The Detective and the Devil (16 page)

‘You may not be Byron,’ he said. ‘But five people with links to each other are now dead, and I have no conception as to how they were killed, or indeed even
why
they
were killed. There may be secret meanings in the works of this German, Agrippa. But there are secret meanings in the works of our own perpetrator, wife.’

She nodded at that, sadly, as if he had expressed a hidden but melancholy truth.

‘Perhaps these dark arts are as dangerous as you say, husband,’ she said. ‘I shall return to my Bible and my lectures.’

‘Is all well with you, wife?’

She looked out the window, and did not answer at first.

‘I do believe so, yes,’ she replied, unsatisfactorily.

The next day, Horton met with Charles Lamb at a coffee house just around the corner from East India House. He had written to Lamb the previous day to arrange the meeting, and
had received a letter in reply with surprising alacrity. Lamb, it appeared, had been waiting to hear from him.

It was a little place, an adapted residence with tables and chairs in what must once have been the parlour. Lamb was sitting in a private room at the back of the place, to which Horton was led
by a waiter with some display of subterfuge.

‘You are worried lest you be seen with me,’ said Horton as he sat down.

‘In duh-duh-deed,’ said Lamb, smiling happily through his stammer. ‘And wuh-wuh-we are just two men among duh-duh-dozens here.’

Lamb had ordered wine. He was excited. After downing an entire glass of wine, and pouring himself another, he winked at Horton.

‘The suh-story is beginning to fuh-focus, constable. Last night my house was broken into.’

It was an unexpected statement, and an alarming one given the events at Horton’s own home, but Lamb did not seem at all vexed by his news.

‘Was anything stolen?’ Horton asked.

‘No. But my no-no-notebooks and ledgers were looked at. Some old stories and essays of mine is all they would have fuh-found. The contents amount only to whimsy and confusion.’

‘Are you married?’

‘No. I live with my sister. She, fortunately, was not at home. They may have been watching the house, waiting for her to leave.’

More eyes were watching more houses than he had thought. It was not a happy idea.

‘Has anything like this ever happened before?’

‘Of course not! This is obviously a direct consequence of my enquiries. Someone has noticed.’

‘You have been making enquiries? Into what?’

‘I have been busy, Constable Horton! On your behalf!’

‘Lamb, I have no wish to . . .’

‘Now, now, now, constable, enough. I have my bolt holes, you know. Southey is in the Lake District. If things become too hot, I shall make for the North.’

‘But will that not cost you your position with the Company?’

‘Not if I have information which can protect me, it won’t.’

He pulled out a piece of paper.

‘I have discovered something interesting. In your letter of yesterday, you told me this Captain Suttle had been an
assistant treasurer
in St Helena. As it happened, I had already
discovered that.’

‘When?’

‘Just in the last day or two. I should add that I had never heard of the position of
assistant treasurer
. It has never been mentioned in any correspondence I have seen relating to
St Helena, and I believed I had seen it all. I have never heard a similar title in any of the Company’s territories.’

‘So, Suttle was lying?’

‘No. He was not lying.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because, earlier this month, the Company sent a
new
assistant treasurer to St Helena. He left on the
Arniston,
sailing from the Isle of Dogs on May the third. I found
the order requisitioning a berth for a Captain Burroughs, and some related correspondence. I do believe it was hard for whoever organised this to keep things quiet – it is unusual for an
Indiaman to stop in St Helena on the outward track.’

‘Wait a minute – did you say Burroughs?’

‘Yes.’

‘The same name as Alderman Burroughs?’

‘Robert Burroughs? The gold broker? Ah, I had not considered that possibility. The name is a common enough one.’

‘Alderman Burroughs is a Proprietor of the Company.’

‘Indeed. One of the greater ones, too.’

‘Tell me, what is the role of this assistant treasurer?’

‘Constable, I have no idea.’ Lamb sipped from his wine again, the mouthfuls smaller now his stammer had been calmed. ‘Absolutely none! The Company keeps copious records of all
its personnel, and everyone has a job to do, in the service of the Company’s chief aim.’

‘Which is?’

‘The enrichment of the Proprietors, of course.’

‘But there is no account of the role of assistant treasurer?’

‘There is no official record of it
whatsoever
. It is only alluded to, in passing, in other documents – ships’ requisitions, property deeds and the like. As far as I
can work out, Captain Suttle travelled to St Helena in 1808, and returned in 1814. He seemingly replaced a fellow called Captain Thomas Campbell. This Campbell had himself travelled out in 1801,
replacing Captain Robert Fox, and the ledger says he was to take up Fox’s position but doesn’t mention what that position was. Fox went out in 1792, replacing Captain Stephen Jenkins,
who went out in 1780. That’s as far back as I’ve been able to go in the time, because I also wanted to see what had happened to these men.’

Lamb had written the names and dates down carefully on a single sheet of paper. He was, thought Horton, now the very model of the clerk, if a slightly inebriated one. A waiter came in with
food.

‘I looked back into the records of payment for these officers, Horton. It makes for interesting reading.’

Another swig of wine, and then Lamb spied the food. He wolfed down a forkful, which he swallowed with yet another swig. His manic excitement was smoothed beneath the clerical detail he had
unearthed. Horton looked at the piece of paper Lamb had handed him. Names, numbers, titles and dates swirled before his eyes, like a Bath ball in which everyone was dancing to a different tune.

‘The Company pays wages and pensions to all its officers, and these are all recorded,’ continued Lamb. ‘All these men received pensions on their return, but there is something
very unusual about those pensions.’

‘And what is that?’

‘They were astonishingly large.’

‘By what standards?’

‘By any standards you care to choose. These men were rich, Horton. Such men as these are not supposed to be rich. They were militia men, essentially. They did not involve themselves in
private trade. They were enriched by the Company itself. There is no whiff of embezzlement or fraud about this matter. These men were simply paid huge sums. It is not immediately obvious in the
records, for the sums are distributed across several ledgers. There has been a careful attempt to hide the payments. But if you know they are there, they can be found.’

‘Could Benjamin Johnson have found them?’

‘He
did
find them, Horton. Ledgers have to be signed out of the Archives. On each of the ones I looked at, the last man to sign them out was B. Johnson. I requested a list of all
the ledgers Ben had signed out in the last twelve months. There are dozens and dozens of them. It will take me months to read them all. But I am starting today.’

‘Lamb, you must not put yourself in any danger.’

‘Do be quiet, Horton, you are not my aunt. And besides – there is one other thing. It may be my imagination running away from me – it has a tendency to do so – but I find
it striking that none of these former
assistant treasurers
is receiving a pension any longer.’

‘The Company has stopped paying them?’

‘Yes, Horton. The Company has stopped paying them. Because they are all dead.’

He sat waiting in the same place he had waited with magistrate Harriott, inside the throat of the Leviathan. It was some days after his lunch with Charles Lamb and, once again,
East India House had swallowed him up. The same clerks scurried in and out of the gigantic doors, and he tried to see into their faces, tried to calculate the odds of any of these men being paid to
follow him, or Abigail, or even Charles Lamb. What was known about what he knew? Did the Company perceive him clambering about upon and within it? And how might it respond?

He didn’t wait very long. Elijah Putnam appeared within two minutes of his arrival, his heron’s head nodding as he walked. Horton calculated Putnam’s private trade office, deep
within the guts of the building, was a good deal further than two minutes away. Perhaps the man had been waiting for him, watching as Horton showed his card to the same servant he had spoken to
with Harriott?

‘Constable,’ said Putnam. His face was cold. The welcoming fellow from his last visit was gone forever it seemed, replaced by the careful individual he had said farewell to on the
previous occasion. Putnam now reminded Horton strongly of Alderman Burroughs.

‘Putnam,’ he replied.

‘You have questions to ask me? You left somewhat precipitously last time.’

‘Certain matters have come to my attention, Putnam. Regarding the assistant treasurers of St Helena.’

Putnam smiled. He was not surprised. He knew what Horton had discovered. Horton found himself wondering where Charles Lamb was, today.

‘Come with me, then, if you please,’ said Putnam.

Horton looked at him, and at the crowd of clerks that flowed around them. He thought of the long corridors down to the private trade office, the anonymous doors off the corridor, the shadows and
the corners.

‘I think, if you please, that we should talk here,’ he said. ‘We have no need of a private room.’

Again, Putnam smiled.

‘As you please.’

They sat down, and Horton pulled out the piece of paper Lamb had given him. Putnam looked at it, but Horton kept the face of it away from his eyes. The man might know Lamb’s hand, after
all – though he rather suspected the time for such niceties was past.

‘What can you tell me about the position of assistant treasurer in St Helena, Putnam?’

‘I can tell you nothing about it,’ Putnam replied.

‘Because you know nothing?’

Putnam waved his hand around him.
This place
, the gesture said.

‘Then I shall be more specific. Tell me about Captain Campbell.’

‘I do not recall the name.’

‘Indeed? He was found in Kingston-upon-Thames, earlier this year. He had been attacked with some kind of a knife. It was around the same time another man, a Captain Suttle, was found at
Boxhill. He too had been killed with a knife. Both smelled strongly of drink.’

‘A tragedy,’ said Putnam. ‘Two tragedies, in fact.’

‘Both Campbell and Suttle had held the office of assistant treasurer in St Helena.’

Putnam said nothing to that. He shrugged, and held out two open palms, silently repeating his inability to help.

‘Captain Robert Fox, then. The predecessor of Captain Campbell. A St Albans man, I believe. A distant relative of Charles James Fox.’

‘Ah, yes, I do recall Captain Fox.’

‘You do?’

‘Indeed, yes. There was something of a scandal concerning him, was there not? Something to do with indecency around children. He threw himself into the Thames, I believe. He was a Company
man. But there are so many of us, the law of averages dictates that some will be wicked, does it not?’

‘You have told me nothing I could not find for myself in the newspapers.’

‘Well, the gentlemen of the press are very astute, are they not?’

‘Captain Fox was an assistant treasurer at St Helena.’

‘Indeed?’

‘And what of Captain Stephen Jenkins? He served in St Helena from 1780 to 1792.’

‘Before my time, constable, as you must realise.’

‘Which is why, Putnam, the Company keeps records.’

‘Records which you seem to have some access to, constable. Might I enquire as to how?’

‘Captain Jenkins lived in a house on Manchester Street. I asked after him at the Public Office at Great Marlborough Street. One of the magistrates there remembered the case. Captain
Jenkins was thrown from an upper window of his house in June 1798, with such force that his body had been impaled on the railings outside, where it remained until removed by constables. A woman was
also found inside the house. It is assumed she was a whore. Her identity is unknown, as was the cause of her death; she seemed to have simply stopped breathing, and there were no marks on her body
beyond those any man would expect to find on a London whore. An odd mark drawn in ink was found on her left breast, immediately above her heart. It was not a tattoo. It looked like this.’

Horton handed Putnam the piece of paper on which he had copied the symbol Salter had found on the bodies of the Johnsons. The clerk glanced at it, and just then – for a brief moment
– something opened up in the clerk’s face, some brief but potent mixture of surprise and anxiety which was shut down immediately like the snap of curtains on a room lit from behind.

‘A macabre motif, constable,’ said Putnam, handing it back, his face recomposed. ‘I take it you expect me to see some significance in it? I’m afraid I do not.’

‘Do you have a tattoo, Putnam?’

The question was almost certainly stupid, but Horton remembered their first meeting, when Putnam had spoken of Otaheite and how he
carried its mark on me still
.

‘You mean, do I have this odd symbol tattooed on me? No, constable, I do not. And with that preposterous enquiry, I think we should draw this to a close.’

‘What is the relationship between Captain Burroughs, the new assistant treasurer of St Helena, and Alderman Burroughs?’

Putnam stood up, and Horton did likewise, so that the two of them were once again pitched into the stream of clerks that ran along the corridor.

‘Do you know where I live, Putnam?’ asked Horton. ‘Have you been in my apartment?’

The Company man’s face was as unreadable as the marble floor.