Carver's Quest Read online

  ‘Creech was a man who had no obvious source of income. And yet he lived in some style in Herne Hill. How did he do so, do you suppose?’

  ‘London is full of men with no obvious source of income. They are called gentlemen.’

  ‘But where did he get his income?’ Adam persisted.

  ‘I do not know. I do happen to know that Creech stayed at the Langham when he first came to town last year. What does that suggest to you?’

  ‘That money was little object to him.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘But why was money suddenly no object to him? He was a man who had spent most of his career drudging in foreign climes for a meagre salary. Did he receive an inheritance? Was there money in the family that finally came to him?’

  ‘Money can come from a thousand different sources.’ Garland paused and seemed to be considering whether or not to say anything more. After a moment, he continued. ‘If you wish to know the truth, Mr Carver, then most of Sam Creech’s money probably came from blackmail. He was a blackmailer.’

  Adam had been prepared for any number of possible replies to his questions, including this one, but he was still surprised to hear it directly from Garland’s lips. He was surprised that the MP should state the facts so openly.

  ‘And was he blackmailing you, sir?’ he asked, after a moment.

  In the silence that followed, Adam could hear the gentle hissing from the gaslights in the room. He wondered what the answer to this question would be, but when Garland spoke, the MP continued as if it had not been asked.

  ‘Blackmail is a nasty word, of course, but then Creech was a nasty man. He was a nasty little boy, if it comes to that. When we were at school, it was always Creech who would tell tales on his fellows if he thought he could get away with it; Creech who would bully the smaller boys most cruelly; Creech who would suck up to the powerful and spit upon the meek. I was not in the slightest degree surprised when I learned that he had turned to extortion in his more mature years.’

  ‘But whom was he blackmailing? And what did he know that enabled him to turn to extortion?’

  ‘Everyone has his secrets, Mr Carver. A determined blackmailer does not usually need to look far for material with which to work.’

  ‘So Creech knew of matters of which others would have preferred him to be ignorant.’

  ‘I have no doubt that he did. He would have been a poor extortionist without access to the secrets of others.’

  ‘Would the secrets Creech had gathered have died with him? Or could someone else be in possession of them?’

  ‘That I cannot tell you.’

  ‘Perhaps Jinkinson has come into possession of them and has decided that he too will embark on a career as a blackmailer.’

  ‘Jinkinson?’ Garland looked puzzled at first, but understanding soon dawned. ‘Ah, yes, the man in yellow.’

  ‘So you acknowledge that you met him outside a public house in the Strand?’

  ‘You have been following me, Mr Carver?’ The MP sounded more amused than affronted.

  ‘I was interested in Jinkinson. It was he that my man was following.’

  Garland nodded to himself, as if all was explained.

  ‘Yes, I met the fellow,’ he said. ‘In the Strand, as you say. You would not expect me to entertain the canary-coloured jackanapes here, now, would you? Or in my house in Bruton Street? I had my doubts about meeting him at all.’ Garland flicked invisible specks of dust from the sleeve of his morning coat.

  ‘The man is a complete fool. His business demands subtlety and subterfuge and he dresses in such a way that he would stand out in the crowd on Derby Day. God knows how Creech came across him. His taste for the low life must have grown since last I saw him.’

  ‘But you met Jinkinson and spoke to him. I wonder why you felt the necessity to do so.’

  Garland looked sharply at Adam. He made as if to move closer to him and then stopped.

  ‘I can only say to you, Mr Carver, what I said to the canary man. You would do well to look after your own business and refrain from concerning yourself with mine.’

  Adam decided to change tack. ‘I have spoken recently with Sir Willoughby Oughtred,’ he said. ‘I have been asking him very much the same kind of questions I have been asking you, Mr Garland. I am not trying to poke my nose where it is not wanted. I am merely seeking to find out more about the circumstances surrounding Creech’s murder.’

  ‘You have seen Oughtred, have you?’ Garland laughed. ‘You know him from the Marco Polo, I assume.’

  ‘I had never met the baronet before. Although he knew my father.’

  ‘Of course, I had forgotten. You are the son of Carver of the Lincolnshire Railway.’

  Garland moved towards the large mahogany table in the centre of the room. He began to run his hand across its surface as if he was polishing it. ‘And what did you think of Oughtred, I wonder?’

  ‘Sir Willoughby is a fine example of an old-fashioned Englishman,’ Adam replied cautiously.

  The MP laughed again. He continued to rub his hand across the wooden grain of the table, as if admiring its smoothness.

  ‘Spoken like a diplomat, Mr Carver. He is exactly that. Perhaps a little too old-fashioned.’

  ‘I am not sure I catch your meaning, sir.’

  ‘Let me put it this way, then.’ Garland turned to look at Adam. ‘All right-thinking men know that the country’s present and future fortunes are tied up with cotton and coal and railways rather than with corn. Your late father was one of those in the vanguard of the nation. Oughtred belongs with those bringing up the rear. He firmly believes that the rot set in as long ago as thirty-two, with Grey’s Reform Act, if not earlier, and that the country has been going downhill ever since.’

  ‘And yet, like yourself, he has his seat in this House. He is one of the nation’s legislators.’

  ‘In my humble opinion, the trouble with Parliament is that there are still more MPs whose wealth and position depend, as Oughtred’s does, on agriculture and not industry.’

  Garland, Adam thought, did not look like a man who had ever held a humble opinion in his life. He assumed he was not going to begin to do so now. The tall MP continued to speak.

  ‘He is a dear man but no one could say that he is the brightest baronet to be found in the pages of Burke’s. Indeed, there are some who might claim that he is among the dimmest. Let me be perfectly honest with you. I have known Willoughby, as I have known Creech, for four decades. He is a man who cannot add two to three and be sure of getting five. He is not only suspicious of abstract thought, he is incapable of it. In his heart of hearts, he believes that intellectual endeavour of all kinds will lead inevitably to the levelling of classes and the destruction of society. However, his pedigree predates the Plantagenets and he owns half the acres of Lincolnshire. And so…’ – Garland shrugged his shoulders – ‘he takes his seat in the House and his place in a dozen boardrooms is guaranteed. Well, I suppose there is one thing that can be said for poor old Willoughby. He may be mediocre, but at least he’s reliably mediocre.’

  The MP moved closer to Adam and rested his hand on his arm.

  ‘We have strayed from our original topic of conversation, Mr Carver. And I have been woefully indiscreet about my old friend. I must trust you to repeat nothing of what I have said when you leave this room.’

  ‘It will go no further, sir, but can you not tell me whether or not you have seen this fellow Jinkinson again? Do you know where he is?’

  Garland turned away in exasperation.

  ‘You are persistent, Mr Carver, if nothing else. I will grant you that virtue, if virtue it is. But it is not the most gentlemanly of activities, detective work, is it? Scurrying about London asking all these impertinent questions.’

  Adam made no reply.

  ‘Do you really think I have nothing better to do with my time than to keep track of some buffoon like Jinkinson?’ Garland asked after a brief pause.

  ‘But he was seen in your company
little more than a week ago.’

  ‘I am in the company of many in the course of a week. The man’s probably off on some backstreet bacchanal in St Giles. I neither know nor care where he is. You should not bother with him yourself, Mr Carver. Forget about him. Forget about that old villain Sam Creech. Clap the extinguisher to your curiosity. It’s a terrible thing to say but Creech may well have deserved the fate he met. Leave the policing to the police and the detecting to the detectives.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The following morning, Adam was sitting in his study reading Richard Burton’s Wanderings in West Africa, when Quint’s large and shining head appeared round the edge of the door.

  ‘There’s some Bible-grinder asking to see you,’ he said, his face twisted into a gargoyle expression of distaste. ‘Leastways, I reckon that’s what he is. He’s got a white choker round his neck and looks about as cheery as an undertaker’s mute.’

  ‘You have no time for evangelists, Quint?’

  Quint snorted dismissively. ‘I ain’t one for all that gospel-gab,’ he agreed. ‘Most of these tub-thumpers have less sense than a coster’s jackass. This one seems harmless enough. Although he’s got eyes like cod in a Billingsgate basket.’

  ‘Show him into the sanctum sanctorum, then.’

  The visitor was, as Adam had already guessed, Elisha Dwight. The reverend entered the room warily, as if he half expected it to be filled with unrepentant sinners intent on tempting him from the path of righteousness. When Adam gestured towards the only chair he could offer visitors, Dwight wasted no time in plumping himself down in it. His smooth, round face was flushed and he looked acutely uncomfortable. He had a white cravat wrapped round his throat, which Adam thought must be intended to denote his clerical status. It was so tight that any attempt Dwight might make to move his head to the left or to the right was fraught with the danger of strangulation. He could only stare fixedly ahead of him.

  ‘I am delighted to see you again so soon, Reverend,’ Adam said amiably. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I have been wrestling with the minions of Satan, Mr Carver.’ Dwight spoke as if this was one of his regular pastimes.

  ‘Which minions would those be, Reverend Dwight?’

  ‘The imps of temptation.’ The clergyman, rubbing his hands and gazing at the books on Adam’s shelves, sounded very unhappy. ‘The demons that demand lies. Lies in the service of the Father of Lies.’

  ‘I am sorry, Reverend, I do not quite follow you.’

  ‘I did not tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth when you came to see me the other day. The minions of Satan wish me to persist in my deceit but I have fought them and won.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it.’ Adam was beginning to tire of his visitor’s orotund sanctimony. He wished the clergyman would say what he had to say without further ado. Dwight had travelled halfway across London to tell him something. Why did he not just go ahead and do so?

  ‘I know more of Jinkinson than I admitted.’ Dwight pulled at his cravat like a man awaiting a hanging with a noose round his neck. ‘I have decided that I should tell you the more that I know.’

  ‘I am all ears.’

  ‘Jinkinson is a sinful man.’ Dwight returned to rubbing his hands together, as if washing them with soap and water from a bowl set down in his ample lap. ‘He has long been a drinker and a degenerate. His home has more often been the low tavern and the penny gaff than the Tabernacle of righteousness.’ The clergyman spat out his words like oaths. ‘He is a slug in the Lord’s vineyard, Mr Carver.’

  ‘You are surely too harsh on him, Reverend Dwight.’ Adam began to wonder whether this pompous young minister really did have much to reveal about Jinkinson’s whereabouts. Perhaps he had walked from his Tabernacle all the way to Doughty Street merely to insult the plump enquiry agent a little more than he had done the previous Sunday. ‘There is no harm in the occasional indulgence in alcohol. And the penny gaffs do no more than bring colour and excitement into lives that have little of either.’

  This, Adam realised immediately, was the wrong thing to say.

  ‘Filthy songs. Filthy dances.’ Dwight was suddenly overwrought. His Adam’s apple wobbled furiously behind the tightly tied cravat. ‘And filthy men and women watching them. That’s your penny gaffs for you, sir. They disgust me. They should disgust every Christian soul in the realm.’

  Taken aback by the minister’s sudden wrath, Adam hurried to placate him.

  ‘I know little of them, Reverend Dwight. I am sure you are correct and that the virtuous should avoid them. In any case, it is unlikely that Jinkinson has taken refuge in a penny gaff.’

  ‘No, but I believe I know where he will have gone.’ Dwight had regained control of himself as rapidly as he had lost it. His hand reached up to his throat to adjust his cravat.

  ‘Mr Jinkinson has spent many years pursuing that will of the wisp, Pleasure, through the giddying labyrinth of Dissipation,’ Dwight said, sternly. The minister’s voice, Adam thought to himself, possessed the ability to add invisible capital letters to so many of the nouns he used. ‘He has struggled with the Demon Drink throughout the time he has attended the Tabernacle. When he falls from grace and returns to his wine-bibbing, there is one sink of iniquity he frequents. He may well be there now. It is a public house in Wapping called the Cat and Salutation. He pays the landlord for a room and there he drinks his immortal soul towards the pit.’

  * * * * *

  The street in Wapping was almost deserted. Adam watched the yellow light from the side lanterns on the cab which had dropped him there flicker briefly in the evening gloom and then disappear. Two men, standing a dozen yards away beneath the street’s solitary gas lamp, were conducting some mysterious business of their own. They glanced briefly at Adam and then turned their backs to him. Closer to hand, a woman was making her unsteady way along the pavement ahead of him. She was wearing a shapeless black bonnet that even her grandmother might have considered somewhat dowdy,

  and was reeling with drink. As Adam watched, she pitched forwards and sideways, only recovering her balance at the last minute. Her black bonnet fell into the gutter but she did not seem to notice it had gone. Following behind her, he stooped briefly to pick it up. It was the work of a moment to overtake the woman and hand it back to her. She took the hat and gazed bleary-eyed at him. She attempted to say something but drink defeated her. Frustrated, she turned and staggered into the wall of one of the soot-blackened houses that lined the street. Adam moved forward as if to help her but she waved him away and sat down in the doorway. Within seconds, she appeared to be asleep. Adam left her to her stupor and walked on. There was almost a spring in his step. He felt, he realised, oddly enlivened by venturing so far off the paths he usually trod in London.

  The Cat and Salutation was at the end of an alleyway running off the street that opened out into a small, cobbled court. Another solitary gas lamp stood at one end of the cobbles and cast its light on the pub sign. The tavern looked an uninviting refuge for even the most desperate of drinkers. Adam approached the entrance, his heels clicking on the cobblestones.

  An old woman was sitting on a wooden bench outside the pub. She was fat and dirty. A faded green rag was tied beneath her jaw and over her head, and a short pipe was clamped in the corner of her mouth. She glared at the young man.

  ‘Sing you a song for a glass of the blue, sonny,’ she offered, truculently.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, ma’am, but I cannot linger to hear you at present.’

  ‘You could jest get me the gin.’

  ‘Alas, I have no time to do that either.’

  ‘Pox on you, then.’

  The old woman removed the pipe from her mouth and spat a great gob of phlegm on the cobbles at Adam’s feet. He picked his way around it and made his way into the Cat and Salutation. The alehouse was small and gloomy, little more than a square box with dingy, red-curtained windows. It seemed to lack most of the amenities usually associated wit
h a good pub. A few tables and benches were scattered around it. A bar ran along most of the left side of the room. At each of its ends stood an earthenware spittoon filled with sawdust. Behind it were a row of bottles on a shelf, a couple of barrels of beer resting on wooden supports and a torn poster advertising the merits of Reid’s Matchless Stout. The Cat and Salutation also seemed to lack any of the jolly atmosphere traditionally associated with alehouses. In fact, it was very nearly empty. A long-faced man with a squint was sitting at one of the tables, drinking from a pint tankard and eating bread and cheese. With one arm he created an encircling barrier around his food, as if expecting a thief to snatch it away from him at any moment. With the other he tore at the bread and cheese and stuffed lumps of both into his mouth. Adam was astonished by the ravenous relish with which he ate. The man looked up briefly as Adam entered and then returned to his food. Next to him was a younger man, little more than a boy, with untidy, straw-coloured hair and a look of distraction. This youth had wrapped a small comb in tissue paper and was blowing through it. Adam could just about make out the tune of ‘Lilliburlero’. As he looked in his direction, the boy stopped blowing and dropped the comb and paper into his lap. He grinned at Adam, revealing stained and blackened teeth.

  The only other person in this first room was the man behind the bar but, through a door at the back, Adam could see another room. In it was a billiards table and two men were moving around it, cues in hand. One settled to play his shot. He was tall and so fat that he had great difficulty bending over the table. His opponent had noticed Adam enter the bar and he muttered something in his companion’s ear. The fat man heaved his bulk off the baize and looked back into the bar room. Wagging his finger at the man who had whispered in his ear, he left the table. A small white, strikingly ugly terrier trotted after him as he exited the billiard room and approached the bar.

  Several of his chins wobbling with the effort of moving, he was smiling a ghastly smile of greeting. ‘Six penn’orth of hot brandy and water here, Toby. And whatever this gentleman is having.’ He looked questioningly at Adam.