I took him to my own room upstairs and sat him down on the couch.
‘What happened?’
‘He’s killed himself.’
‘No!’ Then, uselessly, ‘Are you sure?’
‘I found him, Libby.’
‘Tell me.’
If Tom had been less shocked, he might have tried to spare me the details. As it was, he poured the story out, trying to come to terms in his own mind with the reality of it, still hardly believing.
‘I told you I was going to call on him over the weekend. I went on Saturday afternoon. His boy, Anil, came to the door and told me Griffiths sahib was sorry but he had a visitor and couldn’t see me. He sent down a message inviting me to come to breakfast with him this morning at eight o’clock. That surprised me a little, that he hadn’t suggested I should call on Sunday instead of Monday morning, but I thought he might have overstrained his heart and wanted a day to rest. We’d quite often have breakfast together back in Bombay. We’d talk about anything and everything – Persian poetry, or the letters of Cicero, or some bird he’d seen, or politics. You never knew. That’s one of the fascinating things about him. Was, I mean.’ He swallowed a few times and went on. ‘Would you believe, I was looking forward to it. You’d helped convince me that I’d got myself into a stupid state about the committee. I hadn’t told them anything about Griffiths they didn’t know already so I didn’t have to feel badly about facing him. I even thought I’d tell him how awful some of the members were and we’d have . . . have a good laugh about it.’
He drew a long breath and sat with his hand to his eyes. I took out the Madeira bottle I keep in my desk cupboard for clients and poured him a good glassful. He drank it at a gulp.
‘Sorry, Libby. As I said, I was looking forward to seeing him. I was ringing his bell just after eight. I expected Anil to come down and let me in. When he didn’t, I thought he was preparing breakfast upstairs and hadn’t heard. I tried the door and it was only latched, not locked, so I pushed it open and went upstairs. We never stood on ceremony. I went into that big room with the bookcases and called good morning to him. No reply, and no sign of Anil either. No smell of coffee. I suppose that should have struck me as odd. Then I thought perhaps he’d overslept and Anil was in the bedroom, helping him dress or shave. So I just picked up one of his books, sat down and started reading. I got interested in the book and it was probably ten minutes or so later that it struck me that things were very quiet. No sound of anybody moving. So I thought maybe he’d had to go out early and had taken Anil with him. He might have forgotten he’d invited me, though that wouldn’t have been like him. So I stood up to go but I thought I’d take a glance in the bedroom, just in case he happened to be still in there and asleep. I opened the door. Nothing. The bed hadn’t been slept in. Then I noticed that the door from the bedroom to the bathroom was half open.’
A long pause. He sat, head lowered, breathing deeply. When he looked up, his expression was dazed, as if living the scene again.
‘Have you ever felt as if your mind’s split itself in two? As if half of it’s saying that of course everything is quite all right, nothing to worry about, while the other half’s screaming out that something terrible has happened? That’s the way I felt, looking at that door and the sunlight coming through the doorway from the bathroom window. It was just a door, and yet somehow I already knew what I’d see when I went through it.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Only I didn’t think Tom heard. In any case, it wouldn’t have helped him then to tell him why I knew exactly what he meant.
‘So I opened the door and went in,’ Tom said. ‘The sun was bright, even through the curtain, and it was shining in my eyes so I couldn’t see properly. He was sitting up in the bath facing me, with his back to the window. I felt embarrassed and started apologizing. I think it was the smell that told me, before anything else. The blood smell, you know, like iron filings.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘I looked down and the water was red. It came halfway up his chest. I was thinking, stupidly, “What’s he doing sitting there in red water?” I think I’d even taken a step forward to lift him out of it, then I saw his wrist. His left wrist it was, just under the water. It was cut nearly half through, flopping back. His other wrist had got trapped between his body and the side of the bath, but when we got him out that was cut through too.’
‘We?’
‘Myself and the men from East India House.’
‘How did they know?’
‘I went and told them. Not immediately. I . . . I had to be sure he . . . really was dead. I knelt down and put my hand on his chest. No heartbeat. I remembered you were meant to try a feather, so I went to the bed and found a feather out of the pillow and held it under his nose. Not a breath. His eyes . . . his eyes were open. All the time, I half expected him to laugh and ask what I was doing. Only . . . oh, Libby.’
I went and sat beside him on the couch and held him. It was a long time before he moved away.
‘I must go back. There’ll be things to do. They said the coroner’s officer will want to speak to me because I found him.’
‘He’ll wait for a while,’ I said.
I got up, poured Madeira for both of us and went back to sit beside Tom.
‘So you went and told them at East India House?’
‘Yes. It was just round the corner. It was the obvious thing to do. I passed a police constable and thought of telling him, but what would have been the good?’
‘How did people react when you told them?’
‘Shocked. The first one I told was Mr Jarvis. He’s the head of the section where they’ve put me, not a bad old stick. But before I knew it, the Calcutta men had taken over.’
‘You mean, the ones who didn’t like Mr Griffiths?’
‘Yes. Three of them came back to his rooms with me. They called the porter up from the basement to lift him out of the water and wrapped him in sheets and blankets off the bed. There was blood and water everywhere.’
‘They told the police?’
‘There was a little crowd outside the house by then. People knew something had happened. A constable came up to them and one of the Calcutta men sent him to tell the coroner. They took his body away in a cart.’
‘These Calcutta men, was Alexander McPherson one of them?’
‘No, but he’ll know by now. I dare say he’s gloating.’
A flash of anger went over Tom’s face, then he hung his head again.
‘If only I could have seen Griffiths over the weekend. I might have persuaded him that things weren’t as bad as they seemed.’
‘Why are you so sure he killed himself?’
‘Libby, haven’t you been listening?’
‘Just tell me.’
‘The old Roman way. If a Roman was facing defeat or dishonour, killing himself was the proper thing to do. Very often, he’d have his servants prepare a warm bath, then slit his wrists and calmly bleed to death.’
‘And was the water warm when you found him?’
‘Of course not. It was stone cold. It would have gone cold.’
‘Those hot water cans in the bathroom, did they look as if they’d been used?’
‘For heaven’s sake, do you think I was worrying about hot water cans?’
The porter would know, I thought.
‘But he wasn’t facing death or dishonour,’ I said.
‘He’d have been in front of that damned committee this afternoon.’
‘He didn’t seem in the least worried about the committee. I had the impression he was even looking forward to it.’
Tom shook his head.
‘That was before what happened on Friday, when McPherson humiliated him in public.’
‘But he didn’t. I told you what happened.’
‘That’s not the way the Calcutta men have been putting it around. In their account, all Griffiths could do was splutter threats and they all laughed at him.’
‘He didn’t splutter and McPherson seemed quite put out when he was teasing him about things he might say.’
‘What things, do you think?’
‘His pamphlet, I assumed.’
‘The Calcutta men don’t say anything about that. In their account, he got the worst of it and slunk away with his tail between his legs.’
‘He certainly didn’t slink. I thought he seemed quite pleased with himself.’
‘He must have been keeping up a front. Then he was alone all the weekend, thinking about it.’
‘Not alone all the time, if he had a visitor on Saturday afternoon. Who was it, do you think?’
Tom groaned.
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. But I must go back.’
‘What happened to the pamphlet?’
‘It’s with his things, I suppose.’
‘But we unpacked his things for him. The pamphlet wasn’t with them. It was quite a big bundle of manuscript. We wouldn’t have missed it.’
‘Then he must have kept it with him. It will be in his rooms somewhere.’
‘And the servant boy, Anil? Where was he in all this?’
‘Nowhere to be seen. The men thought he must have found Griffiths’s body, got scared and run off.’
‘In a city he doesn’t know?’
‘It surprised me, I admit. Anil had been in Griffiths’s household all his life.’
‘But he’s only fourteen or so from the look of him.’
‘Yes, but his father had been Griffiths’s khitmutgar. That’s how these things go. He was devoted to Griffiths.’
‘So he finds him dead and just runs away?’
‘Indians see things differently.’
I wasn’t so sure about that, but there was no point in arguing. Tom stood up.
‘I must go. There’ll be so much to see to. Nobody seems to know even who his next of kin is.’
‘I’m sure the Calcutta men will see to all that,’ I said.
Tom picked up the sarcasm in my voice and nodded.
‘Yes, they will if they can. They’ll be putting the word round already: “Mad Griffiths couldn’t face the committee and killed himself”. That’s why I want to be back at East India House, to protect his reputation as best I can. I don’t want to fail him all over again.’
‘Tom, you did not fail him.’
‘Didn’t I? I give evidence against him, and two days later he kills himself. Doesn’t that seem like failure to you?’
I tried to protest but he wouldn’t listen and practically ran away downstairs. I think he didn’t want me to see him losing control again. I sat and thought about it for a while, then put on my coat and bonnet, walked to Piccadilly and caught a coach to the City.
The crowd had gone from the house where Mr Griffiths had lodged so briefly. The porter was sweeping the front steps and recognized me from three days ago.
‘Was he your father, miss?’
‘No, just a friend. But I’ve come to see to his things.’
‘The gentlemen locked up his rooms and took away the key. They said they’d be back.’
‘What gentlemen?’
‘The ones who were here after they found him this morning.’
Calcutta again. Why should they be so careful of the possessions of a man they despised? A small lie seemed justified.
‘I think I left my shawl when my brother and I were unpacking the other day,’ I said. ‘I’d be sorry to lose it.’
I’d come prepared for modest bribery. The half-crown I slipped into his palm prompted him to be kind and remember that there was a service door from the back stairs that had not been locked. He led the way up broad, uncarpeted stairs and through the doorway to the landing. When he opened the door to the main room, a faint metallic tang of blood was still in the air.
‘At least he did it tidy enough,’ he said. ‘Money worries, was it?’
I made as slow a business as I could of looking for my hypothetical shawl, although the tidiness of the room made that difficult. Mr Griffiths seemed to have disturbed very little after the unpacking Tom and I had done, apart from leaving his velvet smoking jacket on the back of the chair by his desk. The desk was open. If his pamphlet were anywhere, it would surely be there. I went over to it and shifted the smoking jacket as if looking underneath. A simple desk, only two shelves and four pigeonholes, all empty. We’d unpacked his blotter, ink bottle and tray of pens and laid them out ready for him. Two sheets of paper lay on the blotter. One of them was a note in what looked like his handwriting, as far as I remembered it from just a glance at his manuscript.
I trust you are safely settled in. Please do not hesitate to cash and make use of the enclosed as soon as possible. I hope to see you within the next day or two. E.G.
The other smaller sheet was a bank draft in the same handwriting for one hundred pounds, made out to ‘Bearer’. Obviously, he’d intended to fold the draft inside the note and address it. The other side of the note was blank. Luckily, the porter hadn’t been watching, preoccupied by a rather detailed drawing propped against the wall of what was probably an Indian temple carving. Tom had tried to prevent me from seeing it when we unpacked and left it with its face to the wall. Griffiths, or somebody, must have turned it round. I opened the doors of the cupboard beneath the desk. Empty as an eggshell.
‘Did you hear or see anything last night?’ I said to the porter.
He turned quickly.
‘Not a sound. I’m a good sleeper.’
‘I suppose you don’t know where his servant went?’
‘No. Just scarpered, like they do.’
‘Where did he sleep, I wonder?’
I’d meant the servant boy, but the porter nodded towards the main bedroom.
‘In there.’
He opened the bedroom door, probably assuming by now that my shawl had been just an excuse for morbid curiosity. The bed was made, not slept in. A small camp bed in a corner answered the question of where the servant slept. An unlit spirit lamp, a jar of coffee beans and a brass coffee grinder stood on a table near the camp bed. Mr Griffiths had been living simply, like a traveller. The only likely place for a pile of manuscript was the chest of drawers. I walked across and opened the top one.
‘The gentlemen said they’d send for his things,’ the porter said, a little uneasy now.
‘Just in case my shawl got put inside,’ I said.
We’d left Mr Griffiths to unpack his own clothes. The top drawer contained nothing but clean shirts, underlinen and cravats. The second held two beautifully embroidered silk tunics of the kind a high-born Indian man might wear, carefully folded. The other two drawers were empty. The porter had gone through to the bathroom. I could hear him opening the window. I had a quick look under the mattress, though there was no reason why Mr Griffiths should have hidden his manuscript. Nothing. I went and stood in the doorway of the bathroom. The black and white tiles had been mopped clean but were still damp. The bath had been cleaned too. Mr Griffiths’s big yellow sponge was propped on the edge of it, surprisingly unbloodied. As ordinary objects can, it brought home the loss of him more than anything else had done. I looked away from it to the two hot water cans on the floor.
‘Did he ask you to bring hot water up to him last night?’ I said.
‘Not last night, no.’
‘Nor very early this morning?’
‘He’d have been dead by then, wouldn’t he? Why are you asking?’
‘I’m not sure. I suppose when somebody you know kills himself, you want to know what he was thinking.’
‘Uncle of mine jumped in the canal because he’d lost his taste for beer,’ the porter said.
‘So no hot water?’
‘The only hot water I took up to him was Sunday morning, and he said only half a can, for a wash.’
So Mr Griffiths had not even allowed himself the Roman comfort of a warm bath to die in. I walked over to the window and found myself looking down on the crown of a black top hat.
‘It looks as if one of the gentlemen’s come back,’ I said.
‘I might be in trouble if they know I let somebody come up here. You’d better go quick down the back stairs, miss, shawl or no shawl.’
I let him usher me back through the service door, but instead of going downstairs I left it open a crack and waited just behind it, while he went to meet the visitor. I heard their footsteps coming up the main staircase and peered out, getting quite a good view of the gentleman. He wasn’t flaunting the diamond hawk today, but the jutting eyebrows and broad broken nose were unmistakeable. Alexander McPherson in person.
‘You can go,’ he said to the porter. ‘I’ll call you if you’re needed.’
The porter left. McPherson went inside the main room and closed the door. I could hear him moving about inside the room, as if looking for something. Trying to track his steps, I judged that he was standing looking down at the desk. The steps paused there long enough for him to read the note and draft, then went through to the bedroom. He was walking round there longer than you’d expect for a sparsely furnished room. I heard drawers open and close, then what sounded like a wooden lid being lifted up and put down. The only thing in the bedroom with a lid was the commode. I hadn’t thought of looking in there. Alexander McPherson was making a thorough search and, judging by the way he went on roving around, not finding what he was looking for. After a while I heard the door slamming and his footsteps stamping downstairs. I ran back into Griffiths’s rooms and looked out of the bathroom window as he walked away down the street. He was swinging his arms as he strode along, so not carrying anything. His overcoat was well fitted, with nothing bulging out the pocket – or certainly nothing as heavy as a wadded up manuscript. I waited for him to get well on his way, then went back downstairs and let myself out quietly, so as not to alert the porter again. So Alexander McPherson had not found what he’d come for. Then again, neither had I.