I walked from the City to Fleet Street. At the east end of it, not far from Ludgate Hill, a narrow alleyway leads to a cobbled courtyard within bad-smelling distance of the Thames. The creaking and tapping sounds that came from open doorways around the courtyard in various competing rhythms marked it as one of the communities of small printing shops that cluster behind the larger buildings of Fleet Street. As far as I knew, it was the present working place of my radical printer friend, Tom Huckerby. He and his printing press never stayed in one place long, because of threats from bailiffs and the paid bullies of public men who thought he’d libelled them. He sometimes had, but they deserved it, more often than not. My luck was in. He was at work, leaning over a galley of type. I waited until he straightened up and greeted me by my first name. He was part of a staunch Republican tradition that didn’t hold with titles, not even Mr or Miss. After asking after each other’s health, I came to business.
‘Tom, if you wanted to get quite a large pamphlet printed in a hurry, where would you take it?’
He puffed out his cheeks and spread his arms in a gesture indicating the whole of Fleet Street and probably places beyond.
‘Yes, I was afraid of that,’ I said.
‘Seditious, is it?’
‘I haven’t read it. At a guess, it will annoy a lot of powerful and wealthy people, but not seditious or treasonable.’
‘That makes it harder. Not everyone will print something that might land him in Newgate, but aside from that you could take your pick from several hundred.’
‘If it helps at all, the man who wrote it spent most of his life in India and probably doesn’t know many people in London. Are there any printers who specialize in Indian affairs?’
He thought about it.
‘Probably, back in the City near East India House. But I’d guess those are some of the gentry your friend wants to annoy?’
‘Yes.’
‘So if he’s got any sense, he wouldn’t go to any of those, or people might get wind of it and try to stop it.’
‘I think he had sense.’
He acknowledged the past tense with a raise of the eyebrow.
‘So you can’t ask the man himself?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll ask around, if you like. What was his name?’
‘Griffiths. The pamphlet was against the opium trade with China. And he’d probably have wanted it done within a few days.’
‘Not unusual. Most people want it done the day before yesterday. I’ll let you know if I find out anything.’
Then, being a journalist and political to his ink-stained fingertips, he wanted to know what it was all about. If I’d been working for a client I should have been discreet, but as it was I could see no harm in telling him more or less the full story. He knew already about the committee looking into the affairs of the East India Company, but hadn’t heard about the confrontation between Mr Griffiths and Alexander McPherson in Westminster Hall.
‘I can use it,’ he said.
‘You’ll keep my brother out of it?’
‘Of course. Give my regards to young Fraternity.’
He was the only one who still used my brother’s radical middle name. I suspected brother Tom himself would like to forget it.
Before I left, Tom Huckerby had already scribbled out the paragraph he intended to put in the next edition of his paper The Unbound Briton.
We hear that the temperature is rising to Indian heights around Leadenhall Street. Recently arrived in town from Calcutta is one Alexander McPherson, a commercial gentleman whose main business is smuggling shiploads of opium into China. Since the ungrateful Chinese have seized and burned some of his cargoes, Mr McPherson has arrived at Westminster to demand vengeance and compensation. He has given evidence to the committee of MPs looking into the way John Company is using its vast and chartered powers over millions of our fellow human beings. He recently honoured Westminster Hall with a visit, blazing with looted diamonds. An altercation arose between him and a certain E. Griffiths, a servant of the Company who has greatly annoyed his colleagues. Griffiths’s offence was to criticize the policy of using our navy to protect the fortunes of McPherson and his merry smuggler friends. Griffiths had the best of the Westminster Hall debate. Since when he has sadly died in mysterious circumstances, though not before confiding his pamphlet against the opium merchants to the printers. We await its publication with interest.
I made a few objections.
‘It was just the one big brooch,’ I said. ‘Not exactly blazing. And we don’t know it was looted.’
‘Of course it was. All jewels from India are looted.’
‘And you do realize that you’re practically accusing McPherson of murdering Mr Griffiths?’
He put on an innocent face.
‘Am I really? Where does it say so, exactly?’
‘And we don’t know the manuscript is with printers. I just hope it is.’
‘So if it is, this might flush it out.’
I gave up. The readership of The Unbound Briton was devoted, but quite small, and appreciated good political punching rather than slavish sticking to facts. Besides, it wasn’t my duty to look after the interests of the Calcutta men.
I thanked Tom Huckerby and turned to go.
‘Has Tabby found what she was looking for?’ he said.
I turned back.
‘Looking for? What do you mean?’
‘She turned up here out of the blue four or five days ago, asking where rich bastards went to make money.’
‘What!’
I had thought I was managing to clean up her language. She’d developed a liking for Tom Huckerby and his printing friends that was surprising in a girl so determinedly illiterate.
‘She had this idea that there were places where rich men congregate, something like pickpockets or beggars all lodging in the same part of town. Not so wrong, after all. She’s got a lot of sense, that girl,’ Tom said.
‘So what did you tell her?’
‘I mentioned gentlemen’s clubs, but she seemed to know about those.’
‘She would. We had a case involving one.’
‘It turned out she’d picked up some notion of the stock exchange. I told her about Capel Court, where the stockjobbers trade.’
‘Why did she want to know about stockjobbing? Tabby’s never had more than a shilling or two in her life.’
‘I supposed she was on some kind of errand for you.’
‘No. It would have been something specific, not vague like that.’
‘Maybe she’s setting up on her own,’ Tom said.
He meant it as a joke, but I was worried. It looked as if Tabby had taken our difference of opinion on business ethics very much to heart. She surely had too much sense to think that her apprenticeship was over and she could go out and look for cases on her own account. Or did she think she could pick up work the way she once begged halfpennies? I asked Tom to please try and persuade her to get in touch with me if she called on him again, and he promised he would.
I hoped my brother might call in the afternoon, but he didn’t. I supposed he was too busy with the formalities of Mr Griffiths’s death. That evening, no glint of light from Tabby’s cabin, no letters, no clients, no distractions. I drank tea and ate Welsh rarebit for supper with Mrs Martley, spent a conscientious hour doing accounts and went early to bed. In the morning, a shout came up from Mr Grindley, the carriage repairer in the yard.
‘Letter for Miss Lane.’
I flew downstairs with a handful of small change to pay the postman, hoping for news from Athens. The letter he handed over to me was a double disappointment. It was a mere local letter, not a well-travelled one, and was addressed not to me but to Thomas Lane Esquire c/o Abel Yard, Adam’s Mews. The address was written in a clerkly hand and the thing had a formal look about it. Probably something from the East India office about Tom’s employment, though I was surprised he’d given them my address. When he arrived at last, in mid-afternoon, his exhausted look drove the letter from my mind. His gloves and neckcloth were black. Even his shirt studs were small knobs of jet.
‘The inquest?’ I said.
He nodded.
‘What was the verdict?’
‘That he took his own life.’
‘Just that?’
He nodded. So no half-consoling addition of ‘while the balance of his mind was disturbed’. Mr Griffiths was a suicide, pure and simple.
‘Did it take long?’
‘No more than half an hour. I had to identify him and give evidence about finding him. Some fat MP who’d been in Westminster Hall gave evidence about that wretched business.’
‘Was McPherson there?’
‘No, but quite a few of the other Calcutta men were.’
‘And nobody argued against suicide?’
‘Are you saying I should have? What possible evidence could I have given?’
So I told him about my visit to Mr Griffiths’s rooms, about the lack of warm water, the missing pamphlet. Tom looked shocked at first, then downright furious when I came to hiding behind the door to find out what Alexander McPherson was doing.
‘Liberty, this is intolerable. What if he’d seen you?’
‘Would it have mattered? He wouldn’t have known I’m your sister.’
‘But you had no right to be there.’
‘Nor had he.’
‘He might have come to pack up Griffiths’s things.’
‘On his own? Rather a menial job for him. Anyway, he wasn’t packing up anything, he was searching. And I’m sure he was searching for Mr Griffiths’s pamphlet.’
‘Why do you keep coming back to that?’
‘Because it was important to him, and we don’t know where it’s gone. It definitely wasn’t in any of the things we unpacked. That means he kept it with him when he left Richmond for London. What did he do with it after that?’
I hoped Tom might draw the same conclusion as I had: that Mr Griffiths had hurried it straight to a printer. But he was still too occupied in being annoyed with me. That decided me not to tell him about my visit to Tom Huckerby. I was already having some regrets about that paragraph that would be appearing in The Unbound Briton and didn’t want another cause of war between us.
‘I wonder who he meant that bearer bond for,’ I said. ‘He didn’t know many people in London, but here he is intending to send somebody a lot of money.’
‘It might not have been for anybody in London,’ Tom said. ‘They have banks in India too.’
‘But it was for somebody he hoped to see in the next day or two. That must mean London, or near it. And why didn’t he seal and post it, as he must have intended?’
‘Because he’d died,’ Tom said, practically grinding his teeth.
‘But he was the sort of man who’d want to leave everything in order, wasn’t he? So why leave that undone before he killed himself?’
‘Liberty, stop it.’
I moved the kettle closer to the fire to boil and rediscovered the letter to Tom, which I’d propped against the tea caddy.
‘Something came for you.’
He glanced at the clerkly hand on the wrapper, frowning. I turned away to tidy things on the table, then heard him gasp as if the contents had burned him.
‘What is it?’
He said nothing, just held it out for me to see. The thick parchment and bulge of a wax seal through the folds showed it was a legal document. He turned it over. The writing on the outside was also in a clerkly hand, but not the same as the one on the covering wrapper.
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF EDMUND GRIFFITHS ESQUIRE.
‘When did this arrive?’
‘By the morning post. I’d have rushed it round to you, only I didn’t think it was important.’
‘Why has he sent me his will?’
Tom stared at me then at the still-folded document, getting no answer from either. I picked up the wrapper. There were two lines of writing on the inside.
Dear Sir, We have been requested to forward to you the enclosed. A note acknowledging receipt of it is requested. Smith and Danby, Solicitors, London Road, Richmond.
It was dated five days earlier.
‘It looks as if he gave it to them just before he left Richmond,’ I said.
‘But why send it to me?’
‘Hadn’t you better look at it?’
‘It’s a legal document, Libby. Shouldn’t it be opened in a lawyer’s presence?’
‘I don’t think that’s essential. Anyway, why should he have sent it to you if he didn’t want you to see it?’
At least Tom still possessed his fair share of curiosity. After thinking about it for a while longer he opened it, read, then passed it to me.
It was a short document, drawn up by an English solicitor in Bombay. It was dated from the autumn of the preceding year and duly witnessed by two men with English-looking names, probably the solicitor’s clerks.
I, Edmund Griffiths, currently resident in Bombay, being of sound mind, do hereby give and bequeath:
The sum of £500 each to the Hindu College in Calcutta and the Sanskrit College in Calcutta, with the wish that it shall be used towards the education of boys who would otherwise be too poor to attend these colleges.
The sum of £100 to my faithful servant Anil, with the hope that some of it will be used to further his education.
My library, including books, maps, pictures and manuscripts to the Sanskrit College of Calcutta, subject to the provision below.
All the remainder of my estate to the Rani Rukhamini Joshi, of the Red Fort, near Amravati, India in small recognition of the wrong done to her and to her family.
I appoint as my executor Thomas Fraternity Lane and direct that he shall be paid the sum of one hundred guineas from my estate for his trouble, and shall choose what books he likes from my library. I direct him as my executor to see that my body is disposed of according to Hindu rites by the sacred mother Ganges.
Then his signature, and the witnesses. A broad margin had been left below the witness signatures. In it, a line in Griffiths’s handwriting in very blue, new-looking ink:
Or as near to that as he can contrive. E.G.
Tom had been watching as I read.
‘Well?’ I said.
‘This leaves no doubt at all, does it?’
‘About what?’
‘That he killed himself.’
Relief as well as shock in Tom’s voice. I hadn’t realized until then how, in his heart, he’d doubted the verdict of suicide.
‘Why?’
‘Don’t be stupid. He leaves the will with a solicitor to forward it, so that it will get to me after his death. He’d planned it all carefully.’
‘Had he? Everybody seems to think that he was driven to suicide by that argument with McPherson, but that only happened after he’d moved in to town from Richmond. By then, he’d already left the will with the Richmond solicitors for forwarding. So if he did kill himself, it had nothing to do with your evidence or with the argument.’
Tom said nothing while I made tea and poured it. He was rereading the will, probably several times over.
‘What shall I do with it?’ he said.
‘It will have to go to probate. I should see a solicitor. Ask Daniel to find a good one. He has some legal friends.’
‘You don’t think I should show it to them at East India House?’
‘Of course not. What’s it got to do with them?’
‘Back in Bombay, Griffiths did say something about naming me as his executor, but I didn’t think much about it at the time. Some of the men revise their wills before going on long sea voyages.’
‘So who’s this Rani who gets the balance of his estate?’
‘I have no notion. Literally, ‘Rani’ means queen, but it’s often a term of respect for any high-born Indian lady. Rukhamini is the name of a Hindu goddess. Amravati is in the Maratha. I’ll have to find out when I get back to India. But I doubt if there’ll be much left over after the bequests to the colleges. I don’t think he was a man of means.’
At the time, I didn’t give much thought to the clause about Hindu rites and mother Ganges, or Griffiths’s footnote to it. There was simply too much to think about. When Tom said goodbye his mind was clearly elsewhere. He surprised me with a last question that seemed to have nothing to do with what we’d been discussing.
‘Will Amos Legge be at the stables at this time of day?’
‘Yes, they’ll be getting ready for evening feeds.’
So at least he was planning to get some exercise.
As I watched him walking away along Adam’s Mews, I noticed a member of Tabby’s gang standing in the doorway of one of the stables. I’d never sorted out the exact hierarchy of this troop of errand runners, horse-holders and occasional pickpockets, but knew this lad was one of the leaders. His nickname – probably the only name he had – was Plush. He was squat in build, immensely broad of shoulder. Trousers cut off raggedly at the knee showed calves of solid muscle and bare splay-toed feet, very dirty. His body could have been anything from twelve years old to twenty. His face was like some malign gargoyle from the middle ages, his voice as husky as dry leaves shifting in the wind from his habit of pipe smoking. Judging by his yellowed and oddly angled teeth, he’d taken to it as soon as he’d been weaned. He lived for fighting against members of rival gangs and usually carried some recent injury, in this case a left ear so bright and swollen that it looked as if it would glow in the dark. And yet, there was a tentative, almost gentle, air about him.
He shifted his short clay pipe in his mouth and wished me good afternoon. I returned the greeting and asked if he’d seen Tabby recently. He shook his head.
‘Not for ten days or more.’
‘Do you know where she’s gone?’
‘Dunno. Just said she was going away for a bit.’
‘That’s all she said to me. I’m afraid she’s annoyed with me.’
‘Them little dogs?’
‘Yes. It wasn’t right, you know.’
He nodded, grave as a churchwarden. I was sure that the business of lapdog kidnapping and ransoming was still being carried on, only transferred for a while out of my orbit. No use saying anything. I asked him if Tabby had given him any idea where she was going.
‘Nah. She’s been a bit strange the last few weeks, not talking much. Like she’s angry about something.’
‘She’s been like that with me too. I thought it was just on account of the dogs.’
‘Something else bothering her, only she won’t say what. I said to her when she came for the knife—’
‘Knife? What knife?’
‘The one she asked me to get for her.’
‘Tabby asked you to get her a knife?’
‘Good sharp one, with a long blade. Three bob I had to pay for it. She paid me back without turning a hair.’
‘What did Tabby want with a knife?’
‘That’s what I asked her. I said to her if she was expecting trouble from anybody, just let me know and I’d truss him up with his heels round the back of his neck any time she wanted. Wasn’t interested.’
I asked him a few more questions, without result, and went back into Abel Yard, badly shaken. Tabby was angry. Tabby had a long sharp knife. Tabby was inquiring about where rich men went. And I could see no way of finding her if she didn’t want to be found.