suggested that she was just the sort of willing lass who could prove useful.
“Do you like working for Mr. Bloathwait, Bessie?” I strolled over toward her, that I might stand directly in front of this pretty little laundry maid.
“Oh, aye, I do.” She nodded with a little too much enthusiasm, as though I might report her should she seem unhappy.
“What kind of a man do you think him?”
Her mouth dropped a little. She knew I was probing, but she could not tell for what. “Oh, I couldn’t answer a question like that. But he’s a great man, sure.” She looked up as though she had recalled something. “I best be getting on, sir. If Mr. Stockton, Mr. Bloathwait’s butler, finds me standing here talking with a fine gentleman, there’ll be no end to his questions, for sure.”
“I certainly wouldn’t want that. But I would think it rather pleasing, Bessie, if I might see you again sometime in the future. Perhaps we might arrange a meeting during which we would have no fear of Mr. Stockton. Would you like that?”
That charming redness spread across her face and neck and bosom again. She dropped into a curtsy as low as it was quick. “Oh, yes, sir. I would, sir.”
“How much would you like it?” I asked her, as I took a shilling from my purse and placed it in her palm. I held the back of her hand with my palm while my other hand closed her fingers around the coin. I gently stroked her fleshy digits with my thumb.
“Very much,” she breathed.
“I would like it very much too.” I removed my hand from hers and gently ran the backs of my fingers along her face. “You had better run along, Bessie, lest Mr. Stockton come after you.”
She curtsied again and then ran off.
Now, I am hardly the sort of man who considers himself above using a shilling or two to conquer a gentleman’s laundry lass, but I had more than the pleasures of the flesh on my mind. It seemed to me a useful thing to have a pliable confederate inside Bloathwait’s house, and if she was a compliant beauty, so much the better.
Not more than ten minutes after Bessie’s departure the unkempt footman returned and announced that Bloathwait would see me. I followed him out of the parlor and down the hall to a closed door. He knocked once and opened it to reveal a cramped room, furnished in the same dull tones as the parlor.
The study let in more light, however, but the brightness that came through the windows did little to dispel the feel of duskiness—just as the evident neatness of these rooms did little to dissuade me that I kicked up dust as I walked. Bookshelves covered the walls, and within them volumes were arranged according to size, of all things. Upon the floor near many of the shelves, ledgers were stacked, without any apparent attention to detail, and loose sheets of paper sat upon the shelves and were wedged between volumes.
For a man whose home suggested that he gave little credit to appearances, Bloathwait had designed his study with a brilliant attention to detail. He was an enormous man, and his oversized desk prevented him from looking like a foolish adult sitting upon a chair furnished for a child. He sat with an air of dignity that suggested his enormity, this man who was, after all, among the principal figures of the world of London finance.
Bloathwait sat with a formal stiffness, his somber black wig and black suit hovering like a storm cloud about his bulk as he engaged in some business or other. His ink-stained hand sailed across paper after paper in a furious hurry, as though there could never be enough time for all the work he had yet to finish, and in his mania he seemed to me half a fool, half a villain—a man equally likely to order my death as to spill his ink upon his lap.
I suppose he looked little different from the man I remembered from my boyhood; that creature had been enormous, full of grotesquely undersized features: mouth, teeth, nose, eyes—all adrift upon a wide, fleshy face. Now there was something that seemed more unpleasant than terrible, better able to incite distaste than fear. Still, I knew that if I had just passed him upon the street, spotted him upon the peripheries of my vision, my blood should have run cold.
Casting only a momentary glance at me, Bloathwait used his forearm to wipe a space clear of papers, and then grabbed a paper to attend to. Piles upon piles covered the entire surface of his desk; some documents were entirely filled with a tiny, close hand, others with only a few words. I could not imagine that a man so important in the management of the Bank of England could thrive in this chaos.
“Mr. Weaver,” he said at last. He set his pen down and looked at me. An old clock, as wide as a man and half again as tall, began to emit a rusty chime, but Bloathwait raised his voice to speak over the contraption. “Please sit. I trust you will state your business with all possible haste.”
As I moved to seat myself in an unsteady-looking chair that faced the desk, I saw him stretch out his arm for a piece of foolscap that rested at the outermost limit of his reach. It was a subtle movement, cautious and casual at the same time, but it caught my eye, as did the piece of paper he covered. I cannot say what was there, written in a scrawling hand, but some word or idea or phrase upon the page drew me in the very moment Bloathwait hid it from my view. With his free hand he took a folio volume and set it atop the paper. He then turned to me.
Observing that I watched his movements, he squinted disapprovingly. “I await your commands,” he said tersely. “I have allotted a quarter of an hour at the utmost for this meeting, but I reserve the right to abridge that amount of time should I determine our conversation to be unproductive.”
I could never be certain with a creature like Bloathwait, but I believed that my presence unnerved him, and I felt a strange thrill, pressing upon this man who had so pressed upon me when I was a boy. We sat here as equals, or at least something not entirely unlike equals. At any rate, he felt it in his interest to listen to what I had to say. “And what is it you wish your conversation to produce?” I asked, opting to be deliberately elliptical.
Bloathwait blinked like an uncomprehending beast. “What expectations should I have? You have called upon me.”
Anxious to remove myself from his cold scrutiny, I thought I should avoid the issue no further. “I am here, Mr. Bloathwait, because I am inquiring into the matter of my father’s death.”
His face displayed no emotion, but he scrawled a note upon a piece of paper. “How very odd you should come to me.” He did not look up while he spoke. “Do you believe I know something of the operation of hackney coaches?”
I stung a bit at this rebuke. It occurred to me that, despite my efforts to puff myself up, I still felt somewhat childish in Bloathwait’s presence, as though he were an older kinsman or a teacher; unnerving him, I realized, left me feeling naughty, not powerful. I would get nowhere if I cringed each time he looked at me with disapproval, so I involuntarily clenched the muscles in my chest as I determined to treat him as I would any man.
“Hardly,” I said, affecting a bit of impatience. “But it is my recollection that you did know something of my father.”
He raised his head once more. “Your father and I both worked upon the ’Change, Mr. Weaver—each in his own way. I attended your father’s funeral as a courtesy, and no more.”
“But you knew something of him,” I pressed on. “Such is what I have heard.”
“I will not answer for what you have or have not heard.”
“Then I shall tell you,” I said, thrilled now to have taken control of our conversation. “I have been told, sir, that you made it a habit all your life to inquire into my father’s affairs. That you familiarized yourself with his business, with his acquaintances, with his comings and goings. I know that at least once you took some small notice of the comings and goings of his children, and that later you transferred your interest to the father himself.”
He offered me the slightest of smiles, exposing a wall of improbably large and crooked teeth. “Your father and I had been enemies. I see you have some recollection of our animosity. Though that enmity ended long ago on my part, I have learned that it is wisest to assume one’s neighbors less generous than oneself.” He paused for a moment. “I maintained a distant familiarity with your father in the event that he wished me harm. Such never proved to be the case.”
“I hoped,” I continued, “that because you did maintain such a familiarity you might have some idea on who should wish him harm.”
“Why do you believe anyone should wish him harm? I was led to believe that his death was an unfortunate accident.”
“I have been led to believe otherwise,” I explained. I proceeded to inform him of the suspicions of William Balfour.
