Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 2003

This ebook edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Andrew Taylor 2003

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover illustration © Andrew Davidson/The Artworks

Andrew Taylor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008300753

Ebook Edition © December 2012 ISBN: 9780007380985

Version: 2018-09-25

Praise for The American Boy:

‘An enticing work of fiction … Taylor takes account of both a Georgian formality and a pre-Victorian laxity in social and sexual matters; he is adept at historical recreation, and allows a heady décor to work in his favour by having his mysteries come wrapped around by a creepy London fog or embedded picturesquely in a Gloucestershire snowdrift’

TLS

‘Possibly the best book of the decade is Andrew Taylor’s historical masterpiece, The American Boy. A truly captivating novel, rich with the sounds, smells, and cadences of nineteenth-century England’

Glasgow Herald

‘Long, sumptuous, near-edible account of Regency rogues – wicked bankers, City swindlers, crooked pedagogues and ladies on the make – all joined in the pursuit of the rich, full, sometimes shady life. A plot stuffed with incident and character, with period details impeccably rendered’

Literary Review

‘Taylor spins a magnificent tangential web … The book is full of sharply etched details evoking Dickensian London and is also a love story, shot through with the pain of a penniless and despised lover. This novel has the literary values which should take it to the top of the lists’

Scotland on Sunday

‘It is as if Taylor has used the great master of the bizarre as both starting-and finishing-point, but in between created a period piece with its own unique voice. The result should satisfy those drawn to the fictions of the nineteenth century, or Poe, or indeed to crime writing at its most creative’

Spectator

‘Andrew Taylor has flawlessly created the atmosphere of late-Regency London in The American Boy, with a cast of sharply observed characters in this dark tale of murder and embezzlement’

Sunday Telegraph

‘Madness, murder, misapplied money and macabre marriages are interspersed with coffins, corpses and cancelled codicils … an enjoyable and well-constructed puzzle’

Sunday Times

Dedication

For Sarah and William.

And, as always, for Caroline.

Epigraph

I would not, if I could, here or to-day, embody

a record of my later years of unspeakable

misery, and unpardonable crime.

From ‘William Wilson’ by Edgar Allan Poe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for The American Boy

Dedication

Epigraph

The Wavenhoe Family, 1819

The Narrative of Thomas Shield, 1819–20

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Seventy-One

Chapter Seventy-Two

Chapter Seventy-Three

Chapter Seventy-Four

Chapter Seventy-Five

Chapter Seventy-Six

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Chapter Seventy-Eight

Chapter Seventy-Nine

Chapter Eighty

Chapter Eighty-One

Chapter Eighty-Two

Chapter Eighty-Three

Chapter Eighty-Four

Appendix, 1862

A Historical Note on Edgar Allan Poe

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

The Wavenhoe family, 1819

N.B. The names underlined are of those members of the family who were alive in September 1819

THE NARRATIVE OF THOMAS SHIELD

CHAPTER ONE

WE OWE RESPECT to the living, Voltaire tells us in his Première Lettre sur Oedipe, but to the dead we owe only truth. The truth is that there are days when the world changes, and a man does not notice because his mind is on his own affairs.

I first saw Sophia Frant shortly before midday on Wednesday the 8th of September, 1819. She was leaving the house in Stoke Newington, and for a moment she was framed in the doorway as though in a picture. Something in the shadows of the hall behind her had made her pause, a word spoken, perhaps, or an unexpected movement.

What struck me first were the eyes, which were large and blue. Then other details lodged in my memory like burrs on a coat. She was neither tall nor short, with well-shaped, regular features and a pale complexion. She wore an elaborate cottage bonnet, decorated with flowers. Her dress had a white skirt, puffed sleeves and a pale blue bodice, the latter matching the leather slipper peeping beneath the hem of her skirt. In her left hand she carried a pair of white gloves and a small reticule.

I heard the clatter of the footman leaping down from the box of the carriage, and the rattle as he let down the steps. A stout middle-aged man in black joined the lady on the doorstep and gave her his arm as they strolled towards the carriage. They did not look at me. On either side of the path from the house to the road were miniature shrubberies enclosed by railings. I felt faint, and I held on to one of the uprights of the railings at the front.

‘Indeed, madam,’ the man said, as though continuing a conversation begun in the house, ‘our situation is quite rural and the air is notably healthy.’

The lady glanced at me and smiled. This so surprised me that I failed to bow. The footman opened the door of the carriage. The stout man handed her in.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she murmured. ‘You have been very patient.’

He bowed over her hand. ‘Not at all, madam. Pray give my compliments to Mr Frant.’

I stood there like a booby. The footman closed the door, put up the steps and climbed up to his seat. The lacquered woodwork of the carriage was painted blue and the gilt wheels were so clean they hurt your eyes.

The coachman unwound the reins from the whipstock. He cracked his whip, and the pair of matching bays, as glossy as the coachman’s top hat, jingled down the road towards the High-street. The stout man held up his hand in not so much a wave as a blessing. When he turned back to the house, his gaze flicked towards me.

I let go of the railing and whipped off my hat. ‘Mr Bransby? That is, have I the honour –?’

‘Yes, you have.’ He stared at me with pale blue eyes partly masked by pink, puffy lids. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘My name is Shield, sir. Thomas Shield. My aunt, Mrs Reynolds, wrote to you, and you were kind enough to say –’

‘Yes, yes.’ The Reverend Mr Bransby held out a finger for me to shake. He stared me over, running his eyes from head to toe. ‘You’re not at all like her.’

He led me up the path and through the open door into the panelled hall beyond. From somewhere in the building came the sound of chanting voices. He opened a door on the right and went into a room fitted out as a library, with a Turkey carpet and two windows overlooking the road. He sat down heavily in the chair behind the desk, stretched out his legs and pushed two stubby fingers into his right-hand waistcoat pocket.

‘You look fagged.’

‘I walked from London, sir. It was warm work.’

‘Sit down.’ He took out an ivory snuff-box, helped himself to a pinch and sneezed into a handkerchief spotted with brown stains. ‘So you want a position, hey?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And Mrs Reynolds tells me that there are at least two good reasons why you are entirely unsuitable for any post I might be able to offer you.’

‘If you would permit me, I would endeavour to explain.’

‘Some would say that facts explain themselves. You left your last position without a reference. And, more recently, if I understand your aunt aright, you have been the next best thing to a Bedlamite.’

‘I cannot deny either charge, sir. But there were reasons for my behaviour, and there are reasons why those episodes happened and why they will not happen again.’

‘You have two minutes in which to convince me.’

‘Sir, my father was an apothecary in the town of Rosington. His practice prospered, and one of his patrons was a canon of the cathedral, who presented me to a vacancy at the grammar school. When I left there, I matriculated at Jesus College, Cambridge.’

‘You held a scholarship there?’

‘No, sir. My father assisted me. He knew I had no aptitude for the apothecary’s trade and he intended me eventually to take holy orders. Unfortunately, near the end of my first year, he died of a putrid fever, and his affairs were found to be much embarrassed, so I left the university without taking my degree.’

‘What of your mother?’

‘She had died when I was a lad. But the master of the grammar school, who had known me as a boy, gave me a job as an assistant usher, teaching the younger boys. All went well for a few years, but, alas, he died and his successor did not look so kindly on me.’ I hesitated, for the master had a daughter named Fanny, the memory of whom still brought me pain. ‘We disagreed, sir – that was the long and the short of it. I said foolish things I instantly regretted.’

‘As is usually the case,’ Bransby said.

‘It was then April 1815, and I fell in with a recruiting sergeant.’

He took another pinch of snuff. ‘Doubtless he made you so drunk that you practically snatched the King’s shilling from his hand and went off to fight the monster Bonaparte single-handed. Well, sir, you have given me ample proof that you are a foolish, headstrong young man who has a belligerent nature and cannot hold his liquor. And now shall we come to Bedlam?’

I squeezed the thick brim of my hat until it bent under the pressure. ‘Sir, I was never there in my life.’

He scowled. ‘Mrs Reynolds writes that you were placed under restraint, and lived for a while in the care of a doctor. Whether in Bedlam itself or not is immaterial. How came you to be in such a state?’

‘Many men had the misfortune to be wounded in the late war. It so happened that I was wounded in my mind as well as in my body.’

‘Wounded in the mind? You sound like a school miss with the vapours. Why not speak plainly? Your wits were disordered.’

‘I was ill, sir. Like one with a fever. I acted imprudently.’

‘Imprudent? Good God, is that what you call it? I understand you threw your Waterloo Medal at an officer of the Guards in Rotten-row.’

‘I regret it excessively, sir.’

He sneezed, and his little eyes watered. ‘It is true that your aunt, Mrs Reynolds, was the best housekeeper my parents ever had. As a boy I never had any reason to doubt her veracity or indeed her kindness. But those two facts do not necessarily encourage me to allow a lunatic and a drunkard a position of authority over the boys entrusted to my care.’

‘Sir, I am neither of those things.’

He glared at me. ‘A man, moreover, whose former employers will not speak for him.’

‘But my aunt speaks for me. If you know her, sir, you will know she would not do that lightly.’

For a moment neither of us spoke. Through the open window came the clop of hooves from the road beyond. A fly swam noisily through the heavy air. I was slowly baking, basted in sweat in the oven of my own clothes. My black coat was too heavy for a day like this but it was the only one I had. I wore it buttoned to the throat to conceal the fact that I did not have a shirt beneath.

I stood up. ‘I must detain you no longer, sir.’

‘Be so good as to sit down. I have not concluded this conversation.’ Bransby picked up his eye glasses and twirled them between finger and thumb. ‘I am persuaded to give you a trial.’ He spoke harshly, as if he had in mind a trial in a court of law. ‘I will provide you with your board and lodging for a quarter. I will also advance you a small sum of money so you may dress in a manner appropriate to a junior usher at this establishment. If your conduct is in any way unsatisfactory, you will leave at once. If all goes well, however, at the end of the three months, I may decide to renew the arrangement between us, perhaps on different terms. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Ring the bell there. You will need refreshment before you return to London.’

I stood up again and tugged the rope on the left of the fireplace.

‘Tell me,’ he added, without any change of tone, ‘is Mrs Reynolds dying?’

I felt tears prick my eyelids. I said, ‘She does not confide in me, but she grows weaker daily.’

‘I am sorry to hear it. She has a small annuity, I collect? You must not mind me if I am blunt. It is as well for us to be frank about such matters.’

There is a thin line between frankness and brutality. I never knew on which side of the line Bransby stood. I heard a tap on the door.

‘Enter!’ cried Mr Bransby.

I turned, expecting a servant in answer to the bell. Instead a small, neat boy slipped into the room.

‘Ah, Allan. Good morning.’

‘Good morning, sir.’

He and Bransby shook hands.

‘Make your bow to Mr Shield, Allan,’ Bransby told him. ‘You will be seeing more of him in the weeks to come.’

Allan glanced at me and obeyed. He was a well-made child with large, bright eyes and a high forehead. In his hand was a letter.

‘Are Mr and Mrs Allan quite well?’ Bransby inquired.

‘Yes, sir. My father asked me to present his compliments, and to give you this.’

Bransby took the letter, glanced at the superscription and dropped it on the desk. ‘I trust you will apply yourself with extra force after this long holiday. Idleness does not become you.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Adde quod ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes.’ He prodded the boy in the chest. ‘Continue and construe.’

‘I regret, sir, I cannot.’

Bransby boxed the lad’s ears with casual efficiency. He turned to me. ‘Eh, Mr Shield? I need not ask you to construe, but perhaps you would be so good as to complete the sentence?’

‘Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros. Add that to have studied the liberal arts with assiduity refines one’s manners and does not allow them to be coarse.’

‘You see, Allan? Mr Shield was wont to mind his book. Epistulae Ex Ponto, book the second. He knows his Ovid and so shall you.’

When we were alone, Bransby wiped fragments of snuff from his nostrils with the stained handkerchief. ‘One must always show them who is master, Shield,’ he said. ‘Remember that. Kindness is all very well but it don’t answer in the long run. Take young Edgar Allan, for example. The boy has parts, there is no denying it. But his parents indulge him. I shudder to think where such as he would be without due chastisement. Spare the rod, sir, and spoil the child.’

So it was that, in the space of a few minutes, I found a respectable position, gained a new roof over my head, and encountered for the first time both Mrs Frant and the boy Allan. Though I marked a slight but unfamiliar twang in his accent, I did not then realise that Allan was American.

Nor did I realise that Mrs Frant and Edgar Allan would lead me, step by step, towards the dark heart of a labyrinth, to a place of terrible secrets and the worst of crimes.

CHAPTER TWO

BEFORE I VENTURE into the labyrinth, let me deal briefly with this matter of my lunacy.

I had not seen my aunt Reynolds since I was a boy at school, yet I asked them to send for her when they put me in gaol because I had no other person in the world who would acknowledge the ties of kinship.

She spoke up for me before the magistrates. One of them had been a soldier, and was inclined to mercy. Since I had indeed thrown the medal before a score of witnesses, and moreover shouted ‘You murdering bastard’ as I did so, there was little doubt in any mind including my own that I was guilty. The Guards officer was a vengeful man, for although the medal had hardly hurt him, his horse had reared and thrown him before the ladies.

So it seemed there was only one road to mercy, and that was by declaring me insane. At the time I had little objection. The magistrates decided that I was the victim of periodic bouts of insanity, during one of which I had assaulted the officer on his black horse. It was a form of lunacy, they agreed, that should yield to treatment. This made it possible for me to be released into the care of my aunt.

She arranged for me to board with Dr Haines, whom she had consulted during my trial. Haines was a humane man who disliked chaining up his patients like dogs and who lived with his own family not far away from them. ‘I hold with Terence,’ the doctor said to me. ‘Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto. To be sure, some of the poor fellows have unusual habits which are not always convenient in society, but they are made of the same clay as you or I.’

Most of his patients were madmen and half-wits, some violent, some foolish, all sad; demented, syphilitic, idiotic, prey to strange and fearful delusions, or sweeping from one extreme of their spirits to the other in the folie circulaire. But there were a few like myself, who lived apart from the others and were invited to take our meals with the doctor and his wife in the private part of the house.

‘Give him time and quiet, moderate exercise and a good, wholesome diet,’ Dr Haines told my aunt in my presence, ‘and your nephew will mend.’

At first I doubted him. My dreams were filled with the groans of the dying, with the fear of death, with my own unworthiness. Why should I live? What had I done to deserve it when so many better men were dead? At first, night after night, I woke drenched in sweat, with my pulses racing, and sensed the presence of my cries hanging in the air though their sound had gone. Others in that house cried in the night, so why should not I?

The doctor, however, said it would not do and gave me a dose of laudanum each evening, which calmed my disquiet or at least blunted its edge. Also he made me talk to him, of what I had done and seen. ‘Unwholesome memories,’ he once told me, ‘should be treated like unwholesome food. It is better to purge them than to leave them within.’ I was reluctant to believe him. I clung to my misery because it was all I had. I told him I could not remember; I feigned rage; I wept.

After a week or two, he cunningly worked on my feelings, suggesting that if I were to teach his son and daughters some Latin and a little Greek for half an hour each morning, he would be able to remit a modest proportion of the fees my aunt paid him for my upkeep. For the first week of this instruction, he sat in the parlour reading a book as I made the children con their grammars and chant their declensions. Then he took to leaving me alone with them, at first for a few minutes only, and then for longer.

‘You have a gift for instructing the young,’ the doctor said to me one evening.

‘I show them no mercy. I make them work hard.’

‘You make them wish to please you.’

It was not long after that he declared that he had done all he could for me. My aunt took me to her lodgings in a narrow little street running up to the Strand. Here I perched like an untidy cuckoo, mouth ever open, in her snug nest. I filled her parlour during the day, and slept there at night on a bed they made up on the sofa. During that summer, the reek from the river was well-nigh overwhelming.

I soon realised that my aunt was not well, that I had occasioned a severe increase in her expenditure since my foolish assault with the Waterloo Medal, and that my presence, though she strove to hide it, could not but be a burden to her. I also heard the groans she smothered in the dark hours of the morning, and I saw illness ravage her body like an invading army.

One day, as we drank tea after dinner, my aunt gave me back the Waterloo Medal.

It felt cold and heavy in the palm of my hand. I touched the ribbon with its broad, blood-red stripe between dark blue borders. I tilted my hand and let the medal slide on to the table by the tea caddy. I pushed it towards her.

‘Where did it come from?’

‘The magistrate gave it to me for you,’ she said. ‘The one who was kind, who had served in the Peninsula. He said it was yours, that you had earned it.’

‘I threw it away.’

She shook her head. ‘You threw it at Captain Stanhope.’

‘Does not that amount to the same thing?’

‘No.’ She added, almost pleading, ‘You could be proud of it, Tom. You fought with honour for your King and your country.’

‘There was no damned honour in it,’ I muttered. But I took the medal to please her, and slipped it in my pocket. Then I said – and the one thing led to the other – ‘I must find employment. I cannot be a burden to you any longer.’

At that time jobs of any kind were not easy to find, particularly if one was a discharged lunatic who had left his last teaching post without a reference, who lacked qualifications or influence. But my aunt Reynolds had once kept house for Mr Bransby’s family, and he had a kindness for her. Upon threads of this nature, those chance connections of memory, habit and affection that bind us with fragile and invisible bonds, the happiness of many depends, even their lives.

All this explains why I was ready to take up my position as an under-usher at the Manor House School in the village of Stoke Newington on Monday the 13th of September. On the evening before I left my aunt’s house for the last time, I walked east into the City and on to London Bridge. I stopped there for a while and watched the grey, sluggish water moving between the piers and the craft plying up and down the river. Then, at last, I felt in my trouser pocket and took out the medal. I threw it into the water. I was on the upstream side of the bridge and the little disc twisted and twinkled as it fell, catching the evening sunshine. It slipped neatly into the river, like one going home. It might never have existed.

‘Why did I not do that before?’ I said aloud, and two shopgirls, passing arm in arm, laughed at me.

I laughed back, and they giggled, picked up their skirts and hastened away. They were pretty girls, too, and I felt desire stir within me. One of them was tall and dark, and she reminded me a little of Fanny, my first love. The girls skittered like leaves in the wind and I watched how their bodies swayed beneath thin dresses. As my aunt grows worse, I thought, I grow better, as though I feed upon her distress.

CHAPTER THREE

ONCE AGAIN, I walked to save money. My box had gone ahead by carrier. I followed the old Roman road to Cambridge, Ermine-street, stretching north from Shoreditch, the bricks and mortar of the city creeping blindly after it like ants following a line of honey.

About a mile south of Stoke Newington, the vehicles on the road came to a noisy standstill. Walking steadily, I passed the uneasy, twitching snake of curricles and gigs, chaises and carts, stagecoaches and wagons, until I drew level with the cause of the obstruction. A shabby little one-horse carriage travelling south had collided with a brewer’s dray returning from London. One of the chaise’s shafts had snapped, and the unfortunate hack which had drawn it was squirming on the ground, still entangled in her harness. The driver was waving his blood-soaked wig at the draymen and bellowing, while around them gathered a steadily expanding crowd of angry travellers and curious bystanders.

Some forty yards away, standing in the queue of vehicles travelling towards London, was a carriage drawn by a pair of matching bays. When I saw it, I felt a pang, curiously like hunger. I had seen the equipage before – outside the Manor House School. The same coachman was on the box, staring at the scene of the accident with a bored expression on his face. The glass was down and a man’s hand rested on the sill.

I stopped and turned back, pretending an interest in the accident, and examined the carriage more closely. As far as I could see, it had only the one occupant, a man whose eyes met mine, then looked away, back to something on his lap. He had a long pale face, with a hint of green in its pallor and fine regular features. His starched collar rose almost to his ears and his neck cloth tumbled in a snowy waterfall from his throat. The fingers on the windowsill moved rhythmically, as though marking time to an inaudible tune. On the forefinger was a great gold signet ring.

A footman came hurrying along the road from the accident, pushing his way through the crowd. He went up to the carriage window. The occupant raised his head.

‘There’s a horse down, sir, the chaise is a wreck and the dray has lost its offside front wheel. They say there’s nothing to do but wait.’

‘Ask that fellow what he’s staring at.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ I said, and my voice sounded thin and reedy in my ears. ‘I stared at no one, but I admired your conveyance. A fine example of the coach-builder’s craft.’

The footman was already looming over me, leaning close. He smelt of onions and porter. ‘Be off with you, then.’ He nudged me with his shoulder and went on in a lower voice, ‘You’ve admired enough, so cheese it.’

I did not move.

The coachman lifted his whip.

Meanwhile, the man in the carriage stared straight at me. He showed neither anger nor interest. There was an impersonal menace in the air, as pungent as gas, even in broad daylight and on a crowded road. Like an itch, I was a minor irritant. The gentleman in the coach had decided to scratch me.

I sketched a bow and strolled away. I did not know the encounter for what it was, an omen.

CHAPTER FOUR

STOKE NEWINGTON WAS a pretty place, despite its proximity to London. I remember the trees and rooks with affection. The youngest boy in the school was four; the oldest nineteen and so nearly a man that he sported bushy whiskers and was rumoured to have put the baker’s girl with child. The sons of richer and more ambitious parents were prepared for entry at the public schools. Most, however, received all the learning they required at Mr Bransby’s.

‘The parents entrust their sons’ board and lodging to us as well as their tuition,’ Mr Bransby told me. ‘A nutritious diet and a comfortable bed are essential if a boy is to learn. Moreover, if a child lives among gentlefolk, he acquires their ways. We keep strictly to our regimen. It is an essential foundation to sobriety in later life.’

The regimen did not affect Mr Bransby and his household, who lived separately from the rest of the school and were no doubt sufficiently sober already. I was expected to sleep on the boys’ side, as was the only other master who lived at the school, the senior usher.

‘Mr Dansey has been with me for many years,’ Bransby told me when he introduced us. ‘You will find him a scholar of distinction.’

Edward Dansey was probably in his forties, a thin man, dressed in black clothes so old and faded that they were now mottled shades of green and grey. He wore a dusty little wig, usually askew, and had a cast in one eye, which, without being actually oblique, approached nearly to a squint. Both then and later, he was always perfectly civil. His manners were those of a gentleman, despite his shabby clothes. He had the great merit of showing no curiosity about my past history.

When I knew Dansey better I found he had a habit of looking at the world with his chin raised and his lips twisted asymmetrically so that one corner of the mouth curled up and the other curled down; it was as though part of him was smiling and part of him was frowning so one never really knew where one stood with him. The cast in his eye accentuated this ambivalence of expression. The boys called him Janus, perhaps because they believed his mood varied according to the side of his face you saw him from. They were scared of Bransby, who kept a cane in every room of the school so he could flog a boy wherever he was without delay, but they were terrified of Dansey.

On my second Thursday at the school, the manservant padded along to the form room as the boys were streaming out to their two hours of liberty before dinner and requested me to wait on his master.

My immediate fear was that I had somehow displeased Mr Bransby. I went through the door that separated his quarters from the rest of the house, which was like stepping into a different country. Here the air smelt of beeswax and flowers and the walls were freshly papered, the panels freshly painted. Mr Bransby had silence enough to hear the ticking of a clock, a luxury indeed in a house full of boys. I knocked and was told to enter. He was staring out of the window, tapping his fingers on the leather top of his table.

‘Sit down, Shield. I must be the bearer of sad news, I’m afraid.’

I said, ‘My aunt Reynolds?’

Bransby bowed his heavy head. ‘I am truly sorry for it. She was an excellent woman.’

My mind was blank, an empty place filled with fog.

‘She charged the woman with whom she lodged to write to me when she was gone. She died yesterday afternoon.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It appears that it was very sudden at the end, or else they would have sent for you. But there is a letter. Mrs Reynolds directed that it should be given to you after her death.’

The seal was intact. It had been stamped with what looked like the handle of a small spoon. I thought I could make out the imprint of fluting. My aunt had probably used the small silver spoon she kept locked in the caddy with her tea. The wax was streaky, a mixture of rusty orange and dark blue. Economical in all things, she saved the seals of letters sent to her and melted the wax again when she sent a letter of her own.

The mind is an ungovernable creature, particularly under the influence of grief; we cannot always command our own thoughts. I found myself wondering if the spoon would still be there, and whether by rights it was now mine. For an instant the fog cleared and I saw her there, in my mind but as solid as Bransby himself, sitting at the table after dinner, frowning into the caddy as she measured the tea.

‘There will be arrangements to be made,’ Bransby was saying. ‘Mr Dansey will take over your duties for a day or two.’ He sneezed, and then said angrily, ‘I shall advance you a small sum of money to cover any expenses you may have. I suggest you go up to town this afternoon. Well? What do you say?’

I recalled that my sanity was still on trial, and now there was no one to speak for me so I must make shift to speak for myself. I raised my head and said that I was sensible of Mr Bransby’s great kindness. I begged leave to withdraw and prepare for my journey.

A moment later, I went up to my little room in the attic, a green hermitage under the eaves. There at last I wept. I wish I could say my tears were solely for my aunt, the best of women. Alas, they were also for myself. My protector was dead. Now, I told myself, I was truly alone in the world.

CHAPTER FIVE

MY AUNT’S DEATH drew me deeper into the labyrinth. It brought me to Mr Rowsell and Mrs Jem.

Her last letter to me was brief and, judging by the handwriting, written in the later stages of her illness. In it, she expressed the hope that we might meet again in that better place beyond the grave and assured me that, if heaven permitted it, she would watch over me. Turning to more practical matters, she informed me that she had left money to defray the expense of her funeral. There was nothing for me to do, for she had decided all the details, even the nature of her memorial, even the mason to cut the letters. Finally, she directed me to wait on her attorney Mr Rowsell at Lincoln’s Inn.

I called at the lawyer’s chambers. Mr Rowsell was a large, red-faced man, bulging in the prison of his clothing as though the blood were bursting to escape from his body. He directed his moon-faced clerk to fetch my aunt’s papers. While we waited he scribbled in his pocketbook. When the clerk returned, Rowsell looked through the will, glancing up at me with bright, bird-like eyes, his manner a curious compound of the curt and the furtive. There were two bequests of five pounds apiece, he told me, one to the maid of all work and the other to the landlady.

‘The residue comes to you, Mr Shield,’ he said. ‘Apart from my bill, of course, which will be a charge on the estate.’

‘There cannot be much.’

‘She drew up a schedule, I believe,’ said Rowsell, reaching into the little deed-box. ‘But do not let your hopes rise too high, young man.’ He took out a sheet of paper, glanced at it and handed it to me. ‘Her goods and chattels, such as they were,’ he continued, staring at me over his spectacles, ‘and a sum of money. A little over a hundred pounds, in all probability. Heaven knows how she managed to put it by on that annuity of hers.’ He stood up and held out his hand. ‘I am pressed for time this morning so I shall not detain you any longer. If you leave your direction with Atkins on your way out, I will write to you when we are in a position to conclude the business.’

A hundred pounds! I walked down to the Strand in a daze similar to intoxication. My steps were unsteady. A hundred pounds!

I went to the house where my aunt had lodged and arranged for the disposal of her possessions. Of the larger items, I kept only the tea caddy with its spoon. The landlady found a friend named Mrs Jem who was willing to buy the furniture. I suspected I would have got a higher price if I had been prepared to look elsewhere, but I did not want the trouble of it. Mrs Jem also bought my aunt’s clothes.

‘Not that they’re worth more than a few shillings,’ she said with a martyred smile; she was a mountainous woman with handsome little features buried in her broad face. ‘More patches and darns than anything else. Still, you won’t want them, will you, so it’s doing you a favour. I’ve only thirty shillings. Will you wait while I fetch the rest of the money?’

‘No.’ I could not bear to stay here any longer, for I wanted to contemplate both my loss and my good fortune in peace and quiet. ‘I will take the thirty shillings and collect the balance later.’

‘As you wish,’ she said. ‘Three Gaunt-court. It’s not a stone’s throw away.’

‘A long throw.’

She gave me a hard stare. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll have the money waiting for you. Six shillings, no more no less. I pay my debts, Mr Shield, and I expect others to pay theirs.’

I could not resist a schoolboy pun. ‘Mrs Jem,’ I said solemnly, ‘you are indeed a pearl of great price.’

‘That’s enough of your impudence,’ she replied. ‘If you’re going, you’d better go.’

The balloon of mirth subsided as I walked away from the house where my aunt had lived. So this was all that a life amounted to – a mound of freshly turned earth in a churchyard, a few pieces of furniture scattered among other people’s rooms, and a handful of clothes that nobody but the poor would want to buy.

There was also the small matter of the money which would come to me. For the first time in my life, I was about to be a man of substance, the absolute master of £103 and a few shillings and pence. The knowledge changed me. Wealth may not bring happiness, but at least it has the power to avert certain causes of sorrow. And it makes a man feel he has a place in the world.

CHAPTER SIX

WEALTH. THAT BRINGS me to Wavenhoe’s Bank. It was Mr Bransby who first mentioned its name to me. I never went there, never met old Mr Wavenhoe himself until he was on his deathbed, but Wavenhoe’s was the chain that bound us all together, the British and the Americans, the Frants and the Carswalls, Charlie and Edgar. Money plays its own tune, and in our different ways we all found ourselves dancing to it.

Early in October, I applied to Bransby for leave to go up to town. It was on that occasion that he mentioned Wavenhoe’s. I needed to visit London because Mr Rowsell had papers for me to sign, and I wished to collect the few shillings that Mrs Jem owed me. He made no difficulty about my request.

‘Upon one condition, however,’ he went on. ‘I should like you to go on Tuesday. Then you may undertake two errands for me while you are there. Not that you will find them onerous – quite the reverse, I fancy. When you travel up to town, you will take the boy Allan with you and leave him at his parents’ house in Southampton-row. Number thirty-nine. His father writes that his mother desires to have him measured for a suit of clothes against the winter.’

‘Will I collect him on my way back, sir?’

‘No. I understand he is to return later in the evening, and that Mr Allan will make the arrangements. Once you have left him at his father’s house, you may discharge your own business. But afterwards I wish you to call at a house in Russell-square so that you may convey a new pupil to the school. Or rather, he will convey you. The boy’s father tells me he will order the carriage.’ Bransby leaned back in his chair, his body pressing against his waistcoat buttons. ‘His name is Frant.’

I nodded. I remembered the lady who had smiled at me at the gate of the school, and also the man who had nearly set his servants on to me as I walked up Ermine-street. I felt my pulse beating somewhere among the fingers of my clasped hands.

‘Master Frant should suit us very well. His father is one of the partners of Wavenhoe’s Bank. A very sound concern indeed.’

‘How old is the boy, sir?’

‘Ten or eleven. As it happens, this school was commended to Mr Frant by Allan’s father. He is an American of Scottish descent, but resident in London. I understand that he and Mr Frant have conducted business together. Mark this well, Shield: first, a satisfied parent will share his satisfaction with other parents; second, Mr Frant is a gentleman-like man who not only moves in good society but meets wealthy men in the course of his business. Wealthy men have sons who require an education. I would wish you to make a particularly good impression, therefore, on Mr and Mrs Allan and Mr and Mrs Frant.’

‘I shall endeavour to do so, sir.’

Bransby leaned forward across the desk so that he could study me more closely. ‘I am confident that your manner will be everything that is appropriate. But I must confess – and pray do not take this amiss – that some alteration to your dress might be desirable. I advanced you a small sum for clothing, did I not, but perhaps not enough?’

I began to speak: ‘It is unfortunate, sir, that –’

‘And, indeed,’ Bransby rushed on, his colour darkening, ‘you have now been with us for nearly a month and your work has, on the whole, been satisfactory. That being so, from next quarterday I propose to pay you a salary of twelve pounds a year, as well as your board and lodging. It is on the understanding, naturally, that your dress will be appropriate to an usher at this establishment and that your conduct continues to give satisfaction in all respects. In the circumstances, I am minded to advance you perhaps half of your first quarter’s salary so that you may make the necessary purchases.’

Three days later, on Tuesday, 5th October, I travelled up to London. Young Allan sat as far away as possible from me in the coach and replied in monosyllables to the questions I put to him. I delivered the boy into the care of a servant at his parents’ house. I had taken but a few steps along the pavement when I felt a hand on my sleeve. I stopped and turned.

‘Your pardon, sir.’

A tall man in a shabby green coat inclined his trunk forward from the waist. He wore a greasy wig, thick blue spectacles and a spreading beard like the nest of an untidy bird.

‘I am looking – looking for the residence of an acquaintance.’ He had a low, booming voice, the sort that makes glasses vibrate. ‘An American gentleman – a Mr Allan. I wonder whether that might be his house.’

‘It is indeed.’

‘Ah – you are most obliging, sir – so the boy you were with must be his son?’ He swayed as he spoke. ‘A handsome boy.’

I bowed. The man’s face was turned away from me but his breath smelt faintly of spirits and strongly of rotting teeth or an infection of the gums. He was not intoxicated, though, or rather not so it affected his actions. I thought he was perhaps the sort of man who is at his most sober when a little elevated.

‘Mr Shield, sir!’

I turned back to the Allans’ house. The servant had opened the door.

‘There was a message from Mrs Allan, sir. She wishes to keep Master Edgar until tomorrow. Mr Allan’s clerk will bring him back to Stoke Newington in the morning.’

‘Very good,’ I said. ‘I will inform Mr Bransby.’

Without a word of farewell, the man in the green coat walked rapidly in the direction of Holborn. I followed, for my next destination was beyond it, at Lincoln’s Inn. The man glanced over his shoulder, saw me strolling behind him and began to walk more quickly. He knocked against a woman selling baskets and she shrieked abuse at him, which he ignored. He turned into Vernon-row. By the time I reached the corner, there was no sign of him.

I thought perhaps the man in the green coat had mistaken me, or someone behind me, for a creditor. Or he had accelerated his pace for quite a different reason, unconnected with his looking back. I dismissed him from my mind and continued to walk southwards. But the incident lodged itself in my memory, and later I was to be thankful that it had.

At Mr Rowsell’s chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, his clerk had the papers ready for me to sign. But as I was about to take my leave, the lawyer himself came out of his private room and shook me by the hand with unexpected cordiality.

‘I give you joy of your inheritance. You are somewhat changed, Mr Shield, if I may say so without impertinence. And for the better.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘A new coat, I fancy? You have begun to spend your new wealth?’

I smiled at Mr Rowsell, responding to the good humour in his face rather than the words. ‘I have not touched my aunt’s money yet.’

‘What will you do with it?’

‘I shall place it in a bank for a few months. I do not wish to rush into a venture I might later regret.’ I hesitated, then added upon impulse: ‘My employer Mr Bransby happened to mention that Wavenhoe’s is a sound concern.’

‘Wavenhoe’s, eh?’ Rowsell shrugged. ‘They have a good name, it is true, but lately there have been rumours – not that that means anything; the City is a perfect rumour mill, you understand, turning ceaselessly, grinding yesterday’s idle speculations into tomorrow’s facts. Mr Wavenhoe himself is an old man, and they say he delegates much of the day-to-day business of the bank to his partners.’

‘And that is a cause of unease?’

‘Not exactly. But the City does not like change, it may be no more than that. And if Mr Wavenhoe retires, or even dies, his absence may have an effect on confidence in the bank. That is no reflection on the bank itself necessarily, merely on human nature. If you wish, I shall make some inquiries on your behalf.’

I dined at an ordinary among plump lawyers and skinny clerks. My business had taken longer than I had anticipated, and I resolved to postpone my visit to Mrs Jem in Gaunt-court. After dinner, comfortable with beef and beer, I made my way up Southampton-row, passing the Allans’ house. It was a fine autumn afternoon. With my new coat, my new position and my new fortune, I felt I had become a different Tom Shield altogether from the one I had been less than a month before.

As I walked, I observed the passers-by – chiefly the women. My eyes clung to a face beneath a bonnet, a pretty foot peeping beneath the hem of a dress, the curve of a forearm, the swell of a breast, a pair of bright eyes. I heard their laughter, their whispers. I smelt their perfume. Dear God, I was like a boy with his face pressed against the pastry-cook’s window.

One struck me in particular, a tall woman with black hair, a high colour, and a fine full figure; as she climbed into a hackney I thought for an instant that she was Fanny, the girl I had once known, not as she had been then but as she might have become; and for a moment or two a cloud covered my happiness.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE FRANTS’ HOUSE was on the south side of Russell-square. I rang the bell and waited. The brass plate sparkled. The paint was new. If a surface could be polished, it had been polished. If it could be scrubbed, it had been scrubbed.

A manservant answered the door, a tall fellow with a fleshy, hook-nosed face. I told him my name and business, and he left me to kick my heels in a big dining room overlooking the square. I walked over to the window and stared down at the square garden. The curtains were striped silk, cream and green, and the green seemed to have been chosen to match exactly the grass outside.

The door opened, and I turned to see Mr Henry Frant. As I did so, I looked for the first time at the wall beside the door, which was opposite the window. A portrait hung there, Mrs Frant to the life, sitting in a park with a tiny boy leaning against her knee and a spaniel stretched on the ground at her feet. In the distance was a prospect of a large stone-built mansion-house.

‘You’re Mr Bransby’s usher, I collect?’ Frant walked quickly towards me, his left hand in his pocket, bringing with him a scent of lavender water. He was the man I had seen at the carriage window in Ermine-street. ‘The boy will be down in a moment.’

There was no sign of recognition on his face. I was too insignificant for him to have remembered me, of course, but it was also possible to believe that my own appearance had changed in the last month. Frant made no move to shake hands; nor was there an offer of refreshment or even a chair. There was an air of excitement about him, of absorption in his own affairs.

‘The boy has milksop tendencies, fostered by his mother,’ he announced. ‘I particularly desire that these traits be eradicated.’

I bowed. In the portrait, Mrs Frant’s small white hand toyed with a brown ringlet that had escaped the confines of her bonnet.

‘He is not to be indulged, do you hear? He has had enough of that already. But now he is grown too old for the softness of women. It is time for him to learn to be a man. Behaving like a blushing maiden will be no good to him when he goes to Westminster. That is one reason why I have determined to send him to Mr Bransby’s.’

‘So he has never been to school before, sir?’

‘He has had tutors at home.’ Frant waved his right hand as though pushing them away, and the great signet ring on his forefinger gleamed as it caught the light from the window. ‘He does well enough at his books. Now it is time for him to learn something equally useful: how to deal with his fellows. But I will not detain you any longer. Pray give my compliments to Mr Bransby.’

Before I could manage even another bow, Frant was out of the room, the door snapping shut behind him. I envied him: here was a man who had everything the gods could bestow including an air of breeding and consequence that sat naturally upon him, as though he were its rightful possessor. Even now, God help me, part of me envies him as he was then.

I waited another moment, studying the portrait. My interest, I told myself, was both pure and objective. I admired the painting as I might a beautiful statue or a line of poetry that spoke with both elegance and force to the heart. The brushwork was particularly fine, and the skin was exquisitely lifelike. Such beauty was refreshing, too, like a drink to a thirsty traveller. There was, therefore, no reason why I should not study it as much as I wished.

Ah, you will say, you were falling in love with Sophia Frant. But that is romantic nonsense. If you want plain speaking, I will give it you as I gave it to myself on that fateful day: leaving artistic considerations aside, I disliked her because she had so much I lacked in the way of wealth and the world’s esteem; and I also disliked her because I desired her, as I did almost any pretty woman I saw, and knew she could never be mine.

I heard footsteps outside the door and a high voice speaking indistinctly but loudly. I moved away and feigned an intense interest in the ormolu clock upon the mantel-shelf. The door opened and a boy rushed into the room, followed by a small, plain woman, dressed in black and with a wart on the side of her chin. What struck me immediately was that there was a remarkable resemblance between young Frant and Edgar Allan, the American boy. With their lofty brows, their bright eyes and their delicate features, they might almost have been brothers. Then I noticed the boy’s attire.

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ he said. ‘I am Charles Augustus Frant.’

I shook the offered hand. ‘And I am Mr Shield.’

‘And this is Mrs Kerridge, my – one of the servants,’ the boy rushed on. ‘There was no need for her to come down with me, but she insisted.’

I nodded to her and she inclined her head. ‘I wished to ask if Master Charles’s box had arrived at the school yet, sir.’

‘I’m afraid I do not know. But I’m sure its absence would have been marked.’

‘And my mistress desired me to say that Master Charles feels the cold. When the weather begins to turn, perhaps a flannel undershirt next to the skin might be advisable.’

The boy snorted. I nodded gravely. My mind was on the lad’s clothes, though not in a way that Mrs Kerridge or indeed Mrs Frant would have liked. Whether at his own request or at his mother’s whim, Master Charles was wearing a beautifully cut olive greatcoat with black frogs. He carried under his arm a hat from which depended a long and handsome tassel; he clutched a cane in his left hand.

‘They’re bringing the carriage round, sir,’ Mrs Kerridge said, ‘and Master Charles’s valise is in the hall. Would you like anything before you go?’

The boy hopped from one leg to another.

‘Thank you, no,’ I said.

‘There’s the carriage.’ He ran over to the window. ‘Yes, it is ours.’

Mrs Kerridge looked up at me, squeezing her face to a frown. ‘Poor lamb,’ she murmured in a tone too low for him to hear. ‘Never been away from home before.’

I nodded, and smiled in a way I hoped the woman would find reassuring. When we opened the door, a footman was waiting by the front door and a black pageboy, not much older than Charles himself, hovered over the valise. Charles Frant, smiling graciously at his father’s servants, marched down the steps with a dignity befitting the Horse Guards, a dignity only slightly marred by the way he skipped up into the carriage. Mrs Kerridge and I followed more slowly, walking behind like a pair of acolytes.

‘He is very young for his age, sir,’ Mrs Kerridge muttered.

I smiled down at her. ‘He’s a handsome boy.’

‘Takes after his mother.’

‘Is she not here to say goodbye to him?’

‘She’s away nursing her uncle.’ Mrs Kerridge grimaced. ‘The poor gentleman’s dying, and he ain’t going easy. Otherwise Madam would be here. Will he be all right, sir? Boys can be cruel little varmints. He don’t realise. He don’t know many boys.’

‘It may not be easy at first. But most boys find there is much to enjoy at school as well. Once they are used to it.’

‘His mama frets about him.’

‘It often happens that an event is more distressing in anticipation than it is in actuality. You must endeavour to –’

I broke off, realising that Mrs Kerridge was no longer looking at me. She had been distracted by the sight of a carriage whirling into the square from Montague-street. It was an elegant light chariot, painted green and gold, and drawn by a pair of chestnuts. The coachman slipped between two carts and brought the equipage to a standstill behind our own, the wheels neatly aligned within a couple of inches of the kerb. He sat back on the box with the air of a man well pleased with himself.

‘Oh Lord,’ muttered Mrs Kerridge, but she was smiling.

The glass slid down. I glimpsed a pale face and a mass of auburn curls partly concealed by a large hat adorned with grogram.

‘Kerridge!’ the girl called. ‘Kerridge, dearest. Am I in time? Where’s Charlie?’

Charles jumped out of the Frants’ carriage and ran along the pavement. ‘Do you like this rig, Cousin Flora? Mighty fine, ain’t it?’

‘You look very handsome,’ she said. ‘Quite the military man.’

He held his face up for her to kiss him. She leaned down and I had a better view of her. She was older than I had thought – a young woman; not a girl. Mrs Kerridge came forward to be kissed in her turn. Then the young woman’s eyes turned to me.

‘And who is this? Will you introduce us, Charlie?’

He coloured. ‘I beg your pardon. Cousin Flora, allow me to name Mr Shield, an usher at Mr Bransby’s – my school, you know.’ He swallowed, and then gabbled, ‘Mr Shield, my cousin Miss Carswall.’

I bowed. With great condescension, Miss Carswall held out her hand. It was a little hand that seemed to vanish within my own. She wore lilac-coloured gloves, I recall, which matched the pelisse she wore over her white muslin dress.

‘You were about to convey my cousin to school, no doubt? I shall not detain you long, sir. I merely wished to say farewell to him, and to give him this.’

She undid the drawstring of her reticule and took out a small purse which she handed to him. ‘Put it somewhere safe, Charlie. You may wish to treat your friends.’ She bent down, kissed the top of his head, and gave him a little push away from her. ‘Your mama sends her best love, by the by. I saw her for a moment at Uncle George’s.’

For an instant the boy’s face became perfectly blank, drained of the fun and excitement.

Miss Carswall patted his shoulder. ‘She cannot leave him, not at this moment.’ She looked over the boy to Mrs Kerridge and myself. ‘I must not delay you any longer. Kerridge, dearest, may I drink tea with you before I go? It would be like old times.’

‘Mr Frant is within, miss.’

‘Oh.’ The young lady gave a little laugh, and a look of understanding passed between her and Mrs Kerridge. ‘Good God, I had almost forgot. I am promised to Emma Trenton. Another time, perhaps, and we shall have a good old prose together.’

Miss Carswall’s departure was the signal for ours. I followed Charlie into the Frants’ carriage. A moment later we turned into Southampton-row. The boy huddled into the corner and turned his head to stare out of the far window. The tassel on that ridiculous hat swayed and bounced behind him.

Flora Carswall could never have been called beautiful, unlike Mrs Frant. But she had a quality of ripeness about her, like fruit waiting to be plucked, demanding to be eaten.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I FOUND IT difficult to sleep that night. My mind was possessed with a strange excitement that would not let me rest. I felt that during the day I had crossed from one part of my life into another, as though its events formed a river between two countries. I lay in my narrow bed, my body twitching and turning and sighing. I measured the passage of time by the striking of clocks. At last, a little after half-past one, my restlessness drove me from the warmth of my bed to smoke a pipe.

Mr Bransby held that snuff was the only form of tobacco acceptable to a gentleman so Dansey and I found it necessary to smoke outside. But I knew where the key to the side door was kept. A moment later I walked down the lawn, my footsteps making no noise on the wet grass. There were a few clouds but the stars were bright enough for me to see my way. To the south was a faint lessening of the darkness, a yellow haze, the false dawn of London by night, the city which never went to sleep. Beneath the trees it was completely dark. I smoked in the shelter of a copper beech, leaning against the trunk. Leaves stirred above my head. Tiny crackles and rustles near my feet hinted at the passage of small, secretive animals.

Then came another sound, a screech so sharp and hard and unexpected that I jerked myself away from the tree and almost choked on the smoke in my mouth. It came from the direction of the house. There was another, quieter noise, the scrape of metal against metal, followed by a smothered laugh.

I crouched and knocked out the pipe on the soft, damp earth. I moved forward, my feet making little sound on the leaf mould and the husks of last year’s beech nuts. By now my eyes had grown accustomed to the near darkness. Something white was hanging from an attic window in the boys’ wing. The room behind it was in darkness. I veered aside into the slightly deeper darkness running along the line of a hedge.

The attic was not in the same wing of the house as my own and Dansey’s. Most of the boys slept in dormitories, with ten or twelve of them crammed together in one of the larger rooms below. But in this part of the attic storey, two or three boys might share one of the smaller rooms if their parents were willing to pay extra for the privilege.

Once again, I heard the gasp of laughter, snuffed out almost as soon as it began. Suddenly, and with an anger so sharp that it stabbed me like a knife, I knew what I had seen. I went quickly into the house, lit my candle and made my way to the stairs leading to the boys’ attics. I found myself in a narrow corridor. By the light of the candle I saw five doors, all closed.

I tried the doors in turn until I found the one I wanted. I saw three truckle beds in the wavering glow of the candle flame. From two of them came the sound of loud, regular snoring. From the third came the broken breathing of a person trying not to cry. The window was closed.

‘Which boys are in this room?’ I demanded, not troubling to lower my voice.

One boy stopped snoring. To compensate, the other snored with redoubled force. The third boy, the one who had been trying not to cry, became completely silent.

I pulled the blankets from the nearest bed and tossed them on the floor. Its occupant continued to snore. I held the candle close to his face.

‘Quird,’ I said. ‘You will wait behind after morning school.’

I stripped the covers from the next bed. Another boy stared up at me, making no pretence at sleep.

‘You will accompany him, Morley.’

My foot caught on something on the floor. I bent down and made out a length of rope like a basking snake, most of it pushed beneath Morley’s bed.

With a grunt of anger, I threw off the covers from the third bed. There was Charlie Frant, his nightshirt rucked up above his waist and a handkerchief tied round his mouth.

I swore. I placed the candle on the windowsill, lifted the boy up and pulled down the nightshirt. He was trembling uncontrollably. I untied the handkerchief. The lad spat out a rag they had pushed inside his mouth. He retched once. Then, without a word, he fell back on the bed, turned away from me and buried his head in the pillow and began to sob.

Morley and Quird had hung him out of the window. The older boys had lashed his ankles round the central mullion to prevent him from breaking his neck on the gravel walk below.

‘I will see you tomorrow,’ I heard myself saying to them. ‘At present, I cannot see any reason why I should not flog you twice a day and every day until Christmas.’

I wondered whether I should remove young Frant from his tormentors, but what would I do with him? The boy had to sleep somewhere. But the nub of the matter was that, sooner or later, by day or by night, young Frant would have to face up to Quird and Morley. Punishing them was one thing; but trying to shield him was another.

I went back to my own room. I did not sleep until dawn. When I did, it seemed only moments before the bell rang for another day of hearing little savages construe Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

CHAPTER NINE

I WATCHED CHARLIE Frant in morning school, both before breakfast and after it. The boy sat by himself at the back of the room. I doubted if he turned a page of his book or even saw what was written on the one in front of him. His coat was now too bedraggled to have a military air. He had tear tracks on his cheeks, and his nostrils were caked with blood and mucus. Smears on the sleeve showed where he had wiped his nose.

At breakfast, I told Dansey what had happened in the night. The older man shrugged.

‘If the boy goes to Westminster School, he’ll get far worse than that.’

‘But we cannot let it pass.’

‘We cannot prevent it.’

‘If the older boys would but exert some authority over the younger ones –’

Dansey shook his head. ‘This is not a public school. We do not have a tradition of self-governance by the boys.’

‘If I went to Mr Bransby, might he not expel them or at least discipline them – Quird and Morley, I mean?’

‘You forget, my dear Shield: the true aim of this establishment is not an educational one. Considered properly, it is nothing but a machine for making money. That is why Mr Bransby has sunk his capital in it. That is why you and I are sitting here drinking weak coffee at Mr Bransby’s expense. Both Quird and Morley have younger brothers.’ Dansey’s lips twisted into their Janus-like frowning smile. ‘Their fathers pay their bills.’

‘Then is there nothing to be done?’

‘You can beat the wretched boys so soundly that you reduce their ability to persecute their unfortunate friend. At least I can be of assistance in that respect.’

At eleven o’clock, after the second session of morning school, I flogged Morley and Quird harder than I had ever flogged a boy before. They did not enjoy it but they did not complain. Custom blunts even pain.

Later, I caught sight of Charlie Frant in the playground. Half a dozen boys had grouped around him in a ragged circle. They tossed the hat from one to the other, encouraging him to make ineffectual grabs for it. The hat had lost its tassel. Some wag had contrived to pin it on the back of the olive-green coat.

‘Donkey,’ they chanted. ‘Who’s a little donkey? Bray, bray, bray.’

When lessons resumed after dinner, Frant was not at his desk. He had hidden himself away to lick his wounds. I decided that if Lord Nelson could turn a blind eye to matters he did not wish to see, then so could I. I did not, however, turn a blind eye to either Quird or Morley. Their work, never distinguished, withered under the unremitting attention that I bestowed upon it. I gave them both the imposition of copying out ten pages of the geography textbook by the following morning.

Towards the end of afternoon school, the manservant came from Mr Bransby’s part of the house and desired Dansey and myself to wait upon his master without delay. We found him in his study, pacing up and down behind his desk, his face dark with rage and a trail of spilt snuff cascading down his waistcoat.

‘Here’s a fine to-do,’ he began without any preamble, before I had even closed the door. ‘That wretched boy Frant.’

‘He has absconded?’ Dansey said.

Bransby snorted.

‘Not worse, I hope?’ There was the barest trace of amusement in Dansey’s voice, like an intellectual whisper pitched too low for Mr Bransby’s range of comprehension. ‘He has – harmed himself?’

Bransby shook his head. ‘It appears that he strolled away, as cool as a cucumber, after the boys’ dinner. He walked a little way and then found a carrier willing to give him a ride to Holborn. I understand that Mrs Frant is away from home but the servants at once sent word to Mr Frant.’ He waved a letter as though trying to swat a fly. ‘His stable boy brought this.’

He took another turn in silence up and down the room. We watched him warily.

‘It is most vexing,’ he continued at length, glowering at each of us in turn. ‘That it should concern Mr Frant – the very man we should study to please in every particular.’

‘Has he settled on withdrawing the boy?’ Dansey asked.

‘We are spared that, at least. Mr Frant wishes his son to return to us. But he demands that the boy be suitably chastised for his transgression so that he apprehends that the discipline of the school is firmly allied to paternal authority. Mr Frant desires me to send an under-master to collect his son, and he proposes that the under-master should flog the boy in his, that is to say Mr Frant’s, presence and in the boy’s own home. He suggests that in this way the boy will realise that he has no choice but to knuckle down to the discipline of the school and that by this he will learn a valuable lesson that will stand him in good stead in his later life.’ Bransby’s heavy-lidded eyes swung towards me. ‘No doubt you were about to volunteer, Shield. Indeed, my choice would have fallen on you in any case. You are a younger man than Mr Dansey, and therefore have the stronger right arm. There is also the fact that I can spare you more easily than I can Mr Dansey.’

‘Sir,’ I began, ‘is not such a course –?’

Dansey, standing behind me and to the left, stabbed his finger into my back. ‘Such a course of action is indeed a trifle unusual,’ he interrupted smoothly, ‘but in the circumstances I have no doubt that it will prove efficacious. Mr Frant’s paternal concern is laudable.’

Bransby nodded. ‘Quite so.’ He glanced at me. ‘The stable boy has ridden back to town with my answer. The chaise from the inn will be here in about half an hour. Be so good as to discuss with Mr Dansey how he should best discharge your evening duties as well as his own.’

‘When will it be convenient for me to wait upon Mr Frant?’

‘As soon as possible. You will find him now at Russell-square.’

A moment later, Dansey and I went through the door from the private part of the house to the school. A crowd of inky boys scattered as though we had the plague.

‘Did you ever hear of anything so unfeeling?’ I burst out, keeping my voice low for fear of eavesdroppers. ‘It is barbaric.’

‘Are you alluding to the behaviour of Mr Frant or the behaviour of Mr Bransby?’

‘I – I meant Mr Frant. He wishes to make a spectacle of his own son.’

‘He is entirely within his rights to do so, is he not? You would not dispute a father’s right to exercise authority over his child, I take it? Whether directly or in a delegated form is surely immaterial.’

‘Of course not. By the by, I must thank you for your timely interruption. I own I was becoming a little heated.’

‘Mr Frant and his bank could purchase this entire establishment many times over,’ Dansey observed. ‘And purchase Mr Quird and Mr Morley as well, for that matter. Mr Frant is a fashionable man, too, who moves in the best circles. If it is at all possible, Mr Bransby will do all in his power to indulge him. It is not to be wondered at.’

‘But it is hardly just. It is the boy’s tormentors who deserve chastisement.’

‘There is little point in railing against circumstances one cannot change. And remember that, by acting as Mr Bransby’s agent in this, you may to some degree be able to palliate the severity of the punishment.’

We stopped at the foot of the stairs, Dansey about to go about his duties, I to fetch my hat, gloves and stick from my room. For a moment we looked at each other. Men are strange animals, myself included, riddled with inconsistencies. Now, in that moment at the foot of the stairs, the silence became almost oppressive with the weight of things unsaid. Then Dansey nodded, I bowed, and we went our separate ways.

CHAPTER TEN

I COME NOW to an episode of great significance for this history, to the introduction of the Americans.

Providence in the form of Mr Bransby decreed I should witness a scene of comings and goings in Russell-square. A man believes in Providence because to do otherwise would force him to see his life as an arbitrary affair, conducted by the freakish rules of chance, no more under his control than a roll of the dice or the composition of a hand of cards. So let us by all means believe in Providence. Providence arranged matters so that I should call at Mr Frant’s on the same afternoon as the Americans arrived.

The shabby little chaise from the inn brought me to London. The vehicle creaked and groaned as though afflicted with arthritis. The seat was lumpy, the leather torn and stained. The interior smelt of old tobacco and unwashed bodies and vinegar. The ostler who was driving me swore at the horse, a steady stream of obscenity punctuated by the snapping of the whip. As we drove, the daylight drained away from the afternoon. By the time we reached Russell-square, the sky was heavy with dark, swirling clouds the colour of smudged ink.

My knock was answered by a footman, who showed me into the dining room to wait. Because of the weather and the lateness of the afternoon, the room was in near darkness. I turned my back on the portrait. Rain was now falling on the square, fat drops of water that smacked on to the roadway and tapped like drumbeats on the roof of the carriages. I heard voices in the hall, and the slam of a door.

A moment later the footman returned. ‘Mr Frant will see you now,’ he said, and jerked his head for me to follow him.

He led me across the marble chequerboard of the hall to a door which opened as we approached. The butler emerged.

‘You are to desire Master Charles to step this way,’ he told the footman.

The footman strode away. The butler took me into a small and square apartment, furnished as a book-room. Henry Frant was seated at a bureau, pen in hand, and did not look up. The shutters were up and candles burned in sconces above the fireplace and in a candelabrum on a table by the window.

The nib scratched on the paper. The candlelight glinted on Frant’s signet ring and the touches of silver in his hair. At length he sat back, re-read what he had written, sanded the paper, and folded it. As he opened one of the drawers of the bureau, I noticed that he was missing the top joints of the forefinger on his left hand, a blemish on his perfection which pleased me. At least, I thought, I have something that you have not. He slipped the paper in the drawer.

‘Open the cupboard on the left of the fireplace,’ he said without looking at me. ‘Below the shelves. You will find a stick in the right-hand corner.’

I obeyed him. It was a walking-stick, a stout malacca cane with a silver handle and a brass-shod point.

‘Twelve good hard strokes, I think,’ Mr Frant observed. He indicated a low stool with his pen. ‘Mount him over that, with his face towards me.’

‘Sir, the stick is too heavy for the purpose.’

‘You will find it answers admirably. Use it with the full force of your arm. I desire to teach the boy a lesson.’

‘Two older boys set on him at school,’ I said. ‘That is why he ran away.’

‘He ran away because he is weak. I do not say he is a coward, not yet; but he might become one if indulged. Pray make it clear to Mr Bransby that I do not expect the school to indulge his weaknesses any more than I do.’ There was a knock on the door. He raised his voice. ‘Come in.’

The butler opened the door. The boy edged into the room.

‘Sir,’ he began in a small, high voice. ‘I hope I find you in good health, and –’

‘Be silent,’ Frant said. ‘Wait until you are spoken to.’

The butler stood in the doorway, as if waiting for orders. In the hall behind were the footman and the little Negro pageboy. I glimpsed Mrs Kerridge on the stairs.

Frant looked beyond his son and saw the servants. ‘Well?’ he snapped. ‘What are you gaping at? Do you not have work to do? Be off with you.’

At that moment the doorbell rang. The servants jerked towards it, as though attached to the sound by a set of strings. There was another ring, followed immediately by knocking. The footman glanced over his shoulder at the butler, who looked at Mr Frant, who squeezed his lips together in a tight, horizontal line and nodded. The footman scurried to the front door.

Mrs Frant slipped into the hall before the door was more than a foot or two ajar. A maid followed her in. Mrs Frant’s colour was high as if she had been running, and she clutched her cloak to her throat. She darted across the squares of marble to the door of the book-room, where she stopped suddenly on the threshold, as though confronted by an invisible barrier. For a moment nobody spoke. Mrs Frant’s grey travelling cloak slipped from her shoulders to the floor.

‘Madam,’ Frant said, standing up and bowing. ‘I’m rejoiced to see you.’

Mrs Frant looked up at her husband but said nothing. He was a tall, broad man and beside him she looked as defenceless as a child.

‘Allow me to name Mr Shield, one of Mr Bransby’s under-masters.’

I bowed; she inclined her head.

Frant said, ‘You are come from Albemarle-street? I hope I should not infer from this unexpected visit that Mr Wavenhoe has taken a turn for the worse?’

She glanced wildly at him. ‘No – that is to say, yes, in that he is no worse and may even be slightly better.’

‘What gratifying intelligence. Now, Mrs Frant, I do not know whether you are aware that your son has chosen to pay us an unauthorised visit from his school. He is about to pay the penalty for this, and then Mr Shield will convey him back to Stoke Newington.’

Mrs Frant glanced at me, and saw the malacca cane in my hand. I looked at the boy, who was shaking like a shirt on a washing line.

‘May I speak with you, sir?’ she said. ‘A word in private?’

‘I am afraid that at present I am not at leisure. Pray allow me to wait on you in the drawing room when Mr Shield and Charles have left us.’

‘No,’ Mrs Frant said so softly that I could hardly hear her. ‘I must ask you –’

There came another ring on the doorbell.

‘Confound it,’ Frant said. ‘Mr Shield, would you excuse us for a moment? Frederick will show you into the dining room. Close the door of this room, Loomis. Then see who that is. Neither Mrs Frant nor I are at home.’

I propped the cane against a bookcase and went into the hall. Mrs Kerridge moved towards the back of the house, shooing the maid before her. Loomis pulled open the front door. I glanced over his shoulder.

For an instant, I thought it was much later than it really was. Rain was now falling heavily over the square from a sky as black as coal. Through the doorway came the smell of freshly watered dust, and the hissing and pattering of the rain. The brief illusion of night was reinforced by an enormous umbrella stretching across the width of the doorway. Below it I glimpsed a small, grey man in a snuff-coloured coat.

‘My name is Mr Noak,’ announced the newcomer in a hard, nasal voice. ‘Pray inform Mr Frant that I am here.’

‘Mr Frant is not at home, sir. If you would like to leave your –’

‘Nonsense, man. They told me at his place of business he was here. He is expecting me.’

The little man stepped into the hall and Loomis gave ground before him. Beside me, Frederick drew a sharp intake of breath, presumably at this breach of decorum, this frontal assault on Mr Loomis’s authority. Noak was followed by another man, much taller and perhaps twice his weight, who backed into the hall, lowering, collapsing and shaking the umbrella. He turned round, holding out the dripping umbrella to Frederick. This fellow was a Negro, though not so dark as the pageboy and with a more European cast of features. He took off his hat, revealing close-cropped grey hair. His dark eyes examined the hallway, resting for a moment on me.

‘Convey my card to Mr Frant,’ Noak said, unbuttoning his coat and feeling in an inner pocket. ‘Stay a moment. I shall write a word on the back.’

The butler did not even try to dissuade him. The little man had a natural authority which any schoolmaster would have envied. He found a pencil in his waistcoat and scribbled briefly on the back of the card. The Negro waited, his hat in his hands. The umbrella dripped on the floor. Frederick craned his neck, trying to see what Noak was writing. I edged nearer Mrs Kerridge to get a better view of proceedings. She glanced up at me and rubbed the wart on the side of her chin.

Noak handed the card to Loomis. ‘I’m obliged to you.’ He passed his hat to Frederick.

Loomis tapped on the book-room door and went inside. No one spoke in the hall. Noak turned his back towards Frederick and raised his arms, so the footman could help him out of his coat. The Negro was as still as a post, his eyes now fixed on a spot behind Mrs Kerridge’s head.

The book-room door reopened, and to my surprise Mr Frant himself emerged, his face illuminated with a smile of welcome. The Negro’s head swivelled towards Mr Frant, and the expression on his face had an element of calculation which reminded me of the way farmers at market look when assessing a calf or a mare. At the time it did not strike me as significant – but how could it have done? Only later did I realise what was really happening in the hall of the house in Russell-square.

‘My dear sir,’ Frant said, advancing towards Noak with his hand outstretched. ‘This is indeed an honour. And I had not expected you so soon, though I left word with my clerk in case we were fortunate. You travelled post from Liverpool, I collect?’

‘Yes, sir. We arrived a little after noon.’

‘But I forget my manners.’ Frant released Noak’s hand and turned towards Mrs Frant, who was now standing in the doorway behind him. ‘My dear, allow me to present Mr Noak of Boston, in the United States. You have often heard me speak of him – he is acquainted with the Allans and many of our other American friends. And this, sir, is Mrs Frant.’

She coloured becomingly and curtsied. ‘How do you do, sir. You must be exhausted after your long journey.’

‘And here is my son,’ Frant continued before Noak could reply. ‘Come, Charles, make your bow to Mr Noak.’

You must allow the gentry this, if nothing else: they know how to close ranks in front of strangers. You would never have guessed from their behaviour that the Frants were not the happiest of families. Mrs Frant smoothed her son’s hair and smiled first at her guest and then at her husband. I fancied that the only symptom of her underlying agitation was her breathing: it seemed to me that her bosom rose and fell more rapidly than was natural.

‘Charles is about to return to his school,’ Mr Frant said. ‘Pray excuse him.’

Noak inclined his head. ‘I should not like to be the cause of interrupting a young man’s education.’

He glanced briefly and incuriously in my direction; Frant had not considered me worth introducing. Mrs Frant smiled dazzlingly at Mr Noak, took the boy by his shoulders and steered him towards Mrs Kerridge.

‘Charlie and Mr Shield will leave now,’ Mrs Frant murmured. ‘Make sure they take something to eat with them.’ She added in a sudden rush, still in a whisper, ‘But they must leave at once, Kerridge, the hour is already late. We have detained Mr Shield from his duties for too long.’

Mrs Kerridge curtsied.

Mrs Frant turned to me. ‘I confide my son to your charge, sir. I regret we have inconvenienced you.’

I bowed, sensing that my own colour was rising. What you must realise is that she was beautiful, and her beauty had the power to invest the simplest words with charm. In her company I was like a man in the desert who stumbles on a pool of clear water fringed with palms. You will understand nothing of what follows unless you understand that.

‘How did you come here?’ she asked me.

‘In a hired chaise, madam. It is outside.’

‘Tell them to have it brought round to the area door. It – it will be quicker than using the hall door.’

Quicker, and more discreet. She hugged her son. Her husband and Mr Noak were chatting about the inconvenience of travelling post, at the mercy of other people’s worn-out horses. I stared at the angle between her neck and shoulder and wondered how soft the skin would be, and what it would smell of.

She pushed Charles gently away from her. ‘Go with Mr Shield, Charlie. And write to me often.’

‘But Mama –’

‘Go, dearest. Go quickly now.’

‘This way, Master Charles.’ Mrs Kerridge placed an arm over the boy’s thin shoulders and urged him away from the front of the hall. Looking back at me, she added, ‘If you would be so kind as to come this way, sir.’

She smiled at Mr Noak’s man, still standing, still watching with grave interest.

‘I am Mrs Kerridge, sir.’

‘Salutation Harmwell, ma’am. At your service.’

‘Come and dry out in the servants’ hall. Perhaps we can offer you a little refreshment while you wait?’

He paused for a moment, as if contemplating the meaning of her question; then he bowed his assent, and for an instant his gravity dissolved into what was almost a smile.

I wondered how well Harmwell spoke English. He was undoubtedly a fine figure of a man, though, in any language. Aye, and Mrs Kerridge thought so too; I could tell that from the way she stumbled on the stairs and clung to his arm and thanked him so prettily for his support. It struck me for the first time that, though by no stretch of the imagination was she a handsome woman, she had a fine, mature figure and a pleasing smile when she chose to use it.

In the basement, the cook emerged and lured young Frant into her kitchen to select the contents of our hamper for the drive back to school. I waited in the shadows by the staircase, ignored and feeling somewhat of a fool. Mrs Kerridge showed Mr Harmwell into the servants’ hall. A moment later she returned, demanding a decanter of Madeira and a plate of biscuits. Unaware of my presence, she raised a finger to detain Frederick, who was about to fetch the chaise.

‘What did that scrawny little fellow write on his card?’ she muttered. ‘Did you see?’

He glanced from side to side, then spoke in a low voice to match hers. ‘Can’t have been more than two or three words. I could only read one of them. Carswall.’

‘Mr Carswall?’

Frederick shrugged. ‘Who else?’ He gave a snort of amusement. ‘Unless it was Miss Flora.’

‘Don’t be pert,’ Mrs Kerridge said. ‘Well, well. You’d better fetch that hackney.’

As the footman was leaving, I shifted my weight from one foot to another. My boot creaked. Mrs Kerridge looked quickly in my direction, and then away. I kept my face bland. Perhaps she wondered whether I had marked the oddity of it. If Mr Frant had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Mr Noak, why had not Mr Noak simply sent in his card? And why had the name of Carswall acted as his Open Sesame?

The page came clumping down the stairs with indecorous speed.

‘Don’t run, Juvenal,’ snapped Mrs Kerridge. ‘It ain’t genteel.’

‘The mistress told Mr Loomis to have the carriage brought round,’ the boy gasped. ‘Mr Wavenhoe’s, that is, she come in that. She’s a-going back to Albemarle-street.’

Frederick grinned. ‘I wouldn’t want to linger here if it was my uncle a-dying, and him as rich as half a dozen nabobs.’

‘That’s more than enough from you,’ Mrs Kerridge said. ‘It’s not your place to go prattling about your betters. If you want to keep your situation, you’d better mind that tongue of yours.’ She turned to me, no doubt to alert the others to my presence. ‘Mr Shield, sir, I’m sorry to keep you waiting down here. Ah, here’s Master Charles.’

The lad came out of the kitchen holding a basket covered with a cloth. Frederick called out that our chaise was at the door. A moment later, the boy and I were driving back to Stoke Newington. I unstrapped the hamper and Charlie Frant wept quietly into the napkin that had been wrapped round the warm rolls.

‘In a year’s time,’ I said, ‘you will smile at this.’

‘I won’t, sir,’ he retorted, his voice thick with grief. ‘I shall never forget this day.’

I told him all things passed, even memories, and I ate cold chicken. And as I ate, I wondered if I had spoken the truth: for how could a man ever forget the face of Mrs Frant?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE NEXT INCIDENT of this history would have turned out very differently if there had not been the physical resemblance between young Allan and Charlie Frant. The similarity between them was sufficiently striking for Mr Bransby on occasion to mistake one for the other.

On the day after my return from London, I gave Morley and Quird another flogging after morning school. I made them yelp, and for once I derived a melancholy satisfaction from the infliction of pain. Charlie Frant was pale but composed. I believed they had let him alone during the night. Morley and Quird were uncertain how far they could try me.

After dinner, I took a turn about the garden. It was a fine afternoon, and I strolled down the gravel walk to the trees at the end. On my left was a high hedge dividing the lawn from the part of the garden used as the boys’ playground. The high, indistinct chatter of their voices formed a background to my meditations. Then a shriller voice, suddenly much louder than the rest as if its owner were becoming heated, penetrated my thoughts.

‘He’s your brother, isn’t he? Must be. So is he a little bastard like you?’

Another voice spoke; I could not make out the words.

‘You’re brothers, I know you are.’ The first voice was Quird’s, made even shriller by the fact that it would occasionally dive deep down the register. ‘A pair of little bastards – with the same mother, I should think, but different fathers.’

‘Damn you,’ cried a voice I recognised as Allan’s, anger making his American twang more pronounced than usual. ‘Do not insult my mother.’

‘I shall, you little traitor bastard. Your mother’s a – a nymph of the pavey. A – a fellow who knows her saw her in the Haymarket. She’s nothing but a moll.’

‘My mother is dead,’ Allan said in a low voice.

‘Liar. Morley saw her, didn’t you, Morley? So you’re a bastard and a liar.’

‘I’m not a liar. My mother and father are dead. Mr and Mrs Allan adopted me.’

Quird made a noise like breaking wind. ‘Oh yes, and I’m the Emperor of China, didn’t you know, you Yankee bastard?’

‘I’ll fight you.’

‘You? You little scrub. Fight me?’

‘One cannot always fight with the sons of gentlemen,’ said the American boy. ‘Much as one would prefer it.’

There was a moment’s silence, then the sound of a slap.

‘I am a gentleman!’ cried Quird with what sounded like genuine anguish. ‘My papa keeps his carriage.’

‘Steady on,’ Morley intervened, croaking like a raven. ‘If there’s to be a fight, you must have it in the regular manner.’ Morley was older than his friend, a hulking youth of fourteen or fifteen. ‘After school, and you must find yourself a bottle-holder, Allan. I shall act for Quird.’

‘He’ll have the other little bastard,’ Quird said, ‘the one we put out of the window. That was famous sport, but this will be even better.’

I could not intervene. From time immemorial, fighting had been commonplace in schools. The little boys aped the bigger ones. An establishment such as Mr Bransby’s aped the great public schools. The public schools aped the noble art of pugilism on the one hand and the mores of the duel on the other. It was one thing for me to intervene in an episode of nocturnal bullying, but quite a different one for me to seek to prevent a fight conducted with the tacit approval of Mr Bransby. I own that I was surprised by the tenderness of my own feelings. I was perfectly accustomed to the knowledge that boys are rough little animals and maul each other like puppies.

There was a good deal of whispering during afternoon school. The older boys, I guessed, had seized with enthusiasm the opportunity to organise the fight. I consulted with my colleague Dansey, who told me, as I knew he would, that I must leave well alone.

‘They will not thank you, Shield. Boys are morally fastidious creatures. They would consider you had interfered in an affair of honour.’

By the time supper came, nothing had happened. That was plain from the unmarked countenances of Quird and Allan, and from the buzz of excited whispering that spread up and down the long tables.

‘It will be after supper, I fancy,’ Dansey observed. ‘There will still be enough light, and Mr Bransby will be safe in his own quarters. They should have well over an hour to beat each other into pulp before bedtime.’

I did not know the result of the fight until the following morning. It did not come as a surprise. There are cases when Jack kills the Giant to universal approbation, but they are few and far between. Quird was at least a head taller than Allan and a couple of stone heavier. Arm in arm with Morley, Quird swaggered into morning school. Edgar Allan, on the other hand, sported two black eyes, a grazed cheekbone and swollen lips.

I looked for, and found, reasons for me to give impositions to Morley and Quird which would keep them occupied after prayers every evening for a week. Sometimes it is easier to punish the wicked than to defend the innocent.

Gradually I discovered that the defeat was widely recognised as having been an honourable one. Dansey told me that he had overheard two older boys talking about the fight at breakfast: one had said that the little Yankee was a well plucked ’un, to which the other had replied that he had fought like the very devil and that Quird should be ashamed of himself for picking on such a youngster.

‘So you see there’s no harm in it,’ Dansey said. ‘None in the world.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

OVER THE NEXT few days I did not pay much attention to Charlie Frant and the American boy. I saw them, of course, and noted that they showed no further marks of mistreatment, or rather no more than one would expect to find on small boys in their situation. I was aware, however, that they often sat together and played together. Once I overheard two older boys pretending to mistake one for the other, but in a jocular way that suggested that the resemblance between them had become a source of friendly amusement rather than mockery.

The next event of importance to this history occurred on Monday the 11th October. The boys were more or less at leisure during the period between the end of morning school at eleven o’clock and their dinner two hours later. They might play, write letters, or do their preparation. They were also allowed to request permission to make excursions to the village.

Their movements outside the school, however, were strictly regulated, at least in theory. Mr Bransby had decreed, for example, among other things, that boys should patronise certain establishments and not others. Only the older boys were permitted to purchase liquor, for which they required special permission from Mr Bransby. The older boys ignored the condition, usually with impunity, and were frequently drunk at weekends and on holidays; and some of the younger ones were not slow to follow their example. But I own I was surprised when I saw Charlie Frant ineffectually attempting to conceal a pint bottle beneath his coat.

I had walked into the village in order to buy a pipe of tobacco. On my way back to the school, I happened to pass the yard entrance of the inn which hired out hacks. There was really no avoiding the meeting. Looking as furtive as a pair of housebreakers, Frant and Allan edged out of the yard immediately in front of me. I was on their left, but their attention was to their right, towards the school, in other words, the direction from which they expected trouble. Frant actually knocked into me. I watched the shock spreading over his features.

‘What have you got there?’ I asked sternly.

‘Nothing, sir,’ replied Charlie Frant.

‘Don’t be a fool. It looks remarkably like a bottle. Give it me.’

He passed it to me. I pulled out the cork and sniffed. The contents smelled of citrus and spirits.

‘Rum-shrub, eh?’

The boys stared up at me with wide, terrified eyes. Rum-shrub was something of a favourite among the older boys at the Manor House School, for the combination of rum with sugar and orange or lemon juice offered them a cheap, sweet and rapid route to inebriation. But it was not a customary beverage for ten-year-olds.

‘Who told you to purchase this?’ I inquired.

‘No one, sir,’ said Frant, staring at his boots and blushing.

‘Well, Allan, is your memory any better?’

‘No, sir.’

‘In that case, I shall be obliged if you would both wait on me after supper.’ I slipped the bottle into my coat pocket. ‘Good day.’

I walked on, swinging my stick and wondering which of the older boys had sent them out. I would have to beat Allan and Frant, if only for the look of the thing. Allan and Frant followed me round the corner. I glanced back, in time to see a man coming up behind them. He was a tall figure, clad in a blue coat with metal buttons.

‘Boy,’ the man said, taking Charlie by the arm with a large hand and bending down to peer into his face. ‘Come here – let me look at you.’

His face was turned away from me, but it was the voice that was somehow familiar – deep, husky and audible though the man spoke little above a whisper. He must have seen me ahead but cannot have realised my connection with the boys.

‘Let go,’ Charlie said, trying to tug himself away.

‘You’ll do as I ask, my boy, because –’

‘Let him go, sir,’ snapped Allan in his high voice. He took hold of Charlie’s other arm and tried to pull him away.

Charlie saw me. ‘Sir! Mr Shield!’

The man raised his stick. I was not sure which boy he intended to hit. I did not wait to find out but shouted and broke into a run.

‘That is enough, sir. Leave the boys alone.’

He released his grip on Charlie and swung towards me. ‘And who the devil are you?’

‘Their master.’

He screwed up his forehead. His eyes were hidden by dark glasses. I could not tell whether he recognised me or not.

‘Damn you,’ he said.

‘Be off with you. Or I shall call the constable.’

The man’s face changed: it was as though the features were dissolving into a puddle of discoloured flesh. ‘I meant no harm, sir, I take my oath on it. Won’t you pity an old soldier? All I hoped was that these two young gents might be able to oblige me with the price of a little refreshment.’

I suppressed the temptation to give him the bottle of rum-shrub. Instead I raised my stick. He muttered a few words I could not catch and walked rapidly away, his shoulders rounded.

Charlie Frant looked up at me with his mother’s eyes. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘I suggest you return to school before you fall into more mischief,’ I said.

They scuttled down the lane. I wondered if I should accost the man but he was already out of sight. So I followed the boys, walking slowly and cudgelling my brains to find an explanation while wondering whether an explanation was in fact required. Here was an old reprobate, I told myself, a drunkard lurking in the environs of an inn in the hope of cadging a drink. No doubt he had seen the two little boys with their bottle of rum-shrub leaving the tap and he had followed them as a hunter follows his prey.

It was the most natural thing in the world, a man would think, nothing strange about it. But to me there was something strange. I could not be sure but I believed I might have seen the fellow before. Was it he who had accosted me the previous week outside Mr Allan’s house in Southampton-row? The coat and hat were different, and so was the accent; but the voice itself was similar, and so were the blue spectacles and the beard like an untidy bird’s nest.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I TOOK THE coward’s way out and did not pursue the matter. After supper I flogged the little boys as lightly as I could while preserving the decencies. Both of them thanked me afterwards, as custom dictated. Allan was pale but apart from grunting when the blows fell gave no sign of pain; Frant wept silently, but I turned my eyes away so that he would not know that I had seen his moment of weakness. He was the gentler of the two, who followed where Edgar Allan led.

Mr Bransby usually exchanged a few words with Dansey and myself when we waited upon him before evening prayers. That evening I took the opportunity of this meeting to mention to him that Frant and Allan had been accosted by a drunk in the village during the afternoon. I added that I had been on hand to deal with the man, so no harm had been done.

‘He pestered young Frant, you say?’ Bransby was in a hurry (he never lingered before or after evening prayers because he dined immediately afterwards). ‘Well, no harm done. I’m glad you were at hand to deal with him.’

‘I believe I may have seen the vagabond in town the other day, sir. He claimed acquaintance with Allan’s father.’

‘These fellows try their luck everywhere. What are the magistrates doing, to let them roam the streets and pester honest folk?’

Mr Bransby said nothing further on that occasion. But there was a sequel the following week. On the twentieth, he desired me to wait upon him after morning school.

‘Sit down, Shield, sit down,’ he said with unusual affability, taking a pinch of snuff and sneezing. ‘I have had a letter concerning you from Mrs Frant. It seems that Master Charles sent her a highly coloured account of your dispute with the vagabond the other day. You are quite a hero among the little boys, I find.’

I inclined my head but said nothing.

‘There is also the point that tomorrow is the fourteenth anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, and therefore a half holiday for the school.’

I was well aware of this, as was everyone else in the school. Mr Bransby had a cousin who had distinguished himself in the service, who had seen action at Trafalgar, and who had once shaken Lord Nelson himself by the hand. As a result, Mr Bransby had a great respect for the achievements of the Royal Navy.

‘Mrs Frant proposes that the boy spend his half holiday with her in London. She has invited Allan as well. I understand he too performed heroically in the great battle of Stoke Newington.’

Bransby looked expectantly at me. He was neither a subtle humorist nor a habitual one, and I found his efforts so unnerving that all I could manage was a weak smile.

‘Furthermore,’ he continued, ‘Mrs Frant suggests that you accompany the lads. I trust you will not find that an inconvenience?’

I bowed again, and said that it would be no trouble in the world.

The following afternoon, the carriage was waiting for us after the boys’ dinner. Both Charlie Frant and Edgar Allan were in an ebullient mood, and eager to be away from school.

‘Shall you call on your parents while you are in town?’ I asked the American boy.

‘No, sir. They are away from home.’

‘And they are not his parents, sir,’ said Charlie, squirming with the excitement of being privy to information that he believed I lacked. ‘They are his foster parents.’

I glanced at Edgar. ‘Indeed?’

Charlie reddened. ‘Should I not have said? You do not mind, Edgar?’

‘There is no secret.’ Allan turned to me. ‘Yes, sir, my parents died when I was an infant. Mr and Mrs Allan took me into their home and have always treated me as a son.’

‘I’m sure you repay their kindness,’ I replied and gestured at random at the world beyond the window of the Frants’ carriage. ‘Is that a swallow or a house-martin?’

The distraction was clumsy but effective. We talked of other matters for the remainder of the journey. When we got to Russell-square, I went into the house with the boys to discover when Mrs Frant wished me to return for them. Loomis, the butler, desired me to step upstairs with the boys. He showed us into the drawing room. Mrs Frant was seated by one of the windows with a book in her hand. Charlie, no doubt aware of the presence of Allan and myself, was very cool and composed with her, submitting to her embrace rather than returning it. A moment later, she turned to me, her hand outstretched.

‘I must thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘I shudder to think what might have happened to Charlie had you not been at hand to help him.’

‘You must not magnify the danger he was in, madam,’ I said, thinking that her hand was soft and warm like a living bird.

‘But a mother can never exaggerate the dangers that face her child, Mr Shield. And this is Edgar Allan?’

As she was shaking hands with him, Charlie piped up: ‘His grandpapa was a soldier, Mama, like mine. They might have fought each other. He was a general in the American Revolutionary army.’

Mrs Frant looked inquiringly at Edgar.

‘Yes, ma’am. That is to say, he is widely known as General Poe among his friends and neighbours, but my foster father Mr Allan has informed me that he did not in fact hold that rank. I believe he was a major.’

‘And his mama was a famous English actress,’ Charlie went on, though I could see the conversation was causing Edgar some embarrassment.

‘How charming,’ Mrs Frant said. ‘You come from a talented family. What was her name?’

‘Elizabeth Arnold, madam. Though English, she acted mainly in the United States. And it was there that she died.’

‘You poor boy.’ She turned the conversation: ‘Perhaps you should visit cook before you do anything else. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if she had baked something for you.’

The boys clattered out of the room, relieved to be away from the company of their elders. For the first time I was quite alone with Mrs Frant. Her dress rustled as she crossed the room from the window and sat down upon a Grecian sofa of carved mahogany. The air moved around me as she passed, and I smelt her perfume. I was seized by a crazy desire to kneel at her feet, throw my arms around her and bury my head in the sweet softness of her lap.

‘Would you care for some tea, Mr Shield?’ she asked.

‘Thank you, madam, but no.’ I had spoken abruptly, and I hastened to smooth the refusal with a lie. ‘I have several errands I must complete. When would you like me to return?’

‘I have ordered the carriage for half-past six o’clock. If you wish to come earlier, perhaps at six, the boys will be having their supper and I’m sure you could join them.’ There was a delicious touch of pink to her pale complexion, and she began to speak faster. ‘I would ask you to dine with us, but my husband prefers to sit down at a later time.’

I bowed my acknowledgement of her condescension and a moment later said goodbye. When the door of the drawing room was safely closed behind me, I dabbed my forehead and felt the sweat. I was terrified by the strength of my own desire.

I walked slowly down the stone steps to the hall. Loomis was waiting at the bottom. As I drew nearer, he gave a gentle cough.

‘Mr Frant desired me to ask you to step in and see him on your way out, sir.’

I followed the servant to the book-room at the back of the hall. He knocked at the door, opened it and announced me. Mr Frant was seated at his bureau, as he had been on the other occasion I had visited him here. This time, however, my welcome was altogether more cordial. He looked up from a letter he was reading, and a smile spread across his pale features.

‘Mr Shield – I am rejoiced to see you. Pray sit down. I will not delay you long.’ He folded the letter and locked it away in a drawer. ‘My wife informs me that you rendered us a considerable service the other day.’

‘It was nothing of consequence, sir,’ I said, embarrassed that the Frants were making so much of the incident.

‘Nevertheless, I am obliged to you. Tell me, would you describe to me exactly what occurred?’

I explained that an older boy had sent Frant and Allan upon an errand – I did not judge it prudent to enlarge upon its nature – and that the man had approached them on their way back. I added that I had been fortunate enough to witness the moment when the man accosted the boys.

‘What exactly did he do, Mr Shield?’

‘He took Charles by the arm.’

‘Why would he do that if he were a beggar? Would he not ask for money instead?’

‘I think it likely his wits were disordered, sir. He had been drinking. I cannot say whether he intended to offer violence or whether his design was simply to attract the boys’ attention and demand money. Young Allan tried to drag Charles away.’

‘A brave lad. The man was carrying a stick, I understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And he offered you violence?’

‘Yes, sir, but it didn’t signify – I had a stick myself and I fancy that even without it I would not have been in difficulties.’

‘My son told his mama the man was somewhat larger than you.’

‘True, sir, but on the other hand I am somewhat younger.’

Henry Frant turned aside to sharpen a pencil. ‘Would you indulge my curiosity a little further and describe him?’

‘He was well above the middle height and had an ill-trimmed beard. He wore blue spectacles, and a blue coat with metal buttons and I think brown breeches. Oh, and a cocked hat and a wig.’ I hesitated. ‘There’s one more thing, sir. I cannot be absolutely certain, but I believe I may have seen him before.’

‘The devil you have. Where?’

‘In Southampton-row. It was on the day I came to collect your son when he first went to school. I took Edgar Allan to his parents’ house on the way. The man was loitering, and asked me when I was leaving if that was Mr Allan’s, and then he hurried away.’

Frant tapped his teeth with the pencil. ‘If he were interested in Allan’s boy, then why should he attach himself to mine? It makes no sense.’

‘No, sir. But the two boys are not unlike. And I noticed the man stooped to look at me.’

‘So you formed the impression he might be short-sighted? Perhaps. I will be candid, Mr Shield. A man in my situation makes enemies. I am a banker, you understand, and bankers cannot please everybody all the time. There is also the point that a certain type of depraved mind might consider stealing the child of a wealthy man in order to extort money. This attack may be no more than a chance encounter, the casual work of a drunkard. Or it may be that the man was more interested in Mr Allan’s boy. But there remains the third possibility: that he nursed a design of some sort against my son, or even in the long run against myself.’

‘To judge by what little I have seen of him, sir, I would doubt that he could put any design successfully into action, apart, perhaps, from that of raising a glass or a bottle up to his lips.’

Frant gave a bark of laughter. ‘I like a man who speaks plain, Mr Shield. May I ask you not to mention what we have discussed to my wife? Speculation of this nature must inevitably distress her.’

I bowed. ‘You may depend on me, sir.’

‘I take this kindly, Mr Shield.’ Frant glanced at the clock on the mantel-shelf. ‘One more thing, for my own private satisfaction I should like to meet this fellow and ask him a few questions. Should you come across him again, would you be good enough to let me know? Now, I must not keep you any longer from your half holiday.’

He shook hands cordially with me. A moment later I was walking down to Holborn. My mind was in a whirl. There is something intensely gratifying about being treated civilly by people of wealth and indeed fashion. I felt myself a fine fellow.

Perhaps, I thought as I strolled through the autumn sunshine, my luck was changing. With Mr and Mrs Frant as my patrons, where might I not end?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE AFTERNOON UNEXPECTEDLY changed its course as I was walking down Long Acre on my way to Gaunt-court and Mrs Jem’s six shillings, the balance of the price we had agreed for my aunt Reynolds’s possessions. I stopped to buy a buttonhole and, while the woman was fixing it to my lapel, I glanced over her shoulder along the way I had come. I saw some twenty-five yards away, quite distinctly, the man with the bird’s-nest beard.

As if aware I had recognised him, he ducked into the shadow of a shop doorway. I gave the girl a penny and hurried back along the street. He plunged out of the doorway and blundered into one of the side roads leading down to Covent Garden.

Without conscious thought, I set off in pursuit. I acted upon impulse – partly, no doubt, because Mr Frant wanted to know more about the man, and I welcomed an opportunity to oblige Mr Frant. But there was both more and less to it than that: I was like a cat chasing a rope’s end: I chased the man not because I wanted to catch him but because he moved.

The market was drawing to its close for the day. We pushed our way into a swirling sea of humanity and vegetables. There was a tremendous din – of iron-shod wheels and hooves on cobbles, of half a dozen barrel organs, each playing a different tune, of people swearing and shouting and crying their wares. Despite his age and weight and condition, my quarry was remarkably agile. We zigzagged through the market, where he tried to conceal himself behind a stall selling oranges. I found him out, but he saw me, and off he went again. He leapt like a hunter over a wheelbarrow full of cocoa nuts, veered past the church and swerved into the mouth of Henrietta-street.

It so happened that there was a pile of rotting cabbage leaves on the corner and this, quite literally, was his downfall. He slipped and went down. Though he tried at once to scramble up, his ankle gave way and he sank back, swearing. I seized him by the shoulder. He straightened his spectacles and looked up at me, his face red with exertion.

‘I meant no harm, sir,’ he panted in that absurdly deep voice. ‘As God is my witness, I meant no harm.’

‘Then why did you run away?’

‘I was afraid, sir. I thought you might set the constables on me.’

‘Then why did you follow me in the first place?’

‘Because –’ He broke off. ‘It does not matter.’ His voice took on a richer note and the words that followed fell into a rhythm, like words often repeated: ‘I give you my word, sir, as one gentleman to another, that I am as innocent as the day is long. It is true that I have fallen upon evil times but the fault has not been mine. I have been unlucky in the choice of my companions, perhaps, and cursed by a generous spirit, by a fatal tendency to trust my fellow men. Yet –’

‘Enough, sir,’ I interrupted. ‘Why have you been following me?’

‘A father’s feelings,’ he said, beating himself on the breast with both fists, ‘may not be denied. The heart which beats within this breast is that of a gentleman of an old and distinguished Irish family.’

By now he was kneeling in the gutter and a knot of spectators was gathering around us to enjoy the spectacle.

‘Bloody clunch,’ an urchin cried. ‘He’s dicked in the nob.’

‘Which, you may ask, has been the worst of my many losses?’ my companion continued. ‘Was it the loss of my patrimony? My enforced departure from my native heath? Was it the bitter knowledge that my reputation has been unjustly besmirched by men not fit to brush my coat? Was it disappointment in my profession and the loss, through the intemperate jealousy of others, of my hopes of regaining my fortune by my own exertions? Was it the death of the beloved wife of my bosom? No, sir, bad though all these things were, none of them was the worst blow to befall me.’ He raised his face to the sky. ‘As heaven is my witness, no sorrow compares with the loss of my little cherubs, my beloved children. Two fine sons had I, and a daughter, destined to be the delights of my maturity and the supports of my old age. Alas, they have been snatched away from me.’ He paused to wipe his eyes with the sleeve of his coat.

‘If that was a play,’ observed another of our audience, ‘I wouldn’t pay a penny to see it. I wouldn’t pay a bloody ha’penny. A bloody farthing.’

‘You repugnant rapscallion!’ the man roared, shaking his fist at the boy. Once more he lifted his face to the sky. ‘Why, heaven?’ he inquired. ‘Why do I bare my innermost heart before the vulgar herd?’

‘Who are you calling names then?’ said another voice.

‘The gentleman is unwell,’ I said firmly.

‘No, he ain’t. He’s half-cocked.’

‘Perhaps his wits are a little disordered,’ I conceded, helping my captive to his feet.

The big man began to weep. ‘The lad speaks no more than the truth, sir,’ he said, leaning so heavily on me that I could scarce bear his weight. ‘I’ll not deny that in my sorrow I have occasionally found consolation in a glass of brandy.’ He brought his lips close to my ear. ‘Indeed, now you mention it, a drop of something warming would be a most effective prophylactic against this autumn chill which even now I feel creeping over me.’

I led him, mumbling, down Henrietta-street. The crowd dropped away from us for the man was no longer amusing. In Bedford-street, he steered me to a tavern where we sat opposite each other in a corner. My guest thanked me kindly for my hospitality and ordered brandy and water. I asked for porter. When the girl brought the drinks, he raised his glass to me and said, ‘Your health, sir.’ He drank deeply and then looked inquiringly at me. ‘You do not drink.’

‘I am wondering whether I should have you arrested and given in charge,’ I said. ‘I regret that I shall be compelled to do so if you do not tell me the nature of your interest in myself and in the boys you waylaid in Stoke Newington.’

‘Ah, my dear sir.’ He spread his hands wide. He was calmer now, almost at his ease, and the mellifluous tone of his voice was oddly at variance with his dishevelled appearance. ‘But I have already explained. Or rather I was in the middle of doing so when that pack of ruffians interrupted me.’

‘I am at a loss to understand you.’

‘The boy, of course,’ he said impatiently. ‘The boy is my son.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I RETURNED TO Russell-square shortly after six o’clock, having missed my six shillings from Mrs Jem; in fact, thanks to Mr Poe, I was poorer than before and had acquired a slight headache. The door was answered by the footman, Frederick, whom I had met before. I desired him to inquire whether his master was at leisure. A moment later, Mr Frant came down the stairs, asked me how I did with the utmost cordiality, and led me into the book-room.

He looked keenly at me and seemed to divine in my countenance the reason for my presence. ‘You have intelligence of the man who assaulted Charles?’

‘Yes, sir. After leaving you, I was walking down to Leicester-square. It appears he had been loitering in the neighbourhood, and followed me.’

There were spots of colour in Frant’s sallow cheeks. ‘Why should he do that? Are you the reason for his interest?’

‘I believe not. I chanced to see him behind me. He ran off but I gave chase.’

Frant made an impatient movement with his hand, which warned me to be brief.

‘The long and the short of it is I brought him down and then gave him a drink afterwards. He confided that he is an Irish-American who has fallen on hard times. His name is Poe, David Poe. His family believe him dead.’

‘And what does he want with you and the boys?’

‘The object of his interest is Edgar Allan, sir, and he hoped I might lead him to the boy this afternoon. He alleges that the Allans are merely foster parents – which I have heard from the boy’s own lips, by the way – and that Edgar is in fact his son. He told me that circumstances forced him to leave his wife in New York, and that she shortly afterwards died in Richmond, Virginia, leaving three children.’

‘Assuming he speaks the truth, what does he want from his son? Money?’

‘Quite possibly. Yet he may not have acted entirely from self-interest.’

Frant gave his bark of laughter. ‘You surely do not suggest that he has suddenly been overwhelmed by the weight of his paternal responsibilities?’

‘No – yet a man may sometimes act from more than one motive. Perhaps he is curious. There may even be a streak of tender sentiment in him. He told me he merely wanted to see the boy, to hear him speak.’

Frant nodded. ‘Once again, Mr Shield, I am obliged to you. Where does he lodge? Did you find that out?’

‘He declined to give me his precise direction. He lives in St Giles. As you know, it is a perfect maze of alleys and courts and he doubted I could find his lodging even if he told me where it was. But he informed me he is often to be found in a nearby tavern, the Fountain. He plies his trade there.’

‘He is gainfully employed?’

‘As a screever.’

Frant shrugged. ‘And takes his fees in gin, no doubt.’

He fell silent and took a turn about the room. In a moment, he said, ‘So you have done me a second service, Mr Shield. May I ask you to do a third?’

I bowed.

‘I would be obliged if you would preserve the utmost discretion about this. Considered in all its aspects, this is a delicate matter. Not so much for you or me but for others. I see a good deal of Mr Allan in the way of business, and I know he is fond of the boy, and treats him as his son. The arrival of someone claiming to be the lad’s natural father would come as a profound shock. Indeed, I understand Mrs Allan is in delicate health and such a shock could kill her.’

‘You think Mr Poe may be an impostor?’

‘It is possible. Some reprobate American, perhaps, who knows of Mr Allan’s wealth, and his generosity towards the boy and his affection for him. Then we must consider Mr Bransby, must we not? Should this matter become public, and should it also become known that an Irish rogue from St Giles preyed on boys while they were in the care of Mr Bransby, then I do not imagine the effect upon the school would be a healthy one. A school is like a bank, Mr Shield, in that there must be mutual trust between the institution and its customers, in this case between the school and the parents who pay the bills. A rumour of this affair, should it get out, would spread widely, and no doubt become exaggerated in the telling.’

‘Then what is to be done, sir?’ I was alive to the fact, as no doubt Mr Frant intended I should be, that my welfare was to some extent tied to the school’s, and that if Mr Bransby’s profits diminished, then so might the size of his establishment.

‘I am also mindful that young Edgar Allan has been a friend to my boy,’ Frant went on, as though thinking aloud, as though I had not spoken. ‘So, taken all in all, I think we should encourage the soidisant Mr Poe to – ah – neglect his duties as a father. I shall make it worth his while, of course.’ He gave me a sudden, charming smile. ‘Mr Bransby is indeed fortunate in his assistants. Should you ever tire of the teaching profession, Mr Shield, let me know. There are always openings to be found for young men of parts and discretion.’

Twenty minutes later, the boys and I rattled away from that big, luxurious house in Russell-square. The boys chatted happily about what they had done and what they had eaten. I sat back in my corner, enjoying the feel of the leather and the faint smell of Mrs Frant’s perfume. I confess that during the day my opinion of Henry Frant had changed considerably. Previously I had thought him a proud and disagreeable man. Now I knew there was a more amiable side to him. I toyed with a pleasant dream in which Mr Frant used his influence to obtain for me a well-paid sinecure in Whitehall or brought me into Wavenhoe’s Bank to work as his secretary. Stranger things had happened, I told myself, and why should they not happen to me?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

SUCH WAS MY naïveté, I believed that my aunt’s attorney Mr Rowsell had conceived a sudden liking for me. The apparent proof of this came in the form of an invitation to dinner.

He wrote that there was another document to be signed in connection with my aunt’s estate. Moreover, he had devoted some thought to the question of how I might lay out my modest nest-egg to best advantage. He believed he was now in a position to offer me some advice, should I wish to receive it. Unless I preferred to call on him in Lincoln’s Inn, Mrs Rowsell would be pleased if I would dine with them on any Saturday I cared to name. He understood, of course, that my time was not at present my own, but no doubt my employer would understand how desirable it was that the disposition of my aunt’s estate should be completed as soon as possible.

The Rowsells lived at Northington-street in the neighbourhood of Theobalds-road. On Saturdays, Mr Rowsell went to Lincoln’s Inn during the morning and they dined at five. When I arrived, Mrs Rowsell made a brief appearance, her face flushed, wiping floury hands upon her apron. She was a plump lady, considerably younger than Mr Rowsell. Having greeted me, she made her excuses and returned to the kitchen.

Mr Rowsell seemed to have forgotten the original purpose of my visit. He called for the children, who had been with their mother. There were four of them, ranging in age from three to nine. Puffing with exertion, he led us up to the sitting room on the first floor where I did my best to amuse the elder boy and girl with card tricks and the like.

The dinner was served in a parlour at the front of the house. Mrs Rowsell was plainly anxious, but as the dishes succeeded each other without accident she became more cheerful. After we had attacked an enormous suet pudding and retired defeated, the cloth was withdrawn and Mrs Rowsell left us to our wine. As she passed round the table to the door, her husband leaned backwards in his chair and, believing himself unobserved by me, pinched her thigh. She squealed – ‘Oh la! Mr Rowsell!’ – smacked his hand away and scuttled out of the room.

Mr Rowsell beamed at me. ‘Man was born for the married state, Mr Shield. The benefits it brings are inestimable. A toast, sir! A toast! Let us drink to Hymen.’

It was the first of many toasts. By the time we had finished the second bottle of port Mr Rowsell was lying back in his chair, glass in hand, his clothes loosened, trying to recall the words of a sentimental ballad of his youth. He exuded benevolence. Yet his little blue eyes often stared at me in a fixed manner I found uncomfortable, and it occurred to me that perhaps he was less drunk than he appeared. I dismissed the idea almost at once because there was surely no reason for him to deceive me.

With the third bottle, he put music aside and talked with unexpected eloquence about money, a subject that interested him in the abstract: in particular he was fascinated by its ability to grow and diminish apparently of its own volition, without relation to the goods or services it theoretically stood for. This at last gave me an opportunity to bring the conversation round to the reason for my invitation to dinner.

‘You wrote, sir, that you were in a position to advise me about how to lay out my aunt’s money?’

‘Eh? Oh yes.’ He leaned back in his chair and looked at me with great solemnity. ‘In your position I should avoid risk. I recall that at an earlier stage of our acquaintance, you mentioned that your esteemed employer had recommended Wavenhoe’s Bank to you.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘There is a personal connection of some sort, I collect?’

‘We have a boy at the school whose father, Mr Henry Frant, is one of the partners.’

Mr Rowsell wiped his pink, moist forehead with a gravy-spattered napkin. ‘Mr Frant is the youngest of the partners, I believe, but nowadays takes the leading part in the business.’

‘I understand that Mr Wavenhoe himself is not well.’

‘I remember your mentioning the circumstance. It is common knowledge that he is dying. They say in the City that it will be only a matter of weeks.’

I thought of Sophia Frant. ‘I’m sorry to hear it, sir.’

‘Things were very different when Wavenhoe was young. It was his father who founded the bank. City people, of course, tended to steer clear of those West End accounts. The further West you go, I always say, the higher the profits but the higher the risk. Of course he was lucky to get Carswall. In a private partnership you can do nothing without capital.’ He looked sternly at me. ‘Stephen Carswall may not be an agreeable man, but no one would deny he has capital. Shrewd, too. Sold his sugar plantations in the nineties, early enough to get a good price. Mind you, many men thought he was mad. But he could see the way the wind was blowing. Those damned Abolitionists, eh? Once you abolish the trade, it’s only a matter of time before the institution itself is under threat. When the institution goes, as it will, the entire economic foundation of the West Indies will be destroyed. But Carswall was ahead of the game there. That’s the beauty of banking: all you need is capital; none of the worry of land and other fixed property. They can’t abolish money, thank God. Though I wouldn’t put it past them to try.’ He pushed the port towards me. ‘Where was I?’

‘You were describing how Mr Carswall became Mr Wavenhoe’s partner, sir. Did he take an active part in the running of the bank?’

‘He left that to Wavenhoe most of the time, as far as the City was concerned, at least. But what went on behind the scenes may have been another matter. Carswall has many friends in America, especially in the southern states, and they did a good deal of business over there. And they did very well in Canada, despite the late war.’ Mr Rowsell was of course referring to that inconclusive and largely unnecessary squabble between Great Britain and the United States, not to the great war with France.

I said, ‘So they had a finger in every man’s pie?’

‘Spread the risks, eh, increase the profits. It was Carswall who brought in young Frant. Not that he’s so young any more. You have met him?’

‘Yes, sir. I was able to do him a small service, and he was most amiable. He is very much the gentleman, of course.’

‘The family fell on evil times, which forced him into trade. As for his amiability, I hear a different story. Frant has ability, I don’t question that. It’s just that – your glass, sir, your glass is empty.’

Breathing heavily, Mr Rowsell refilled the glass so well that it overflowed. The diversion caused him to lose the thread of his discourse. He sipped his wine and stared with a frown at the polished mahogany.

‘Is Mr Carswall married?’ I asked after a moment or two.

‘Married? Not now. There was a wife, I believe, but she died. Mind you –’ He lowered his voice and leaned towards me. ‘I’m not saying he hasn’t found consolation. Stephen Carswall used to have something of a reputation, if you get my drift.’ He tapped his nose to make his drift even clearer. ‘He’s kin to George Wavenhoe. You knew they were cousins?’

I shook my head.

‘Stephen Carswall’s mother was sister to George’s father. So they are first cousins.’ He laughed and stabbed his forehead once more with the napkin. ‘Young Frant was a fly one. He came in as Carswall’s man, and what does he do but marry Sophia Marpool, old Wavenhoe’s niece? So there he is, with a connection to both partners. A love match, they say, but I wager that most of the love was on one side. Master Henry thinks he’s the heir apparent, the crown prince. But it’s ill luck to count your gains during the game, eh?’

Rowsell stood up, staggered to the door, opened it with difficulty, and bellowed for the servant to bring another bottle.

‘Something went wrong? Something to do with Mr Carswall?’

‘There was a host of reasons. First Carswall decided to withdraw his capital. He’d settled in the country, turned gentleman, wanted nothing to do with the bank. The story is that Wavenhoe was pressed to find the ready cash when it was needed. It was a large sum. Then Wavenhoe himself has not been well these last few years. He left more and more of the day-to-day conduct of business in the hands of Henry Frant. The City does not feel entirely easy with Frant. It is not just that he is a gentleman dabbling in trade. There are stories that he is fond of play, like his father before him. That was how the Frants lost their money.’

The maid brought another bottle. When it was opened, Rowsell recharged our glasses and drank deeply.

‘It’s a matter of confidence, you see. All business must depend on it, and banking more than most. If you lose the esteem of those you do business with, you might as well shut up shop. No, my boy, to return to your own case, if you wish to keep your money safe, there is much to be said for the Consolidated Funds.’ Mr Rowsell stared glassily at me and at last continued to speak, though slowly and with elaborate care of his consonants. ‘You will not become rich, but you will not become bankrupt, either.’

He stopped. He blinked rapidly. His mouth opened and closed several times but no sound came. He bowed like a great oak falling, stately even in ruin. His head hit the table, knocking over the glass. He began to snore.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

AS THE WEEKS slipped by and the weather grew steadily colder, the friendship between Charlie Frant and Edgar Allan flourished. Like many schoolboy friendships it was partly a defensive alliance, a strategy for dealing with a world full of Morleys and Quirds. Though similar in looks, they were different in temperament. The American was a proud boy who would not take insults lightly, who when teased would fly at his tormentors. Charlie Frant was gentler, and well supplied with pocket money. If you offended one of them, you had a taste of Edgar Allan’s anger, which was formidable. If you pleased one or both of them, however, you were likely to be among the beneficiaries when Charlie Frant next paid a visit to the pastry-cook’s.

As for myself, I felt the life of the school settle around me like an old coat. But one part of my life was incomplete. I own that I dwelt overmuch in my daydreams during this period. When I was in this unsatisfactory state I no longer thought much of Fanny, the girl whose ghostly presence had lingered in my mind for years. Instead, I frequently encountered both Miss Carswall and her cousin Mrs Frant. Daydreams have this advantage over real life: one is not obliged to be constant.

There was nothing to warn me of the troubles that lay ahead. One evening, however, Mr Bransby summoned Dansey and myself to his private room.

‘I have had a disturbing communication from Mrs Frant, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘She writes that her son and young Allan have been accosted in the village by the ruffian who approached them before. The man’s effrontery beggars belief.’

‘We have heard nothing about this from the boys, sir?’ Dansey said.

Bransby shook his head. ‘He did not linger. And there was no unpleasantness. No, it seems that he simply came up to them in the High-street, gave them a half-sovereign apiece, told them to mind their book and walked away.’

‘How extraordinary,’ Dansey said. ‘I gained the impression that he was not the sort of man who had a ready supply of half-sovereigns.’

‘Just so.’ Mr Bransby fumbled for his snuff-box. ‘I have interrogated Frant and Allan, of course. Frant mentioned the meeting to his mother in a letter. They had nothing substantial to add to what they had told her, except to emphasise that the man’s behaviour was noticeably more benevolent than on the previous occasion. Allan added that he was more respectably dressed than before.’

‘So we may infer from all this that he is in more comfortable circumstances?’

‘Indeed. But Mrs Frant is understandably somewhat agitated. She does not like the idea that boys of this establishment, and in particular her son, should be at the mercy of meetings with strange men. I propose to inform the boys that they must report any suspicious strangers in the village to me at once. Moreover, Mr Dansey, I would be obliged if you would alert the innkeepers and tradesmen to the danger. You and Mr Shield will circulate a description of the man in question.’

‘You believe he may return, sir?’

‘It is not a question of what I believe, Mr Dansey, but rather a matter of trying to allay Mrs Frant’s fears.’

Dansey bowed.

I could have revealed the identity of the stranger. But it was not my secret to tell. Nor did I think it would be kind to Edgar Allan. The gap between father and son was too wide to be easily bridged, especially in that the boy had no knowledge whatsoever of his natural father and believed him to have died long ago in the United States. It could only come as a shock to the lad to learn that David Poe was an impoverished drunkard on his very doorstep.

I said, ‘You do not think it likely he will venture to return, sir?’

‘For my part, I doubt it. He will not show his face here again.’

In that, at least, Mr Bransby was entirely correct.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ALL THIS TIME, George Wavenhoe lay dying in his fine house in Albemarle-street. The old man took his time, hesitating between this world and the next, but by November matters had come to a crisis, and it was clear that the end could not be far away. Once again I was summoned to Mr Bransby’s private room, this time without Dansey.

‘I am in receipt of another letter from Mrs Frant,’ he said with a trace of irritation. ‘You are aware that her uncle, Mr Wavenhoe, has been very ill for some time?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘His medical attendants now believe him to be at death’s door. He has expressed a wish to say farewell to his great-nephew. Mrs Frant requests that you convey her son to Mr Wavenhoe’s house, where she and the rest of his family have gathered. And she further requests that you remain with him while he is there.’

I confess my heart leapt at the prospect of being under the same roof as Sophia Frant for a few days. ‘But surely that will be most inconvenient for the conduct of the school, sir? Could she not send a servant instead to collect him?’

Bransby held up his hand. ‘Mr Wavenhoe’s establishment is in some disorder. Both Mrs Frant and the boy’s old nurse are fully occupied in nursing Mr Wavenhoe. She does not wish her son to be neglected, or to mope, while he is with them.’ He took a pinch of snuff and sneezed. ‘As to the inconvenience, that is to some extent mitigated by the fact that Mrs Frant is prepared to pay handsomely for the privilege of having your company for her son. It should only be for a day or two.’

For an instant, a wild hope surged through me: could Mrs Frant have invited me for her own sake, rather than her son’s? A moment’s reflection was enough to show me my folly.

‘You will leave this afternoon,’ Bransby said. ‘I could wish it otherwise. Sooner or later the boy must learn to stand on his own two feet.’

When Charlie Frant heard that I was to take him to his uncle Wavenhoe’s, and why, his face aged. The skin wrinkled, the colour fled. I glimpsed the old man he might at some point in the future become.

‘May Allan come with me, sir?’ he asked.

‘No, I’m afraid not. But you must bring your books.’

Later that day we drove up to town. Charlie resisted my efforts at conversation, and I was reminded of that other journey, when I had taken him back to school in disgrace. Although it was only the middle of the afternoon, it was such a raw, damp, grey day it felt hours later than it really was. When we turned from the noise and lights of the bustle of Piccadilly into Albemarle-street, what struck me first was the quiet. They had put down straw to muffle the sound of wheels and bribed the organ grinders, the beggars and the street sellers to take themselves elsewhere.

Mr Wavenhoe lived in a substantial house near the northern end of the street. The servant took our hats and coats in the hall. Men were talking in raised voices in a room on the right of the front door. There were footsteps on the stairs. I looked up to see Flora Carswall running towards us, her feet flickering in and out on the stone steps. She stooped and kissed Charlie who shied away from the embrace. She smiled at me and held out her hand.

‘Mr Shield, is it not? We met briefly outside my cousin’s house in Russell-square.’

I told her I remembered our meeting well, which was no more than the truth. She said she was come to take Charlie up to his mother. I asked after Mr Wavenhoe.

‘I fear he is sinking fast.’ She lowered her voice. ‘These last few months have not been happy ones for him, so in some respects it is a blessed relief.’ Her eyes strayed to Charlie. ‘There is nothing distressing about it. Or rather, that is to say, not for the spectator.’ She coloured most becomingly. ‘Lord, my father says I let my tongue run away with me, and I fear he is right. What I mean to say, is that Mr Wavenhoe looks at present like one who is very tired and very sleepy. Nothing more than that.’

I smiled at her and inclined my head. It was a kindly thought. To see the dying is often disagreeable, particularly for a child. The sound of male voices became louder behind the closed door.

‘Oh dear,’ Miss Carswall said. ‘Papa and Mr Frant are in there.’ She bit her lip. ‘I am staying here to help Mrs Frant with the nursing, and Papa looks in at least once a day to see how we do. But now I must take Charlie up to his mama and Kerridge or they will wonder where we are.’ She turned to the footman. ‘Show Mr Shield up to his room, will you? And he and Master Charles will need a room to sit in. Has Mrs Frant left instructions?’

‘I understand the housekeeper has lit a fire in the old schoolroom, miss. Mr Shield’s room is next door.’

We went upstairs. Miss Carswall led Charlie away. I looked after her, watching her hips swaying beneath the muslin of her gown. I realised the footman was doing the same and quickly looked away. We men are all the same under the skin: we fear death, and in our healthy maturity we desire copulation.

We climbed higher and the footman showed me first into a bedroom under the eaves, and then into a long schoolroom next to it. There were fires burning in the grates of both rooms, a luxury I was not used to. The man inquired very civilly if I desired any refreshment, and I asked for tea. He bowed and went away, leaving me to warm my hands by the fire.

A little later, there came footsteps on the stairs, followed by a knock on the door. I looked round, expecting Charlie or the footman. But it was Mrs Frant who entered the room. I stood up hastily and, made clumsy by surprise, sketched an awkward bow.

‘Pray be seated, Mr Shield. Thank you for coming with Charlie. I trust they have made you comfortable?’

Her colour was up and she had her hand to the side, as though running up the stairs had given her a stitch. I said I was well looked after, and asked after Mr Wavenhoe.

‘I fear he is not long for this world.’

‘Has Charlie seen him?’

‘No – my uncle is asleep. Kerridge took Charlie downstairs with her for something to eat.’ Her face broke into a smile, instantly suppressed. ‘She believes she must feed him every time she sees him. He will be with you directly. If you need any refreshment, by the way, you must ring the bell. As for meals, I thought it might be more convenient if you and Charlie had them up here.’

She moved to the barred window, which looked across an eighteen-inch lead-lined gully to the back of the parapet of the street façade. She wore greys and lilacs today, a transitional stage before the blacks she would don when her uncle died. A strand of hair had escaped from her cap, and she pushed it back with a finger. Her movements were always graceful, a joy to watch.

She turned towards me, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth as though impatient with herself. ‘You must have lights,’ she said almost pettishly, tugging the bell. ‘It is growing dark. I cannot abide the dark.’

While we waited for the servant to come she questioned me about how Charlie was faring at school. I reassured her as best I could. He was much happier than he had been. No, he was not exactly industrious, but he coped with the work that was expected of him. Yes, he was indeed occasionally flogged, but so were all boys and there was nothing out of the way in it. As for his appetite, I rarely saw the boys eating, so I could not comment with any authority, but I had seen him on several occasions emerging from the pastry-cook’s in the village. Finally, as to his motions, I feared I had no information upon that topic whatsoever.

Mrs Frant blushed and said I must excuse the fondness of a mother.

A moment later, the footman brought my tea and a lamp. When the shadows fled from the corners of the room, then so did the curious intimacy of my conversation with Mrs Frant. Yet she lingered. I asked her what regimen she would like us to follow while we were here. She replied that perhaps we might work in the mornings, take the air in the afternoons, and return to our books for a short while in the evening.

‘Of course, there may be interruptions.’ She twisted her wedding ring round her finger. ‘One cannot predict the course of events. Mr Shield, I cannot –’

She broke off at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. There was a tap on the door, and Mrs Kerridge and Charlie entered.

‘I saw him,’ Charlie said. ‘I thought he was dead at first, he lay so still, but then I heard his breathing.’

‘Did he wake?’

‘No, madam,’ Mrs Kerridge said. ‘The apothecary gave Mr Wavenhoe his draught, and he’s sleeping soundly.’

Mrs Frant stood up and ran her fingers through the boy’s hair. ‘Then you shall have a holiday for the rest of the afternoon.’

‘I shall go and see the coaches, Mama.’

‘Very well. But do not stay too long – it is possible your uncle may wake and call for you.’

Soon I was alone again in the long, narrow room. I drank tea and read for upwards of an hour. Then I became restless, and decided to go out to buy tobacco.

I took the front stairs. As I came down the last flight into the marble-floored hall, a door opened and an old man emerged, wheezing with effort, from the room beyond. He was not tall, but he was broad and had once been powerfully built. He had thick black hair streaked with silver and a fleshy face dominated by a great curving nose. He wore a dark blue coat and a showy but dishevelled cravat.

‘Ha!’ he said as he saw me. ‘Who are you?’

‘My name’s Shield, sir.’

‘And who the devil is Shield?’

‘I brought Master Charles from his school. I am an usher there.’

‘Charlie’s bear leader, eh?’ He had a rich voice, which he seemed to wrench from deep within his chest. ‘Thought you were the damned parson for a moment, in that black coat of yours.’

I smiled and bowed, taking this for a pleasantry.

The elegant figure of Henry Frant appeared in the doorway behind him.

‘Mr Shield,’ he said. ‘Good afternoon.’

I bowed again. ‘Your servant, sir.’

‘Don’t know why you and Sophie thought the boy ought to have a tutor,’ the old man said. ‘I’ll wager he gets enough book-learning at school. They get too much of that already. We’re breeding a race of damned milksops.’

‘Your views on the rearing of the young, sir,’ Frant observed, ‘always merit the most profound consideration.’

Mr Carswall rested one hand on the newel post, looked back at the rest of us and broke wind. It was curious that this old, infirm man had the power to make one feel a little less substantial than one usually was. Even Henry Frant was diminished by his presence. The old man grunted and, swaying like a tree in a gale, mounted the stairs. Frant nodded at me and strolled across the hall and into another room. I buttoned up my coat, took my hat and gloves and went out into the raw November air.

Albemarle-street was a quiet, sombre place, lying under the shadow of death. The acrid smell of sea coal filled my nostrils. I crossed the road and glanced back at the house. For an instant, I glimpsed the white blur of a face at one of the drawing-room windows on the first floor. Someone had been standing there – staring idly into the street? or watching me? – and had retreated into the room.

I walked rapidly down towards the lights and the bustle. Charlie had said he wanted to watch the coaches, and I knew where he would have gone. During my long convalescence, when I was staying with my aunt, I would sometimes walk to Piccadilly and watch the fast coaches leaving and arriving from the White Horse Cellar. Half the small boys in London, of all conditions, of all ages, laboured under the same compulsion.

I stepped briskly into Piccadilly, dodged across the road, and made my way along the crowded pavement towards a tobacconist’s. The shop was full of customers, and it was a quarter of an hour before I emerged with a paper of cigars in my pocket.

A few paces ahead of me walked a couple, arm in arm and muffled against the cold. The man raised his stick and hailed a passing hackney. He helped the lady in, and I think his hand must have brushed against her bosom, though whether on purpose or by accident I could not tell. She turned, half in, half out of the hackney, and tapped him playfully on the cheek in mock reproof. The woman was Mrs Kerridge, and the cheek she tapped had a familiar dusky hue.

‘Brewer-street,’ said Salutation Harmwell, and followed Mrs Kerridge into the coach.

There was nothing suspicious about that, of course, or not then. It was not unusual to see a white-skinned woman arm in arm with a well-set-up blackamoor. Dusky gentlemen were rumoured to have certain advantages when it came to pleasing ladies, advantages denied to the men of other races. But I own I was shocked and a little surprised. Mrs Kerridge had seemed so sober, so prim, so old. Why, I thought to myself, she must be forty if she’s a day. Yet when she looked down at Harmwell, her face had been as bright as a girl’s at her first ball.

I stared after the hackney, wondering what the pair of them were going to do in Brewer-street and feeling an unaccountable stab of envy. At that moment a hand touched my sleeve. I turned, expecting to see Charlie at my elbow.

‘I always said Mrs Kerridge was a deep one,’ said Flora Carswall. ‘I believe my cousin sent her on an errand to Russell-square.’

I raised my hat and bowed. An abigail in a black cloak hovered a few paces away, her eyes discreetly averted.

‘And where are you off to, Mr Shield, on this dreary afternoon?’ Miss Carswall asked.

‘The White Horse Cellar.’ It did not seem quite genteel to confess that I had been looking for a tobacconist’s. ‘I believe Charlie may be there.’

‘You are looking for him?’

‘Not really. I am at leisure for an hour or so.’

‘It is vastly agreeable to see the coaches depart, is it not? All that bustle and excitement, and the thought that one might purchase a ticket, climb aboard and go anywhere, anywhere in the world.’

‘I was thinking something very similar.’

‘Most people do, probably. How I hate this place.’

I stared at her for an instant. Why should a girl like Flora Carswall dislike a city that could gratify her every whim? I said, ‘Then for your sake I hope your stay here will be brief.’

‘That depends on poor Mr Wavenhoe. But it is not being in town that I dislike – quite the reverse, in fact – but the gloom of Albemarle-street and some of the people one is obliged to meet there.’ She smiled at me, her outburst apparently forgotten. ‘I wonder – if you are at leisure, might I request the favour of your company? Then I could send my maid home – the poor girl has a mountain of sewing. I have one or two errands to run; they will not take long.’

I could hardly have refused even if I had wanted to. Miss Carswall took my arm and we threaded our way through the crowds down St James’s-street. In Pall Mall, she scanned the latest novels in Payne and Foss’s for a few minutes and spent rather more time with Messrs Harding, Howell, & Co. The people there made much of her. She bought a pair of gloves, examined some lace newly arrived from Belgium, and inquired after the progress of a hat she was having made for her. She even asked my opinion about whether a certain colour matched her eyes and prettily deferred to my verdict. She was excessively animated; and the longer we were together the more I liked her, and the more I wondered whether our meeting had been coincidental.

On the way back to Piccadilly, neither of us talked much. Once she slipped in the mud, and would have fallen if I had not been there. For a moment her grip tightened on my arm and I saw her looking up at my face. When at last we returned to Albemarle-street, she removed her hand from my arm and we walked side by side but unattached. As we drew near to Mr Wavenhoe’s house, she walked more slowly, despite the cold and despite the rain which had begun to fall.

‘You have met my father?’

‘Yes – as I was leaving the house just now.’

‘I daresay you thought him a little brusque,’ she said. ‘Pray do not answer. Most people do. But I hope you will not allow his manner to offend you. He is naturally choleric, and the gout makes it worse.’

‘You must not distress yourself, Miss Carswall.’

‘He is not always as amiable as he might be.’

‘I shall bear it as best I can.’

She looked sharply at me and stopped walking altogether. ‘There is something I wish to tell you. No, not exactly: it is rather that I would prefer to tell you myself than have you discover it from someone else. I –’

‘Sir! Cousin Flora! Wait!’

We turned to face Piccadilly. Charlie ran towards us. His cheeks were pink from the cold and the exercise. The side of his coat was covered with mud. As he came close, my nose told me that it was not mud but horse dung.

‘Sir, that was the most famous fun. I rubbed down a horse. I gave the ostler sixpence and he said I was a regular out-and-outer.’

In his joy, he let out a whoop of delight. We were now standing beneath the very windows of the house where George Wavenhoe lay dying. I looked over Charlie’s head at Miss Carswall. I think each of us expected the other to reprove the lad for making so much noise. Instead we smiled.

Then Miss Carswall went briskly into the house and left me to wonder what she had been about to tell me.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

IN MY ABSENCE, the schoolroom had filled with smoke. No one could remember the last time a fire had been lit in there. The flue of the chimney appeared to be partly blocked. The sweep was summoned for the following morning. In the meantime, Mrs Frant decided that Charlie and I should use the library on the ground floor for our lessons.

We sat at a table drawn near to the fire. I set Charlie to construe twelve lines of Ovid. He was willing enough but his mind could not stay on the task for long. I too found it hard to concentrate. Then the door opened, and the servant showed Mr Noak into the room. He wore evening dress, plain but respectable.

I sprang up, ready to withdraw with Charlie. The footman said sulkily that he had not realised that anyone was using the room.

‘Pray do not disturb yourself,’ Mr Noak said to me. ‘If I may, I shall sit here and turn the pages of a book until Mr Frant is at leisure.’

The servant withdrew. Mr Noak advanced towards the fire holding out his hands.

‘Good evening, sir,’ Charlie said. ‘We met at my father’s house a few weeks ago.’

‘Master Charles, is it not?’

They shook hands. Charlie was a well-bred little boy, and he now turned to me. ‘May I present my – my tutor, Mr Shield, sir?’

Noak held out his hand to me too. ‘I believe I saw you on the same occasion, Mr Shield. We were not introduced, and I’m glad to remedy the deficiency now.’

The words were gracious but Noak had a harsh, staccato way of delivery which made them sound almost insulting. I moved aside the table so he could warm himself at the fire. He looked down at the open book.

‘I do not approve of Ovid,’ he said in precisely the tone of voice he had used before. ‘He may have been a great poet but I am told he was licentious in his mode of life.’

Charlie stared wide-eyed at Mr Noak.

I said, ‘We choose passages which display his genius but do not dwell on his less agreeable qualities.’

‘Then again, one must ask oneself what is the utility of studying the languages of antiquity? We live in a world where commerce is king.’

‘Permit me to remind you, sir, that Latin is the language of natural science. Moreover, the study of the language and the literature of great civilisations cannot be wasted effort. If nothing else it must school the mind.’

‘Pagan civilisations, sir,’ Noak said. ‘Civilisations that passed their peak two thousand years ago or more. We have come on a little since then, I fancy.’

‘That we have been able to build so high is surely a tribute to the strength of the foundations.’

Mr Noak stared at me but said nothing. In my present position I could hardly afford to anger anybody. Yet he had talked such obvious nonsense that I felt it my duty to advance some counter arguments, if only for Charlie’s sake. At this moment the door opened and Henry Frant came in. The almost foppish elegance of his dress was in stark contrast to Mr Noak’s sober attire. Charlie caught his breath. I had the curious impression that he would have liked to shrink into himself.

‘My dear sir,’ Frant cried. ‘How glad I am to see you.’

As he advanced to shake hands, I gathered up our possessions and prepared to leave.

‘You have been renewing your acquaintance with Charles, I see, and with Mr Shield.’

Noak nodded. ‘I am afraid I have disturbed them at their studies.’

‘Not at all, sir,’ I said.

Mr Noak continued as if I had not spoken. ‘Mr Shield and I have been having a most interesting conversation concerning the place of the classical languages in the modern world.’

Frant shot me a quick glance but swerved away from this subject. ‘I have kept you waiting – I am so sorry. It was kind of you to meet me here.’

‘How does Mr Wavenhoe do?’

Frant spread out his hands. ‘As well as can be expected. I fear he may not be with us long.’

‘Perhaps you would prefer it –’ Noak began.

‘I would not on any account postpone our dinner,’ Frant said quickly. ‘Mr Wavenhoe is sleeping now, and I understand from his medical attendants that an immediate crisis is not to be expected. Nor is he expected to wake for some hours. They tell me the carriage is at the door.’

Noak lingered by the fire. ‘I had wondered whether I might see Mr Carswall here,’ he remarked. ‘He is Mr Wavenhoe’s cousin, is he not?’

‘He has indeed been here today, and may look in again,’ Frant said smoothly. ‘But I believe he is not in the way at present.’

‘I had the pleasure of meeting him and his daughter briefly the other evening. Though of course I knew him by reputation already.’

At the door, Noak paused, turned and said goodbye to Charlie and myself. At last the door closed and we were alone again. Charlie sat down in his chair and picked up his pen. All the colour and excitement of the afternoon had drained away from his face. He looked pinched and miserable. I told myself that a father must inspire awe in his children as well as affection. But Mr Frant always made it easier for Charlie to fear him than to love him.

‘We shall shut up our books for the day,’ I said. ‘Is that a backgammon board on the table there? If you like, I will give you a game.’

We sat opposite each other at the table by the fire and laid out the pieces. The familiar click of the counters and the rattle of the dice had a soothing effect. Charlie became engrossed in the game, which he won with ease. I waited for him to set out the counters again so I might have my revenge, but instead he toyed with them, moving them at random about the board.

‘Sir?’ Charlie said. ‘Sir, what is a by-blow?’

‘It is a child whose parents are not married to each other.’

‘A bastard?’

‘Just so. Sometimes people will use words like that when they have no basis in fact, simply with the intention of wounding. It is best to disregard them.’

Charlie shook his head. ‘It was not like that, sir. It was Mrs Kerridge. I overheard her talking to Loomis –’

‘One should not eavesdrop on servants’ tittle-tattle,’ I put in automatically.

‘No, sir, but I could hardly help overhearing, as they spoke loud and the door was open and I was in the kitchen with Cook. Kerridge said, ‘the poor mite, being a by-blow’, and afterwards when I asked her what it meant, she told me not to bother my head about it. They were talking about Uncle Wavenhoe dying.’

‘And she said you were a by-blow?’

‘Oh no, sir – not me. Cousin Flora.’

CHAPTER TWENTY

HENRY FRANT HAD miscalculated. While he was dining that evening at his club with Mr Noak, George Wavenhoe rallied. For a short time, the old man was lucid, though very weak. He demanded that his family be brought to him.

By then, the Carswalls had returned to the house and were dining with Mrs Frant. Charlie was in bed, and I was reading by the fire in a small sitting room at the back of the house. Mrs Kerridge asked me to wake Charlie and bring him down when he was dressed; she could not go herself because she was needed in the sickroom. A few minutes later, Charlie and I descended to the second floor, where we found Mrs Frant in whispered conversation with a doctor on the landing. She broke off when she saw Charlie.

‘My love, your uncle desires to see you. I – he wishes to say farewell.’

‘Yes, Mama.’

‘You understand my meaning, Charlie?’

The boy nodded.

‘It is not at all frightening,’ she said firmly. ‘He is very ill, however. One must remember that soon he will go to Heaven, where he will be made well again.’

‘Yes, Mama.’

She looked at me. Her face was very lovely in the soft light. ‘Mr Shield, would you be kind enough to wait here? I do not think my uncle will detain Charlie for long.’

I bowed.

She and Charlie went into the old man’s room. The doctor followed them. I was left alone with a footman. The man was in his evening livery, his wig a great crest of stiff white powder, his calves like twin tree-trunks encased in silk. He examined his reflection surreptitiously in a pier glass. I paced up and down the passage, pretending to look at the pictures which hung there, though I could not have told you their subjects a moment afterwards. Somewhere in the house I heard the rumble of Stephen Carswall’s voice, fluctuating yet constant, like the sound of the sea on a quiet summer night. The door of the room opened and the physician beckoned me towards him.

‘Pray come in for a moment,’ he murmured, waving me towards him.

He put his finger to his lips, lifted himself on to tiptoe and led me into the room. It was large and richly furnished in a style which must have been the rage thirty or forty years ago. The walls above the dado rail were covered with silk hangings of deep red. There was a huge chimney glass above the fire which made the room look even larger than it was. Candles on ornate stands burned at intervals around the walls. A large fire blazed in the burnished steel grate, filling the room with a flickering orange glow. What compelled attention, however, was the bedstead itself, a great four-poster with a massive carved wood cornice, hung with curtains of floral-patterned silk.

Amid all this outmoded magnificence, this Brobdingnagian grandeur, was a tiny old man, with no hair and no teeth, with skin the colour of an unlit wax candle, whose hands picked at the embroidery of the coverlet. My eyes were drawn to him, as though the bed were a stage and he the only player on it. This was strange, because in many ways he was the least significant person in the room. Besides the doctor and Mrs Kerridge, who kept back in the shadows, there were four people clustered round the dying man. Near the head of the bed sat Mr Carswall, his body spilling untidily out of a little carved wooden gilt bedroom chair. Standing at his shoulder was Miss Carswall, who looked up as I entered and gave me a swift smile. Facing them across the bed was Mrs Frant, seated in another chair, with Charlie resting on one of the chair’s arms and leaning against her.

‘Ah, Mr Shield.’ Carswall waved me forward. ‘My cousin wishes to add a codicil to his will. He would be obliged if you would witness his signature, along with the good doctor here.’

As I stepped forward into the light, I saw on the bed a sheet of paper covered in writing. A writing box lay open on the dressing table nearby.

‘The lawyer has been sent for,’ said Mrs Frant. ‘Should we not wait until he arrives?’

‘That would take time, madam,’ Carswall pointed out. ‘And time is the one thing we may not have. There can surely be no doubt about our cousin’s intentions. When Fishlake comes, we shall have him draw up another codicil if necessary. But in the meantime, let us make sure that this one is duly signed and witnessed. I am persuaded that Mr Wavenhoe would wish it, and that Mr Frant would see the wisdom of such a course.’

‘Very well, sir. We must do as my uncle desires. And thank you. You are very good.’

While this conversation was going on, the old man lay propped against a great mountain of embroidered pillows. He breathed slowly and noisily through his mouth, sounding like an old pump in need of grease. The eyes were almost closed.

Carswall picked up the sheet of paper from the coverlet. ‘Flora, the pen.’

She brought the pen and the inkpot to her father. He dipped the nib in the ink, lifted Wavenhoe’s right hand and inserted the pen between the fingers.

‘Come, George,’ he growled, ‘here is the codicil: all that is required to make things right is that you sign your name here.’

Carswall lifted the paper in his other hand. Wavenhoe’s eyelids fluttered. His breathing lost its regularity. Two drops of ink fell on the embroidered coverlet. Carswall guided Wavenhoe’s hand to the space below the writing. With a slowness that was painful to watch, Wavenhoe traced his name. Afterwards the pen dropped from his fingers and he let himself fall back against his pillows. The breathing resumed its regularity. The pen rolled down the paper, leaving a splatter of ink-spots, and came to rest on the coverlet.

‘And now, Mr Shield,’ Carswall said. ‘Pray oblige us by doing your part. Flora, hand him the pen. Sign there, sir, beside the writing box. No, stay, before you sign, write these words: “Mr Wavenhoe’s signature witnessed by me” – then write your name, sir, your full name – “on the 9th day of November, 1819.’’’

While he gave his instructions, he folded down the top of the sheet so I could not see the codicil itself, only Mr Wavenhoe’s signature. He handed the paper to Flora, who stood beside me, holding the candle so I could see what I was doing. I wrote what Mr Carswall required, and signed my name. Flora was standing very close to me, though without touching; but I fancied I sensed the warmth of her body.

‘When you are done, be so good as to pass the paper to the doctor,’ Carswall said.

I crossed the room and handed the codicil to him. Wavenhoe’s eyes were fully open now. He looked at me and frowned.

‘Who –?’ he whispered.

‘Mr Shield is Charlie’s tutor, sir,’ Flora said.

Wavenhoe’s eyes drifted away from me and he turned his head so he could see the Frants on the other side of the bed. He looked at Mrs Frant.

‘Anne?’ he said in a firmer voice. ‘I thought you were dead.’

She leaned towards him and took his hand. ‘No, Uncle, I am not Anne, I am her daughter Sophie. Mama has been dead these many years, but they say I am very like her.’

He responded to the touch, if not the words. ‘Anne,’ he said, and smiled. ‘I am rejoiced to see you.’

His eyelids twitched and he slipped into a doze. The doctor scratched his signature and gave the paper to Carswall, who flapped it in the air until the ink was dry and then folded it away in his pocketbook. No one told me I should leave. I think the little group around the bed had forgotten my existence. I withdrew and stood in the shadows by the wall with Mrs Kerridge and the doctor. Flora sat in the chair beside her father. Mrs Frant picked up a Prayer Book from the side table beside her and looked inquiringly at Carswall who nodded. She opened it and began to read from Psalm 51:

But lo, thou requirest truth in the inward parts: and shalt make me to understand wisdom secretly. Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness: that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

As I listened, I thought that we were all imprisoned in a place between light and darkness, life and death, and that the only sounds that mattered in the world were the slow rasp of Wavenhoe’s breathing, the creak and sputter of coals in the grate and the rise and fall of Sophia Frant’s voice.

After a few moments, Stephen Carswall pulled out his watch. He sighed loudly, pushed back his chair, the legs scraping on the oak floorboards, and stood up, snorting with the strain of manoeuvring his big, clumsy body. Mrs Frant broke off her reading at the end of a sentence. Carswall made no sign of apology or even acknowledgement.

‘Shall we go down to the drawing room?’ he said to his daughter.

‘If you would not object, sir, I should prefer to remain here.’

He shrugged. ‘You must please yourself, miss.’ He glanced down at the little figure on the bed and nodded his head. It was a curious gesture: like the tip of the head a maidservant gives when she makes her obedience. He stamped across the floor and Mrs Kerridge opened the door for him. From the ground floor came a muffled knock on the front door and the subdued murmur of voices.

‘Ah,’ Carswall said, cocking his head, suddenly all attention. ‘That lawyer fellow, at last, unless Frant’s back early. If it’s Fishlake, I’ll deal with him.’

‘My love,’ Mrs Frant said to Charlie, ‘it is time for you to go to bed. Kiss your uncle goodnight, and then perhaps Mr Shield will go upstairs with you. We must not inconvenience him any further, must we?’

Charlie detached himself from his mother’s chair. I saw his face in that instant, saw him screwing up his courage for what had to be done. He bent over the figure in the bed and brushed his lips against the pale forehead. He backed away and, avoiding his mother’s embrace, walked unsteadily towards me.

George Wavenhoe coughed. Flora gasped, and all of us turned suddenly towards the bed. The old man stirred and opened his eyes. ‘Goodnight, dear boy,’ he said softly but with perfect clarity. ‘And sweet dreams.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I DREAMT ABOUT George Wavenhoe as I lay in my bed several floors above him: and in my dream I watched him sign the codicil yet again, and watched his little yellow fingers clutch the pen; and in my dream the nails had grown and become claws, and I wondered why no one had clipped them. I woke to the news that he was dead.

Mrs Frant summoned me to the breakfast room. Her face was pale, her eyes rimmed red with weeping, and she did not look at me but addressed the coal scuttle. She and Mr Frant, she said, had decided that Charlie should stay with them in Russell-square until after Mr Wavenhoe’s funeral. She thanked me for my trouble and told me she had ordered the carriage to take me back to school.

The conversation left a sour taste in my mouth. She had made me feel like a servant, I told myself, which to all intents and purposes I was. I packed my few belongings, said goodbye to Charlie and was driven back to Stoke Newington.

As the days slipped past, I tried to absorb myself in the life of the school. But I found it hard not to think about the Frants, the Carswalls and Mr Wavenhoe. Mrs Frant and Miss Carswall filled my thoughts far more than was entirely proper. And there was much that puzzled me: what had Salutation Harmwell and Mr Noak to do with all this? Was it true that Miss Carswall was her father’s natural daughter?

Nor could I ignore Mr Carswall’s behaviour. Though Mr Wavenhoe had certainly signed the codicil which I had witnessed, and Mrs Frant and the physician had seemed perfectly satisfied as to the correctness of Mr Carswall’s conduct, had the old man known what he was signing? I was not easy in my mind. There was nothing one could call suspicious, exactly, but there was much to arouse curiosity, to raise doubts.

To make matters worse, a trickle of intelligence from the newspapers and certain of Mr Bransby’s correspondents revealed that Mr Rowsell’s forebodings had been amply justified. Something was very wrong at Wavenhoe’s Bank. There were reports that it might close its doors and refuse payments. Mr Wavenhoe’s death had caused a crisis in confidence. I did not appreciate how swiftly events were moving until some ten days after I returned from Albemarle-street. By this time Mr Wavenhoe was buried, and Charlie had returned to school, wearing mourning but in other respects apparently untouched by the experience.

After morning school, I strolled into the village, as was my habit if the weather was dry. A green and gold carriage, drawn by a pair of chestnuts, pulled up beside me in the High-street. The glass slid down, and Miss Carswall looked out.

‘Mr Shield – this is a pleasure I had not anticipated.’

I raised my hat and bowed. ‘Miss Carswall – nor had I. Are you come to see your cousin?’

‘Yes, indeed – Mr Frant wrote to Mr Bransby; he is to have a night in town. But I am somewhat early. I would not wish to arrive before my time. Schoolboys are such creatures of habit, are they not? I wonder if I might prevail upon you to show me a little of the village and the surrounding country? I am sure it will be better to keep the horses moving.’

I disclaimed any topographical information of value but said I would be glad to show her what I could. The footman let down the steps and I climbed into the carriage. Flora Carswall slid along the seat into the corner to give me room.

‘How very obliging of you, Mr Shield,’ she said, toying with an auburn curl. ‘And how fortunate that I should encounter you.’

‘Fortunate?’ I said softly.

She coloured most becomingly. ‘Charlie mentioned that you often take the air after morning school.’

‘Fortunate for me, at least,’ I said with a smile. ‘As it was the other day, when we met in Piccadilly.’

Miss Carswall smiled back, and I knew my guess had hit the mark: she had followed me from Albemarle-street that afternoon. ‘I suppose that sometimes one must give fortune a nudge,’ she said. ‘Don’t you agree? And I own that I am glad to have the opportunity for a private conference with you. Would you – would you tell John coachman to drive out of the village for a mile or two?’

I obeyed.

She cleared her throat and went on, ‘I am afraid the bank is in a bad way.’

‘I have seen something of that in the newspapers.’

‘It is even worse than is generally supposed. Pray do not mention this to a living soul but my father is quite shocked. He had not realised – that is to say, there is serious cause for alarm. It seems that a number of bills were due at about this time, some for very large sums of money, and in the normal course of affairs, they would have been extended. But no: the creditors wish to be paid immediately. And then, to make matters worse, we had assumed – indeed the whole world had assumed – that Mr Wavenhoe was a very wealthy man. But it appears that this was no longer the case at the time of his death.’

‘I’m sorry to hear this. May I ask why –?’

‘Why I am telling you? Because I – I was concerned about what happened on the evening Mr Wavenhoe died. My father often appears high-handed, I regret to say. He is a man who is used to his own way. Those of us who know him make allowances, but to a stranger it can seem – it can seem other than it really is.’

‘I witnessed a signature, Miss Carswall. That is all.’

‘You saw Mr Wavenhoe sign, did you not? And you yourself signed immediately afterwards? And you could testify that there was no coercion involved, and that Mr Wavenhoe was in his right mind and knew what he was doing?’

Until now her hands had been inside her muff. As she spoke, in her agitation, she took out her right hand and laid it on my sleeve. Almost immediately she realised what she had done and with a gasp she withdrew it.

‘I can certainly testify to that, Miss Carswall. But surely others can do the same? The doctor’s word would naturally carry more weight than mine, and Mrs Frant’s, too.’

‘It is possible that Mr Frant may dispute the codicil,’ she said, colouring again, and more deeply. ‘You know how it is with families, I daresay: a disputed inheritance can wreak the most fearful havoc.’

I said gently, ‘This codicil, Miss Carswall: why should Mr Frant wish to dispute it?’

‘I will be frank with you, Mr Shield. It concerns the disposition of a property in Gloucester which had belonged, I believe, to Mr Wavenhoe’s grandmother, that is to say to the grandmother whom he shared with my father. Mr Wavenhoe was sentimentally attached to it on that account, for he had childhood memories of the place. I understand from my father that it is in fact the only one of his properties that is not encumbered with a mortgage. And the codicil now bequeaths it to me.’

‘May I ask who would have received it if Mr Wavenhoe had not signed the codicil?’

‘I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps my cousin Mrs Frant would have held it in trust for her son. There are a number of small bequests, but apart from those, she and Charlie are the co-heirs, and Mr Frant is appointed the executor. My father and Mr Wavenhoe had quarrelled over a matter of business, you see, so he was not mentioned in the will. Yet, in my uncle’s last hours, when Papa represented to Mr Wavenhoe that he had no quarrel with me, my uncle was much struck by the force of the argument and desired the codicil to be drawn up there and then.’

‘And Mr Frant?’

‘Mr Frant was not there. Sophie was in and out of the room but her thoughts were otherwise occupied.’ Miss Carswall hesitated and then added in a voice not much above a whisper, ‘In fact, she put quite the wrong construction upon it. She thought that she was the beneficiary of the codicil.’

I remembered her words to Mr Carswall before Mr Wavenhoe had signed the codicil: We must do what my uncle wishes. And thank you. You are very good.

Miss Carswall edged a little closer to me and lowered her voice. ‘I understand that Mr Frant does not believe my uncle was in a fit state to make a decision of this nature, that indeed he had no idea what he was putting his name to.’

I nodded without committing myself. Was it possible that Mrs Frant had been tricked, and that I had been an unwitting agent in a scheme to defraud her of an inheritance? Did that explain her altered behaviour to me on the morning after Mr Wavenhoe’s death?

‘It would not matter so much,’ Miss Carswall burst out, ‘if my uncle’s affairs were not so embarrassed. My father believes that once his debts are paid there will be scarcely enough to settle the household bills. As for the bank – there is such a run on it at present that my father says there is sure to be a suspension of payments and perhaps even a commission of bankruptcy. It will go very hard on Sophie, I fear.’

‘And on Mr Frant.’

‘If the bank has run into difficulties, then he must be held at least partly responsible,’ Miss Carswall said tartly. ‘Since my father withdrew from the partnership, Mr Frant has been largely responsible for the conduct of business.’

The carriage had left the village, and was now proceeding down a country lane at a walk.

Miss Carswall looked up at me. ‘I must go to the school.’ Her voice had softened, had become almost pleading. ‘I – I scarcely know how to say –’

‘To say what?’

‘It is so absurd,’ she replied, speaking in a rush. ‘And in any case it may be quite untrue. But Mr Frant is said to nurse a grudge against you.’

‘But why should he do that?’

‘It is said that he feels you should not have witnessed my uncle’s signature.’

‘It is said? By whom?’

‘Hush, Mr Shield. I – I heard him talking with my father and the lawyer on the morning after my uncle died. That is to say, I was in the next room, and they did not trouble to lower their voices.’

‘But why should Mr Frant object to my witnessing the signature? If I had not done it, someone else would have. Does he hold a grudge against the physician as well?’

Miss Carswall did not reply. She covered her face with her hands.

‘Besides, your father was so pressing that I could hardly refuse him,’ I said, my mind filling with the memory of Mrs Frant’s cold, pale face in the breakfast room at Albemarle-street. ‘Nor was there any reason why I should do so.’

‘I know,’ she murmured, peeping at me through her gloved fingers. ‘I know. But men are not always rational creatures, are they?’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

ON TUESDAY THE 23rd November, Wavenhoe’s Bank closed its doors for ever. On the same day, two of its customers committed suicide rather than face ruin.

When a bank fails, the consequences spread like a contagion through society: fathers rot in the Marshalsea or blow out their brains, mothers take in sewing or walk the pavements, children are withdrawn from school and beg for pennies, servants lose their places and tradesmen’s bills go unpaid; and so the plague spreads, ever outwards, to people who never heard of Wavenhoe’s or Russell-square.

‘Frant burned his fingers badly when the tobacco market collapsed,’ Dansey told me as we smoked our evening pipes in the garden. ‘I have it on good authority that he had to turn to the Israelites to keep his head above water. Oh, and the servants have left. Always a sure sign of a sinking ship.’

On Wednesday there were more suicides and we heard that the bailiffs had gone into that opulent house in Russell-square. Dansey and I stood at a window and watched Charlie Frant, arm in arm with Edgar Allan, marching round the playground and blowing plumes of warm breath into the freezing air.

‘I pity the boy, of course. But take my advice: have nothing more to do with the Frants, if you can help it. They will only bring you grief.’

It was sound advice but I was not able to take it, for the very next day, Thursday, the sad history of the Frants and Wavenhoes reached what many believed to be its catastrophe. The first intelligence we had of the terrible events of the night came at breakfast time. The man who brought the milk communicated it to the maids, and the news set the servants whispering and swaying like a cornfield in a breeze.

‘Something’s afoot,’ Dansey said as we sat with our weak, bitter coffee. ‘One doesn’t often see them so lively at this hour of the morning.’

Afterwards, Morley sidled up to us, with Quird hovering as usual at his elbow. ‘Please, sir,’ he said to Dansey, shifting from one foot to the other, his face glowing with excitement. ‘Something horrible has happened.’

‘Then I advise you not to tell me what it is,’ Dansey said. ‘It may distress you further.’

‘No, sir,’ Quird broke in. ‘Truly, sir, you don’t understand.’

Dansey scowled at the boy.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Quird said quickly. ‘I did not mean to –’

‘Someone’s been murdered in the night,’ Morley broke in, his voice rising in his excitement.

‘They say his head was smashed into jelly,’ Quird whispered. ‘Torn limb from limb.’

‘It might have been any of us,’ Morley said. ‘The thief could have broken in and –’

‘So a thief has turned to murder?’ Dansey said. ‘Perhaps Stoke Newington is not such a humdrum place after all. Where is this interesting event said to have occurred?’

‘Not exactly in the village, sir,’ Morley answered. ‘Somewhere towards town. Not a stone’s throw from us, not really.’

‘Ah. I might have known. So Stoke Newington remains as humdrum as ever. When there is news I shall be interested to hear it. In the meantime, I do not propose to waste my few remaining moments of leisure listening to second-hand servants’ gossip. Good morning.’

Morley and Quird retreated. We watched them leaving the room.

‘What tiresomely underbred creatures they are, to be sure,’ Dansey said.

‘I wonder if there is some truth in what they heard.’

Dansey shrugged. ‘Very possibly. No doubt we shall be talking about it for weeks on end. I can imagine nothing more tedious.’

This was not affectation on his part. Dansey could be reticent to a fault but he rarely troubled to lie. Indeed, he rarely troubled much with anything; I sometimes wonder what might have become of him if he had.

I did not have to wait long to learn more. Part way through morning school Mr Bransby’s servant came to fetch me. I found my employer in the parlour with a small man in grey, mud-stained clothes. Bransby was pacing up and down, his face redder than usual.

‘Allow me to present Mr Shield, one of my ushers,’ he said, pausing to help himself to a large pinch of snuff. ‘Mr Shield, this is Mr Grout, the attorney who acts as clerk to the magistrates. I regret to say that a most shocking circumstance has come to light, one that may cast a shadow over the school.’

Mr Grout had a face that was an appendage of his nose, like a mole’s. ‘A man has been murdered, Mr Shield. His body was found early this morning by a watchman at a building plot not more than a mile and a half away. There is a possibility that you may be able to identify the unfortunate victim.’

I stared in consternation from one to the other. ‘But I have never been there. I did not even know –’

‘It is not the location which is our concern,’ the clerk interrupted. ‘It is the identity of the victim. We have reason to believe – I would put it no more strongly than that – that he may not be unknown to you.’

Bransby sneezed. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, Shield, Wavenhoe’s Bank had an interest in this building projection.’

‘The bank hold the head-lease on the land themselves. Or perhaps I should say held.’ Grout wrinkled his nose. ‘Owing to the scarcity of money at the present time, the man who holds the principal building-lease, a Mr Owens, was compelled to apply to them for a series of loans. Unfortunately the money the bank provided was not enough to meet his obligations. The poor fellow hanged himself in Hertford a few months ago.’

Bransby shook his head. ‘And now poor Frant has gone to meet his Maker. Truly an unlucky speculation.’

‘Mr Frant is dead?’ I blurted out.

‘That is the question,’ Grout said. ‘The watchman believes the body is Mr Frant’s. But he met him only once, and that briefly, and he cannot be said to be a reliable witness at the best of times. At such short notice I have been able to find no one in the vicinity who knows Mr Frant. But I understand that he has – had, that is to say – a boy at the school, so I have driven over to see whether someone was able to identify the body; or not, of course, as the case may be. Mr Bransby tells me he has never met Mr Frant either, but that you have.’

‘Yes, sir, on several occasions. Tell me, what of Mrs Frant? Has she been informed?’

Grout shook his head. ‘It is a delicate matter. One would not like to tell a lady that her husband had been murdered, only to discover that the victim was in fact somebody else. Mr Bransby tells me you have been a soldier, sir, that you were in fact one of our glorious army at Waterloo. I hope I am correct in inferring that the sight of a man who has died a violent death may have fewer terrors for you than it would for a mere civilian.’

There was a glazed expression on Mr Bransby’s face. He gave me a tight smile and nodded. I knew I had little choice but to accept the rôle that he had allotted me.

Mr Grout bowed to my employer. ‘Mr Shield should be back in time for dinner.’

‘Well, the sooner this is done the better.’ Bransby fixed me with a glare. ‘We can only hope and pray that the unfortunate man does not prove to be Mr Frant.’

A few minutes later, Mr Grout and I were driving briskly away in his whiskey. We rattled down Church-street and turned right into the High-street. It was on this road, not very far south from here, that I had met Mr Frant for the first time – in September, when I had walked to Stoke Newington to take up my situation at Mr Bransby’s school. I remembered the meeting well enough – as one does when a man more or less threatens to set his servants on one – but he had never shown the slightest recollection of it. It occurred to me that now I had a possible explanation for his presence on the road that day, one that perhaps also accounted for Mr Frant’s bad temper: he had been inspecting one of his failing investments.

We turned into a narrow lane between tall hedges. As we bounced and slithered along on a surface of rutted, frozen mud, I glimpsed market gardens and scrubby pasture over the tops of the hedges. Grout squeezed the whiskey into an opening on the left that led to a large field. There was little grass to be seen – merely heaps of sand and gravel, stacks of bricks, and above all mud. Few walls were higher than my waist. The plot looked as if it had recently suffered an artillery bombardment, leaving two rows of ruins separated by an immense heap of spoil. Grout pulled up beside a wooden shed. For a moment we looked out over the dismal scene.

‘I believe the design is for twenty houses facing each other across a communal garden,’ Grout said. ‘Wellington-terrace. Mr Owens drew up the plans himself. According to the prospectus, Londoners will flock to benefit from the healthy air.’

‘One can see why he felt obliged to hang himself,’ I observed.

‘I agree – it is not a happy place. Nothing has gone well for the scheme from start to finish.’

The door of the shed opened and a man came out, touching his hat.

‘Ah, there is the constable.’ Grout raised his voice. ‘Well, where is he?’

‘We brought him in here, sir, just as you said.’

Grout glanced at me. ‘Are you ready, Mr Shield? Then let us wait no longer.’

We jumped down from the whiskey and followed the constable over the caked mud into the shed. My eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom. A small stove burned in the corner and filled the air with heavy, acrid fumes. A man huddled beside it, a clay pipe smouldering in his mouth. In the shadows at the back of the shed was the shape of a door laid upon trestles. On the door lay the long, dark mound of a body. I sniffed: in the smoke were other smells: the tang of spirits and the dark effluvium of the charnel house.

Grout indicated the man by the stove. ‘This fellow’s name is Orton, Jacob Orton.’

‘Late of the Seventy-Third, sir,’ said Orton in a mendicant’s whine. ‘And I have a testimonial from my company commander to prove it.’ He raised the hand holding the pipe in a parody of a military salute and a shower of sparks flew like meteors through the air. ‘They called me Honest Jake in the regiment,’ he said. ‘That’s my name, sir, that’s my nature.’

‘Are there no more lights in here?’ Grout demanded.

‘It is a terrible dull day, to be sure,’ Orton said, sucking on his pipe.

Grout darted towards him and seized his lapels. ‘Are you sure you heard nothing in the night? Think carefully. A lie will cost you dear.’

‘As God is my witness, sir, I was sleeping as sound as a babe in his mother’s arms.’ Orton snuffled. ‘I could not help it, your worship.’

‘You’re not paid to sleep: you’re paid to watch.’

‘Drunk as a pig,’ said the constable. ‘That’s what he means, sir.’

‘I don’t deny I took a drop of something to keep out the cold.’

‘Drank so much the Last Judgement could have come without him noticing anything out of the way,’ the constable translated. He nodded towards the silent shape that lay on the trestles. ‘You’ve only got to look at him to see he didn’t go quietly. Ain’t that right, Mr Grout?’

The clerk ignored the question. He turned aside and tugged at the sacking over one of the windows, which were small and set high to dissuade thieves. The sacking fell away, revealing an unglazed square. Pale winter daylight spread reluctantly through the little cabin. Orton whinnied softly, as though the light hurt him.

‘Stow it,’ said the constable.

‘He moved,’ Orton whispered. ‘I take my oath on it. I saw his hand move. Just then, as God’s my witness.’

‘Your wits are wandering,’ Grout said. ‘Bring the lantern. Why is there not more light? Perhaps we should have left the poor man where he lay.’

‘There’s foxes, and a terrible deal of rats,’ Orton said.

Grout motioned me to approach the makeshift table. The body was entirely covered with a grey blanket, with the exception of the left hand.

‘Dear God!’ I ejaculated.

‘You must brace yourself, Mr Shield. The face is worse.’

His voice seemed to come from a great distance. I stared at the wreck of the hand. I bent closer and the constable shone the light full on it. It had been reduced to a bloody pulp of flesh, skin and shockingly white splinters of bone. I fought an impulse to vomit.

‘The top joints of the forefinger appear to be missing,’ I said in a thin, precise voice. ‘I know Mr Frant had sustained a similar injury.’

Grout let out his breath in a sigh. ‘Are you ready for the rest?’

I nodded. I did not trust myself to speak.

The constable set down the lantern on the corner of the door, raised himself on tiptoe, took the top two corners of the blanket and slowly pulled it back. The figure lay supine and as still as an effigy. The constable lifted the lantern and held it up to the head.

I shuddered and took a step back. Grout gripped my elbow. My mind darkened. For an instant I thought the darkness was outside me, that the flame in the lantern had died and that the day had slipped with tropical suddenness into night. I was aware of a powerful odour of faeces and sweat, of stale tobacco and gin.

‘He should think himself lucky,’ Orton wheezed at my shoulder. ‘I mean, look at him, most of him’s hardly touched. Lucky bugger, eh? You should see what roundshot fair and square in the belly can do to a man. Now that’s what I call damage. I remember at Waterloo –’

‘Hold your tongue, damn you,’ I said, obscurely angry that this man seemed not to have spent the battle cowering in the shadow of a dead horse.

‘You block the light, Orton,’ Grout said, unexpectedly mild. ‘Move aside.’

I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the sights and sounds and smells that struggled to fill the darkness around me. This was not a battle: this was merely a corpse.

‘Are you able to come to an opinion?’ Grout inquired. ‘I realise that the face is – is much battered.’

I opened my eyes. The man on the trestle table was hatless. There were still patches of frost on both clothes and hair. It had been a cold night to spend in the open. He wore a dark, many-caped greatcoat – not a coachman’s but a gentleman’s luxurious imitation. Underneath I glimpsed a dark blue coat, pale brown breeches and heavy riding boots. The hair was greying at the temples, cut short.

As to the face, it was everyone’s and no one’s. Only one eye was visible – God alone knew what had happened to the other – and it seemed to me that its colour was a pale blue-grey.

‘He – he is much changed, of course,’ I said, and the words were as weak and inadequate as the light from the lantern. ‘But everything I see is consonant with what I know of Mr Frant – the colour of the hair, that is to say, the colour of the eyes – that is, of the eye – and the build and the height as far as I can estimate them.’

‘The clothes?’

‘I cannot help you there.’

‘There is also a ring.’ Grout walked round the head of the table, keeping as far away from it as he could. ‘It is still on the other hand, so the motive for this dreadful deed appears not to have been robbery. Pray come round to this side.’

I obeyed like one in a trance. I was unable to look away from what lay on the table. The greatcoat was smeared with mud. A dark patch spread like a sinister bib across the chest. I thought I discerned splinters of exposed bone in the red ruin of the face.

The single eye seemed to follow me.

‘Now take cavalry,’ Orton suggested from his dark corner near the stove. ‘When they’re bunched together, and charging, so the horses can’t choose where they put their hooves. If there’s a man lying on the ground, wounded, say, there’s not a lot anyone can do. Cuts a man up cruelly, I can tell you. You wouldn’t believe.’

‘Stow your mag,’ said the constable wearily.

‘Least he’s got a peeper left on him,’ Orton went on. ‘The crows used to go for the eyes, did you know that?’

The constable cuffed him into silence. Grout held the lantern low so I could examine the right hand of the corpse. Like the left, it had been reduced to a bloody pulp. On the forefinger was the great gold signet ring.

‘I must have air,’ I said. I pushed past Grout and the constable and blundered through the doorway. The clerk followed me outside. I stared over the desolate prospect of frosty mud and raw brick. Three pigeons rose in alarm from the bare branches of an oak tree that survived from a time when the land had not been given over to wild schemes and lost fortunes.

Grout pushed a flask into my hand. I took a mouthful of brandy, and spluttered as the heat ran down to my belly. He walked up and down, clapping his gloved hands together against the cold.

‘Well, sir?’ he said. ‘What is your verdict?’

‘I believe it is Mr Henry Frant.’

‘You cannot be certain?’

‘His face … it is much damaged.’

‘You remarked the missing finger.’

‘Yes.’

‘It supports the identification.’

‘True.’ I hesitated and then burst out: ‘But who could have done such a thing? The violence of the attack passes all belief.’

Grout shrugged. His eyes strayed towards the nearest of the half-built houses.

‘Would you care to see where the deed was done? It is not a sight for the squeamish, but it is as nothing compared with what you have already seen.’

‘I should be most interested.’ The brandy had given me false courage.

He led me along a line of planks that snaked precariously across the mud. The house was a house in name only. Low walls surrounded the shallow pit of the cellar, perhaps two or three feet below the surface of the field in which we stood. Grout jumped into it with the alacrity of a sparrow looking for breadcrumbs. I followed him, narrowly avoiding a pool of fresh excrement. He pointed with his stick at the further corner. Despite his warning, there was little to see, apart from puddles of icy water and, abutting the brickwork in the angle of the wall, an irregular patch of earth which was darker than the rest, darker because shadowed with Henry Frant’s blood.

‘Were there footprints?’ I asked. ‘Surely such a struggle must have left a number of marks?’

Grout shook his head. ‘Unfortunately the scene has had a number of visitors since the deed was committed. Besides, the ground was hard with frost.’

‘When did Orton make the discovery?’

‘Shortly after it was light. When he woke, he found that while he slept someone had wedged the door of the shed. He had to crawl out through one of the windows. He came here to relieve himself, which was when he found the corpse.’ Grout’s nose wrinkled. ‘First he alerted a neighbouring farmer, who came to gawp with half a dozen of his men. Then the magistrates. If there were footprints, or other marks, they will not be easy to distinguish from those which were made before or afterwards.’

‘What of Mr Frant’s hat and gloves? How did he come here? And why should he come at that time of evening?’

‘If we knew the answers to those questions, Mr Shield, we would no doubt know the identity of the murderer. We found the hat beside the body. It is in the shed now, and has Mr Frant’s name inside. And the gloves were beneath the body itself.’

‘That is odd, is it not, sir?’

‘How so?’

‘That a man should remove his gloves on such a cold night.’

‘The affair as a whole is a tissue of strange and contradictory circumstances. Mr Frant’s pockets had been emptied. Yet the ring was left on his finger.’ Grout rubbed his pointed nose, whose tip was pink with cold. ‘The principal weapon might have been a hammer or a similar instrument,’ he went on, the words tumbling out at such a rate that I realised that he, too, was not unmoved by the dreadful sight on the trestle table. ‘Though it is possible that the assailant also used a brick.’

He scrambled out of the cellar and we walked slowly back towards the shed.

‘They may have come here on foot,’ Grout said. ‘But more likely they rode or drove. Someone will have seen them on the way.’

‘Ruined men can be driven to desperate measures, and it is not impossible that one of those whom Mr Frant injured has had his mind overturned by his troubles, and has sought revenge.’

Grout gave me a long look. ‘Or this might be the work of a jealous lover. Or a madman.’

There was nothing more for me to do at Wellington-terrace. As Mr Grout drove me back to school, I sat in silence beside him, my mind too full for conversation. We passed the flask to and fro between us. It was empty by the time we drew up outside the Manor House School.

I said, ‘May I tell Mr Bransby what has passed?’

Grout shrugged. ‘He either knows or surmises everything you or I could tell him. So will the whole neighbourhood in an hour or two.’

‘There is the matter of the boy. Mr Frant’s son.’

‘Indeed. Mr Bransby must do what he thinks fit on that head.’ He bobbed his nose towards me. ‘I do not know how the magistrates will proceed, and if I did know, it would not be proper for me to tell you. However, there will be an inquest, and you may be required to attend. In the meantime, though –’ he spread his arms wide ‘– there will be talk. That much I do know.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

IN THE EVENING of that terrible day, I smoked a pipe with Dansey in the garden after the boys were in bed. We walked up and down, huddled in our greatcoats. Soon after my return, Mr Bransby had summoned Charlie Frant. The boy had not been seen since. A message had been sent for Edgar Allan to take his friend’s possessions to Mr Bransby’s side of the house.

‘It is said a man has been arrested already,’ Dansey said softly.

‘Who?’

‘I do not know.’

I bowed my head. ‘But why did the murderer mutilate the body?’

‘A man in search of revenge is a man out of his senses. If it was revenge.’

‘Yes, but the hands?’

‘In Arabia, they cut off the thief’s hands. We used to do it here, I believe, or something similar. Crushing the hands in the manner you described might be another form of the practice. Perhaps Mr Frant’s killer believed his victim was a thief.’

Our pipes hissed and bubbled. At the foot of the garden, we turned, and stood for a moment under the shelter of the trees looking back at the house.

Dansey sighed. ‘Come what may, this affair will make a considerable noise in the world. Pray do not think me impertinent if I speak for a moment in the character of a friend, but I would advise you to keep your own counsel.’

‘I am obliged to you. But why do you make such a point of this?’

‘I hardly know. The Frants are great folk. When great folk fall, they bring down smaller folk in their train.’ He sucked on his pipe. ‘It is a thousand pities you were called upon to identify the body. You should not have had to appear in this matter at all.’

I shrugged, trying unsuccessfully to push from my mind the memory of that bloodied carcass I had seen in the morning. ‘Shall we go in? It grows cold.’

‘As you wish.’

It seemed to me that there was a note of regret in Dansey’s voice. We walked slowly back to the house – slowly, because his footsteps lagged. The moon was very bright, and our feet crunched on the silver lawn. The house reared up in front of us, the moon full on its garden front.

Dansey laid a hand on my arm. ‘Tom? I may call you that, may I not? Pray call me Ned. I do not wish –’

‘Hush,’ I said. ‘Look – someone is watching us. Do you see? The third attic from the left.’

The window belonged to the chamber Morley and Quird had shared with Charlie Frant. We quickened our pace, and a moment later passed into the house.

‘Moonlight plays strange tricks,’ Dansey said.

I shook my head. ‘I saw a face. Just for a moment.’

That night I slept dreamlessly, though I had feared my nightmares of carnage would return after the sight I had seen in Jacob Orton’s shed.

In my waking hours, the school itself was better than any medicine. For the next few days, our lives continued their placid course, seemingly unchanged. Nevertheless, news continued to reach us from the outside world. The man who had been taken into custody was the brother of the builder, Mr Owens, who had committed suicide. The brother was said to be subject to fits of ungovernable rage; reputable witnesses had heard him utter threats against Henry Frant, whom he held responsible for his brother’s suicide; he was a violent man, and had nearly killed a neighbour whom he suspected of making sheep’s eyes at his wife. But the following day, the magistrates ordered his release. It transpired that he had spent the evening of the night in question drinking at his uncle’s house, and had shared a bed with his cousin; and so his family would give him an alibi.

The inquest came and went. I was not called to give evidence, much to my relief and to Mr Bransby’s. Mr Frant’s confidential clerk, a man named Arndale who had known him for the better part of twenty years, had no hesitation in identifying the body as his master’s. The jury brought in a verdict of murder against person or persons unknown.

Despite the horrific manner of his death, there were few expressions of grief for Mr Frant or of sympathy for his widow. As information emerged about the collapse of Wavenhoe’s Bank and the reasons for it, the public prints hastened to condemn him.

The extent of Frant’s depredations was never known for certain, but I heard sums ranging from £200,000 to upwards of half a million. Many of the bank’s customers, secure in the good name of Wavenhoe’s, had appointed Mr Wavenhoe and Mr Frant as their trustees. As such, Frant had purchased hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of stock in the three per cent Consols. In the last three years, he had forged powers of attorney enabling him to sell this stock. Mr Wavenhoe had signed the documents put before him, though doubtless he was unaware of their significance. The name of a third partner, another of the trustees, had been forged on all occasions, as had several of the subscribing witnesses. Mr Frant had converted the proceeds from these sales to his own use, retaining sufficient funds to allow him to pay dividends to the bank’s customers, thereby preventing their suspicions from being aroused.

Arndale, Frant’s clerk, claimed to have known nothing of this. (Dansey thought the man had avoided prosecution by co-operating with the authorities.) Arndale confirmed that the house had been badly hit by the withdrawal of Mr Carswall’s capital. He also testified that the bank had made many advances to speculative builders, which had rendered necessary a system of discounting, and that Mr Frant had subsequently been obliged to make further advances to these persons, in order to secure the sums in which they already stood indebted. In addition, rumours continued to circulate to the effect that Mr Frant had been addicted to play, and that he had lost large sums of money at cards and at dice in private houses.

‘Whoever killed him did the hangman a favour,’ Dansey said. ‘If Frant weren’t already dead, they’d have tried him for forgery and sent him to the gallows for uttering.’

At the time there was much speculation as to whether Mrs Frant had been privy to her husband’s schemes. Some found her doubly guilty by association, for was she not the wife of one partner and the niece of another? Not everyone agreed.

‘A man does not discuss his business dealings with his wife,’ Dansey argued. ‘No, she is guilty merely by association. The public prefers a living scapegoat, if at all possible.’

What made matters worse was that Mrs Frant had no one to speak in her defence. Mr Carswall had given her the shelter of his roof but he remained silent on this head and on all others. She was said to be suffering from a fever, her spirits quite overthrown by the double tragedy of her husband’s murder and the revelation of his crimes.

As for Charlie, he stumbled like an automaton through the days. I wondered that Mr Carswall did not remove him from the school. Boys are unpredictable creatures. I had expected his schoolfellows would bait him, that they would make him suffer for his father’s crimes. Instead, most of them left him alone. Indeed, when they did not ignore him, they handled him with a certain rough kindness. He looked ill, and they dealt with him as though he were. Edgar Allan rarely left his side. The young American treated his friend with a solicitude and a delicacy of sentiment which was unusual in one so young.

Delicacy of sentiment, however, was not a characteristic which could be attributed to either Morley or Quird. Nor was common decency. I came across them fighting with Allan and Frant in a corner of their schoolroom. Morley and Quird were so much older and so much heavier that it was not so much a fight as a massacre. For once, I intervened. I flogged Morley and Quird on the spot and ordered them to wait on me that evening, so that I might flog them again.

‘Are you sure you want to do that, sir?’ Morley asked softly when he and Quird appeared before me at the appointed time.

‘I shall beat you all the more if you don’t take that insolent smile off your face.’

‘It’s only, sir, that me and Quird happened to see you and Mr Dansey the other night.’

‘Quird and I, Morley, Quird and I. The pronoun is part of a compound nominative plural.’

‘Smoking under the trees, you were.’

‘Then be damned to you for a pair of snivelling, spying scrubs,’ I snarled, my rage boiling over. ‘And why were you not in bed, pray?’

Morley had the impudence to ignore my question. ‘And we saw you and him, sir, on other nights.’

I stared at him, my anger rapidly subsiding. A show of anger has its uses when you are dealing with boys, but ungovernable passion must always be deplored.

‘Bend over,’ I ordered.

He did not move. ‘Perhaps, sir, it is my duty to inform Mr Bransby. We must all listen to the voice of conscience. He abhors the practice of –’

‘You may tell Mr Bransby what you like,’ I said. ‘First, however, you will bend over and I shall thrash you as you’ve never been thrashed before.’

The smile vanished from Morley’s broad, malevolent face. ‘This is most unwise, sir, if I may say so.’

The words were measured, but his voice rose into a squeak at the end when I hit him a backhanded blow across the mouth. He tried to protest but I caught him by the throat, swung him round and flung him across the chair that served as our place of execution. He did not move. I dragged up his coat-tails and flogged him. There was no anger in it now: I was cold and deliberate. One could not let a boy take such a haughty tone. By the time I let him go he could hardly walk, and Quird had to half carry him away.

Nevertheless the incident left me shaken, though Morley had richly deserved his beating. I had never flogged a boy so brutally before, or given way to my passions. I wondered if the murder of Henry Frant had affected me in ways I had not suspected.

What I did not even begin to suspect until later was that Morley may have known Dansey better than I did, and that his meaning had been quite other than I had supposed.

Nine days after the murder, on Saturday the 4th December, I received a summons to Mr Bransby’s private room. He was not alone. Overflowing from an elbow chair beside the desk was the large, ungainly form of Mr Carswall. His daughter perched demurely on a sofa in front of the fire.

As I entered, Carswall glared up at me through tangled eyebrows and then down at the open watch in his hand. ‘You must make haste,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we shall not get back to town in daylight.’

Astonished, I looked from one man to the other.

‘You are to accompany Charles Frant to Mr Carswall’s,’ Bransby said. ‘His father is to be buried on Monday.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

‘I AM A bastard,’ Miss Carswall said to me on the Monday evening after Mr Frant’s funeral.

I was so shocked by her immodesty I did not know how to reply. I glanced at the door, fearing it might be open, that her words had been overheard. At the time Miss Carswall and I were alone in the drawing room of her father’s house in Margaret-street; Charlie had run upstairs to fetch a book.

She fixed me with her brown eyes. ‘Let us call things by their proper names. That is what I wished to tell you in Albemarle-street. The day when Charlie interrupted.’

‘It is of no significance,’ I said, feeling I must say something.

She stamped her foot. ‘Had you been a bastard yourself, you would know how foolish that sounds.’

‘I beg your pardon. I did not make my meaning clear. I did not mean that it was of no significance to you, or indeed in the general scheme of things. I – I meant merely that it was of no significance to me.’

‘You knew, sir, admit it. Someone had told you.’

Miss Carswall glared at me for a moment. She had the fair, almost translucent skin that so often goes with auburn hair. She looked captivating in a passion.

‘My papa does not choose to advertise the circumstances of my birth,’ she went on after a moment’s silence. ‘Which in itself has been a matter of some inconvenience to me. It can lead to situations in which people – that is to say – they may approach me under false pretences.’

‘You need not trouble yourself on my account, Miss Carswall,’ I said.

She studied the toes of her pretty little slippers. ‘I believe my mother was the daughter of a respectable farmer. I never knew her – she died before I was a year old.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. When I was six, my father sent me to board at a seminary in Bath. I stayed there until I was fifteen, when I went to live with my cousin, Mrs Frant. Papa and Mr Frant were then on friendly terms, you see. Mr Frant was in America on the bank’s business, so there were just the three of us, Mrs Frant, little Charlie and me. I wish …’

‘What do you wish?’

‘I wish I could have stayed there. But my father’s wife died, so there was no longer an obstacle to my living with him. And he and Mr Frant had quarrelled, so it was not convenient for me to stay in Russell-square. So I came here.’ She spoke jerkily now, as though pumping the words from a deep reservoir of her being. ‘As a sort of companion. A sort of housekeeper. A sort of daughter. Or even – Ah, I scarcely know what. All those things and none of them. When my father brings his friends to the house, they do not know what I am. I do not know what I am.’ She broke off and sat down on the little sofa by the fire. Her bosom rose and fell in her agitation.

‘I am honoured you should take me into your confidence,’ I said softly.

She looked up at me. ‘I am glad the funeral is over. They always make me hippish. No one came, did they, no one but that American gentleman. You would not think it now but in his life Henry Frant had so many people proud to call him friend.’

‘The American gentleman?’

‘Mr Noak. He knew Mr Frant, it appears, and Mr Rush the American Minister introduced him to Papa and me a few weeks ago.’

‘I have met him, I believe. Mr Noak, that is to say.’

She frowned. ‘When?’

‘He was at Russell-square once, just after his arrival from America. I saw him later, too, in Albemarle-street on the night Mr Wavenhoe died.’

‘But why should he come to the funeral? They do not appear to have been intimate friends, and Mr Frant’s crimes have turned his other friends into strangers.’

‘I do not know.’ I looked into her face. ‘Can you not ask him yourself?’

She shook her head. ‘I scarcely know him. We were introduced, but he has no conversation. Anyway, why should he wish to waste his time talking nonsense to a chit of a girl?’

I made no reply, for none was needed, or not in words. The question hung in the air between us and she blushed. Our eyes met and we smiled at each other. Flora was never beautiful but when she smiled it made your heart leap.

‘Poor dear Sophie – Mrs Frant,’ she said suddenly, perhaps eager to steer the conversation elsewhere. ‘She has nothing, you know, nothing left at all. Mr Frant even took the rest of her jewels. She had given him most of them already but on the day he went away he broke into a drawer of her dressing table and took what was left – the ones that were especially dear to her, that she hoped to save from the wreckage.’

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