The Scent of Death (24 page)

‘I know. I never doubted it for a moment.’

He nodded, smiling. ‘There’s a good fellow. I knew I could rely on you. That’s why you shall have a wing to yourself. It is no more than you deserve.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You are most obliging.’

‘There’s plenty of room to build, you see.’ His head rocked slowly from side to side on the pillow. ‘I can’t see why old Froude didn’t improve the place himself. Too busy with his hammers and spades, eh, and chasing his confounded bugs and sweating like a negro. So you shall have a whole wing, with a suite of splendid apartments, all fitted up just as you like. And we shall get Bella to find you a wife and we shall rub along very nicely. Shan’t we?’

‘It will be delightful.’

‘We shall be like those men in Cicero.’

‘I’m not quite sure—’

‘You know the story I mean,’ he burst out. ‘Of course you do. You always do.’ He hesitated, frowning, and squinted at me. ‘Juvenal? Is that you? Juvenal? I thought you was dead.’

‘No, sir – I’m Savill, you know, I am—’

‘To be sure, my friend Savill, to be sure. But you sounded like Juvenal, and for a moment I thought you was him – and he would know, I’m certain of it. He minds his lessons, you see, and I never do.’

‘What would he know?’

‘Who those men in the story were. Was one called David? No – but it was a name like that. There was a tyrant too.’

Suddenly I saw whom Wintour might mean. I dredged up scraps of knowledge from my schooldays. ‘Damon and Pythias? The friends who fell foul of Dionysius, the Tyrant of Syracuse?’

‘Of course. But they were true to each other through thick and thin and all ended well. Just as it will for us. And you shall have your wing. And a wife to put in it.’

‘That is excellent news,’ I said. ‘And now, perhaps it is time for sleep.’

He ignored what I had said and raised his forefinger as if summoning a waiter in a tavern. ‘So let us see it.’

‘I beg your pardon – the wing?’

Again, he lowered his voice. ‘The box.’ His arm swung outwards and nudged my shoulder. ‘The box! We shall need it if you are to have your wing, shan’t we? We shall need it for … for everything.’

‘I told you – I don’t have it.’

‘Ah – of course. I forgot. It’s still there.’

I hazarded a guess. ‘At Mount George?’

‘Will it take long to get there?’

‘Not long, I dare say, when you are better. Would you like another sip of water?’

He did not refuse, so I raised his head again and gave him more to drink. Afterwards, he lay back with his eyes closed, breathing heavily.

Slowly I rose to my feet and moved away. I looked at the doctor, who nodded and smiled. I was aware of Mrs Arabella and the Judge, their faces turned towards me. The light was too poor for me to be able to read their expressions.

A movement on the bed made me swing round. Wintour had turned his head on the pillow. His eyes were open. They glowed with fire, reflecting the flames of the candelabra on the night table.

‘Savill?’ he whispered. ‘Are you there?’

I crouched beside the bed so my head was on a level with his. ‘Yes – I’m here.’

‘Not a dream?’

‘No.’ I stretched out an arm and touched his shoulder. ‘See? You are awake, and so am I.’

‘Yes.’ He drew in his breath slowly. ‘You will come with me, won’t you? To Mount George? I don’t want to go alone.’

The room was silent, as if everyone and everything between these four walls were holding their breath, waiting for my answer.

‘Yes, of course I will,’ I said. ‘Now, go to sleep.’

That night, Captain Wintour slept peacefully for six hours. By morning, the fever had diminished. He accepted a mouthful of broth and a small glass of wine.

The crisis had passed. I spent the day at the office. When I returned to Warren Street in the evening, I supped alone with the Judge. The Captain had eaten more broth and was now sleeping again. Mrs Wintour was still convalescing from her putrid cold and Mrs Arabella was lying down with the migraine.

Mr Wintour was convinced that his son’s recovery was due in large measure to me and nothing I could say would dissuade him from this opinion.

‘He listens to you, my dear sir,’ he said, pressing my hand. ‘He trusts you. I believe you made him feel that all was well. Then he could sleep at last and let nature be his physician.’

We sat for nearly an hour over our wine. Towards the end the Judge grew confidential.

‘I cannot understand my son’s desire to see Mount George,’ he said. ‘It is the height of folly.’

‘It was the fever speaking, surely?’

‘I think not – he’s cherished the scheme for some time now, has he not? And what is this box he talked o
f
?’

‘Did you not tell me your brother had a box of curiosities?’ I said.

‘Yes, but that was never at Mount George.’

I smiled. ‘Then perhaps the fever made it so.’

‘I remember now.’ The Judge wrinkled his forehead. ‘I remember how I came to tell you of my brother’s cabinet of antiquities. You had asked me whether poor Mr Pickett had mentioned a box of curiosities when he paid his visit to us.’

‘It can hardly be the same box,’ I said. ‘Anyway, the Captain talked a deal of nonsense last night, did he not? You remember my projected suite of apartments at Mount George. And he called me Juvenal at one moment. Why should he do that?’

‘That at least I can explain, sir.’ He turned his head toward the dark shape standing behind his chair. ‘See – here is Josiah. You recall I told you that he grew up with my brother Francis? Well, Juvenal was John’s slave. I gave him the lad as a playmate on his sixth birthday.’ He leaned closer to me and lowered his voice. ‘But – to go back to this mad freak of John’s about Mount George. Will you try to dissuade him from it if he mentions it to you again? There is no possible advantage in his going there until the whole province has been restored to the King’s Peace.’

I promised to do my best, and our conversation turned to
other things. Three-quarters of an hour later, however, when we said goodnight, Mr Wintour gave me his hand, which he did not usually do.

‘I know one thing,’ he said. ‘That my son considers you his friend. You have not seen him at his best since his return from Canada, but he is an affectionate boy – a good boy at heart – I should say man, I suppose. He does not bestow his friendship lightly.’

I gently disengaged my hand. ‘I’m honoured that he should think of me as a friend, sir.’

‘Damon and Pythias,’ he said, smiling. ‘Those dear comrades of antiquity. John compared your friendship to theirs. It would give me much joy if he spoke no more than sober truth.’

The following morning, at my office, I barred my door to all callers and settled down to write my memorandum about Mr Pickett’s murder. For the benefit of Mr Rampton and his masters, I outlined the facts of the case again and listed in some detail the measures that Major Marryot and I had taken to enquire into the crime, both in August last year and more recently.

I concluded that we had found nothing new of any consequence but added that we would of course keep the case open and put out a general warrant for the arrest of the scar-faced negro who might have had some connection with the murder.

I sanded the last sheet of paper and read it over. Marryot and I would sign it in the afternoon and it would go out with the mail on the next packet home.

I told myself that I did not wish to confuse matters with gossip, speculation and irrelevant information. Therefore, I did not mention the two items of information I had learned from the Reverend Dr Slype – that Pickett had been a rebel soldier in New York in 1776, and that, some time earlier, he might have sold his land in North Carolina to Mr Froude of Mount George. Nor did I mention that Captain Wintour, Froude’s son-in-law, attached a curious importance to a box of curiosities. I also omitted the facts that Mr Froude had been killed at Mount George and that I was now lodging at his daughter’s house in New York.

For the same reasons, I decided that it would be unwise to confide in Major Marryot when I saw him. I could not rely on his discretion. Besides, any civil servant knows that, when in doubt, one should if at all possible let sleeping dogs lie.

All this was true. Indeed, it was more than true – it was prudent as well. But all this was also a cloak concealing another, deeper truth: that there was some intrigue afoot involving the Wintours; and I did not want to commit myself to any irrevocable action until I knew more about its nature.

I was a civil servant, loyal to my office and to the Crown. But I was also a man of flesh and blood and heart. I had grown attached to the Wintours, to all four of them, though in very different ways. I did not wish to cause them unnecessary pain or difficulty, for they had enough of both to contend with as it was.

It amounted, I supposed, to a question of loyalties; and I tried scrupulously to weigh out the portions, so that each loyalty I owed received its due measure.

Despite his wounds, despite the privations he had suffered after Saratoga, despite his consumption of rumbo, Captain Wintour recovered with a rapidity that amazed his doctor and his nurses. Within three days the fever had subsided and the wound in his shoulder was no longer oozing pus. He was very weak, however, and spent much of the time sleeping.

His mother was allowed to see him. She brought him arrowroot jelly and, perching like a little bird on his bed, fed it to him with her own hand. I had never seen her look so happy or act so vigorously. It was as if she gained strength from his weakness.

As he grew better, Wintour’s temper soured. I understood him better now. I knew that inaction wearied him. He had no taste for reading. He fretted at his confinement.

I fell into the habit of looking in on him – after dinner if I dined at Warren Street or sometimes in the evening. He wanted to hear what they were saying in Headquarters, what the gossip was in the coffee houses, what people were doing on the street, who had come and gone in the city. Strange to say, an unexpected intimacy developed between us.

Sometimes we played at cards, draughts or backgammon. After the evening before Christmas, I had made a private vow never to play with him again. But Wintour was different now, and perhaps I was too. We played for pennies instead of guineas. The regimen of the sickroom prevented him from drinking more than a few glasses of wine a day. As a result, his head was clearer and he revealed himself to have a fine talent for calculating the odds. I lost more than I won.

For a week or so of his convalescence, Wintour remained in his own chamber. For the first time I saw the room by daylight. To the right of the fireplace hung a small and clumsily executed portrait of two boys, one in a green coat and the other wearing blue. I suspected it was the work of a colonial artist. The lads were about ten years old. Behind them was a backdrop painted to resemble a rather cluttered ruin from classical antiquity, complete with broken pillars, crumbling walls and headless marble statues. The boy in green was of European descent. His eyes were strikingly large and he gazed out of the past with a winning smile. But the boy in blue had a face with a dusky African hue, though his features were regular, even handsome. He stared at his companion but he was not smiling. Around his neck was a silver collar.

Wintour noticed me looking at the picture. He paused in shuffling the cards. ‘Do you find me much changed?’

‘I beg your pardon – ah, I see. That is you in the green coat, I apprehend?’

‘Yes. My mother commissioned it. It was a tiresome business indeed, being painted. My best suit of clothes, and having to stand still for hours.’

‘And the negro?’

‘My slave Juvenal. We did everything together for a while – he shared my lessons and my sports. I believe he was a better scholar than my tutor by the end of it.’

‘You mentioned his name when you were ill,’ I said.

‘Did I?’ Wintour slid card after card across the table. ‘I talked a deal of nonsense, I’m sure.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘Juvenal? He died. Now pick up your hand, sir, and I shall give you your revenge.’

We played out another game of picquet, which he won.

‘By the way, sir,’ he said afterwards. ‘How is my wife?’

The question startled me. For an instant I even wondered if it was an oblique accusation of some improper intimacy on my behalf.

‘I have seen very little of her in the last week, sir,’ I said. ‘I believe she has the headache and keeps to her room.’

Wintour gathered the cards together. ‘She is never well nowadays,’ he said.

As I came out of Wintour’s chamber that afternoon, I found Noak on the landing. He was emerging from the sitting room set aside for the ladies, though Mrs Arabella was the only person who used it much.

I was surprised to see him there. He was a familiar figure in the library and I sometimes encountered him in the drawing room reading to Mrs Wintour. But I had never seen him on this floor of the house, which was frequented only by the family and myself.

He bowed to me. I wished him good-day.

‘The Judge sent me to fetch a book from Mrs Arabella.’ He spread his hands wide, showing they were empty. ‘But she is nowhere to be seen.’

‘Perhaps I have seen it – what is the book?’

‘A volume of
The Spectator
, sir.’

‘I will mention it to Mrs Arabella when I see her. Which one?’

‘The third.’

Noak thanked me and followed me downstairs.

At supper that night, I turned the conversation to Mr Noak.

‘He is so obliging,’ Judge Wintour said. ‘I was saying this afternoon that I wanted diversion and nothing would satisfy him but I should have a particular volume of
The Spectator
with a most diverting specimen on clubs. He turned the house upside down for it and was mortified he could not find it.’

The fact remained, I thought, that Noak had been in the ladies’ sitting room when it was empty. And now it seemed that the reason he had given for being there had been manufactured by himself.