The Silent Boy (38 page)

Charles watches these people. He counts them. He accumulates information about them. All these facts are good, for one can rely on them.

A fact is not like a person, who may be here one day and gone the next. Or kind at one moment and cruel at another.

Despite his watchfulness, the coach takes him by surprise. When he hears the rumble of wheels in Nightingale Lane, he is looking over the back of the house, standing on a chair in an attempt to see into the yard behind the Royal Oak, which is between the alehouse and its garden. Careless of noise, he runs to the window overlooking the lane, arriving just in time to see a shabby hackney coach swinging into the space in front of Mr Savill’s house. Three children dart towards it from the house where the sewing woman lives. The old man appears in the doorway of his shop.

The driver climbs from his seat, lets down the steps and opens the door of the coach. Monsieur Fournier descends slowly, leaning on his stick. When he has reached the safety of the ground, he turns and helps out two ladies, Mrs West and Miss Horton. They stand in a row, looking up at the house.

Charles ducks away from the window. He hears their voices below. There is a knocking at the door.

The echoes of the knocking dwindle away, and into the void they leave behind comes the sound of Mrs Forster’s voice. On and on it goes, grating and sawing. Charles summons his courage and edges nearer the window. Monsieur Fournier and Mrs West are listening to the old woman. Her daughter is looking at her mother. Miss Horton has turned away and is studying the outside of the house.

They have come to take him back to the Count.

Charles trembles at the thought. He does not want to go to the Count. He sees now what has happened, that Monsieur de Quillon has hired the man in the blue coat to kidnap him, and that Monsieur Fournier is his accomplice. Even Miss Horton is complicit in the plot, which goes to show that no one can be trusted, no one whatever, and the best policy is silence.

Say nothing. Not a word to anyone.

Who has told them to come here?

Only one person knows that he is at the house in Nightingale Lane. His sister, Lizzie.

Charles has found a new hiding place. It is in Lizzie’s room, where the bed is pushed against the wall. The bed has two mattresses. He hollows out a place for him to lie in an irregular triangle formed by the mattresses and the wall. With the covers pulled over him he is hot, uncomfortable and, he hopes, entirely invisible.

Like Robinson Crusoe, he has made his preparations: he has cut pieces of ham and cheese, wrapped them in a cloth and put them in the hiding place, together with a knife he found in the kitchen.

He waits, but nothing happens. When at last he comes out of the hiding place, the coach is no longer in front of the house. He knows that the relief is only temporary, that Monsieur Fournier will return, probably with Monsieur de Quillon. They are not men who will be delayed for long by bolts and locks.

But it will not be safe to leave until it is quite dark.

Charles stands by the window that looks on to Nightingale Lane. The light is already fading. A pall of smoke hangs over the rooftops. The old man has lit a candle and placed it on the sill of his shop window. Evening is coming, and soon it will be night.

Panic is everywhere. It rises like vomit from Charles’s stomach. He wonders whether he would be safer inside the house or outside. But when he leaves the house, where will he go? He opens his mouth and a thin wail emerges and fills the room where he stands.

Say nothing.

Almost at once, as if summoned by his wail, a figure appears at the far end of Nightingale Lane. It advances slowly through the gathering dusk, taking monstrous form as it draws nearer Mr Savill’s house. The figure is that of an enormous man. As he approaches, he glances at the cottages on either side. There is no one to see him. The children are inside at this hour, and so are Mrs Forster and her daughter. The old shopkeeper has shut his outer door.

The man walks with a slow, rolling gait as if marching through a muddy field. His head, legs and arms belong to someone who is shorter and thinner than he is. As he walks, he leans on a large stick. Nevertheless, it is a wonder that he does not topple over under his own weight.

Not a man, Charles thinks, but a man-mountain.

The figure stops in front of Mr Savill’s house and stares up at it. Charles is standing well back from the window and he knows the man below cannot see him. He knows that with his mind but not with his heart, and the panic rises higher.

The man sways to and fro, leaning on his stick, with his eyes on the house. With his free hand, he scratches his belly at the place where the halves of his waistcoat meet. When at last he moves off, he does not turn and retrace his steps. Instead he goes down the path along the side of the house and garden.

The man-mountain is looking for a way in.

At this time the streets were so crowded that walking was as fast as any other means of locomotion. Savill marched from the Strand to Westminster, revolving in his mind the information he had received from Mrs Ogden. With two words, she had given him the link that bound together the whole unhappy business.

Horace Malbourne
.

Dick Ogden had abducted Charles from Norbury on the very morning that Savill was to take him up to London. Ogden had long since estranged himself from his family and those who wished him well; and at the time of his murder he had clearly been on the edge of destitution. And here came this new piece of information: that Ogden and Malbourne were old friends and, if Mrs Ogden was to be believed, partners in vice, with Malbourne the senior partner.

Poor Ogden had been a pliable young man, degenerate in his habits and clearly at the mercy of his own vices. Ripe, in other words, for a final descent into outright criminality if the temptation had been sufficiently alluring, particularly if it came from his old comrade, Malbourne.

As for Malbourne, he was one of the very few people who had known that Savill was going to Charnwood to fetch Charles. He had provided Savill with information about the household at Charnwood and their connection with Mrs West at Norbury Park. He had known of Mr Rampton’s connection to Augusta, and hence to her son.

Mr Rampton had not told Malbourne of his plans for the boy, that he was considering adopting him and making him his heir. In Whitehall, Savill paused before the busy crossing by the Privy Garden, remembering again how the lock on the door of Mr Rampton’s private room had not been entirely engaged when he and Savill were talking confidentially before Savill went down to Somersetshire. So – perhaps Malbourne had known of that as well, though the circumstance could not affect him either way.

But what if Malbourne himself had had expectations from Rampton? Rampton was childless, after all, and Malbourne had been his ward and was now his protégé.

Savill set himself to play devil’s advocate. Ogden had not arrived at Mrs Fenner’s inn until Savill had been at Charnwood for some time. Why the delay? The question prompted an unexpected glimpse of something – not a possible reason but the merest hint of a line of enquiry that might in the end provide one.

At that moment, the crowd at the crossing perceived a gap in the traffic and surged forward, bearing Savill with them. When he reached the west side of Whitehall, even this fugitive hint had gone. However hard he tried to recall it, the hint refused to oblige him.

Savill continued along King Street and turned into Crown Street. The outer door of the Black Letter Office was closed. He rapped the knocker continuously until the shutter slid back.

‘Mr Savill for Mr Rampton.’

The shutter closed and the door opened, disclosing not the familiar bulk of Jarsdel but the elderly clerk, thin to the point of emaciation, who had summoned Mr Malbourne on Savill’s first visit to the office.

‘I wish to see Mr Rampton at once,’ Savill snapped.

‘I will ascertain if he is available, sir. If you would care to take a seat—’

‘At once,’ Savill said. ‘I shall show myself up.’

An expression of alarm sprang into the clerk’s face. ‘But, sir, that—’

‘Who is it?’ Mr Rampton called down. He appeared at the head of the stairs. ‘Who was that knocking?’

Savill pushed the clerk aside. ‘May I come up?’

Without waiting for an answer he took the stairs two at a time. Rampton stepped back, his hand to his throat.

‘Pray, sir,’ he said in a voice that seemed older and more tremulous than usual. ‘Why this haste?’

He led the way into the outer office. Mr Malbourne was not at his desk. They went through to Mr Rampton’s private room. Savill closed the door behind him.

‘Where’s Mr Malbourne?’

Rampton frowned. ‘He was obliged to go out on private business. Something to do with Miss Woorgreen, I fancy. The lady to whom he’s betrothed. You remember? I believe I mentioned her.’

‘You allow him a good deal of latitude, sir, if I may say so.’

‘I’m not sure you may say so,’ Rampton said. ‘Or not with propriety. I allow him more latitude than I would the other clerks because he is not like the other clerks. But that’s my affair. I fail to see what business it is of yours.’

‘Then I shall enlighten you directly, sir.’ Savill was suddenly too angry, and too desperate, to approach the matter in any other way. ‘Your Mr Malbourne was once a close friend of Dick Ogden’s.’

Rampton, who had been lowering himself with the caution of his advanced years into the chair, sat down in a rush and slumped forward over his desk, supporting himself on his forearms. ‘You – you must have been misinformed.’

‘I see no reason to think so. Come, sir, we must find him at once.’

‘One moment. Who told you?’

‘Mrs Ogden.’

‘I forbade you to see her again.’

‘Be damned to that, sir. Her son and Malbourne were intimate friends at Oxford. She believes it was Malbourne who led her son astray.’

Rampton straightened his back. His lips were compressed and he looked both older and infinitely weary. ‘You have no idea of the damage you may have done.’

‘That’s because you have kept me in the dark.’

‘You must trust me.’

Savill stared down at him. ‘But I don’t. And I have reason not to, haven’t I?’

Rampton knotted his fingers together, tugged them until they cracked and looked away from Savill, as if refusing to examine the unhappy history of their acquaintance. ‘I am not always my own master,’ he said. ‘I have told you before, there are considerations you know nothing of, matters that touch on the security of the realm. It is as true now as it was then.’

‘You cannot hide behind your office, not in this case. Charles was in my charge when he was kidnapped, and I owe a duty to him, not to His Majesty’s Government. We cannot afford delay. We must find Malbourne.’

Rampton unlaced his fingers and held up his hands, palms towards Savill. ‘A moment, I beg of you.
Festina lente
, eh? Let us be sure of our ground before we advance. And pray moderate your voice, my dear sir. You do not want to let the world know of your suspicions.’

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Savill discovered his fists were clenched and forced himself to relax them. He took a turn about the room, glancing at the dockets and letters piled in their baskets, at the smouldering coals in the grate, at the portrait above the fireplace of a plump gentleman richly dressed in the clothes of an earlier generation. He was aware that Rampton was watching him, and aware too that Rampton was waiting to let him make the next move; the old man’s patience – his passivity – was unnerving.

Savill drew up a chair and sat down, facing Rampton across the desk. ‘We must conclude that Ogden was acting on behalf of Malbourne,’ he said. ‘There can be no other explanation. You must grant me that.’

‘No. Why in God’s name should Malbourne wish to kidnap Charles? Your fancy is absurd enough in itself, but it falls down completely on the grounds of motive.’

‘There must be a reason.’ Savill felt his certainty ebbing away. ‘The connection between them cannot be coincidental. That would be stretching it too far.’

‘Would it? I wonder.’ Rampton smiled without conviction, as if at a bad joke. ‘It would not surprise me at all. When you get to my age you learn to accept that Providence plays strange tricks. Not all of them are pleasant, particularly where the operations of chance are concerned.’

Savill ignored this excursion to the wilder shores of philosophy. ‘I wonder whether Mr Malbourne could have eavesdropped on the conversation we had in this room before I went to Somersetshire.’

Rampton raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

‘He withdrew to his own office, leaving us here. He seemed to close the door. But I believe the lock did not quite engage.’

‘Are you suggesting that Malbourne was listening at the keyhole? Like a prying servant? That is a preposterous notion.’

‘Nevertheless, let us say he did. One thing he might have learned is that you contemplated making Charles your heir.’ Savill hesitated. ‘The circumstance would be of no importance to him – unless of course he had previously had reason to believe that he himself was your heir. Or even that he entertained the hope that he might be.’

He knew instantly that he had found his target. Not that Rampton said anything at first. But a flash of emotion – fear? doubt? – passed rapidly over his face.

‘How did you guess?’ Rampton said at last.

‘I didn’t guess. I merely thought it possible – you and he have clearly known each other for many years. He has been your ward. You have a kindness for him – that much is obvious, even to me. And, until Charles appeared, you had no one else to make your heir.’

Except Lizzie, Savill added silently, for she shares your blood as much as Charles does. But Lizzie was different for she was Savill’s child, with his blood in her veins, and he did not want Rampton’s money for her.

Rampton stirred. He wetted his lips with his tongue. ‘It is true that I have considered leaving Horace Malbourne a legacy – perhaps a substantial one. Indeed, at one time I even considered making him my principal heir. But – well, I have not settled the matter. I never drew up a will to that effect. Of course now he will have twelve hundred a year with Miss Woorgreen. But her father is a shrewd man, and I’m sure he will settle it on her and on any children of the union. Malbourne will not be able to touch the capital.’ He hesitated and then added with painful reluctance, ‘I know he has considerable debts already. Besides, if he wishes to enter Parliament, he will need more than twelve hundred a year at his disposal, particularly at first. A man cannot make his way there without money to smooth his path.’