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.
‘What do you make, constable?’
‘What do I make?’
‘In salary. What are you paid?’
‘I am paid enough.’
‘Really? I suspect that is not the case, in fact. When you begin to suspect the same, come and see me.’
The clerk turned away, and rejoined the black-suited throng, just another among hundreds of careful, calculating men.
During these days of corresponding and searching and travelling, Abigail remained under the watchful eyes of Rat and Cripps and the other street boys. Occasionally their numbers were supplemented by a Wapping constable on the orders of Harriott, who seemed determined to demonstrate his protectiveness towards Mrs Horton. But when she saw one of these men loitering around in Lower Gun Alley, Abigail was wont to open a window and yell at him until he left, to the sniggers of the boys in the shadows and the dismay of the neighbours.
These neighbours knew that something was afoot with Horton and his wife, but they had long known that Charles Horton had an unusual job – was, indeed, an unusual man – and that his wife was almost as odd. She kept a good clean house, that much could be said for her, but there were no children, and she read more books than was good for her – any learning garnered from books and not experience was, to most of the denizens of Lower Gun Alley, cause for great suspicion. Some of the women of the street had complained to Horton directly about the boys who hung around the place, and Horton pretended to hear their complaints and then ignored them. It was a fact, after all, that Lower Gun Alley was safer for everyone by being watched.
Rat’s adoration for Abigail only grew as the days passed. He accompanied her everywhere, and grew quieter and cleaner and altogether more acceptable as a companion. Abigail was teaching him to read, an activity he clearly found astonishingly onerous but impossible to refuse, as it meant spending time in close proximity to and in conversation with the beloved Mrs Horton.
Abigail, for her part, admitted to finding the lad amusing, though Horton thought there was rather more to it than that. She had bought him new clothes and boots, such that Horton worried about the fate of the boy when all this was over and he had to rejoin his street mates in his fresh and clean attire. But when he pointed this out to Abigail, her face became desolate, and he knew he had opened a window she had deliberately closed. The question of Rat’s future was, for her, best ignored. She enjoyed the boy while she could, even introducing him to the pleasures of the Royal Institution’s Lecture Hall, which he had judged to be wondrously mesmerisin’.
She continued to read about John Dee, and about that strange symbol which seemed to attract new significance with every day that passed, such that Horton began to understand how secret texts and images could attract power just by their existence, by their promise of unifying explanations and underlying themes. The promises were empty, of course, at least in the realms of philosophy. But somebody had drawn those symbols. The Monad, Abigail said the symbol was called – and it was created by Dee.
The newspapers were full of the quotidian gossip and business of the metropolis, with one persistent drum beat which grew louder and louder as May progressed towards June: the extraordinary prospect of the wars with Napoleon recommencing. The emperor had left Elba, the little Mediterranean island which had been ceded to him by the European powers, three months before. In less than a hundred days he had reassembled his armies and reinfatuated the French with his talk of Imperial glory. The British government had pledged tens of thousands of men and tens of thousands of pounds to bring the French back to heel, and armies had been gathering, their swarms calculated in daily newspaper reports. Horton was struggling to keep the interest of his magistrate, John Harriott, who seemed to have taken Napoleon’s activity as a personal outrage. Likewise the interest in the deaths of the Johnsons, and then of Amy Beavis, had sunk beneath the rising tide of a new Francophobia. Napoleon seemed almost infernal in his resistance to defeat: an emperor who could not die and would not surrender until Europe burned beneath his cloven feet.
Edward Markland, similarly, had become less interested in the case after the embarrassment of his visit to the Home Secretary. The political appeal of solving the murders had declined along with the public interest. There was no new London Monster, or so every day without another killing suggested. The only Monster was Corsican, not English.
A few days after his encounter with Putnam at East India House, as May drew to an end and June came in, Horton received a letter at the Police Office. It was from Charles Lamb.
Horton – a note, scribbled in some urgency. I am this day to take the stage north, to spend time with my friend Southey in the Lakes. I am, I admit, running away. Last night, I was followed home, I know not by whom. I kept to the busiest streets, and made it to my door. I locked it and secured all the windows. I stayed awake all night, and made a point of keeping as many lamps and candles burning as possible. I was not disturbed, but the experience shook me. I have found nothing else on the St Helena assistant treasurers, and must now beat my retreat. My anxiety grows so great. I must find air and freedom. I cannot be Locked AWAY!
Lamb
The note had such frenzy that Horton feared a recurrence of Lamb’s mental disarray. He tried to decode what it might mean, Lamb being followed in this way. Had he himself put Lamb in danger, when he had questioned Putnam in the way he had? Horton had been on high alert in its immediate aftermath, but had seen nothing suspicious. Was it just that the Company had been waiting for things to settle down? Might the danger Lamb perceived be real? He felt the force of Lamb’s imagination and the shadow of his mania, projecting forbidding shapes into Horton’s own mind.
There were three men standing at the bar of the Prospect. They were removing their coats, for the day was warm and inside the pub the air had become close and sticky. One of them rolled up his sleeves before returning to his pint, and Horton saw an enormous tattoo snaking up his arm – literally snaking, for the tattoo depicted a blue-skinned serpent, an evil thing that was at once ugly and beautiful. A reminder of his talk with Putnam.
He minded a man arriving in the pub, tall and out of place, his head turning as he looked for someone. It was Salter, the surgeon. He caught Horton’s eye and walked over to him.
‘Dr Salter,’ Horton said. ‘Were you looking for me?’
‘I was.’ Salter looked around once more, as if he feared every man in the pub might jump on him at once.
‘Can I fetch you a drink?’
‘No, indeed. I do not . . . partake.’
‘Well, then, please do sit.’
Salter looked at the chair opposite Horton. It did not impress him, but he carefully placed himself in it nonetheless.
‘I have some information,’ Salter said. ‘It relates to the odd smell we detected on the bodies of the Johnsons, and which you also reported at the home of Mr Beavis and his daughter.’
‘Yes – the smell of bitter almonds.’
‘Exactly. Well, it reminded me of something, but I’ve been busy and had not the chance to pursue it. I also wished to consult with an acquaintance of mine. Do you know of Dr Granville, physician in ordinary to His Highness the Duke of Clarence?’
Horton laughed, but seeing Salter frown he realised his mistake. Salter was not joking – he was honestly asking if Horton knew the physician to an HRH.
‘No, Salter. I do not know Dr Granville.’
‘Ah, well. Of course. Well, Dr Granville has been long interested in a substance named Prussic acid. Do you know of this, perhaps?’
‘No.’
‘It is a constituent part of the pigment Prussian blue. It is an unusual thing. It was first created in the last century by the Swedish chemist Scheele. He mixed Prussian blue with red precipitate of mercury and water, boiled and agitated and filtered it, then poured it over iron filings and added sulphuric acid. He then distilled a quarter part of it, and made Prussic acid with a mixture of sulphuric acid; the latter he removed using barytic water.’
Salter looked mesmerised. To Horton, he might as well have been speaking Greek.
‘Four years ago, Gay-Lussac in France perfected this technique, and created the purest form of Prussic acid yet seen. He calls it hydro-cyanic acid. Dr Granville is interested in the medicinal properties of this substance – he believes it has great potential as a sedative, even more powerful, he says, than opium.’
‘And its relevance to the current case?’
‘Simply this: Prussic acid, or hydro-cyanic acid – whatever you wish to call it – has three distinct properties. One, it carries a strong smell of bitter almonds. Two, it has a very low boiling point, and is gaseous at some 20 degrees Celsius. Three, it is extraordinarily poisonous. I believe it may have been used in the deaths of the Johnsons and, almost certainly, in the deaths of the Beavises also.’
The information fitted, like an old key in a smooth lock, and Horton was grateful for it. But he wondered where it led him. He had suspected, of course, that the Johnsons and the Beavises had been poisoned. Did knowing the mechanism make any difference? If a door had opened, did it lead anywhere useful?
Horton finished his ale and left the Prospect of Whitby with Salter, bidding the doctor farewell out on the street and thanking him for his information. He walked to the River Police Office, but there he was interrupted by Edward Markland, who was just leaving after a meeting with Harriott. As Markland made his customarily superior greeting, the office porter handed Horton a note. Markland watched him read the name of the sender on the envelope, and must have seen his face.
‘Who is it from, Horton?’ Markland asked, rudely. Horton swallowed his first impulse, which was to tell the man to mind his own business. However he had behaved these past weeks, Markland was still his superior.
‘It is from Robert Brown, the librarian to Sir Joseph Banks,’ Horton replied.
Markland raised his eyebrows.
‘Indeed? You have an interesting correspondence, constable.’
He emphasised the word constable, as if reasserting a natural order. How on earth did one such as Horton come to be receiving letters from an esteemed man of learning like Robert Brown?
Horton opened the letter, desperately wishing he could be somewhere else, but he was trapped – Markland wanted to see what was in the letter, now, and he had no way of refusing him. As he read the note that feeling of loss of control deepened still further.
‘And what does Mr Brown have to say to Constable Horton, hmm?’
‘He requests that I attend Sir Joseph at his earliest convenience in Soho Square on an urgent matter relating to my wife.’
Markland’s face showed shock, followed by a kind of scandalised amusement.
‘Your wife, Horton? What on earth does Sir Joseph Banks have to do with your wife?’
‘I confess I do not know. But it appears she is already there.’