I said, more abruptly than I had intended: 'May I ask how you found my direction, sir?'
'Eh? Oh, my London lawyers recommended an inquiry agent who does that kind of work.' He glanced at me over his spectacles. 'You did not give him a great deal of trouble.'
I fancied there was a hint of a question in his words but I chose not to hear it. I said, 'When did he find me?'
'Earlier this week.' After a pause, he added, his voice suddenly sharp, 'Why do you ask?'
'He was noticed at the house where I lodge.'
'Yes. I shall not employ him again. He was less discreet than I would have wished.' Noak hesitated, and then continued, 'You see, when I commissioned him to find you, I was not sure when – or even whether – I might wish to see you. But today there have been a number of events which make renewing our acquaintance a matter of urgency.'
'For whom?'
'Oh, for both of us.' The American sat back in his chair and a spasm of pain passed over his face. 'In my opinion, that is to say. You of course must be the best judge of your own interests.'
'It is difficult to be the judge of anything when one has no idea what is happening, sir.'
He inclined his head, as though acknowledging the force of my argument, and said in his flat, quiet voice: 'Murder, Mr Shield. That is what has happened. And now there are consequences.'
'You mean Mr Frant's murder?'
Noak said: 'We go too fast. I should have said: murders.'
The plural form of the word filled the room with a sudden, uncomfortable silence. It is one thing to articulate a theory in the privacy of your own mind; it is quite another to hear it on the lips of someone else, particularly a man of sense.
I pretended ignorance. 'I beg your pardon, sir – I do not catch your meaning.'
'The man who lies in St George's burial ground had lost his face, Mr Shield. The law decided he was Mr Frant but the law may sometimes be an ass.'
'If he was not Mr Frant, then who was he?'
Noak regarded me in silence for a moment. His face was perfectly impassive. At last he sighed and said, 'Come, come. Let us not fence with one another. You and Harmwell found Mrs Johnson's body. Both Sir George and Mr Carswall had pressing reasons to treat her death as the accident it seemed, at least superficially, to be. But there is no reason why you or I should delude ourselves. What on earth would a gentlewoman be doing in her neighbour's ice-house in the depths of a winter night, a gentlewoman dressed in her husband's clothes? You will recall the poisoned dogs, I am sure, and the mantrap that was sprung in East Cover. I think Harmwell drew your attention to the sound of a horse when you were carrying back the boys that night. And I am sure you will recall the ring that you and he found the following morning.' He gave a dry, snuffling sound which I think was a sign of mirth. 'I am a tolerable judge of character, by the by. I have never credited Mr Carswall's allegations about you.'
'I am heartily glad of it, sir. Surely, though – and I admit I know little or nothing of the law – even if there are two murders rather than one, and even if the victim of the first was not the man he seemed, it is not easy to change the verdict of a coroner's jury? Not, at least, without irrefutable evidence.'
'Two murders?' said he, ignoring my question. 'I did not say two murders. I believe there has been at least one more.' Mr Noak leaned forward, his elbows on the arms of the chair, and I saw the twinge of pain once again pass like a shadow over his face. 'That is the reason for my involvement. But I've already told you something of that.'
He peered at me. It took a moment for his meaning to sink in. When it did, I felt an unexpected rush of pity.
'Lieutenant Saunders, sir? Your son?'
Noak stood up. He walked slowly across that red rectangle of carpet until he reached the fireplace. He put out a hand and rested it on the mantel-shelf and turned to face me. I was startled by the change in his face. Now he seemed an old, old man.
'You recall that I mentioned him at Monkshill?' he said. 'It was partly to judge the effect of his name on the company when I revealed the connection. It is not generally known, even in America.'
He had also told me that I resembled his son, and that the day was the anniversary of his son's birth. I remembered, too, that he had said something in my private ear about the manner of the young man's death.
'I think you told me that he died in an accident?' I said.
'Another accident.' Noak gave the last word a vicious, hissing twist. 'And it was clumsily done. They found him in a muddy alley at the back of a hotel that was no better than a brothel: face-down in a puddle, stinking of brandy and drowned. They even found a woman who swore he tried to lie with her. She said she had taken his money but found he was unable to fulfil his part of the bargain because he was so drunk. According to those of his fellow officers I was able to question, my son was not a brandy drinker, and he had no business in that part of Kingston. Nor was he known as a man who frequented prostitutes.' He paused and looked inquiringly at me, indeed almost imploringly, which confused me.
'A young man's friends may not wish to tell the unvarnished truth about him to his father.'
'I am aware of that, and have made allowance for it. But I do not believe my son died by accident. And if he did not die by accident, then how and why did he die?' Noak gestured at the shadows on the left. 'Harmwell is convinced my son was killed to keep him silent.'
'Sir, I regret your son's death extremely. But you will forgive me if I say that I do not understand why you have sought me out, or why you have brought me here at such a late hour.'
'The link that binds us, Mr Shield, that binds my son's murder with those others, is Wavenhoe's. The bank was active in Canada during the late war. Mr Frant oversaw its operations there in person for the first year or two, until 1814. There is always money to be made in wartime, if you do not mind the risks. A contractor found himself in difficulties, and the bank came to the rescue and exacted a price for doing so. Wavenhoe's took over the firm's ownership, and Mr Frant assumed its direction. Originally the contract was for fodder for artillery horses, I believe, but Wavenhoe's expanded the sphere of operation considerably. They did very well for themselves, too. But then Mr Frant's desire for profits outran both his commercial acumen and his patriotic scruples. Many sorts of men are drawn to the army, and not all of them are averse to making a private profit, especially if it involves no more than turning a blind eye on occasion. What are they defrauding, after all? They do not think of their fellows, or any individuals, as their victims, but some faceless, formless thing such as the War Department or the government or King George. They tell themselves it is not stealing at all, simply a legitimate perquisite of their office that everyone has and no one talks about. So they sign for goods they have not received, or for damaged articles, or they contrive to lose the necessary paperwork – all of which means that the contractor has a pleasing surplus to dispose of, and in many cases – and this I know for a fact – Mr Frant found a ready market across the border, in the United States.'
'But that is treason,' I said.
'Profit has no nationality,' Noak replied. 'And it follows its own principles. I believe that once Frant had established a channel linking British North America with the United States, he discovered that it could be used for information as well as goods. Information leaves far fewer traces of its passage and it is much more lucrative.'
'You have proof?'
'I know that such intelligence was received in the United States, and I am as sure as I am of my own name that Mr Frant had a hand in it.' Mr Noak stopped suddenly, swung round and extended his arm at Mr Harmwell. 'Were you aware that Harmwell enlisted in the Forty-First when my son was commissioned into it? That was at the start of the war, in 1812. Tell Mr Shield, Harmwell, tell him what you saw.'
Harmwell stepped out of the shadows. 'Lieutenant Saunders did me the honour of confiding in me,' he said sonorously, as though reading a statement in a court of law; and his rich voice reduced the memory of Noak's to a thin whisper. 'He believed the regimental quartermaster to be engaged in peculation in concert with a contractor. Two days before his death on the sixth of May, 1814, he took me with him as a witness to a meeting between the quartermaster and a gentleman at a coffee house. I did not learn the gentleman's name on that occasion, but I did see his face.'
'You understand?' Noak cried. 'The possibility of proof. Harmwell subsequently identified the man whom the quartermaster met as Henry Frant. You were present on the occasion of his identification yourself, as it happens:
