Quincunx

  The Digweeds! That must be the answer for they linked Barney with my mother’s house. At that realization it was as if the formless lump of links snapped straight and I saw the connexions that enchained me. Had Mrs Digweed and her son come to the house not by chance as they had claimed, but in connexion with the house-breaking that had taken place a few years before? I remembered how I had discovered Joey apparently searching my mother’s escritoire that night they had stayed with us. Was he the same Joey that Barney had referred to just now? And yet it all seemed very fine-spun and wire-drawn. In strict logic, I could have no certainty that there was any connexion between Barney and Mrs Digweed. Yet if there was, then perhaps he was her husband? Though when I recalled her frankness and kindliness I could not believe that she was the consort of a criminal, and I did not want to. To accept that she had come to my mother’s house fraudulently and abused my mother’s generosity and trust was too horrible an idea to entertain. And yet I could see no alternative, except to assume that the re-appearance of the housebreaker in my life was the product of mere chance. Yet even this did not end the matter for if it were completely accidental, then in a paradoxical way that implied a kind of design. The thought made my head spin and at that moment there suddenly came into my mind the memory of Barney boasting that he had killed a gentleman. From what he had said, it appeared to have been about a year before my birth. If he were indeed so mysteriously connected with myself and my family and if he had acted as an agent of the Clothiers, could it not be that the murder he had hinted at was … ? No, surely I was mad to speculate so far! Yet everything seemed to be connected and to fit together.

  Now it came to me: my life had a design, but it was that of another! I wondered who held the threads of the conspiracy, who had spun them and why? But at least by seeing the pattern I had escaped being caught in the web. From now on I would no longer be a mere pawn of destiny. I would give my life a purpose and it would be to seek Justice. To seek Justice for my mother and my father and my grandfather and myself against those who had done us wrong. Against Mrs Fortisquince and her smiling duplicity. Against the cold-hearted and arrogant Mompessons. Above all, against Silas Clothier who surely held the threads in his mouth.

  At any rate, I knew I had to get away, and this very night. Quickly and silently I got up and dressed myself, donning not the fine clothes that Sally had bought for me in the West-end, but the old slops she had purchased in Shepherd’s-market when I had discarded my rags, for I wished to steal nothing from Barney and regretted having to take the great-coat and boots.

  Once dressed and holding my boots in my hand, I glanced round the room before blowing out the candle: there was nothing else to take. Then as my arm brushed against the pocket of my jacket, I realized to my horror that it was empty. I searched the floor but eventually I had to concede that everything — my mother’s pocket-book, the copy of the codicil which I had made, the map, and the letter from my grandfather — had been removed. That was what Barney had been doing when I had opened my eyes and recognised him! Feeling the loss of the pocket-book as a further assault upon my mother and my links with her, for a moment I gave way to my rage and pain. The loss of the other documents I felt as a dull ache which would grieve me later though I hardly had time to consider this now. I blew out the candle and left the room.

  I crept down the upper flight wondering how I would manage to effect my escape since the street-door — assuming it were unguarded — was the only way out of the house and that required that I pass the door from the hall into the drawing-room. With the vague intention of waiting until everyone had gone to sleep, I went back to my station in the chamber above the drawing-room and began to listen.

  I had obviously missed the recital of the evening’s achievements.

  “That’s the right stuff!” Will was exclaiming in the midst of a chorus of hoots and laughter.

  “Bli’ me,” cried Bob. “Wouldn’t I love to have seen them swells’ phizes when they laid their peepers on Jack!”

  I heard the popping of corks and the sounds of celebration. Time passed. I had to remain alert to the sound of anyone coming up the stairs and to avoid falling asleep and toppling forward into the chamber below.

  Card-games broke out, someone began to play the fiddle and I saw dancing figures whirling by below me. As the weary hours dragged by in drinking, gaming, quarrelling — and even fighting — I heard and glimpsed scenes of the most abandoned depravity to which my long exposure had still not inured me.

  Suddenly I was awakened from near-sleep by Meg’s voice: “Here, what o’clock is it?”

  “A little arter four and a quarter,” said Bob.

  “Well, where’s Sam and Jack, then?” she said.

  “That’s right!” cried Barney. “They should be here by now.”

  “Something’s amiss!” cried Sally.

  At that moment there was a knock at the door and, leaning forward, I saw Bob leave the room and a moment later heard him call out: “Who is it?”

  I could not hear the reply but Bob shouted: “It’s Jack!” He began to unlock the door as excitement mounted in the drawing-room.

  Then I heard a sudden hubbub of voices, but amongst them cries of: “What’s happened?” and “Where’s Sam?”

  Above the noise I heard Barney’s voice: “Don’t worry. It was only Jack what I expected. Not Sam.”

  “What do you mean?” Will called out.

  “Me and Jack will explain,” he answered. “And a wery interesting story it’ll be, too.” Then suddenly he broke off and cried: “By heavens, Jack, what’s happened to you?”

  There was a sudden silence and then I heard Sally scream and Jack’s voice feebly saying: “I’m all right. I ain’t a-dying, gal.”

  “You’re all over blood!” she cried.

  “I took a few knocks,” he said.

  “What happened, Jack?” Barney asked anxiously.

  “Where’s Sam?” Meg cried.

  “Where’s the blunt?” Bob demanded.

  “Sam won’t be comin’ back and I ain’t got the blunt. Pulvertaft nabbed it of me.”

  At this there was uproar for some minutes while Barney’s voice, like an angry bull’s, rose above the others and beat them into silence, until eventually it was quiet enough for Jack’s feeble accents to be heard.

  “Tell ’em what we knowed, Barney,” Jack said in an exhausted tone, “while I ketch my breath.”

  He came into sight as he lowered himself onto the sopha, helped by Sally who seated herself beside him. She had something in one hand which she let fall to the floor as she began wiping the blood from her beau’s face.

  “You see,” Barney began, “Jack and me knowed something we had to keep secret from the rest of you. Sam was Pulvertaft’s nose all along.”

  There was uproar at this revelation. I remembered how Sam had gone off that time that he and Sally had driven to the West-end with me.

  “How do you mean?” Bob cried. “So what about Nan?”

  “She didn’t do nothing,” Barney said. “We only let on as how we b’lieved it was her.”

  “You mean you and Jack was lying?” Will said.

  “Aye, and Sam, except that in course he knowed it weren’t her because it were him, but he didn’t know that we knowed that.”

  “I don’t understand!” Sally cried and the others showed that they were equally puzzled.

  “Well,” said Barney, “you rec’lleck that time the boy brung the message from the Cat’s-meat-man? So we knowed someone had sold us?”

  As the others cried out at the memory, I peered down at what Sally had dropped, increasingly certain that it was my mother’s pocket-book.

  “Well, right arter that,” Barney went on, “Jack smoked that it was Sam what was the nose. Tell ’em, Jack.”

  “Why it was Sal as put me onto him. One day she told me that she seen him talking to a bald cull with a wooden leg.”

  So here was the explanation of the conversation I had overheard between Bar
ney and Jack when the latter had informed the former that Sally had told him something crucial without understanding its significance.

  I looked at Sally, and was struck by the fact that at these words she started and stared at Jack.

  “Peg!” several of the others exclaimed, referring, of course, to the man I had known as “Blueskin” whom we had seen hanged.

  “That’s right,” Barney went on. “So I arst you, didn’t I Sal, and you told me that was right.”

  Sally stared at him and then nodded slowly.

  “So then I knowed as Jack was onto the nose,” Barney went on.

  “And jist to be sure,” Jack said, “I dodged him and one day I seen him go down the Old Mint into the nethersken what Pulvertaft lives in. Well, I come back and told Barney and …”

  “Me and Jack,” Barney interrupted, “settled as how we had to get rid of Sam, and do it so as Pulvertaft wouldn’t get fly that we had rumbled him. That was the only way to stop him ruining our plans for the fakement. So we agreed to let on to Sam that we thought as how Nan was the nose.”

  So if I had overheard the rest of that conversation between Jack and Barney I would have heard them agree to pretend to Sam that they believed that Nan was the spy. And presumably Sally had helped them to incriminate her simply because of her spite against the other girl. But, of course, I knew that Jack, not Sam, was really Pulvertaft’s secret collaborator.

  “So Nan hadn’t done nothing?” asked Will angrily.

  “That’s right,” Barney went on. “So arter that me and Jack was letting on to Sam as how we thought we’d got rid of Pulvertaft’s nose. And to ketch Pulvertaft on the wrong foot we agreed to bring the date forward by a week. But in fact we only done this to make Sam think we believed we’d wiped Pulvertaft’s eyes, ’cause we knowed he’d find a way of telling him.”

  “But when did Sam have the chance?” asked Meg.

  “Tell her, Sal,” Barney commanded.

  She remained silent.

  “Sal told me,” Jack said, “as how Sam sneaked off that day he went with her and the boy to buy togs. Ain’t that right, Sal?”

  Pale-faced, she nodded.

  “So,” Barney went on, “we knowed Pulvertaft would try to get the blunt of us once we’d got it. Now Sam was very keen that he and Jack should take it straight to the crib in Thrawl-street, so we guessed that Pulvertaft would either ambush them on the way or else be hiding there already.”

  “That’s right,” Bob agreed. “That’s how I’d do it if I was Pulvertaft. Let Sam and Jack bring the blunt to me jist where I wanted it and then jump out on ’em with a couple of coves.”

  “That’s the ticket, Bob,” Barney agreed. Then he paused for a moment before saying: “So that’s why me and Jack agreed that we would have to take the blunt of Sam a-fore that.”

  “So what happened, Jack?” Will asked.

  “As soon as me and Sam left the hell, and got into that narrer lane from Bedford-court into Bedford-Bury, he pulled out a knife and tried to pink me. But I was ready for him, so I had my pocket-pistol and I made him quiet.”

  There was a stunned silence.

  Suddenly Sally screamed and the horror of her cry made the hair on the back of my neck rise. Of course, she had had a fancy for Sam.

  “Now listen, Sal,” Barney said aggrievedly, “don’t carry on like that. I’ve told you why we had to do it.”

  Sally buried her face in her hands and when Jack moved towards her she moved away on the sopha.

  “Listen, Sal,” he said, “I dared not wait no longer. He would have done it to me if I’d gave him the chance.”

  There were murmurs of agreement from the others. Sally was exhorted “not to carry on so” and several comments were passed implying that Jack’s suspicions that her affections might be engaged by Sam were being given credibility by her attitude now. However, she remained distraught and tearful.

  “So what happened to the blunt, Jack?” Barney asked.

  “I left it too late,” Jack said ruefully. “Right arter that Pulvertaft and another cove come round the corner. I didn’t have time to re-charge the gun and they was on me in an instant. They beat me about the head and pulled the bag off me and I jist took to my heels.”

  This account was greeted with sympathy for Jack’s appearance certainly suggested that he had been badly injured.

  The mood of the gathering was now extremely grim, and though they continued to drink, as the realization dawned on them that they had, after all their efforts, been outwitted, they were now trying to numb themselves against their bitter disappointment. As the resentments that had been suppressed during the period of their common endeavour now surfaced, a number of fierce quarrels broke out and several of them deteriorated into brawls. Most of what was going on I had to deduce from the noises alone, but at one moment I was interested to see Sally, who had been sitting on the sopha, rise to her feet and move away in order to avoid Jack’s attempts to embrace her.

  I had wondered for some time how black were the crimes that these people were capable of, and now my worst fears had been far surpassed. Cold-blooded murder for reasons of mere profit and self-interest — murder of a friend and colleague, however disloyal he might have proved himself — was a dark enough act to match my suspicions. And what Jack had done had been yet darker. I had to get away from there even at the risk of my life.

  After a few hours the noises from below suggested that my former companions had fallen into a drunken slumber. This was the moment I had been waiting for: the street-door was not guarded and I should be able to pass through the hall unseen from the drawing-room under cover of darkness, for the late December dawn was not yet arrived.

  I crept down the stairs — which was difficult without a light — and, holding my breath, passed the door of the drawing-room. The snores and drunken mutterings suggested that its inhabitants were now sprawled across the carpets and furniture in promiscuous disarray, as I had often seen them before.

  As silently as I could, I began to undo the locks and chains with which the front-door was secured. I had released half of them when suddenly, because of the difficulty of doing it in the darkness, one of the great chains with a padlock attached fell to the floor with a noise that seemed to fill the house, echoing through the uncarpeted and empty hall and rooms. I could do nothing. There were still too many bolts and chains for me to be able to abandon caution and fling the door open and flee as I longed to do.

  So I froze and waited for my fate. To my amazement, however, no-one came out of the drawing-room to challenge me. I had just concluded that the sound had seemed louder to me than in fact it was, when I seemed to hear a soft noise that might almost have been nothing more than a rat. I held my breath for as long as I could and when no further sound came, I decided it was safe to continue, and so I released the last of the locks and slid the door open.

  A moment later I was out in the cold night air. I pulled the door to behind me in order that my escape should remain undiscovered for as long as possible, and made my way along the rough road, glancing back frequently. As I reached the corner of that ghostly street I took a last look behind me and it seemed to me that the door was open and a small figure was standing on the steps. But it was too dark to be sure that it was not merely a shadow, and I hurried on round the corner.

  When I had gone a safe distance I paused to put on the boots. As I looked up I found before me a wooden board bearing the legend: “This ground to be let on Building Leases. Apply to Mr Haldimand, The West London Building Company”. That was the company that had cheated the Digweeds and which I was sure had been involved in the speculation which had ruined my mother! Perhaps the house I had just left was one of those in which she had invested! Here were more coincidences! I had no time to ponder them, however, and hurried on.

  CHAPTER 68

  Walking north-eastward I soon left behind the empty streets of that half-built waste-land, crossed Vauxhall-bridge-road, hurried up Rochester-row and plunged with a ki
nd of relief into the familiar warren around Pye-street and Orchard-street in Westminster. At first I looked back often and once or twice believed I saw a figure in the shadows that seemed to freeze as I turned, but now the streets grew too populous — even at that early hour — for me to be able to do this.

  As I passed through St. James’-park, which was at that time a marshy field with a ruined Chinese bridge over the Dutch-canal, I turned often to look behind me — but all I believed I saw were the dark shadows of the park-women — those wretched creatures whose diseased features permitted them to ply their trade only by courtesy of the darkness of the unlit parks.

  Except that I knew instinctively that safety lay in the crowded metropolis, I had not considered where I would go. So, passing the deserted bulk of Carlton-house Palace on my left, abandoned for five years and waiting now to be demolished, and then skirting the place where the great new square was being built on the site of the Old-Royal-mews opposite Northumberland-house, I kept steadily heading towards the pink and orange dawn that was rising over the City before me — beautiful but disturbing, too, for I knew it was a warning of even colder weather.

  Although profoundly relieved to be free of that house and those people, I knew that my plight was desperate. I was hungry, I had not a penny, and the clothes I was wearing were hardly worth exchanging for any cheaper ones — apart from the great-coat and boots which I needed for protection against the December weather. The Asylum for the Homeless in Playhouse-yard, which only opened when the temperature fell below freezing, must be receiving inmates now, but I needed a ticket to get in.