He paused again to give Tom time to digest what he had told him. As Murray had suspected, the girl had never mentioned this to him. And why should she? From Tom’s point of view it was unimportant, of course. For Murray it had been a fortuitous blunder.
‘I had no idea what the girl’s game was,’ he said, walking to Tom with mincing, almost balletic, steps. ‘I gave her an evasive reply and sent her packing, but I was curious so I had one of my men follow her – just to be on the safe side. You know how much I dislike people poking their noses into my affairs. But Miss Haggerty didn’t seem interested in snooping – quite the contrary. Isn’t that so? I confess to being astonished when my informant told me she had arranged to meet you at a tea room, and afterwards . . . Well, I don’t need to tell you what happened afterwards at the Pickard boarding-house.’
Tom lowered his head in a gesture that could equally have been embarrassment or vertigo.
‘My suspicions were justified,’ Murray went on, amused by Tom’s awkwardness, ‘but not in the way I had imagined. I thought of killing you there and then, despite my admiration for the way you had used the situation to your advantage. But then you did something completely unexpected: you visited Wells’s house, and that aroused my curiosity even more. I wondered what you were up to. If you intended telling the writer it was a hoax you had gone to the wrong person. As you immediately discovered, Wells is the only person in the whole of London who is aware of the truth. But, no, you had a far nobler purpose.’
As Murray spoke, he paced back and forth in front of Tom, hands behind his back. His movement made the boards on the quayside squeak unpleasantly. Eternal sat a few feet away, fixing him with a vaguely curious look.
‘After leaving Wells’s house, you went to Harrow-on-the-Hill. There you hid a letter under a stone, which my spy brought to me immediately. And when I had read it I understood everything.’ He gazed at Tom with mock compassion. ‘I have to confess I was most amused by your letters, which my informant put back before whoever was to collect them arrived. Except for the last one, of course, which you whisked away so fast I had to steal it off Wells while he was out on that ludicrous machine known as a bicycle he likes to ride around on.’
He stopped pacing and studied the river again.
‘Herbert George Wells ...’ he whispered, scarcely able to contain his contempt. ‘The poor fool. I can’t deny I was tempted to tear up all his letters and rewrite them myself. I only refrained from doing so because Wells would never have found out, which would have been the same as if I had done nothing. But let’s not talk about that any more,’ he declared, suddenly brightening and turning once more to face his victim. ‘You couldn’t care less about petty rivalries between writers, could you, Tom? Yes, I greatly enjoyed reading your letters, one passage in particular, as I’m sure you can imagine. I believe it was very instructive to us all. However, now the final instalment has been written, the little old ladies will shed bitter tears over the lovers’ tragic fate, and I am free to kill you.’
He crouched before Tom and lifted his head with almost maternal tenderness. The blood streaming from Tom’s split lip soiled his fingers and he pulled out a handkerchief to clean it off, still gazing intently at Tom.
‘Do you know something, Tom?’ he said. ‘In the end, I’m deeply grateful for all your efforts not to reveal my hoax. I realise you’re partially blameless. But only partially. True, that foolish girl started everything. Yet you could have let it go, and you didn’t, did you? I sympathise, believe me: I’m sure the girl was worth taking all those risks for. However, you see why I can’t let you go on living. We each have our role to play in this tale. And, sadly for you, mine consists of killing you. And how could I resist the perfect irony of giving the job to your faithful soldiers of the future?’
With these words, he gave a twisted smile at the men looming behind Tom. He studied Tom again for a long time, as though giving one last thought to what he was about to do, perhaps mulling over another possible course of action.
‘I have no choice, Tom,’ he said finally, shrugging his shoulders. ‘If I don’t kill you, sooner or later you’ll look for her again. I know you will. You’ll look for her because you’re in love with her.’
On hearing this, Tom could not help gazing at Murray in surprise. Was it true? Was he really in love with Claire? This was a question to which he had never given much thought because, whether or not he loved her or she had just been a passing fancy, an opportunity he was loath to pass up, he still had to keep away from her. However, now he had to admit that if Murray were to let him live, the first thing he would do was look for her, and that could only mean his boss was right: he was in love with her.
Yes, he realised with astonishment, he loved her. He loved Claire Haggerty. He had loved her from the moment he had first seen her. He loved the way she looked at him, the touch of her skin, the way she had of loving him. It felt so good to let himself be enveloped by the protective mantle of that immense love, the magic cape that shielded him from life’s coldness, the icy indifference of every day that made his soul tremble, the incessant wind filtering through the shutters and seeping into his innermost depths. And he wanted nothing more than to be able to love her with the same intensity, to feel he was fulfilling man’s highest, most noble achievement, the one he had been born for, the one that satisfied him and made him happy: to love, to love truly, to love for no other reason than the joy of being able to do so. That was what drove him on. That was his reason for living, because although he might be unable to leave his mark on the world, he could make someone else happy, and that was the most important thing. The most important thing was to leave his mark on another person’s heart.
Yes, Murray was right: he would look for her because he wanted her to be with him, because he needed her by his side in order to become someone else, to escape from who he was. Yes, he would look for her, whether to delight in the joys of spring together or to plunge into the abyss. He would look for her because he loved her. And somehow this lessened the lie Claire was living. For, in the end, the girl’s love was reciprocated, and Tom’s love, like Shackleton’s, was also unattainable, lost in the ether, unable to find its way to her. What did it matter if they lived in the same time or even in the same city, that festering turn-of-the-century London, if they were to remain as far apart as if they were separated by an ocean of time?
‘But why drag things out?’ he heard Murray say. ‘It would make for a worse, far less exciting ending to the story, don’t you think? It’s best if you disappear, Tom, for the story to end as it’s supposed to. The girl will be far happier in any case.’
Gilliam Murray lifted his huge body to its full height and gazed down at Tom once more with scientific interest, as though he were something floating in a bottle of formaldehyde.
‘Don’t harm her,’ Tom stammered.
Murray shook his head, pretending to be shocked. ‘Of course I won’t, Tom! Don’t you see? With you out of the way the girl is no threat to me. And, believe it or not, I have my scruples. I don’t murder people just for the fun of it, Tom.’
‘My name is Shackleton,’ said Tom, between gritted teeth. ‘Captain Derek Shackleton.’
Murray burst out laughing. ‘Then you needn’t be afraid, for I guarantee you will rise from the dead.’
