'His mind is on other things,' Iversen said.
I turned back to him. 'If you wish me to answer your questions with any coherence, sir, you would find me in a better condition to do so if I had something to eat. And I would be obliged if I might use the necessary house.'
Iversen laughed, exposing a set of false teeth made of bone or perhaps ivory, and clearly expensive; they reminded me of the tooth-puller and curious possibilities stirred once more in my mind. 'You shall have your creature comforts, Mr Shield.' He levered himself to the edge of his chair, thrust himself upwards by exerting pressure on the arms and in one, practised movement seized a crutch and placed it under his right shoulder. For a moment he stood there, swaying slightly, gripping the side of the coffin with his free hand, with an expression of triumph on his face. He was a big man and he loomed over me like a mountain. 'But first I must relieve you of the contents of your pockets.'
His big hands worked deftly and rapidly through my clothes. He removed my pocketbook, my purse, my penknife and the red-spotted handkerchief which the boys had given me on the eve of my departure from Monkshill. He gave each item a brief examination and then dropped it in the pocket of his robe. At last he was satisfied.
'I shall desire them to bring you a pot directly. And something to eat.'
'They will not expect me to stay here – in this coffin?'
'I can see that would be inconvenient. There is no reason why you should not be lifted out. They will keep a watch on you, after all.'
'It will not be easy for me, or for them, if they do not untie my hands,' I pointed out.
'I do not think untying you will be necessary, Mr Shield. A little inconvenience to you or even to them is neither here nor there.' Mr Iversen picked up the pistol from the table and dragged himself towards the door. He glanced back at me. 'Until we meet again,' he said with something of a flourish, a gesture that raised the ghost of a memory deep within my mind.
He dragged himself on to the landing, leaving me alone with the old man in the fading light of an April afternoon. I listened to his hirpling progress along the landing, and his clumping descent of the stairs.
'Sir,' I hissed at the old man. 'You cannot sit there and permit this to happen. He intends to kill me. Will you be an accessory to murder?'
There was no answer. He did not stir a muscle.
'Are you Mr Iversen's father, sir? You would not wish your son to stain his soul with the blood of a fellow human being?'
Apart from my own ragged breathing, I heard nothing. The room was suddenly brighter, for the sun had come out. Motes danced in the air before the window. The arms and rails of the chair were grey with dust. A suspicion grew in my mind and became certainty. The man in brown could help no one.
I waited for relief for well over a quarter of an hour, to judge by the distant chimes of a church clock, while my need for the chamberpot grew ever more pressing.
At length the door opened and the two men dressed in rusty black entered. They had kidnapped me today; and I believed that they had pursued me yesterday evening, though I had not seen their faces clearly so I could not be completely sure. I wondered whether they had also attacked me on my visit to Queen-street in December. The first man bore the chamber-pot, swinging it nonchalantly as he walked. The other carried a wooden platter on which was the end of a loaf, a wedge of cheese and a mug of small beer. He put the platter on the windowsill, close to the elbow of the man in the brown suit. Both men were clearly used to his silent presence, for they did not give him a second glance.
'Is that a waxwork?' I asked in a voice that trembled.
'You won't see one of them at old Ma Salmon's.' The first man put the pot on the table. 'That's Mr Iversen, Senior, sir, at your service.'
They heaved me from the coffin, which was resting on a pair of trestles. They derived a simple and ribald pleasure from my fumbling attempt to use the pot. Fortunately, in a moment they were distracted by something they could see from the window.
'You wouldn't think she had such white skin,' said one of them.
'It only looks like that because of the cuts,' said the other, jingling a bunch of keys in his pocket. 'If you was nearer, you'd see the blemishes, you take my word for it.'
They continued discussing the subject in a detached and knowledgeable manner while I buttoned my flap as best I could with two hands tied. Their remarks were delivered with such an air of assurance that they might have been a pair of critics contemplating a portrait they did not much care for in the Exhibition Room at Somerset House. Still hobbled at the knees, I shuffled a little closer and found that, craning over their shoulders, I could look down into the yard.
There were two women below, one old, one young. The elder was tall, with a curved back like a bow. She was a grey shadow over the other, who was as small as a child, and whose gown and shift had been pulled down from her shoulders so she was naked from the waist upwards. I knew at once that she was not a child because I saw the swell of her hips and the curve of a breast. A moment later, I recognised her as Mary Ann, the dumb woman who lived in the kennel at the back of the yard.
'He did it this morning,' one of the men said. 'Wish I'd seen it.'
'Did she faint?'
'Once: but they threw water over her until she woke and then he began again.'
I found it hard to suppress a gasp of horror as I stared at the network of weals on that white back. Mary Ann winced and trembled as the other woman applied what I assumed was a healing ointment to her wounds. The back of her shift was a mass of blood, some rusty, some fresh.
'Stupid bitch,' said the first man. 'No better than an animal.'
He rattled the window, a casement, until one leaf of it flew open. He pushed me aside as though I had been a chair and picked up the chamber-pot. The bars were fixed horizontally and there was just space between them to allow the chamber-pot to pass through. He extended it to the full length of his arm and turned it upside down.
'Gardy-loo,' he cried, and he and his friend bellowed with laughter.
I was now too far back in the room to see down into the yard; and I was glad. I forced myself to pick at the bread and cheese, knowing that I needed nourishment, for I had eaten nothing since the sandwich Mr Harmwell had given me. The men stayed by the window, hooting with mirth. Gradually their laughter subsided, and I gathered the women had spoiled their sport by taking shelter in the kennel.
It had gradually been borne in upon me that both of them were very drunk. The smell of spirits filled the room, slicing through the unwholesome blend of other odours. Men such as these might always be a little drunk; but their behaviour now was clearly a long way from habitual tipsiness. One of them lowered his breeches, lifted his coat- tails and placed his posterior on the windowsill, no doubt hoping that the women below would be looking at him. But as one grew more boisterous, the other became quieter, and the colour gradually drained from his face, which was scarred with the pox. At length he murmured some excuse and bolted from the room. His colleague dragged me to the window, upsetting my beer in his hurry, and lashed my bound hands to one of the bars with a length of rope.
'Now don't run away, my pretty,' he said hoarsely. 'I got an errand to run, but I won't be a minute. You tell me if the ladies come back, eh?'
He clapped me across the shoulders in the most good-humoured manner imaginable and left the room, slamming the door behind him and turning the key in the lock. I waited for a moment. The yard below was empty. The door of the kennel was closed. Blank walls of smoke-stained brick reared like cliffs on every side. The man had spoken of an errand, and I thought it likely he had gone to fetch more gin, perhaps from the establishment across the road where I had waited yesterday evening.
I flexed my hands. The knots that held my wrists tied together were as firm as ever. But this latest knot, fastening the cord which passed between my wrists and round the bar of the window, was a more slapdash affair. For a start, the position was wrong, for the cord had not been drawn tight, allowing my hands at least a limited mobility. In the second place, the knot itself was far from impregnable. I contrived to curve one hand round until the fingers had a grip on part of the knot, while I tugged at another part with my teeth. With my ears straining to hear the sound of footsteps outside the door, I worried away at the coarse, tarred cord, which chafed my skin like glass-paper. The precious minutes slid away. At last the knot loosened; and a moment later I pulled my hands away from the bar.
My wrists were still bound together, so tightly that the flow of the blood was impeded, and held with a knot
