Charles Palliser (151 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Though I know he helps himself to their rents, so it won’t be long before they catch him.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rope was long, perhaps long enough to let me get so far. But what if it was not?

Trying not to think of that, I dived beneath the surface and felt for the hollow beneath the arch. I could not find it. Was this vault, then, different from the one from which I had rescued Joey? I rose to the surface for breath and dived again. This time I found space and went under it. I kicked my legs and moved some yards. Then I came up in absolute blackness. But there seemed to be space above me. I shouted and from the nature of the echo I deduced that there was indeed a void above me. I was surely in the next vault!

Terrified that the rope would hold me back at any moment so that I would merely drown in that vault rather than the first one, I felt for the ladder and began to climb it. In a few moments I was at the top! The trap-door was the next obstacle. I pushed and it rose a few inches. I heaved again and at last managed to raise it. I scrambled into the cellar unable to see a thing, and as I rose to my feet I reached the full extent of the rope’s length! Was I yet above the reach of the tide? Well, I would find out. So I stood like that as the tide rose to the lip of the trap, bubbled through it, and began to rise about my ancles, then my knees, until it reached my waist. Was I going to drown after all like a rat in a trap? I waited, my eyes wide open in the dark, my forehead feverish in the icy cold, recalling what I had read of the poor wretches waiting for the rising tide at Execution-dock.

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Hours passed that seemed like days, like weeks. Scenes from my life paraded in review before my eyes. Those early years in Melthorpe. My mother, Sukey, Bissett, and Mrs Belflower. I had never repaid Sukey for the money she had lent me! Henrietta and the Mompessons. And what of Henrietta? Did I love her? Had she loved me?

Suddenly I felt shame at so much that I had done — and, worst of all, not done. I had been so quick to judge. I had condemned my mother a hundred times. I had refused to forgive poor crippled Richard for betraying Big Thom at Quigg’s. Now I did not feel I had to forgive him. I felt I had no right to. And if only I had thought more of Joey and his mother and less of gaining my rights. Rights. Justice. What did these words really mean? I had deceived myself. My motives were much baser than I had allowed myself to believe. If only I could live, I would behave so differently in the future. What had I ever done for anyone else? I thought of all the times I had brought my mother to tears and now I wept myself, and the more when I thought of the suspicions of her that I had nursed. Mother, father. Grandfather. What did any of that matter? Suddenly I saw in this horrible, pitiable old man my real affiliation. I knew the story he had told me — his quest for justice, his brooding sense of ill use, his attempt to measure love. It was hideously familiar to me. So now I made a thousand promises and resolutions with no certainty that I would have the chance to break them.

I dared not believe it, but the water seemed to be rising no higher. It was surely falling!

It
was
falling! But I was not saved yet. I had to go back for there was no other escape from the rope that bound me fast. Go back! (Always it seemed that I had to go back!

Would I never be really free?) How long should I wait? The only chance I had was to hope that Clothier had left the cellar and had not secured the trap-door. If I delayed too long he would return and start to haul me in. I would wait until the tide had gone down to a foot beneath the trap-door. That would give me just enough space to breathe while I tried to open the trap-door.

I knelt as the level fell and reached down to feel at intervals until the moment came.

Then I lowered myself into the water and swam back, following the rope. I rose to the surface and as I felt the trap-door with my hands found that it was not secured. Of course! He had not been able to bolt it because of the thickness of the rope holding it ajar! No light was coming in round the corners so I assumed that he was not waiting in the cellar or I would have detected the lanthorn. As I was trying to raise the trap-door I was bracing myself against the ladder when it suddenly began to give way. It was rusted through and my weight had broken it free of its mountings. I was terrified until I realized that it did not matter for the water supported me, of course, and by hauling myself against the rope instead I was able to push back the trap-door and enter the cellar in the darkness. I closed the trap-door again, but what worried me was that Clothier would surely notice when he returned that there were now two lines of rope coming from beneath it when there should only be one. I would have to jump out upon him before he got close enough to notice this. So I found a place to hide near the bottom of the steps.

Soaking wet, I was numb with cold, and a long time passed before I heard the cellar-door opening and saw the light of the lanthorn. He stood by the door presumably listening to the slopping of the tide beneath the trap-door and waiting for it to fall further. Then he came down the steps a little way

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and I saw him more clearly. He was carrying a knife to cut the rope! Here was a new danger but also an unexpected chance, if I was lucky. Fearing that at any moment he would notice the two ropes, I wondered whether to seize the initiative by throwing myself at him even before he came past me. I would try to get the knife from him and cut myself free, for though my hands were tied together, I still had the use of them. Then I could use the knife to force him to let me out of the building.

I believe I was about to throw myself at him when suddenly I heard a noise from above. He obviously heard it too for he put down the knife to open the door, and went through it. As soon as it closed I crossed to where he had been and fumbled for the knife which I then used to cut myself free. Even that took some time and to free my hands would be much harder. Groping my way back, I threw the end of the rope down the trap so that there was once again only one line coming from it. Cautiously I passed through the door, went up the next flight of stairs, and peered into the main room of the counting-house. I had the knife and I would use it if need be!

The old man was shouting at someone I could not see : “What are you doing back here? And at this hour?”

“What am I doing?” the man answered. “Why, I’ll tell you with great pleasure. More pleasure than I’ve ever had in obeying you, sir — I mean, Clothier.”

I moved into a position from which I could see the speaker. He was in late middle age and round of figure as of countenance, almost completely bald and very red-faced —

though whether this was constitutional or caused by the stress of the occasion I could not know then. He was shabbily clad in an old brownish coat with lustreless brass buttons, a canary waistcoat, and pale blue pantaloons.

“What is this madness?” Clothier cried.

“Madness? No, the madness has been to go on doing the things for you that I have done. Wringing the poor for their last pence, fastening on young heirs and sucking them dry, crowding people into rooms that a fair man wouldn’t keep a pig in. Above all, persecuting that poor young creature — your own daughter-in-law, sir — I mean, Clothier. Cheating her of her little money with the aid of that leech, Sancious, and then hounding her into shame and an early grave.”

Listening, I had to resist the impulse to come forth and embrace the good little man.

“Get to the point, Vulliamy,” Clothier snarled. “How did you get out of the fleet?”

“I’ve never been in it,” he returned. “And now I’ll tell you something. I had a key to the street-door copied some time ago. Ever since then I’ve been coming back of nights to transcribe papers. (That’s why I haven’t always been wide-awake during the day, sir

— I mean, Clothier.) When I was arrested, I took them with me to the sheriff’s and showed them to an attorney — a precious fly ’un, too. He advanced me the monies for the caption and a sham bail bond and told me to come back and get more evidence.”

“What papers?” the old man asked, his voice trembling slightly.

“Why, pretty much everything. Most particularly on the Consolidated Metropolitan Building Company and its dealings over that piece of land. Especially with Mimpriss and Quintard. But many other things, too.”

“Why, you don’t think I’ll let you leave here alive, do you?”

“I think you’d better, sir — I mean, Clothier. For I’ve left ’em with the 700 THE

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attorney who has instructions on what to do with them if he does not hear from me.”

There was a brief silence.

“Come,” said Clothier in a very reasonable tone. “State your terms. You’ve got the better of me this time, but business is business and I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.”

“Why, I couldn’t reconcile it with my conscience to let you go on doing what you have been doing.”

“What, not for anything at all?”