It would not be true to say that I stormed out. I was entirely civil, if a little chilly. But I did leave without further delay. I declined point-blank to hear any further proposals Mr Noak might have, or to listen while he advanced his carefully wrought reasons why I should help him. Nor would I allow Mr Harmwell to fetch me a hackney from the stand, or to accompany me on my way home.
A gentle rain was falling. I picked my way through streets still crowded with revellers and those that prey on them. Hat in hand, I paused by the workhouse at the bottom of Castle-street and stared up at where the stars would have been in another place. I felt the cool refreshment of rainwater on my cheek. It was at that moment that I at last accepted the truth which should have been evident to me since Sophie left my little chamber in Fendall House: I had lost her. Indeed, except in a narrow carnal sense, I had never possessed her, so she could not truly be said to be mine to lose. She had merely lent herself to me, for reasons of her own; and like so many loans, the transaction was for a brief, fixed period, and the rate of interest was higher than the borrower anticipated.
A few minutes later I reached the Strand. I walked slowly, so tired that I was hardly aware of fatigue, so careworn that I did not concern myself with the possibility that I might be followed. I had the illusion that I was floating above the pavement, cushioned on the pain of my swollen feet, the left one of which was wet because the sole of my boot had developed a hole.
As I walked, I turned over in my mind what had passed in Brewer-street. My thoughts had the misleading limpidity that so often accompanies fatigue. Mr Noak had been remarkably frank, I believed: which might be due to the strength of his fanatical desire to avenge his son’s death, to his despair of making progress, to old age and the consequent decay of his intellectual faculties, or to any combination of these. Alternatively, every word, every hypothesis, every apparent confidence, had been carefully planned for the purpose of achieving an unknown end.
This evening’s events were only the latest in a long series. From start to finish in this sorry business, I had been led by the nose – by Henry Frant, Stephen Carswall and now Mr Noak; by Flora Carswall and even, perhaps, by Sophie – though my partiality for her struggled to persuade me that she had been as much a victim as myself. It was undeniable that I had come very close to falling in with Mr Noak’s proposal since it appeared to accord so well with my own wishes. But among all the drawbacks to the plan was this: I could not rid myself of the knowledge that if anyone had a motive for murdering Mr Frant, it was Mr Noak himself.
I stopped to lean against a railing. In some part of my mind I became aware that a set of footsteps behind me had also stopped. A moment later I moved on, and so too did the footsteps. I repeated the experiment and obtained the same result. London is a busy city but at night it contains pockets of silence so profound that one may hear a pin drop on the pavement. The footsteps should have put me instantly on the alert. But my body was too weary, and my mind too full of other anxious thoughts, for the possible significance of the footsteps to register as a cause for alarm.
Mr Noak’s grand scheme to confound his enemies had come to this: he wanted me to spy on Sophie, and through her on Mr Carswall. Mrs Kerridge, it had appeared, was happy to oblige Mr Harmwell with information upon occasion, and she had reported my meeting with her mistress at the burying ground that afternoon. Noak had also learned from her the real reason for my departure from Monkshill-park. From this, and from his own observations, he had inferred quite correctly that I had a tenderness for Sophie Frant. He had made a further deduction at an earlier stage of my acquaintance with Mr Carswall that I had been employed by him for confidential business. That was why he had set Harmwell to follow me on the occasion of my going to Queen-street that first time, in search of the man who was either David Poe or Henry Frant. It had been fortunate for me that he had done so – Mr Harmwell had been my rescuer when Iversen’s hired bullies assaulted me, and now Noak wanted me to pay a price for it.
So tonight Noak had dangled the hope of reward in front of me: if I could turn Sophie into his spy, he had hinted, I might hope to win Sophie for myself. Were Carswall disgraced, she would have no one else to turn to. Noak promised me that, if all went well, he would put me in the way of earning a competence so that I might support her. But the promises were vague and I had no guarantee that he would fulfil them. I thought he would have promised me anything if I could have ensured the downfall of Stephen Carswall and discovered the identity of the man in Wellington-terrace. In the end, I did not trust the American, which was why I had not told him of the finger I had been encouraged to find at the tooth-puller’s, or of today’s discovery that the tooth-puller was among Mr Iversen’s customers.
With immense effort of will, I abandoned the support of the railing and staggered down the Strand. Movement had become a form of torture. Worse than the woes of my body, however, was the despair that depressed my spirits. Noak’s offer had given me the possibility of regaining Sophie. It had been as alluring a temptation as any I had ever faced. I might have justified succumbing to it, too, on the grounds that it might save Sophie from Mr Carswall, whom I knew to be the worst of men.
I heard the footsteps behind me, slow and dragging like an echo of my own. Nemesis pursued me and knew she need not hurry.
The stumbling block was this: in the past six or seven months, I had learnt too well the lesson of what it felt like to be manipulated by others, to have no more control over one’s destiny than Mr Punch in his puppet show. Were I to accede to Mr Noak’s proposal, I would seek to make Sophie my puppet. In agreeing to marry Mr Carswall, she had made a perfectly rational choice. He was rich and she was poor. He was old and she was young, which at least had the advantage that the marriage was unlikely to be a long one. On her side it could not be a love match. On his, I doubted that the emotions that made him desire her had much to do with love as it is generally understood; for a desire to possess, to be a person’s master, is not love. But each would gain by the arrangement. Marriages have been happy without love before now, but not without money. As Flora Carswall had pointed out, love in a cottage didn’t pay the bills. You cannot eat and drink love; you cannot wear it, and it will not provide for your children.
I reached the entrance into Gaunt-court. There was no gas illumination here, of course, only the fitful glow of the oil lamp on the corner. Nothing had changed, I told myself, since Sophie had given me my congé this afternoon.
At the head of the steps up to the front door of number 3 I stopped and, supporting myself on the railing, turned to look back down the court. I heard in the distance a carriage passing along the Strand, the clop of hooves, the jingle of harness and the rattle of wheels on the roadway. I did not hear the sound of footsteps. At some point in the last few minutes, they had stopped. I told myself that London is a city full of dramas played out every night, and there was no reason in the world to believe that these footsteps had belonged to my little tragi-comedy. But now the footsteps had stopped I felt inexplicably uneasy.
Ayez peur, I murmured to myself, ayez peur.