The Hidden Man (31 page)

I noticed Michael Ambler talking with another man at the edge of the crowd. Each held a tray of cakes but instead of passing through the company to offer their wares they were speaking exclusively and vehemently together. Out of his customary setting of the stables, and the Moor, it took me a moment to recognize the other fellow as John Barton, the horse trainer. Surprised, I strolled over to join them, at which they abruptly broke off their conversation.

‘Ambler. May I trouble you for a cake?'

I took one and turned to his companion.

‘Barton. What brings you here?'

‘I am helping.'

He had spoken stiffly, as if it were unnatural to him to admit helpfulness.

‘That does you credit.'

‘And I have also been looking over Pimbo's horses.'

‘To buy them?'

‘There's one entire that might make a teaser.'

‘A teaser? I'm sorry, you will have to explain.'

‘In the stud, to get the mare ready. You bring in the teaser to tickle her up before the big boy comes in and finishes the job.'

He leered at me.

‘I find some women got to have that an' all.'

Hearing this Ambler laughed and slapped Barton on the shoulder. I was tempted to ask the horse pacer if he liked to play the part of the teaser himself, but instead I took a step back and said,

‘Very interesting, but please, let me not distract you from your voluntary duties.'

*   *   *

Later over our supper table at home I told Elizabeth about my conversation with John Barton after the funeral.

‘They were very familiar together. It was striking.'

‘I saw Michael Ambler talking to a dark sallow chap,' she said.

‘That would be Barton.'

‘Thick as thieves they were.'

‘A nasty insinuating tongue has Mr Barton.'

I relayed to her the remarks he had made about the coupling of horses.

‘A teaser, you say?' she asked when I had finished.

‘That is what it is called.'

We had finished eating and she rose with her empty plate and came to pick up mine. She leaned towards me as she did so.

‘Happy the woman whose husband is also her teaser,' she murmured in my ear.

 

Chapter Twenty-four

‘R
EMEMBER, MY LOVE
, that Liverpool is a wicked pit of vice and iniquity.'

These were Elizabeth's parting words, spoken with a playful smile, as I rode off beside Fidelis the next morning. Instead of my old cob I had asked the liveryman for a more spirited animal to match Fidelis's latest fine gelding, and so we made very good time on the road, arriving at the Mermaid Inn before noon.

‘We must dine at Pinchbeck's,' said Fidelis, ‘as you have not seen it yet. And we may run into Canavan there.'

‘But first Truss's shop. It's on the way.'

Dale Street was a long street with a string of fine and various shops stretching north from the Town Hall. We enquired at three shoemakers before we found the one that had been Thomas Truss's, now trading under the name of Theophilus Fowler, and Son.

It was the son James Fowler, a man in his middle years, to whom we spoke first. I asked if he could provide some information about his father's predecessor in the shop.

‘Dad!' he shouted. ‘You're needed out here.'

A bent white-haired old man appeared from the rear, which was apparently the workshop. He was wearing an apron, and had obviously been interrupted in his work.

‘Yes, son. What is it?'

‘These gentlemen are asking about Truss.'

Old Fowler's face lit up.

‘The finest craftsman of upper-stitching, and the finest friend you are ever likely to meet was Thomas Truss,' he said. ‘I had the honour of being his partner in business for his last five years.'

‘And you took over when he retired?'

‘I did that – me and the boy here.'

‘Where did he go? Is he still in Liverpool.'

Old Fowler's bright expression faded visibly.

‘How I wish he were. No, he's in Childwall, six feet under.'

‘He's dead?'

‘This time last year, he left us.'

I looked in disappointment at Fidelis. His lips shaped the words ‘the shoe', so I took it out and showed it.

‘I am very sorry to hear that. But I wonder if you can help us in his stead. Can you tell us anything about this shoe, please? I believe it to have been made by Thomas Truss.'

‘Oh yes, this is his work, see? “T.T.” stamped on the inside. We use “T.F.”. Where did you get this?'

‘I am the Coroner of Preston. It is evidence in an inquest and I am interested in knowing more about it.'

‘Well, you have come to the right man,' Fowler said. ‘I could talk all day about my friend Tommy Truss's shoe work.'

‘I hope you won't dad,' said James sharply. ‘We have Lord Saunders's order to complete by tonight, remember?'

The old man blinked, scowled and ducked his head in irritation.

‘Oh, yes, so we do. So we do.'

‘Then I suggest you get back to work at once.' James's voice was brisk. ‘Or his young lordship's man will have nothing to take away when he gets here and his young lordship will have nothing to put on his shapely feet at the Assembly tonight.'

Old Fowler smiled bleakly at his visitors and shrugged, then shuffled meekly back towards his workshop.

‘I wonder if we might continue the discussion in the morning, then?' Fidelis said.

‘Tomorrow is the Sabbath,' said James.

‘Let me say,' I put in, ‘that though this is a legal enquiry, it is not business as such. There is no money in it. So perhaps a conversation on the matter is permissible on the Sabbath.'

‘A shoe is a worldly object, Sir,' replied James stiffly. ‘It is one to be bought and sold, and therefore a most doubtful subject for the Sabbath. I am a preacher. Folk might hear of this and say it is unseemly in me.'

‘It is not you, but your father we wish to speak to.' I lowered my voice. ‘And surely he will take pleasure in talking about his late friend. Can you deny him that?'

James Fowler hesitated, then he said,

‘Call here at ten. I shall be at the Meeting, but my father'll be here.'

*   *   *

We walked into a roar of voices at Pinchbeck's ten minutes later, it being full of boastful Saturday trade talk. Having cast his eye around the room, Fidelis immediately went up to a man sitting at a table with a cup of chocolate beside him, as well as pen and ink, abacus, and a low pile of papers that were covered in figures. His lips were moving incessantly as he summed the columns of numbers, flicking the abacus beads along their rails with extraordinary rapidity.

‘Hello my friend,' said Fidelis. ‘Do you remember me?'

The question was ignored but there must have been something about the accountant that gave my friend patience, because he took no offence at all. As the relentless counting continued, Fidelis persisted.

‘I do not see my acquaintance, Mr Moreton Canavan, here today,' he observed. ‘You will remember my asking you to point him out to me in this room on Monday last.'

The eyes and index finger shifted relentlessly down the figures, the other finger was busy on the abacus. The man's concentration was such that I could not believe he had even heard Fidelis's words.

‘Has he been here at all in the last few days? Have you seen him?'

The reckoner reached the bottom of the column, and wrote a total down, then cleared the abacus beads back to their starting positions.

‘It's Mr Canavan that I'm asking about,' prompted Fidelis. ‘Moreton Canavan.'

The man closed his eyes, took a sip of his chocolate and said wearily, without looking up at Fidelis,

‘Canavan has not been here recently. I have been here every day. I believe I last saw him on Tuesday.'

He placed his finger at the top of the column that he had to sum next.

‘Thank you Sir,' said Fidelis warmly, and took me off to find a table.

While we ate he pointed out Pinchbeck to me. He then indicated the table where Moon had been sitting when they had met, and the door through which Moon had disappeared having taken possession of my letter. I was struck by the unusual dispatch with which Fidelis cleared his plate of chops. As soon as he had done so he summoned the serving man to bring the reckoning.

‘We'll find nothing more here,' he said, ‘and there's someone I want you to meet. We need to know more about the Guinea Trade before we can fully understand this tangled affair. So come on.'

He led me out to the street and directly down to the dock. As soon as we got there he strode towards an ancient seafarer sitting in a bollard.

‘May we fill your pipe for you, Sir, and stand you a tot of rum?'

The greybeard didn't mind if we did. He rose to his feet with sudden sprightliness and led the way to the tavern of his choice. This was very different from Pinchbeck's. Here the roar was not that of prices and profits, but of drink and women and the hardships of the seafaring life.

With a bottle standing on the table between us, Fidelis asked the old man if he remembered their last meeting, and in particular the mention of the ship
The Fortunate Isle
. He did.

‘And you thought her poorly fitted out, I think.'

‘Yes, she didn't look the shape from dockside. She wasn't Liverpool registered, and I'd not seen her before. I might've bin wrong. I didn't see all of the loading and fitting she had. But if what I saw of her is all she was, then she wasn't good enough for Guinea or the Spanish Main. What I saw of her crew an' all. Skinny old men and skinny boys is all they were, good for goatherds maybe, but not sailing a ship in blue water. I seen that before, and when they set sail for slaves and do it on the cheap it don't come off. Not nine times out of ten, it don't. They end slaughtered, by sickness or swords, it don't matter.'

‘And her captain?'

‘I saw him, I s'pose. Didn't know him to speak to him.'

‘They say he is Edward Doubleday. Have you heard the name?'

‘No. Never heard it.'

His answers were not getting us very far. It was no good being told the ship was not fit, unless we knew what she wasn't fit for.

‘Tell us more about the Trade,' I said. ‘I mean the Guinea Trade. How does it work?'

He turned to me and said nothing but his mouth gaped in a toothless grimace. After this hesitation, he looked away and spoke in a gruff emphatic way.

‘Painful it is for me to speak about it, Sir, very painful, for I lost an arm and two brothers in that dangerous business. Dangerous to do and in this town dangerous to speak of, too, if you understand my meaning.'

‘I'm afraid I do not.'

‘I won't elaborate, Sir, if you'll excuse me. The Baltic, now. I'll tell you about that with pleasure.'

‘We are concerned only with Guinea and the West Indies. Where should we go to find out what we want to know?'

The sailor half closed his eyes and spoke almost in a whisper.

‘All right, Sir. Come along with me. I know a place not far where folk'll tell you – and tell you better'n I can.'

When we had drunk up, he took us through a maze of streets where the houses had cellars under them, which were entered from the street by sets of stone steps. We arrived at one such stairwell and heard the sound of some sort of celebration in progress. Raucous noises came from the place – whoops and shouts of laughter. Our guide wouldn't go down with us.

‘Not a resort for me, kind Sirs. You may be all right. Go down. They will tell you the truth of the Trade, if anyone will.'

Many dark bodies filled the cellar, and someone was pounding a drum, using no stick but just his palms and fingers. A young woman had just begun to dance, shaking her body in a way that was both utterly abandoned and beautiful. I had never seen a dance in any way like it. Finally, as if bringing herself to a pitch of ecstasy, she gave out a wild shriek, and fell to the floor. Fidelis went to her side, knelt and cradled her head as she looked vacantly up into his eyes.

I suddenly knew that we were in danger. All around us dark faces pressed closer, eyes flashing. They were murmuring angrily about what Fidelis was doing. A woman shouted at him to leave her be. A fellow with a ring in his ear touched Fidelis on the shoulder in warning. Just then a burly man pushed through the bystanders and picked the dancer from the ground as easily as you might pick up a house cat.

‘Come with me,' he said curtly to Fidelis. ‘Bring your friend. Unless you want to be eaten alive.'

He laughed most heartily when he saw our faces, then led us out of the cellar, up the stair and into the afternoon light. The woman was still lying insensibly in his arms.

‘My name is Elijah Quick, Sirs, and what I said down there was a figure of speech. Come with me and we shall taste some ale together.'

He jerked his head in the direction of an alehouse across the street, and set off ahead of us still carrying his burden lightly. I looked at Fidelis, who nodded his head and we followed our new acquaintance. Soon we had settled ourselves around a table, with the woman's body now popped up across Elijah Quick's knee, with her head lolling against his shoulder.

‘May I look at her?' asked Fidelis. ‘I am a doctor.'

‘No need. It's only the gin. She has a deadly taste for it.'

Fidelis leaned across and raised the girl's eyelids with his thumb, then placed his fingers against the underside of her wrist. This satisfied him, and he sat back in his chair.

‘I am curious: what brought two gentlemen like yourselves into that cellar?' said Quick.

He spoke accurate, educated English. I explained that we were gathering intelligence about the Guinea Trade and had been directed there. Quick's merriment immediately drained away. He said,