It had been almost two years since his only visit to this place: 32 Soho Square. On that occasion, he had met with Robert Brown, Sir Joseph Banks’s Scottish librarian. He had still never met Banks, though the man’s name had been stamped on to a number of recent cases like the faded hallmark on an old gold ring. Or like the smell of bitter almonds, perhaps.
Sir Joseph’s residence occupied one entire corner of Soho Square. It was a watchful place, its giant windows seeming like open eyes. A place to see and be seen in. A house for a well-connected man.
Horton was, frustratingly, not alone. Markland had insisted on accompanying him. They had gone into the River Police Office directly upon Horton’s reading the letter. Given Wapping’s dealings with Sir Joseph Banks in the past, Horton felt it essential that his magistrate be informed of the new development. His mind buzzed with possibilities. How could Abigail possibly be with Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, one of the most prestigious and powerful men in England? And, more to the current point, was Rat with her? A moment of comedy then, despite himself – the street urchin discussing taxonomy with the great natural philosopher in a Westminster library. Stranger things have happened, he thought – and, truly, stranger things had.
Harriott had of course demanded to come with him, but on suddenly standing from his chair the magistrate had experienced an alarming attack of breathlessness and dizziness, accompanied by what must have been terrible pain, for his aspect became pale and shocked and he collapsed back into his chair as if downed by a musket ball. Inevitably, Markland had offered to come instead, and Harriott had been forced to agree. Despite his attack and the deathly pallor which had descended on his face like fog, Harriott had still managed an apologetic glance towards Horton as he and Markland left the room.
In the carriage to Soho Square, Markland had been conciliatory towards Horton, overflowing with praise for the constable’s previous work and mellifluously forgetful of his previous threats to both Horton and his magistrate. Horton decided to at least try and make some use of their unwelcome time together, even though his thoughts were so much on his wife.
‘I wonder if you have ever heard of the position of assistant treasurer, sir?’
‘At the Company?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, I don’t involve myself in matters such as these, constable. I made my investment and, truth be told, all it’s brought me is misery. The Company is not what it was.’
‘Do the names Suttle or Jenkins or Fox mean anything to you?’
‘In relation to the Company?’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
‘An officer has recently been despatched to St Helena as an assistant treasurer, sir. By the name of Burroughs. Would he be of the same family as Alderman Burroughs?’
Markland now looked worried.
‘Now, constable, I have no conception of where this line of thinking ends up, but you should be careful with it.’
‘Do you know Captain Burroughs?’ Horton insisted.
Markland frowned.
‘No. No, I do not. And Burroughs is hardly an uncommon name.’
‘No, indeed. But the coincidence is striking. What can you tell me of the alderman?’
Markland, having been keen to talk at the start of the journey, was now as close-mouthed as a pickpocket being interrogated in a watch-house.
‘He is a gold and silver broker.’
‘And he lives in the City?’
‘There, and at a place outside Sevenoaks in Kent.’
‘A large house?’
‘Very nearly a castle. Tremendously wealthy man, is Robert Burroughs.’
‘You have visited this castle?’
‘Aye, I have,’ the magistrate said, and looked relieved as the carriage came to a halt. ‘We’re here.’
They stepped out and stood in front of number 32.
‘Odd place,’ Markland said. ‘Like two or three houses conjoined.’
They were shown through the front door, and upstairs to the same room in which Horton had previously met Robert Brown. The librarian was not there, but Abigail was. So was Rat, who sat on a stool next to her like a protective dog, and glared at Markland lest he come too close.
‘Husband,’ Abigail said, rising and coming to him. She noticed Markland, but initially ignored him – rather magnificently, Horton thought. ‘You must have been concerned.’ She held out two hands to him.
His relief made his hands shake as he took hers, and she looked at them with some concern and he wanted to kiss her, but Markland’s presence was awkward.
‘You are no prisoner, wife,’ he said. ‘But nonetheless – where in heaven’s name did you go, to end up here?’
This to Rat as much as Abigail, and it was Rat who answered.
‘Wasn’t my idea, constable! Wasn’t at all! Mrs Abigail said she wanted to take a trip to get some air, and I said we shouldn’t, said you’d be angry, but . . .’
‘Silence, whelp,’ said Markland. ‘Who are you to address your betters so? What are you doing here?’
Rat looked like he had been slapped. Horton instinctively wished Markland ill. Abigail looked at the magistrate as if he had just let down his breeches.
‘He works for me,’ Horton told Markland, no longer able to keep the dislike out of his voice. ‘He is charged with accompanying my wife to preserve her safety.’
‘A misbegotten little runt like this? Really, Horton, all you had to do was ask for one of my constables.’
Horton, who would always choose a misbegotten little runt like Rat over any of Markland’s constables, told Rat that he should head back to Wapping now, and wait for their return. Rat looked at Markland as if he might bite him, turned and made something of a bow towards Abigail (a gesture theatrically appropriate to his surroundings, as it must have seemed to Rat), and made his dignified way out.
‘Now, Mrs Horton,’ said Markland, bumptiously taking charge of the situation. ‘Would you care to enlighten us as to your presence here?’
‘She came here because I invited her,’ said Sir Joseph Banks as he entered the room.
Sir Joseph arrived in the library on an extraordinary device, a wheeled chair which was all iron and leather, pushed by a servant who seemed unconscious of the bizarre picture he and Banks made. Horton had never seen such a thing as this chair, but he could see why it was needed. Banks was both enormous and decrepit, his bulging stomach bisected by a blue sash, one enormous golden star on his breast. His face was pale and puffy, but still possessed of the energy of an unquenchable will. Banks reminded Horton very strongly of John Harriott.
Markland wasted no time engaging with the politics of the situation.
‘Sir Joseph, I am delighted to make your acquaintance.’
‘And who are you, sir?’
‘Edward Markland, Sir Joseph. Senior magistrate at the Shadwell Police Office.’
‘So you are Horton,’ said Banks, turning deliberately away from Markland. Horton suddenly felt like a moth must feel under the glass of a naturalist: examined, categorised, measured. ‘I know a good deal about you, sir.’ It was not a happy thought. It reminded him of Lamb’s excitement at meeting him.
Banks turned his enormous head to Markland.
‘Do you make a habit, sir, of accompanying men to appointments, when you have yourself not been invited?’
Markland blinked and blushed.
‘Sir, I have been cooperating with Constable Horton here on our latest investigation. You may consider me his superior.’
‘Harriott is still ill?’ This to Horton.
‘He had recovered, Sir Joseph,’ said Horton. ‘But he was taken ill again today. He wanted to come with me.’
‘And I would have been delighted to see him. A fine man.’ He glared at Markland, pointedly. ‘Sit, gentlemen, please. I, as you can see, am already doing so.’
Banks looked over at Abigail, and his face softened.
‘I have been talking to your wife, Horton. She is a remarkable woman.’
Abigail blushed and looked down. Horton marvelled at her – she seemed positively enthralled, like a fishwife invited for tea with a duchess.
‘She has caused something of a stir today, which is why you are here. My dear, perhaps you would explain to your husband.’
Horton noted that Banks had effectively assumed that Markland was no longer present. The magistrate sat on the edge of his chair, his hat on his knees, smiling fixedly. One might almost have felt sorry for him.
‘Husband, I went to Mortlake today.’
It was a very good start to a story, Horton thought.
‘You did?’
‘Aye. I took Rat with me, in case of incident. We took a boat from the stairs. Upon reaching Mortlake, we made our way to Dr Dee’s old house.’
‘It still stands?’ Horton said to Banks, who grunted an affirmative.
‘It is an odd place, hard upon the river,’ continued Abigail. ‘I knocked upon the door, and a man answered. He was guarded in his welcome. The house receives a good many visitors. Dr Dee has quite a reputation among a certain type of person.’
‘What type of person?’
Abigail looked at Sir Joseph, who nodded kindly, giving permission to continue. It was a silent exchange which perplexed Horton – as if his wife and Sir Joseph shared a new secret language. Which, he supposed, they did – a language of botany and astronomy and classification and theory. Science, Abigail called it.
‘Credulous souls, the man said. Believers in spirits and spells and astrologers. I explained I was no such person. That I placed my faith in matters I could see with my own eyes.’
It was, Horton thought, a moderately dangerous thing to say in front of Edward Markland. It smacked of religious scepticism.
‘The man said he was pleased to welcome one such as I, and he invited me in.’
‘He invited you in?’
Abigail blushed. ‘With Rat, yes, he did. I nearly refused, but the tale of Dr Dee has arrested my interest, and I wished to see inside. He showed me around the house, and he gave me tea. I told him who I was and who you were, and how we came across Dr Dee’s story. At the end of my visit, and after we had spoken a little more of the discoveries you made at poor Johnson’s house, he asked if I would come to tell Sir Joseph what I had told him. I agreed.’
‘It seems an odd thing to agree to.’
This from Markland, whom Banks ignored magnificently, but Abigail could not.
‘Well, sir, you know nothing of my personal interests. They tend towards the natural philosophical. To be given the chance to meet one such as Sir Joseph . . . well, sir, I did not hesitate to say yes.’
Banks smiled at her, like he would smile at a particularly brilliant daughter.
‘A remarkable wife, sir,’ Banks said to Horton. ‘I congratulate you. I will continue the story, if I may. Mrs Horton came here with the owner of Dee’s house, a fellow by the name of Temple. He is an associate of mine. Not quite an employee or a colleague, and not a Fellow of the Society of which I am President. But he keeps me informed as to the comings and goings at the residence of Dr Dee.’
‘Why?’
Horton’s single word was rudely expressed and took Banks aback momentarily. He was not used to being addressed in such a way.
‘The Royal Society is at the service of the King, the Regent and the country, constable,’ he said, as if Horton were a small lecture hall. ‘We are the repository of all scientific knowledge collected in these islands. Dr Dee, who preceded our Society by almost a century, was one of the foremost scientific thinkers of his time. As such, he is of constant interest to us.’
‘And for this reason, you called us here?’
‘I wished to ascertain, constable, whether your investigations would feature anything regarding Dr Dee or his writings. I wished to offer my help.’
And, thought Horton, you wished to warn us. We are close to Royal Society ground, and that ground may be dangerous. There was something else here, something that had not yet been spoken of.
‘Sir Joseph, can I say I do not believe the recent sad events on the Ratcliffe Highway have anything at all to do with this doctor you speak of,’ said Markland, smoothly and happily, back in the conversation. ‘I fear the constable’s wife may have wasted your time.’
Abigail blushed, and for that alone Horton hated Markland. Banks continued to ignore him.
‘Is that the case, constable?’ he said.
‘I do believe so,’ said Horton, carefully.
‘Well, then. I thank you all for coming here.’
He rang a bell and the servant who pushed him in entered.
‘My dear, it was a pleasure to meet you. Please feel free to visit my library whenever you so choose.’
Abigail’s delight at that filled the room, and Horton could see she had to prevent herself hugging the old bull in the wheeled chair. He rather thought the old bull would not have particularly minded.
‘Constable, good day,’ Banks said to Horton, and the servant wheeled him from the room. He said nothing to Markland.
As they left the house, a servant ran out into the street and handed Horton a note. He opened it and read.
‘Tell Harriott I will attend him and thyself tonight in Wapping. Say nothing to that Shadwell idiot. Sir Jos—’
He folded the paper and handed it to Abigail.
‘ To reiterate his invitation to make use of his library,’ he said to Markland, who grinned.
‘I do believe the old goat has designs on your wife,’ he said, oddly happy again after his difficult afternoon.
It had turned into a good night for secrets: the heavy warm air of the day was settling itself onto Wapping, the pressure almost palpable, squeezing in the shouts and laughter and shrieks of an ordinary East End twilight. Horton left Abigail and Rat in the apartment, checked the doors were locked, spoke to Cripps and another lad out in the street and warned them to be particularly watchful. He didn’t know the source of this odd skittishness. The heavy air, perhaps, and the lingering ever-present danger to Abigail.
As he stepped out into Wapping Street, he looked to his right and to his left. Was that street woman watching him? Had that dock worker come out in suspiciously clean clothes? Was that shop clerk looking away somewhat too purposefully?
Yes. He decided that the man – he might have been a shop clerk or an office clerk – was doing just that. He caught a flash of face, that was all, and now the clerk was strolling away towards Wapping Pier Head and St Katharine’s. Did he recognise him? Was it perhaps the clerk who had been sitting at Johnson’s desk when he’d visited East India House? Horton took a step or two to follow, and for a while his plans for the evening took him in the same direction as the clerk. The River Police Office was in the same direction as the man was heading. Outside the Office, Horton stopped and waited and watched.
The clerk continued to walk away from him, never looking back, if indeed he was ever in Wapping with malicious intent. He watched the man’s back disappear into the crowds. The late spring sun sent shafts of light along the river and the brick walls of the Dock and its associated buildings, but they brought no illumination. Only confusion and that deep, enduring anxiety.
Three old men were waiting for him upstairs in the Office. Three ancient minds perusing imminent death, stocked with memories fraying at the edges. John Harriott, looking even older, was in his chair behind his desk, a slab of the river visible behind his head. Sir Joseph Banks was in his wheeled chair behind the fire, and Horton found himself wondering how Banks would have got up the stairs. Was he winched from outside?
And in the chair on the other side of the fire, an unexpected face, but one who had always been there whenever Horton’s strange life intersected with the Royal Society: Aaron Graham, the senior magistrate from Bow Street, dressed as was his habit in some finery. It had been a year since Horton had last seen him, and though the clothes were just as expensive, the skin beneath them was terribly diminished.
Graham was the only one to stand when Horton stepped into the room, and tottered over to him like Beau Brummel’s skeleton.
‘Constable,’ he said, and Horton was touched by the old man’s unaffected pleasure. ‘A delight to see you again.’
‘Mr Graham. Mr Harriott. Sir Joseph.’
‘Sit down, Horton,’ said Banks, comfortable in charge even though they were in another man’s office. Harriott said nothing. A chair had been left for Horton. He sat in it, and looked at the three men: Graham and Sir Joseph lit by an oil lamp, Harriott by the dying light from the river.
‘Horton, you are a man I can trust,’ said Sir Joseph.
Was this a question? Or a statement? It was something of both. But was he indeed to be trusted, this Nore mutineer? Did Sir Joseph know of that part of his past? Horton looked at Graham, who smiled weakly but somehow reassuringly.
‘I believe so, Sir Joseph.’
‘Because what I am here to speak to you about is known by not half a dozen men in the world outside this room. You have perceived some of it, I think. Graham has told me of your involvement in recent matters. The Ratcliffe Highway murders. The Solander incident. Even, I am told, last year’s affair with the woman from New South Wales, which I am to understand involved my librarian. All these incidents have involved the Royal Society in some way.’
‘The Highway murders, sir? I was told that important men had an interest in them and in their conclusion. I was not informed that you were one of them.’
Sir Joseph looked at Graham and Harriott. Both men seemed suddenly uncomfortable, and Horton detected a strain of guilt in the room. He knew he had been used, of course. The extent to which those who had used him were aware of the reasons – that had remained obscure. He found himself staring at Harriott and for the first time in their association, the magistrate was unable to meet his eye.
Sir Joseph, having not apparently noticed the discomfiture of the magistrates, continued regardless.
‘Horton, you are a constable. It is a lowly position; before this evening, I do believe I have never spoken to one such as you. You should not expect to always have been taken into confidences of greater men with wider horizons. That is the simple truth.’
Horton nodded to acknowledge this.
‘And yet, here we are. Three men of some social standing narrating secrets to a mere waterman-constable. A man of little rank with a murky past.’
At least his question had been answered. Sir Joseph knew all about his personal history.
‘This has come about because of your remarkable gifts, constable. I do believe that you might be able to solve a mystery which has occupied the finest minds this country has produced for over a century. I think the time is right to ask you to look at it. And I think it may have a great deal to do with the case you are currently investigating.’
Sir Joseph leaned his enormous body forward, and his mechanical chair creaked loudly.
‘A fine word, investigating. We are similar, you and I. We pursue knowledge. We unpick secrets. We classify and we contain. The natural philosopher and the . . . the . . . detective. Yes. A fine coinage, I think. Detective Horton. It has a ring to it, does it not?’
Sir Joseph smiled, and though the smile was warm and in some ways delightful, it also contained teeth. The great man sat back in his chair.
‘Know this, then, Detective Horton: the Royal Society has for one hundred and fifty years concerned itself with investigation and observation of the natural world. Our transactions have catalogued a world of wonders, from the nutrition of plants to the construction of palaces. Like my predecessors, I believe in evidence and I believe in proof. The proof of mine own eyes, and the proof of eyes other than mine which are to be trusted.’
The smile again.
‘In this, we are the same, detective.’
Aaron Graham coughed, an ugly little rattle that sounded like death clearing its throat.
‘When my Society began its work, the world contained much mystery,’ continued Sir Joseph. ‘When Robert Hooke produced his Micrografia, he drew things he saw through microscopes of his own design, and the world saw the monstrous and beautiful appearances of even the most ordinary flea through Hooke’s perceptions. It was as if there were another world all around us, could we but see it. But there remain mysteries, Horton. Inexplicable matters, beyond understanding. Plants that grow at breakneck speeds, and seem to possess consciousness. Women who can bend other wills to their own. All of these things you have had some dealing with.’
Horton thought: plants?
‘Some people call these things magic. I say any reality we do not yet understand will appear to be magical.’
Sir Joseph’s enormous face flickered in the light from the oil lamp. He stared into the shadows at the corners of the room. As if he were confessing to a crowd that had hidden itself away. A man at the end of his road, making sense of things.
‘Which brings me to St Helena.’
Harriott sighed, another rattling old sound of ominous import.
‘St Helena is, as you know, a possession of the East India Company,’ Sir Joseph continued. ‘I have fought with all my might for years to extract the island from the Company’s clutches, and yet the Company will not let it go. Many find this odd. St Helena does not pay its way. It is barely more than a staging post for ships returning from the East Indies and New South Wales. A rock holding a few planters, a good many slaves and whores, and no visible means of support. So why does the Company protect it so?’
Harriott, noticed Horton, had leaned forward in his chair. His face looked more animated than the constable had seen it in months. He was learning things, too.
‘At the end of the seventeenth century, shortly after the foundation of our Society, we despatched a promising young man to St Helena to make improvements to our star charts, and to track a transit of Mercury across the sun. His name was Edmond Halley. His achievements were extraordinary, and my own life was linked to his, even though he died long before I was born. He predicted the transit of Venus in 1769, which was the cause of my own first voyage to observe it. To Otaheite.’
Harriott stared at Sir Joseph but Graham, Horton noted, was staring intently at him, as if to verify that he were following all this. If he were seeing how these events connected to each other; young Halley sailing south a century and a half ago, young Banks following him a century later, and now this room tonight, full of stories and secrets.
‘Halley’s trip was a success, but he came back with an odd story. He wrote a letter to a benefactor, in which he claimed there was something unique about St Helena. He had noticed – through observation, mind – that compass needles on the island deviated significantly from the North.’
‘As they do in most places,’ Horton said.
‘Indeed they do. But Halley had started mapping magnetic variation, Horton. He had developed a theory that turned out to be entirely true – that one might draw lines between areas of similar magnetic variation, and that these lines would be constant. Some years after he travelled to St Helena, he produced a chart of these lines, which we now call Halleian lines.’
Horton knew the phrase, from his own knowledge of navigation. He had even seen Halley’s map.
‘I know of this chart, Sir Joseph.’
‘Good. Then you know of the line of zero variation that passes, like a great curve, through the Atlantic.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you know that St Helena sits upon this line.’
‘Yes. I understand your point now, Sir Joseph. Compass needles on St Helena should point directly at magnetic north, as there is no variation.’
‘Indeed. And yet they do not. Sail a mile away from the island, and they do. But on the island itself, they vary by as much as ten degrees. Halley could find no reason for this. Nor, thus far, can we. But that is not the end of it, Horton. In the very same letter in which he first wrote these observations down, Halley also mentioned an encounter which is just as inexplicable.’
Sir Joseph looked back into the shadows, as if young Halley might be found there, scribbling his discovery.
‘Halley met a man on St Helena; he described him as an ugly fellow, whom Halley took for a Portuguese. This man had neither nose nor ears, and one of his hands was entirely missing. He did not speak any English, but they managed to communicate in Dutch. The stranger claimed to have knowledge of the island before the arrival of the Dutch or the English, and when Halley asked when he had come to the island, the Portuguese said he had arrived there in 1516. A hundred and fifty years before Halley had met him.’
At this point, Horton expected Harriott, or at least Graham, to interject. A 150-year-old man on a distant island? Neither man said anything, and this disturbed Horton as much as the strange stories Sir Joseph was recounting.
‘When Halley returned to England, he looked into the history of St Helena,’ continued Sir Joseph. ‘He discovered the tale of a Portuguese nobleman who had led a group of renegades during that country’s wars in Goa. As punishment for his crimes, this man – his name was Fernando Lopez – had his right hand and the thumb of his left cut off, along with his nose and ears. Lopez later stowed away on a ship returning to Portugal, but asked to be let off at St Helena, which was then deserted. It was said he was left there with only a cockerel for company, and for years he was seen there by visiting Portuguese ships. How many years, we cannot say. This, Halley believed, was the creature he met on St Helena.’
Horton had no conception of what this could mean. Nothing Sir Joseph was saying made any sense to him at all. He looked at Harriott, but the old man was staring out of his riverside window. He tried Graham, who caught his eyes, and nodded. It was an awful thing, that nod. It seemed to say I believe all this to be true. And yet, how could it be?
A silence. A question was expected of him.
‘And what does this . . . this story have to do with John Dee?’
‘Ah. A good question, constable. One worthy of Detective Horton.’
Banks smiled. He seemed to be rather enjoying himself.
‘What do you know of Dr John Dee, constable?’
The question did nothing to dilute Horton’s confusion.
‘Only what my wife told me from a guide book to Surrey.’
‘Well, I will tell you this. He was a highly original thinker, a disciplined mathematician and geometer. He lectured on Euclid, and when he wrote about such matters he was as fine a mind as this country has produced. But then he began to be interested in other matters – matters of a more celestial kind, shall we say. He developed an extraordinarily detailed cosmological picture on the shaky edifice of Renaissance science – I cannot make head nor tail of it myself, it seems stuffed to the gunwales with arcane hogwash and esoterica. But there are some members of the Society who believed he was on to something; that he had stumbled across some great truth about the inner workings of our Reality. I do believe Dee made discoveries which remain hidden; discoveries which, if they came to light, might help to explain some of the strange things you and I have encountered together these past few years.’
Now, it was Graham’s turn to sigh, gently and elegantly, but the sigh was cut off by yet another bitter little cough.
‘Such has been Dee’s reputation that the Royal Society has, since its formation, made itself the repository of his thought. The Society purchased Dee’s house at Mortlake many, many years ago, and we have kept it on ever since. That is itself a great secret; if it were to become public, we would be a laughing stock. The world has moved on from John Dee. Or at least, it believes it has. Certain Fellows of the Society have worked to reassemble Dee’s library. This library was the finest private collection of volumes in Elizabeth’s England – perhaps the finest in Europe. But when he left the country under allegations of necromancy and witchcraft, the library was ransacked and destroyed. Dee eventually returned to England and made a claim to the Crown for compensation – he included a list of the volumes in his library. We have, essentially, recreated it.’
‘Why?’ said Harriott, suddenly. ‘Surely much of the material in it is redundant?’ He sounded angry to Horton’s ears.
‘Indeed, Harriott, much of it is. But it is a record of men’s thought in the years immediately preceding the foundation of the Society. And as such it is of incalculable value. But that isn’t the main reason. You see, many believe that certain particular volumes were stolen from Dee’s library. Volumes containing great secrets. Dee was playing for high stakes, gentlemen. He believed that through a combination of what we now call science and what he called magic, man might ascend a kind of celestial stair. Might, in fact, move closer to God. This was the true work of the men we now call alchemists – to purify the spirit of man through the combination of elements, as one might make gold. To make man, essentially, immortal.’
The three old men were still in their room. Mortality stalked them all, and did not bother to hide itself.
This is madness, thought Charles Horton. It chilled him.
‘Dee claimed he had visited St Helena, in one of his writings on navigation,’ said Sir Joseph. ‘There is no other evidence for him having gone there, but why even mention it? It was then an obscure staging post held by the Portuguese. Why would John Dee have an interest in it?’
The silence fell again. Horton did not know what to say.
‘Do you believe this, Sir Joseph?’ he asked, eventually. ‘That Halley met a man who was centuries old?’
‘I am not in the business of believing in anything,’ said Sir Joseph, firmly. ‘I am in the business of investigating and confirming, that is all. And I believe we are in the same business, are we not?’
Sir Joseph smiled that warm smile again, the smile which was practised and worn smooth with much use over the years.
‘We can assume, can we not, that the Royal Society has itself investigated these matters?’ asked Horton.
‘Yes. We have sent dozens of men there over the years, both before and after Halley died. Halley left us with a simple instruction: watch St Helena. It is something we have tried to do over the decades, but God knows it is not straightforward. The East India Company guards its secrets carefully. I have tried to travel to St Helena myself on several occasions, but it has always been made clear to me that such a journey would not be countenanced.’
‘Countenanced by whom?’ said Horton.
‘By the Crown.’
The three simple words spoke so much: of influence and power, of secrets and schemes. Yet Horton wondered if he quite believed Sir Joseph. Was the man not a friend of the now-mad King? Had he no influence in this matter? Horton looked at Harriott, and could see some of his own suspicions in the magistrate’s face.
Sir Joseph shifted his enormous weight in his chair.
‘Detective, here is the matter: the East India Company is, to all intents and purposes, the Crown on St Helena, as it is in India. And while we maintain cordial relations with the Company and its Directors, it is fair to say that in this, as in all things, we are in competition for funds, for attention from the Crown, for influence. The Company watches any undertakings by the Royal Society within its territories as if we were footpads creeping in to empty their pockets.’
This with a high degree of bitterness.
‘And it may be that it will soon become impossible to ever find these secrets. I have heard of changes to how the island is to be governed. It appears that our interests have become conjoined, gentlemen. You are interested in St Helena. I am interested in St Helena. I propose, then, that I send you to St Helena.’
‘But what does any of this have to do with the matter at hand?’ Harriott asked.
‘The matter at hand?’ said Sir Joseph, and in his confusion was all the arrogance of the powerful, and their ignorance of the weak.
‘The murder of Benjamin Johnson, his wife and his daughter. The murder of Amy Beavis and her father.’
Sir Joseph had no answer to that, and neither did Harriott or Graham. Charles Horton, though – he did have an answer. A symbol, a Monad, inked on the chests of the Johnsons. John Dee’s symbol. He did not share this thought. It felt like a fragment of influence, a tiny portion of power which might, one day, serve a need.
Horton looked at the faces of the old men, one after another. In their exhausted eyes was the flickering excitement of one last game, a final mystery to be unlocked, perhaps the biggest of them all. And out there, perhaps, another Monster, stalking him, his wife, his home.