The American Boy

The street grew increasingly congested as we neared the Cross, and the groom muttered continuously under his breath as we waited to turn into Southgate-street. At length, we drew up in the yard of the Bell. The man waited, reins in hands, staring fixedly at his horse's head, leaving me to summon a servant myself or to carry my luggage unaided. I beckoned a boy, who ran forward and lifted down my bags. Next to them was a large leather satchel.

'Leave that,' the groom snapped at the lad. 'It's mine.'

Having no desire to stay at the Bell, where Carswall and his people usually put up, I walked down to the Black Dog in Lower Northgate-street, with my little porter staggering behind me. A few minutes later I had bespoken a room and was steaming gently by a fire. I felt better after I had dined. It is much easier to contemplate an uncertain future on a full stomach than on an empty one.

Afterwards, I discovered that I had left a parcel containing my clean shirt in the gig. I walked rapidly to the Bell, hoping that the groom had not yet returned to Monkshill, and nursing a suspicion that he had intentionally allowed me to leave without it. But I had wronged him. The gig had been backed into a corner of the big coach house at the Bell, and my parcel was where I had left it, tucked under the seat to keep off the rain. The groom himself had gone.

'Hired a horse and off he went,' an ostler told me. 'He'll have a wet ride.' He spat and grinned up at me. 'Can't look much sourer than he already does, can he? That face would turn milk.'

Later that afternoon I went to the coach office at the Booth-Hall Inn. I was fortunate enough to get an inside seat on the Regulator, the London day coach, leaving the following morning at a quarter before six, and reaching Fleet-street by eight in the evening. I went early to bed, leaving orders that I be called at five o'clock in the morning. I dropped into a deep, dreamless sleep from which I was only awakened by repeated knockings on my chamber door.

The Regulator was a light post-coach, hence both its speed and the fact that it carried only four passengers inside. I was lucky in that my companions were as disinclined for conversation as I was – a stout farmer going as far as Northleach, a clergyman returning to his Oxford college and an elderly woman with a prim mouth and a pair of knitting needles that were never still. The other passengers came and went, but the knitting lady and I were both going all the way to London. I spent the journey reading, dozing and staring out of the window.

The recent events at Monkshill unfolded again in the theatre of my mind as the coach rolled through the bleak winter landscape. I felt a profound and paralysing sense of loss. For the first time, I allowed myself to look long and hard into the future and what I saw there was desolate. But there was no help for it. At least I had employment, I told myself, a roof over my head and the prospect of food in my belly.

The last of the daylight had long gone by the time we reached London. The familiar stench and taste of the metropolis oozed into the coach. The glare of the gaslights in the West End loomed out of the fog. We set down the knitting lady in Piccadilly. I let the Regulator carry me a mile or so eastwards to the Bolt- in-Tun, its terminus in Fleet-street.

In the yard of the inn, they were bringing down my luggage from the roof when I felt a tap upon my arm. Turning, I recognised with surprise the face of Edward Dansey.

'How very glad I am to see you,' I said. 'How do you do?'

'Very well, thank you. Is this all your luggage?'

'Yes.' By now I was puzzled, for the strangeness of the situation had become apparent to me. 'How did you know that I was travelling on this coach?'

'I wasn't sure you were,' he said. 'It was a probability, no more than that.'

'I – I do not understand.'

Dansey presented me with the grimmer, graver aspect of his Janus face. 'We must talk, Tom. But we cannot do so here.'

I left the luggage to be collected at the coach office and followed Dansey out into the murky bustle of the evening. He took my arm and guided me through the fog to a chophouse filled with lawyers' clerks in one of the streets running into Chancery-lane. I did not see him clearly until we were sitting in a booth and waiting to be served. It struck me immediately how pale and drawn his face had become. The two vertical lines scored in his forehead were deeper than I remembered.

We were quite private in the booth, and the buzz of conversation insulated us from the rest of the world. Despite my curiosity, I wasted no time in ordering steaks and porter. I had dined on the road not long after midday but my stomach still obeyed Mr Carswall's domestic timetable.

'And now,' said I, 'how did you come to meet me? Not that I regret it – far from it – nothing can be more pleasant than the sight of a friendly face at the end of a journey.'

Dansey stared glumly across the table. 'I am afraid there will be little pleasure about this meeting.'

'I do not understand you.'

'Mr Bransby received a letter early this morning. It was brought by one of Mr Carswall's servants riding post.'

'From Monkshill?'

He nodded. 'Where else? The man had travelled overnight. He could hardly stand by the time he reached Stoke Newington. It was he who told us you were travelling up from Gloucester, by the way, and which coach you were likely to be on. But the-'

He fell silent as our drinks arrived.

When we were alone again, I said, 'Was Carswall's man a groom? A bandy-legged fellow with a tiny head on a thick neck?'

'Yes. You know him?'

'It must be the same man who drove me into Gloucester yesterday morning.'

'Very probably.' Dansey pushed back his wig and scratched his scalp. 'Tom – there is no easy way to say this. When Mr Bransby read the letter, he flew into a great passion, and began shouting so loud I could hear him on the other side of the school. At length he sent for me: and he gave me the letter.'

I sat very still, watching him. I did not speak, for there was nothing to say.

'He – that is to say, Mr Carswall – accuses you of habitual neglect of your duties, and says that when you were with the boys, you rarely taught them but joined in their sports and played the fool and encouraged them to do likewise.' He held up his hand, to prevent my interrupting. 'He alleges you were often the worse for drink.'

'My dear Ned-'

'There is more, and worse: he says you made improper advances to the ladies, to both Miss Carswall and Mrs Frant.'

'That is quite untrue,' I snapped. But my voice sounded false even to myself, and I felt my cheeks grow warm.

Dansey regarded me coolly for a moment and then went on: 'I leave the very worst till last, Tom. Mr Carswall says that shortly after your departure, he discovered that a valuable ring was missing, an heirloom.'

'There certainly was such a ring,' I said. 'A mourning ring commemorating a lady named Amelia Parker, the grandmother of Henry Frant. Together with Mr Noak's clerk, I was instrumental in finding it on the day before I left. The circumstances of its discovery were-'

'How it was found is beside the point,' Dansey cut in. 'We are concerned with how it was subsequently lost. When did you last see it?'

'On the evening of the same day. In the small sitting room at Monkshill.'

'Mr Carswall alleges that while he and the others were at dinner, you slipped into the room where the ring was and stole it.' He paused and licked his lips. 'It was a room you had no right to be in, either, he said, but you were seen coming out of it by one of the servants, and no one saw the ring after that.'

I shook my head. 'The groom who brought you the letter drove me into Gloucester: in other words, Mr Carswall cannot have discovered the ring's loss after my departure. If his talc is true the theft must have come to light beforehand. And if we admit that circumstance, the whole talc becomes suspect.'

Something like hope leapt and died in Dansey's face. 'You are assuming it is the same groom. But even if it were the same man, there are obvious reasons why Mr Carswall did not charge you at once with the crime. Is it not probable that he would wish to spare the ladies from scandal? And there was Mr Bransby to think of, not to mention the boys and Mr and Mrs Allan. No, the more I think of it, the more his conduct shows a very proper delicacy.'