The Poisoned Island (13 page)

“And Horton maintains his customary
investigative
air?”

“Indeed. The man is a ferret. He can sniff out hearsay and evidence like a French pig sniffs out truffles. But what of
your
involvement in all this, Graham? Do you know the ship well?”

“Alas no, old friend.” Something about that
old friend
sounds forced to Harriott’s ears, too self-consciously emollient. “I am merely an investor via my connections within the Royal Society. The trip is the creation of Sir Joseph, who has, if I may say so, been a devilish irritating creature these past weeks as we expected the ship’s return. Every detail checked, every slither of news pored over, fussing and fretting like a woman organizing her daughter’s marriage.”

Graham pauses, as if to go on, but there it is again: the shadow between them, the narrative which cannot be mentioned, whispered by Graham months before during a dark winter’s night. Harriott flounders for something to say, but then finds himself.

“I assume the monies involved are very great?” he says.

“For me, not at all. Merely enough to keep up appearances. For the President, a great deal more. I understand even he has had to mortgage some estates in the Midlands.”

“And the purpose of the trip?”

“Entirely botanical. Firstly, to demonstrate the latest techniques in transporting flora over long maritime distances. Secondly, to bring back seeds and plants for the Gardens at
Kew. Thirdly, to stock Sir Joseph’s herbarium with even more materials.”

“And the trip was a success?”

“Almost a complete one. A great many plants survived the trip, thanks to Hopkins and the techniques sketched out by the President. And even more seeds were returned. Many plants died, of course, but the losses were well within those predicted by Sir Joseph. He mourns the deaths, nevertheless.”

For a moment, Harriott finds himself wondering on that word
deaths.

“But it is a trip of months, not weeks,” he says. “It is a miracle any plants survived at all.”

“Indeed. But as he ages, Sir Joseph’s glass is always half-empty, not the half-full measure to which he had been formerly accustomed.”

“Well, he is not alone in finding the world a harder place as age increases.”

“Indeed not, Harriott, indeed not.”

They have barely nibbled at the edges of the food on the table, delicious though it is, and this now craves Harriott’s full attention for some time. His appetite, which remains strong but declines rapidly with his mood, is such that he feels he could eat all evening, and he attacks the dishes with gusto.

“So, my dear Harriott,” says Graham, whose own appetite seems somewhat to have declined. “I will discuss the matter with Sidmouth, and we will see if we can pull Markland away. Is there anything else with which I can help?”

“Well, Graham, I was rather hoping to approach Banks.”

“Ah.”

Graham looks like a man who has just received some expected bad news, and is considering how to respond to it.

“That may be difficult,” Harriott says at last. “Would he not want to be kept informed?”

“Almost certainly. But—and this is indelicate—he surely does not bother himself with the details of a trip such as the
Solander
’s.”

“A man’s death can hardly be described as a mere detail, Graham.”

The Bow Street magistrate does not respond to that. But the meaning of his silence is clear. The Bow Street magistrate’s sangfroid is legendary in London, but now he is fidgeting like a boy caught stealing from an orchard.

“Here is what I would do. In the first instance, you could try Brown.”

“Brown?”

“Robert Brown. His librarian and I suppose his assistant. He goes pretty much everywhere Sir Joseph goes. He can normally be found at the residence of the President, in Soho Square.”

“Yes. I know where Sir Joseph lives.”

“Ah, yes. Well, of course you do.”

Graham looks miserable. Harriott is full—
as full as an egg
, as his second wife used to say—but Graham has barely touched his food since the first mention of the
Solander
. Harriott says nothing for a while, waiting for Graham to take up the reins of the conversation. Eventually, the younger man appears to force himself to say something to break the uncomfortable silence.

“You do believe—you are
certain
—that this fellow was not just the victim of a simple dockside robbery?” he asks.

The question is an odd one. Perhaps even an impertinent one. Graham, it seems, would somehow wish that this matter would go away. Harriott controls his temper as he answers.

“It remains a possibility. But if so, what was taken? The man’s money was left behind. Horton is trying to seek out the
why
of all this.”

“He will no doubt be successful.”

“I trust so.”

“You have no thoughts yourself?”

“None at all. The man’s neck was bruised, I am told, confirming the analysis of strangulation. But he had a confoundedly happy grin on his face, which struck Horton as most odd. He seems to have died happy, in any case.”

Graham, ruefully, looks at his fork.

“We should all like to die happy,” he says.

“Indeed. But what does an illiterate sailor with grim lodgings and a fat old mistress have to be happy about?”

“I sometimes think an ordinary life would be more desirable than the one I lead.”

Harriott stares at Graham. It is as if the Bow Street magistrate had just admitted to a sympathy for the Jacobin revolutionaries. Graham barely notices, and then speaks with unaccustomed urgency.

“I will do what I can, Harriott. But tread carefully. And I beg of you—do not approach Sir Joseph until you are sure of what you know.”

“I am no child, Graham.”

“Indeed you are not. But Sir Joseph is one of this nation’s great men. He can snap a man’s reputation as easily as a tiger chews on a bird.”

From the
hookha
room comes the sound of young men, giggling.

At first, before he starts thinking, Horton feels only a dull anger with himself as he stands in the shoddy boarding room, surrounded by the scarlet of violent death. Abigail is on her way back to Wapping, leaving him here to dwell on the cataclysm before him and the fact that the one thing that is never supposed to happen has now happened, for the second time in days.

Abigail has once again seen things she shouldn’t ever see.

Something has been broken between him and his wife, although it may be a something of which Abigail knows nothing. His wife was to have been preserved and protected in her own calm world, a place in which the visions of this terrible room were at worst unfamiliar shades. Of course Abigail knows that violent death is as much a part of London as the abusive fishwives of Billingsgate. She is an intelligent woman. But she is also a special kind of woman, believes Horton, for she is a woman who has been willing to take him up and
tend to his wounds both physical and spiritual. In the careful project around which he has reconstructed his life, protection of this special woman has long been the single priority. In this he has now failed. Twice.

Why had he followed the man from the
Solander
? Why had he pursued this awful coincidence? Wasn’t it the truth that, from the moment he saw the man getting out of the wherry, he had forgotten all about his obligations to his wife?

For there can be no doubt that Abigail did glimpse what was inside that room, just as she had seen the dead body of poor Sam Ransome. In that awful moment when she had looked around the door, she had seen the two bodies on the beds, the cascades of red upon the walls behind them, and the fearsome ribbons which lay where their necks should have been. She also saw the way the room had been torn to pieces, the furniture (what there was of it) knocked about, the men’s canvas bags ransacked, clothes and boots flung around as if by some enraged animal. And perhaps she took in, or perhaps she did not, the first thing that Horton himself noticed: the terrible stillness of the two bodies on the beds, the way their faces looked up to the ceiling and their arms lay by their sides. The way they were smiling.

Abigail saw some or all of this, even before Horton was able to drag her away from the door, even while the young clerical man from the
Solander
screamed and sobbed in the hallway behind them. Horton had folded her face into his shoulder as he’d pushed her away, pulling the door closed behind him, feeling a growing sense of panic. How was he to both preserve the evidence of the room and protect his wife, with all these people shoving and shouting? If he took her out into the street, no doubt some curious fellow would open that terrible door, and then another type of hell would
break loose, the avaricious curiosity of the mob, and whatever evidence lay in the room would be destroyed.

These thoughts took barely a second to cohere, and within that second Abigail herself answered his question. She pulled her face away from his shoulder, and the cold rage Horton felt with himself dropped in temperature even further when he saw her pale expression and the firm cast of her eyes. She looked shocked and appalled, but she also looked determined. She seemed hard at that moment, he remembers thinking.
And I have made her so.

“I am calm, Charles,” said Abigail. “I feel the terror of this place, but I am calm. Now, do what you must do.”

And she had turned and left the lodging house, her shoulders small and strong in the shouting throng. He remembered the way the back of her head had looked as she lay sleeping the night after they had discovered the body of Sam Ransome. His back to the door in that noisy Rotherhithe house, he’d felt a sick and unforgettable mix of anger, shame, pride, and loneliness. The image was locked in his mind as if in some future anniversary gift, a locket containing the picture of the wife leaving her husband with a determined sadness, the husband abandoning his wife to some remorseless and unforgiving Duty.

The strange man who’d brought them there was still on his haunches against the opposite wall. He was making a lowing sound like an injured cat as Abigail walked away. A group of children were watching him curiously, while adults stood around shouting at each other and demanding to know of Horton what had happened.

“Give us room!” shouted Horton. “There has been a terrible crime perpetrated in this house. I am an officer of the River Police Office, under the authority of magistrate John
Harriott, and in his name I am securing the room from any entry. Who is the landlord of this place?”

A fat man with no hair and a bloodstained apron made himself known, and began to complain of the intrusion, but Horton shouted him down.

“Sir, there is no time to debate this matter. It seems the crime committed in this building has only just happened, perhaps even minutes ago.”

A female shriek went up at that, and a bubble of chatter.

“I must insist that no one enters the room behind me. I shall go in there myself shortly to secure what evidence there is. I need to get a message to the Police Office in Wapping immediately. Is there a boy or ticket porter here willing to take it?”

A dirty youth of perhaps fourteen presented himself. Horton decided to take a chance on him, however unpromising his appearance.

“Tuppence for you, lad, to take a message to John Harriott, magistrate of the River Police Office on Wapping Street. Message is:
terrible crime committed in boardinghouse between Rotherhithe and Deptford, possibly related to current investigations, require immediate assistance of four officers
. Repeat it, please.”

The youth did so, but not to Horton’s satisfaction, so they tried again. When the youth had repeated it perfectly three times, Horton sent him away, saying he’d be paid when he returned with River Police constables. The youth looked like he was thinking about complaining about this proposal, but after another close look at Horton he appeared to decide on trusting him, and left.

Horton turned his attention to the young man from the
Solander
, who was still sobbing, his face hidden in the forearm
laid across his knees. Horton grabbed both of the man’s arms and pulled him to his feet.

“Calm yourself, man. You must be calm.”

The young man’s despair was painted onto his face. Horton made some rapid but, he hoped, accurate conclusions. The man had initially run out of the boardinghouse because he was alarmed by something, which also explained his reluctance to return when Horton had approached him. But this wailing despair was something else. It had the flavor of deeper fears, but also of a desperate sadness. His reaction had changed between leaving the boardinghouse the first time, and returning with Horton and Abigail. Which must mean something else had changed as well.

“Listen to me.”

Horton pushed the hubbub of the crowd around them away. His back was still firmly against the closed door of the room. No one could pass him. The other man’s head was slumped and his shoulders were still bouncing with half-swallowed sobs, but he looked up then, and his brown-black eyes were cloudy and waterlogged.