Quincunx

  At that moment there is a hammering at the street-door.

  A minute later the boy, pale-faced, opens the door into the inner closet without knocking and says: “Sheriff’s officers, Mr Clothier, sir.”

  Leaving his employer sitting in surprise, Mr Vulliamy briskly gets up and walks into the outer office where he says: “Good evening, gentlemen. I believe it is I whom you are seeking.”

  “Why, that’s wery pleasant of you, sir.” the sheriff says. “I wish all our customers was eq’ally obleeging.”

  While Mr Clothier stands at the door to his inner sanctum, Mr Vulliamy places himself in the custody of the officers and is led away so very calmly and looking at his benefactor so very strangely as he goes, that he leaves the old gentleman quite pale with astonishment and unease.

  CHAPTER 107

  Shortly before ten o’clock Henry rose and said: “We should go now or we’ll be late.”

  He went to one of the windows and pulled back the shutters: “I can’t see a blessed thing,” he announced. “The fog has closed down.”

  “Can we not put it off until tomorrow?” asked Mr Pamplin.

  “By no means,” Henry replied firmly.

  “But the hackney-coach will take hours, if we can even succeed in engaging a driver who will venture out.”

  “Precisely,” Henry said. “So it will be much quicker and more certain to go on foot.”

  “What!” Mr Pamplin cried. “You’re out of your senses. I would not dream of walking so far on such a night.”

  “Nevertheless, that is what must be. I know the way and could find the street if I were blind-folded.”

  “Oh very well,” said the clergyman ungraciously, and he poured himself another glass from the decanter, draining it as he got to his feet.

  Henry took up and lighted a lanthorn. Then he passed a great-coat to me and when we were all wrapped up against the weather we set off.

  The bitter choking air that we encountered as we went from the bottom of the staircase into the courtyard made me gasp. It tasted so powerfully of smoking coal fires that it was like being in a room in which the smoke is blowing back down the chimney. We could see only a few paces ahead and as we left the inn the noise of what little traffic there was seemed muffled. Because of the density of the fog the lanthorn cast only a dim light.

  “I’ll go ahead,” Henry said as we reached the street. “We shall march like Roman legionaries, haeret pede pes, each one’s foot sticking to the other’s. You keep behind me, John, for as Ovid says ‘medio tutissimus ibis’ — it is safest in the middle.”

  “I say, it’s too beastly cold for Latin, Bellringer.”

  “And as for you, Charles, I think you’d be happiest keeping up the rear.”

  Mr Pamplin snorted and we set off. Though I quickly lost all sense of direction, Henry clearly knew exactly where we were and kept striding purposefully ahead.

  We had been walking for some time through almost deserted streets when, as we were descending a long narrow lane I fancied I heard another party ahead of us.

  I asked Henry to stop and we paused to listen.

  “Deuce take it, Bellringer,” Mr Pamplin said, “we could be murdered. It was a damnably foolish idea to come on foot.”

  “Hold your tongue,” his friend ordered.

  We strained our ears but heard nothing.

  “It’s your fancy, John,” Henry said, and we walked on.

  However, just before we reached the mouth of the lane several figures suddenly emerged from the fog behind us and in an instant a strong hand was placed across my mouth and my arms were gripped so that it was painful for me to move. In the darkness and fog I could make out little of what was happening, but I heard sounds indicating that Henry was fighting back and saw the lanthorn fall as someone grappled with him. Then I thought I saw him knocked to the ground. Mr Pamplin had disappeared into the fog at the moment that Henry and I were attacked. I tried to struggle but was punched hard in the ribs and rendered breathless.

  A voice from nearby that I thought I had heard before said: “Search him. Quickly.”

  A hand rifled my pockets and found nothing. In the midst of all this, I congratulated myself for my forethought in concealing the precious document around my neck.

  The man holding me cried in a voice that was also horribly familiar: “I can’t find nothing!”

  Then I was bodily dragged down the lane to the entrance towards which we had been making our way so that it occurred to me even at that moment that we had walked into an elaborate ambuscade. Here I was suddenly lifted up and caught a glimpse of a coach-door before I was thrown onto the straw of the floor. I found myself sprawling at the feet of a man who was already in the coach who spoke from the darkness:

  “Excellent work!”

  My assailant knelt upon my back still holding a hand over my mouth while the third man boarded the coach, slamming the door and calling out to the driver as the vehicle moved off. I was in despair for by now I had recognised both my assailants and the man who had been waiting in the coach: they were Dr Alabaster and his assistants, Hinxman and Rookyard.

  CHAPTER 108

  As I lay on the floor of the rocking coach with Hinxman’s weight still upon me, I wept with vexation, not for the danger to myself so much as the fact that after all that I had endured in order to obtain the will it was going to be taken from me, and whatever happened I would lose my chance of regaining my rights and obtaining justice against those who had wronged my mother. But how had it happened that I found myself once again in the power of my enemies? How had they known where to find me?

  As for my fate, I expected to be taken back to the madhouse and there to be imprisoned for the remainder of my life — however long or short that might be, for I could not expect another opportunity to escape. There was no point in struggling or trying to scream. And so, as the coach moved at barely walking-pace through the dense fog, I gave way to tears of rage and misery.

  However, it seemed that my surmise about our destination was wrong for after only some ten or twenty minutes, the vehicle came almost to a halt in order to make a sharp turn and then it very slowly descended a steep slope. I knew that must mean we were approaching the river and indeed I could smell its salt-stale fragrance mingled with the fog. Now the coach came to a complete stop. I was carried out, still gripped in such a way that I could not struggle or cry out, taken through a door and then flung onto the ground. For a few moments I was dazzled by the bright gas-lights above me.

  Then I looked up and found myself gazing into the face of a little old man who was smiling down at me with the most curiously intense expression. I had seen him before. But where? And when was it? He was pale and skinny and, with his legs encased in tight pantaloons which emphasized this, his bulging paunch was all the more obvious. All of his costume — the fly-blown and powdered perruque like a black cauliflower perched on his balding scull, his torn and dirty frock-coat, his neckerchief of yellowing cambric, his black finger-gloves, his green horn-rimmed spectacles, and his salt-and-pepper breeches — seemed appropriate to an earlier age.

  “Good work,” he said to Alabaster with a smile — if it can be called that, for his mouth merely opened slightly while his tongue licked his upper lip. “You’ll be well paid. Tie him up and take him down.”

  Hinxman secured my hands and he and Rookyard carried me down two flights of steps into a dank cellar lined with ancient hogsheads and empty casks. The smell was more than mere dampness; it was a sharp rivery smell.

  They threw me on the ground near an open trap-door that was like the top of a well, and then went away leaving me in darkness. After a few minutes the old man came down carrying a lanthorn and approached me, walking with a curious crab-like sideways motion. As if I were nothing more than a parcel, he reached down, tore open my coat and felt for the cord around my neck. As his hands groped for it I wondered how he could have known to look there. He removed it and tore it open. Holding it near to the lanthorn, he read it avid
ly while the light cast a huge flickering shadow on the damp wall behind him. Then he folded it, opened the lanthorn, stuck the document into the flame and held it as it burned.

  After all I had gone through! After all that Great-aunt Lydia had endured and died for! To lose all hope of restoring my family’s fortunes, of achieving Justice to redress the balance for their sufferings!

  He held it the other way around until it was completely burnt and then broke it up and scattered the ashes down the trap-door.

  Now that he turned and looked down at me thoughtfully, his face illuminated from below by the lanthorn so that it threw shadows across his face, I found the solution to what had been troubling my memory: “I saw you that time I was ill at Daniel Porteous’s house!” I cried.

  He was the old man I had seen during my fever and not known when I awoke if I had seen him in my dreams or in reality.

  He looked at me as if surprised that I could speak.

  “You’re Daniel Porteous’s father!” I exclaimed. Then the further implications of this struck me: “You’re Peter Clothier’s father! In that case, you’re my …”

  His countenance darkened as I broke off. So this was my mother’s and my Enemy and the prime mover of all my and my family’s woes!

  He stared at me piercingly.

  “Your nothing,” he said. “I’m the father of the unfortunate husband of your mother.” He said something further about her and then reached into his pocket and pulled a small object out and thrust it at me, holding the lanthorn for me to see it by. “This woman,” he said.

  What he was holding was the locket that my mother had prized so highly and whose loss had saddened her so much. It still had the circlet made of two intertwined locks of hair.

  “It was this that led me to your precious mother,” he said. “For one of my pledge-takers recognised my son.”

  As he spoke he held it for a moment over the trap-door and then dropped it. There was a brief silence and then I thought I heard a faint splash. Was the river beneath us? I recalled the occasion when Joey and I had escaped from the rising tide through the vaults of a warehouse and wondered if I were once again near the Fleet-market.

  “Why did you hound her to her death?” I demanded. “Why do you hate her?”

  “What a lot of questions!” he said with that sinister smile that was no smile.

  “Tell me! Tell me the truth!”

  “Why, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” he said, still smiling. “It can’t hurt now and we’ve a little time, for the tide is low.”

  What did he mean? Was he planning to ship me abroad? The sight of the locket had awakened painful memories and made me reckless of my own safety. I had to complete the pattern, whatever my fate was to be.

  “Was it you who had my grandfather murdered?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “It was you,” I insisted. “You paid a man called Barney Digweed.”

  “Never heard of him,” he answered.

  Could that be the truth? That my surmise that Barney had been involved was quite wide of the mark? It was true that I had only inferential evidence.

  Then as if suddenly angry the old man shouted: “I’ll tell you the truth, but you won’t want to hear it. Your mother drove Peter to it. The fact is, he thought himself too fine a gentleman to have an honest money-lender for his dad. He was happy enough to take my money though he professed to be horrified to find out what kind of hard work had paid for his fine manners and his book-learning. I had such hopes for him. But he didn’t love me enough to justify the money I spent on him.”

  While he was speaking he attached a stout rope to an iron ring in the wall: “Then he met your mother and she and her father turned him against me. Poor lad, they pulled him in so many directions there’s no wonder that his wits addled. Mind you, he had good cause to make an end of Huffam for he stood to gain by his death. Just as she did.”

  “That’s not true! She wasn’t like you say!”

  “She trapped Peter with her woman’s wiles and drove him to it as surely as if she’d plotted it herself. (This rope is devilish long! No matter.) I had nothing to gain from Huffam’s death. On the contrary, for it turned Daniel against me. Against his old dad who has worked all his life to make him what he is and leave him a wealthy man! He changed his name shortly after that when he married a rich widow, saying he was afraid of the scandal of the murder and the trial. Oh, he told me it would mean that he and I could do business together without anyone knowing that we were kin. And it’s true that he contrived to bring his banking-house, Quintard and Mimpriss, to underwrite some of my little undertakings. But I know it wasn’t just that. What started as the pretence that we were strangers has now become the truth.”

  Quintard and Mimpriss! Of course! That was the bank which was implicated in the speculation that Sancious had involved my mother in. I recalled the name from one of his letters to her about it. And then I had heard the name mentioned in Court as that of Porteous’s employer.

  “Yes, Daniel is ashamed of me now just as Peter was,” the old man went on. “It isn’t fair! He’ll have everything when I die. All my properties in Town and now he’ll get the Hougham lands, too. But he can’t hide his contempt from me. And that girl of his, does she care for her old grand-dad? She wrinkles up her elegant nose when I come into the room. But she won’t refuse her share of my money, I’ll be bound.”

  Now he was securing the other end of the rope tightly around my waist: “I never sought revenge against your mother. All I ever wanted was my rights. They were taken from me when I was barely out of my teens. Those proud Huffams and Mompessons despised my father and me, but they needed us. Oh yes, they came running to us when they wanted money for their grand ways, their houses and carriages. When did I ever enjoy such things? And yet I could have done so a thousand times over.”

  “It was for your rights that you killed my mother!” I cried. “You put Assinder up to turning her away from Sir Perceval’s house!”

  “So you know about that!” he exclaimed. “Well, what harm can it do now? Yes, I pay him to watch out for my interests. For one thing, he makes sure those damned Mompessons aren’t trying to convert the assets of the estate before it falls into my grasp. Though I know he helps himself to their rents, so it won’t be long before they catch him.”

  “You drove her to her death!” I cried.

  “She took the codicil that I had a good claim to and held onto it and tried to keep me from my rights,” he shouted and began to push and pull me along the floor towards the trap-door.

  “But it wasn’t just that! You needed her to be dead before you could inherit. Just as you need me to …”

  Of course! He intended to push me into the trap and let me be drowned as the tide rose! But why the rope? Presumably he wanted to be able to pull my body out again for some reason. Then it came to me: He needed my body to prove that I was dead!

  “What about Henry Bellringer?” I cried in despair. “Is he an agent of yours like Sancious and Assinder?”

  “Enough questions,” he answered, panting with his exertions.

  I began to struggle as far as I was able to, given that I was securely bound, but though I kicked out at him with my feet he managed at last to push me over the edge. I hit the water only five or six feet below the level of the cellar floor, fortunately descending feet first. It was freezing. The old man held the lanthorn above me and I saw him looking down with a strangely solicitous expression. Then he dropped the trap-door and I was in utter darkness.

  I kicked with my feet to stay upright. And I struggled to get my hands free, but they were fastened beyond any possibility of release. In less than an hour the rising tide would be pressing me against the trap-door. He would have locked it or would be standing on it. Judging by the stench I had noticed, the tide probably covered the floor of the cellar. I would drown. I would drown sooner if I became too numbed to keep my head above the water. So this was death. And nobody but he would ever know t
he truth of it. What would Joey and his mother think of me? How would they remember me? As the one who had brought about the death of their father and husband? What other claim upon their remembrance did I have? I had killed him, and even if I had rescued Joey once from certain death that could not efface my responsibility. Even though I had saved him at risk of my own life.

  Then it came to me! Saved him from death by drowning! Saved him from a vault that was under water! And we had come up into a cellar that was like this one! Then perhaps where I was now was the top of such a vault for I remembered that they were separated by pillars which were submerged as the tide rose. It occurred to me that if this was where I was then I might be able to get into the next vault and the cellar above it by going under the surface and coming up again, as I had on that occasion. The difficulty of doing this when tied to a rope and with my hands secured terrified me, but I had no choice. And if I did not do it soon I would be too numbed by cold to have any chance. It meant rushing upon danger rather than merely waiting for it to come upon me.

  The rope was long, perhaps long enough to let me get so far. But what if it was not? Trying not to think of that, I dived beneath the surface and felt for the hollow beneath the arch. I could not find it. Was this vault, then, different from the one from which I had rescued Joey? I rose to the surface for breath and dived again. This time I found space and went under it. I kicked my legs and moved some yards. Then I came up in absolute blackness. But there seemed to be space above me. I shouted and from the nature of the echo I deduced that there was indeed a void above me. I was surely in the next vault! Terrified that the rope would hold me back at any moment so that I would merely drown in that vault rather than the first one, I felt for the ladder and began to climb it. In a few moments I was at the top! The trap-door was the next obstacle. I pushed and it rose a few inches. I heaved again and at last managed to raise it. I scrambled into the cellar unable to see a thing, and as I rose to my feet I reached the full extent of the rope’s length! Was I yet above the reach of the tide? Well, I would find out. So I stood like that as the tide rose to the lip of the trap, bubbled through it, and began to rise about my ancles, then my knees, until it reached my waist. Was I going to drown after all like a rat in a trap? I waited, my eyes wide open in the dark, my forehead feverish in the icy cold, recalling what I had read of the poor wretches waiting for the rising tide at Execution-dock.