poor’—he refused to pay his servant’s fine and fled the district, leaving his unlucky underling to languish out his sentence in the Barnstaple jail. Further enquiries were instructed by Your Lordship”—this with a nod to Sidmouth—“but due to an unpardonable lapse on the part of our then agent in the town, we lost all trace of him. Indeed it was not until the unfortunate servant was finally freed that we were able to gain any intelligence as to Shelley’s whereabouts, for the man was dull-witted enough to lead us straight to his master, who was then residing at a house called—” He turns the pages and looks closer. “—Tan-yr-allt, if my pronunciation is correct, in Tremadoc, on the coast of North Wales.”

There is a silence as a servant appears at the door with a message for the Home Secretary, who makes his excuses (“a matter of State”), bows, and departs. The servant is dispatched for coffee, and returns a few moments later with a silver tray. As the coffee is poured, we might take advantage of the pause and consider what we have heard. That so inconsequential figure as the nineteen-year-old Shelley should have provoked so comprehensive an intelligence operation sounds, at first, incomprehensible. But you must remember that this is a time of riots, and machine-breaking, and the threat of invasion. A time of all-too-recent revolution in Europe, and the simmering suggestion of it still in England. A time when new ideas are suppressed as ruthlessly as insurrections, and those—like Shelley—who choose to publish them might well find themselves damned for it, if not hanged. You must remember, too, that even if Shelley’s political effusions appear preposterously impractical and incoherent now, they would certainly not have seemed so at the time.

Maddox, meanwhile, has made a few notes in his book, and waits until the door closes behind the departing servant to turn to Sir Henry.

“As to the matter of Tremadoc,” he begins, but Sir Henry holds up a hand.

“We will come to that in its due place. I think you would find it instructive to hear what else our agents were able to discover as to the previous history and character of this man Shelley.”

Maddox bows; he is familiar with the ways of those of Sir Henry’s calling, and indulging the man’s pomposity is a small price to pay for the quality of information he is able to bestow. “I would be most obliged.”

“Enquiries were put on foot in his native Sussex, as in Oxford, whence he had been expelled after but two terms on a charge of atheism.”

Maddox raises an eyebrow, but makes no comment.

“It is not, I have to say, a very pretty tale they had to tell,” continues Sir Henry. “It seems Shelley is of an extremely excitable temper, and has been subject since boyhood to violent paroxysms of anger, most especially when contradicted or opposed. Conversely, as you might say, he has suffered repeated and extended periods of somnambulism. One acquaintance related a tale of his being discovered in Leicester Square at five o’clock one morning, dirty and dishevelled, and unable to give any account of how he got there. He will likewise—and this may prove to be significant—construct elaborate stories that bear all the appearance of truth, and which he himself appears to believe, but which are utter fabrications from first to last. This curious mania of his may lie behind an accusation of adultery directed at his own mother, and an oft-expressed conviction that his father wished to have him committed to a madhouse as a child; though on the latter count it seems there was indeed a period of some weeks during which he was kept under lock and key away from the rest of the household, which might suggest a genuine lunatic episode. Whatever the truth of it, had I been Sir Timothy I might well have considered such an expedient. The boy was not yet thirteen when he attempted to blow up his school with gunpowder. His vacation pursuits appear to have included setting fire to the house, and torturing the family cat. He even,” he concludes dryly, “composed a poem on the subject.”

Maddox looks up; it’s not the first time a man he is investigating has exhibited such characteristics as a child; indeed it has struck him more than once how many murderers begin their descent into crime with the ill-treatment of animals, and the setting of fires. But Shelley, surely, is not a murderer. He writes a few words in his book, aware that the room has fallen silent.

“There is also a note here—” Sir Henry clears his throat circumspectly. “—questioning whether this Shelley might be of the sodomitical persuasion. Seems an unusually large proportion of his acquaintance describe him as ‘feminine.’ ‘A girl in boy’s clothes’ one is said to have remarked.”

He closes the file and sits back in his chair, which creaks discreetly.

There is a pause before Maddox, too, sits back in his chair.

“Given what you have said,” says Maddox slowly, “might it be fair to assume that if Mr Shelley believes he is being pursued by a nameless persecutor, he might not, in this particular case, be prey to fanciful illusion, but has merely detected the presence of one of your own informants?”

“An interesting theory. I presume your use of the present indicative was deliberate?”

Maddox nods. “He believes this pursuit continues even now—indeed claims to have seen the man he fears at least twice since returning to London only two weeks ago.”

“In that case I would suggest you are dealing with a case of pronounced and persistent
paranoea.
We have not actively pursued him since he departed Lynmouth, and my agents played no part whatsoever in the incident in Wales.”

Maddox looks up. “What can you tell me of that?”

“Much of what you have been told is true, though the interpretation put upon it hardly objective. There were some locally who claimed the whole episode was a hallucination, others said it was more likely a hoax put about by Shelley himself to afford him an excuse to withdraw from what was always a most ill-advised scheme. Our own view is that the incident was more likely to have been staged by Leeson and his associates to drive the Shelleys from the district. One shot, at least, Shelley himself fired, that much is certain; it is far less clear if he was fired upon first. Or, indeed, at all.”

He turns to the coffee-pot and refills his cup. “You are aware that something similar was said to have occurred in Cumberland some months before? It seems that there, too, Shelley contrived to infuriate a remarkably large number of people in a remarkably small amount of time, and woke one night to a knock on the door and a fist in his eye. He was forced to leave the neighbourhood. I presume you perceive the pattern?”

Maddox nods; how could he not?

“His Lordship instructed me to give you whatever assistance might be within my power,” says Sir Henry, gathering up his papers and sending, thereby, a clear signal that the interview is at an end. “I shall conclude, therefore with a piece of advice. Be wary, and careful. Wary of a man who seems to bring ill fortune to all those who encounter him; and careful of your pocket-book: He has debts halfway across England, and seems to feel no compunction, moral or otherwise, at defrauding even those small shop-keepers and tradesmen who can ill afford the loss.”

Maddox has already drawn rather the same conclusions, but accepts the counsel with a good grace. Ten minutes later he is on the street once more, walking slowly and thoughtfully back up towards the Strand. It’s rarely he receives such a decisive indication that a client bodes nothing but ill, and yet he cannot rid himself of the image of the girl—not just that face which is the mirror of one he once loved, but the intelligence and the courage that make this new Mary so like the one he lost.

It should not be necessary to remind a man of his experience that this resemblance may be traitorous—that even if the qualities he perceives are true, there may be others that he cannot possibly yet discern, and which may undermine what he wants so much to see. It should not be necessary, but it seems it is, and there is no-one to do it.

• • •

The following morning we find him in his carriage, sitting back against the cushions as it toils up the Gray’s Inn Lane, with an expression on his face that suggests a night of little sleep, and much uncertainty. Fraser has to check the address twice at Pancras, so unlikely does it seem that the son of a baronet should be lodging so meanly, and they are kept waiting a good five minutes in the drizzle before there is any sign of life at 5 Church Terrace. And the person who does eventually open the door is, to say the least, unprepossessing.

“Want that Shelley, do yer?” she says, her pink hands on her fat hips. “Second floor. An’ if you’ve come offerin’ ’im somewhere else to stay don’t let me stop yer. Folks are already startin’ to talk
—two
women ’e’s got up there and all sorts of
noises
at all times of the night, if you take my meanin’.”

Her puffy face manages to exhibit almost equal quantities of prurience and prudery; it is not a pleasant combination. Fraser follows Maddox up to the top of the house, and there, again, they wait. All sorts of noises indeed, for sound and fury rage now behind the door. Then, as they listen, a woman’s high-pitched wail is abruptly cut off, and there is a clattering thud as something strikes the near wall.