Charles Palliser (113 page)

For do you not consider that it would be only right and proper for the young gentleman to keep vigil by his father’s body?”

Skilliter laughed sycophantically but the layer-out appeared not to have heard this remark, for she was now engaged upon unfolding the shroud and shaking it out.

“Lock him in here for the night,” said Dr Alabaster to his deputy. “After all, he has known his father so briefly that it would be a pity not to spend with him what little time remains. Be sure to tell Yallop before you go off.”

Skilliter nodded and Dr Alabaster left the room directing towards me a last gleeful smile.

“Will you help me with this, Mr Skilliter,” said Mrs Silverleaf, who appeared to have heard none of this for she had made no comment upon it. While THE RELEASE

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I tried not to watch, she and Skilliter worked together to pull the shroud over the body and when they had succeeded, she tied it securely at the top.

At that moment the door was suddenly kicked open and Rookyard and the strange man I had seen the previous night outside my cell staggered into the room carrying a coffin, panting and swearing at the effort. They placed it on the table beside the body.

“The boy stays in here tonight, Yallop,” Skilliter said to the stranger. “The doctor’s instructions.”

The three men grinned at each other and when the newcomers had regained their breath they set to work again and with Skilliter’s assistance the body was lifted over the sides and dropped into the coffin. Meanwhile Mrs Silverleaf was collecting her possessions and packing them away into a large bundle ready to depart.

Then Rookyard, who was carrying a hammer, picked up one end of the lid and told the others to help him lift it onto the base.

“Shouldn’t that wait for the undertaker’s men?” asked Mrs Silverleaf looking up at that moment. “They usually like to do it theirselves,”

“Why, what do you know about it?” Rookyard sneered.

“A great deal,” she replied spiritedly. “I’ve laid out many a better-looking gentleman than any what I see before me now.”

Rookyard reddened with anger but Yallop laughed and said : “Yes, she’s right. Leave it for ’em.”

“No, that ain’t right,” Rookyard persisted, and an argument broke out between the three men.

The layer-out reached across me to pick up a piece of sponge and as her face came close to mine she whispered: “Hide in the coffing.”

I was stunned by these words and thought I had misheard them. I stared at her in amazement, but she was now packing her bundle with an expression as unconcerned as if she had not spoken.

Meanwhile the argument ended with the decision that the coffin should be left unsecured and, with ironical good wishes to myself for a pleasant night, the two turn-keys departed, leaving the night-porter behind.

As Mrs Silverleaf was securing her bundle she enquired conversationally of Yallop who was waiting with unconcealed impatience for her departure : “Who’s doing the burying?”

“If it’s any of your consarn, Winterflood and Cronk buries for us.”

“Is that so?” she said. “I wondered if it might be Digweed and Son.”

The room seemed to heave as if I were on board a ship in a squall and I leant back against the chair for support. That Christmas of long ago rose before me and I knew the woman now.

“Never heerd on ’em,” said Yallop disparagingly. He picked up the blanket on which the body had been lying and folded it over his arm.

“When will they come?” she asked.

“Before first light tomorrer. We like our bodies to be out of here at night. It looks bad by day.”

“It’ll be a bitter cold night for this lad if he’s to stay here until dawn,” she said. “Spare him that blanket at least.”

“I wasn’t told nothing about no blanket,” Yallop said doubtfully.

Mrs Digweed turned towards me and stared at me hard as she uttered the 522 THE

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next words: “I think you’d best, Mr Yallop, or Winterflood and Cronk’s men won’t hardly know which on ’em is to be took when they come tomorrer.”

I understood her and to my relief Yallop reluctantly relinquished the blanket into my hands. With a last glance of deep meaning towards me Mrs Digweed passed out of the room.

“Shall I leave him this light?” Yallop mused aloud, picking up his lanthorn and looking at the stub of candle left by the coffin. “Or would it be worse to be altogether in the dark?” He reflected for a moment: “I reckon it would be worse to have the bit o’

candle left and see the shadders moving on the walls and know that in an hour or two it was going to burn out.”

He left it where it was and went out, locking the door behind him.

I understood what I had to do, though my conscience and my stomach alike revolted against it. Perhaps it was fortunate that I had little time to reflect — beyond the conviction that if I failed to seize this chance, I would die — because I needed to act while the candle still burned. And so I began with excessive haste to try to raise the body and lift it over the side of the coffin. After some minutes of struggling I realized that my panic-stricken actions were achieving nothing except further to exhaust me. I forced myself to pause until my thumping heart had quietened and I had considered my next step rationally. It became clear to me that, weakened as I was by hunger, it would be a long and laborious task even if I could find the right way of going about it. But my approach was clearly the wrong one.

Suddenly I remembered the hideous song that I had heard from Isbister’s company, and now I connected it with what I had seen them doing that night in Southwark. I realized that what I should do — despite my horror — was to kneel straddling the legs and embrace the shoulders in order to pull it so that it sat up.

This proved effective though I made only slow progress, and all the time as I struggled my hearing was alert to detect the approach of the night-porter. Eventually I managed to manoeuvre it out onto the table and from there to roll it to the edge. In order to lower it gently to the floor — for I could not bring myself to push it over the rim and let it fall — I had to position myself beneath it and pull it down onto me, going down on my knees as my legs buckled under the weight. I managed this successfully and once it was on the ground untied the shroud and after a long struggle pulled it off.

Now I rolled the body into the furthest corner of the room and arranged it to look like a sleeping figure, laying over it the blanket which I was sure Mrs Digweed had intended that I should use for this purpose. As I was doing this the guttering candle burned out, but I did not need its light for my last action which was to climb back onto the table, pull the shroud over myself, and then clamber into the coffin concealing the untied end beneath my head. I found that I could breathe through the cheap cloth, though with some difficulty.

There was so much that I wanted to avoid thinking about as the long cold hours dragged by. I seized gratefully on the extraordinary nature of my encounter with Mrs Digweed. How was it that she had reappeared in my life in this THE RELEASE

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of all places? Was it by means of a series of meaningless coincidences or by a chain of carefully-linked connexions? Either possibility seemed implausible. Whichever it was, how strange a part she and her family seemed to have played in my life — assuming, of course, that Barney and Sally were members of her family. And there was Joey, too. And now that I thought of him it occurred to me that I was blindly trusting the mother, when it was the son who had led me into this very trap.

I found myself, despite the extreme cold, breaking into a perspiration at these reflections. Was I delivering myself voluntarily to some kind of horrible death? If so, then never had victim more laboriously prepared himself for it. But if my worst fears were well-founded, then what could I do? If I passed up this chance now, then surely only a longer-delayed death awaited me? Was I, then, trusting Mrs Digweed only because I had no alternative? Surely not. There had been true kindness in her manner, and I could not bear to believe that she had acted a part in order to lure me to a cruel death. And yet Emma had taken me in! And even if I had done right in trusting Mrs Digweed, what was to be gained by my concealing myself in this way? Surely I would be discovered by the undertaker’s men?

I grew colder and colder under the thin shroud as the night deepened, and many strange thoughts came to me : that I was at least appropriately attired and positioned should the cold overcome me, and that after all it was not so terrible a thing to die. I wondered who would be affected by my passing from the world. Perhaps Mr Nolloth would be the sole mourner, and now that I thought of him it came to me that it had not been for himself that he was grieving but for his friend, and, I supposed, for me. Miss Quilliam would be sorry for me if she ever heard of my death — and Henry Bellringer, too. Then I wondered if Henrietta would ever learn of it and, if by some chance she did, whether she would grieve for me. The one thing I tried not to think of was the silent presence in the corner of the room whose place I had sacrilegiously usurped.

At last I heard the door being unlocked and the sound of footsteps as if several people were entering. I began to breathe as infrequently and as shallowly as I could. Through the thin cotton I could even see the faint illumination of lanthorns.

Then Yallop’s voice, disconcertingly close, said angrily: “I’m damned if I know why you’ve come so early. It’s a good three hours to first light.”

A man’s voice that was strange to me said: “Them was the orders what I had of Mr Winterflood.”

“You nivver had ’em of Winterflood,” said Yallop. “He’s been dead these twenty year.”

“Then it must have been the other genel’man, for I ain’t but jist started and don’t know the names yet.”

“Well, Cronk ain’t nivver sent no-one so early a-fore. And it’s most irregular not to have brung a proper growed man. I nivver heerd on sich a thing. Especially as, beggin’

your parding, you’re sitiwated as you are. I suppose you’ll expeck me to help carry the box?”

“Why, the guv’nor give me a shillin’ for that wery purpose.”

“Oh did he?” said the night-porter’s voice, slightly mollified. “Well, there it is. But where’s that damned boy? They told me to watch out for him in case he tried to hook it.

Why there he is fast asleep in the corner over yonder! And sleeping like the dead hisself.”

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To my dismay I heard him move towards the far corner saying brutally: “See how much respeck he shows for his own dad! I’ll soon give him somethin’ to dream about.”

Quickly the other voice said: “Help me with this lid will you, Mr Yallop?”

“You’re arstin’ a lot for that shillin’,” said Yallop irritably, but I heard his footsteps moving back towards me.

There was a brief silence which was broken by the grunts of the two men, then the lid was banged down only an inch or two from my face so that I had to force myself not to flinch.

“Hold that there nail steady, will you, Mr Yallop,” said the stranger’s voice.

“Can’t your boy do it?” protested Yallop.

“He can’t reach while it’s on the table,” said the strange voice.

A moment later I was nearly deafened by the crash of the hammer. And then as I listened to one nail after another being driven in my heart began to pound as I wondered how long I would be able to breathe in that confined space and tried not to imagine a horrible possibility.

“Why bless me,” said Yallop, “if that boy ain’t still asleep, though this noise would wake the wery dead. I’ll try what a kick from my boot kin do.”

Almost with relief, I resigned myself to the inevitable.

However, I instantly felt myself being tipped up and the strange man cried: “Bear a hand there, will you, Mr Yallop. I can’t hold both ends by meself.”

“What the divil did you do that for?” said Yallop indignantly. “You should have waited until I was ready.”

As he spoke I felt the coffin being raised to the accompaniment of alarming groans and then lowered slightly, I presumed onto the shoulders of the two men. We advanced a few unsteady steps and I judged that we were out in the passage.

Suddenly Yallop said angrily: “Put it down, for Gawd’s sake.”

I was in a state of terror, fearing that he had realized the deception being practised for now I desperately wanted the attempt to succeed.

“I have to lock the door agin that blessed boy.”

The door clanged shut and the key rasped in the lock.

At that moment I heard a boy’s voice very close to me — he must have had his mouth pressed up against the coffin: “Hold on just a minute longer, Master Johnnie!”

I knew the voice : it was indeed that of the boy who had led me to the house in Islington!

The coffin was raised again and after a while I could tell that we were descending stairs. At last I was deposited on the ground with a jolting thud, and heard the elaborate unlocking of what I guessed to be the main street-door. There was the sound of footsteps on gravel and a moment later I was jarred by the crash of the coffin hitting, as I guessed, the tail-gate of a cart.

“There’s your shillin’,” said the stranger’s voice panting with exertion.

“Why, here’s a start!” said Yallop, also gasping. “That ain’t the reg’lar dead-cart what Winterflood and Cronk allus sends.”

I heard the stranger clucking his tongue: “Hurry up, Gunpowder!”

I was beginning to grow dizzy and though I knew I recognised that name, I could not remember where I had heard it.

At that moment Yallop cried: “Why’s this hiding the name?”

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“Leave that be!” cried the boy and at that instant I felt that the cart was in motion.

“Why ain’t it Winterflood and Cronk?” Yallop shouted. “Who the devil is Isbister?”

Isbister! Of course! This was his horse and cart! Then I had after all entered some kind of hideous trap! I tried to cry out and to beat on the sides of the box, but the air I gasped was hot and choking and no sound emerged from my throat. The effort was too much: there came the sound of rushing water in my ears and a flood seemed to be closing over my head as I began to lose consciousness.