The Hidden Man (41 page)

Fidelis offered Goodenough his hand.

‘Extenuate no more, Sir, lest you make matters worse again. I wish you luck!'

Goodenough shook with Fidelis, but grimaced at his words.

‘I beg you, Sir, do not wish me that in here. It is bound to lead to misfortune. Gross, gross misfortune!'

*   *   *

Returning to the theatre, we found it nearly empty.

‘Where is Mrs Butler?' said Fidelis. ‘I had quite forgot her.'

‘Gone with Elizabeth and the others back to Cheapside, I am sure,' I said. ‘My wife is charmed by her and we are all to have a bite of supper, which I hope you will join us in.'

He said he would, and we walked directly to Cheapside, where we found Mrs Butler among the party. The dining room's sideboard was dressed with a great steaming ham, that had been boiling all through our excursion to the theatre, a dish piled with buttered potatoes and a big boat of parsley sauce. Elizabeth carved and distributed the ham while I made sure the wine decanter was handed around the table. Then, when everyone was served and we began to eat, I told of the extraordinary thing Fidelis and I had learned about the actor that we had all just witnessed playing the wicked Governor of Surinam.

‘He had impersonated none other than Zadok Moon, Phillip Pimbo's cheating business partner,' I told them.

‘Does he know this Moon, then?' asked my mother-in-law. ‘And can he lead you to him? If so, the last and biggest mystery of all that Pimbo business will be revealed and all the gossip can stop, for which I for one will be grateful.'

I doubted the veracity of the last part of her statement, for Mrs George enjoyed gossip as much as anyone I knew.

‘In that case, Mrs G, you will be glad to know there isn't any mystery now about Zadok Moon,' said Fidelis, who was in the process of cutting his sliced ham into small dice.

‘Apart from the mystery of where he's hiding himself,' I said.

‘Oh, no. That is solved.'

Mrs Butler turned to him and expressed the surprise of us all.

‘Solved, Luke? You know where he is to be found? If so, for heaven's sake tell us. We are on tenterhooks.'

Fidelis put down his knife and contemplated his handiwork for a moment. Every little cube of ham on his plate was an identical size.

‘Zadok Moon,' he said, ‘is to be found nowhere.'

‘Is he dead then?' gasped my mother-in-law.

‘No, not dead. He does not exist, Mrs G. He never existed. He was imagined. He was a phantom.'

I was again a link or two behind in my friend's chain of thought.

‘Imagined? Not imagined by the actor Goodenough, surely!'

‘No, he was imagined by the late disgraced Moreton Canavan. That deceitful and devious merchant now emerges, with Captain Doubleday, as the real instigator of the fraud against Pimbo – of the other one, too, for there were two frauds. The attempt to diddle the insurers Willoughby and Pickle out of fifteen thousand guineas was the other. The crimes are linked, of course, because Canavan needed Pimbo's money first to buy a leaky old ship,
The
Fortunate
Isle
, and then to insure its fictional Guinea voyage, during which it would suffer a pretended slave revolt and be reported sunk far from the land.'

‘But why did he invent for himself a business partner?'

‘Moon was not supposed to be a business partner. Canavan sought to protect himself, in case the scheme were ever discovered, by making out that he himself was just another innocent investor, like Pimbo, and that the real embezzler, then, would be discovered to be Zadok Moon – a man who could not be arrested and turn King's Evidence against Canavan, or anyone else, since he did not exist. But also, for that very reason, Canavan had to hire someone, when required, to be Zadok Moon. He was lucky enough to find Goodenough at Pinchbeck's Coffee House, an actor used to taking on roles of doubtful honesty.'

‘I see it all now!' I burst out. ‘Of course! His original, and most important job was to play the role for Pimbo. He made one or two secretive night-time visits to Cadley Place in the guise of Zadok Moon, and did so, naturally, at Canavan's behest. I did not previously understand why they did not meet in Preston, but now I see that Canavan would not risk exposing a mere actor to the people in the real business world. He'd have no difficulty fooling poor gullible Pimbo in his own home, but he might not stand up to scrutiny by members of the Corporation, should he meet any of them.'

‘He did not reckon with the insurance company investigator, though.'

‘No, Jackson was incalculable. He was altogether too intelligent and determined.'

‘I'm right sorry for Mr Jackson,' said Elijah who, until now, had been listening carefully to all that was said. ‘To have died just as he saw the light and understood that his whole profession was founded on nothing but injustice and cruelty. He did not have the chance to make amends.'

He spoke his words with all the solemnity of a preacher so that the company, as if in meditation, fell into a few moments' silence. This was broken by Mrs George.

‘But what about this actor, Goodenough? Should he not be taken up? Put on trial? Something should be done to him, surely.'

‘I fear he will escape punishment,' I said. ‘The proof of his part in the affair has been extenuated, by time and circumstance. Pimbo cannot give evidence. Doubleday has gone. Miss Peel saw the man she thought was Moon, but only in the dark of night, and cannot swear to what he looked like. Fidelis here is the only witness who clearly saw Goodenough playing Moon, but in that case he merely took delivery of a letter addressed to someone that did not exist. It is not a crime of much weight.'

There was another pause as the company contemplated the doubtfulness of the legal process. Then, quite unexpectedly, old Charles George, who had seemed throughout to be attending more to his food than the conversation, rose unsteadily to his feet with his glass in his hand.

‘Titus,' he said in booming tones, ‘it has been a long pull but you've got there, you and your clever friend. As a member of the profession myself, I am glad to say it was also done with the help of shoemakers. But however it was done, you have got to the bottom of the reasons for the death of poor Phillip Pimbo, and I must congratulate you on that. Truth, Sir, that is what counts: more than punishment, more even than retribution. Without truth, and the trial of truth, there is no justice and no advancement. I salute you, son-in-law, with all my heart. You are a credit to this town. You are an apostle of truth!'

It was a strange moment that I had not looked for. Everybody around the table rose, lifted their glasses and drank my health. I felt myself reddening and, as I got up to reply, stammering.

I did not say much – only that Mr George was right, of course. My job was not to find and punish malefactors but the more significant one of asking questions and finding true answers. In this I always relied on the help of others – my darling Elizabeth, my household, the invaluable Furzey – and in this case, even that pest of a dog Suez, of which I had somehow grown increasingly fond.

‘But not least of all, I owe rather a lot to my friend who has twice the brains and twice the energy of myself. You all know to whom I refer. May I ask you therefore to join me, now, in drinking his health?'

And we did, turning as one to him, lifting our glasses in the air and saying with one loud voice,

‘Luke Fidelis!'

As we called out his name I noticed Mrs Butler looking at our friend, and caught the very faintest gleam in her eye.

 

About the Author

ROBIN BLAKE
is the author of acclaimed works on the artists Van Dyck and Stubbs. He has written, produced and presented extensively for radio, is widely published as a critic, and is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Brunel University. He lives in London. Sign up for email updates
here
.

 

Also by
Robin Blake

Dark Waters

A Dark Anatomy

 

Thank you for buying this

Minotaur ebook.

 

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

 

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

 

For email updates on the author, click
here
.

 

Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Map

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

About the Author

Also by Robin Blake

Copyright

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

 

THE HIDDEN MAN
. Copyright © 2015 by Robin Blake. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

 

www.minotaurbooks.com

 

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Blake, Robin, 1948–

    The hidden man / Robin Blake.—First U.S. edition.

        p. cm.—(Cragg & Fidelis mysteries; 3)

    ISBN 978-1-250-05494-4 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-4668-5785-8 (e-book)

    1.  Coroners—Fiction.   2.  Murder—Investigation—Fiction.   3.  Great Britain—History—1714–1837—Fiction.   4.  Preston (Lancashire, England)—Fiction.   I.  Title.

    PR6102.L347H53 2015

    823'.92—dc23

2014042139