that I found impossible to undo with my teeth. My legs were still tied at the knees, with the knot beyond my reach at the back. I was able to move only with painful slowness, shuffling and hopping with noisy inefficiency across the floor, an inch or two at a time.
It took me an age to reach the door. I tried the handle and confirmed it was locked. I bent my head down to the keyhole and saw that my captor had withdrawn the key so there was no possibility of my pushing it through the door and somehow retrieving it from the floor of the landing. It was a stout door, too, reinforced with iron, which made me wonder whether Iversen used it as his strong-room.
I hobbled over to the window and looked out. Mary Ann had emerged from the kennel and was now huddled in the doorway with a smouldering clay pipe in her hand. The casement was still slightly ajar. I heard footsteps immediately below, which meant I dared not call out to her.
I glanced about me. There was no fireplace in the room. Apart from the two chairs, the trestles, the coffin and a large iron-bound chest, there was no furniture. My eyes came at last to the body of Mr Iversen, Senior. He sat with his legs slightly apart, his yellow, sunken face towards the window, and his gloved hands resting on his thighs. The fabric of his coat was riddled with moth-holes and both the man and his coat were covered with a fine, feathery powdering of dust. The coat was undone, revealing the waistcoat beneath. My eyes lingered on the old man's left- hand waistcoat pocket. The stub of a pencil protruded from it.
I eased the pencil gently from the pocket. There was still a point on it, albeit a blunt one. I looked wildly round the room for something to write on. My eyes returned at last to the corpse. I touched a corner of his hat gently with my finger. It did not move. I took a grip with both hands and lifted it, hoping I might find a label attached to the band. The wig rose a few inches and then parted company with the hat and fell back on to the bald skull, sending up a puff of dust. The movement dislodged a few yellow flakes which drifted down to Mr Iversen Senior's shoulders.
I glanced inside the hat and discovered that it had been wedged on to the head with scraps of paper. All were brittle, some had crumbled, but a few were still whole. I picked out the largest fragment and gently unfolded it. It was a receipted bill, attesting to the fact that Francis Corker, a butcher, had received the sum of seventeen shillings and three pence three farthings from Mr Adolphus Iversen on the 9th of June 1807. The other side of the receipt was blank.
I smoothed out the paper on the windowsill, holding down one corner with the platter and most of one side with what was left of the cheese. I would not have believed it possible to write with one's hands tied, but desperation is a fine teacher. Letter by letter, word by word, I scrawled this message:
I pushed the window as wide as it would go. Mary Ann still sat smoking, her face turned away from the house. I heard voices below, though whether from the yard near the house or through an open window or door I could not tell; in any case, I dared not call out to attract her attention. I tried waving my bound arms from side to side, standing as close as I could to the window, in the hope that the movement would register at the edge of her vision. Then, to my horror, I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and approaching along the landing.
I had nothing to lose. I pushed my arms through the bars and let the note flutter from my fingers. As I did so, Mary Ann turned her head, perhaps attracted by a burst of laughter or a sudden movement from the door to the back kitchen. As she turned, she saw me and her eyes widened. The paper fluttered from my fingers and her eyes followed its fall.
The key turned in the lock. The door burst open. The man who had left me tied to the window shouldered his way into the room. His bloodshot eyes roved swiftly over the room, taking in the changes that had occurred since his departure. He lurched across the floor and gave me a backhanded blow that sent me sprawling across the coffin.
'Get back in there, you God-damned swab.' The words were harsh but he spoke in a whisper, as if he were afraid of being overheard, that his dereliction of duty might be discovered. 'In there, I say.'
He bent down and manhandled me back into the coffin, cramming me in so I lay awkwardly on my side. He pushed my head down, catching my nose on the wood, and the blood began to flow. I heard him scurrying around the room in his heavy boots. I raised myself on an elbow. He restored the wig and the hat on to the corpse's head, sending up another cloud of dust as he did so. He did not notice the pencil. He looked out of the window, but saw nothing there to cause him anxiety.
As he turned away, however, he knocked against the outstretched left leg of the corpse. The blow dislodged the dead man's gloved hand from his thigh. There was an audible crackling sound, like tearing cloth. It was not much of a movement, but enough for the hand to hang down below the seat of the chair.
One would expect an embalmed body to be rigid. It was only some time later that I realised the significance of the movement, of the fact that it was possible when so little force had been brought to bear. The rigidity of the limb in question had already been broken. The first time, it had not been an accident.
At first, my captor did not realise what he had done. He felt the blow, of course, and turned back, looking askance at Mr Iversen, Senior as though he suspected the old man of hitting him.
The glove was slipping downwards. It was clearly much larger than the hand – perhaps the latter had shrunk – and it fell to the ground, leaving the hand beneath exposed. I saw yellowing, waxy skin, long nails, and spots of what looked like ink on the fingers. In some corner of my mind, some corner that remained remote from my present anxieties, I knew I had observed something very similar to that hand before. Then, my vision clearing, I saw with the kind of clarity which is almost like a physical pain that the top joints of the forefinger were missing. All at once I remembered the tavern in Charlotte-street, and the contents of Mr Poe's satchel on the scrubbed table top, and the maid's gasp of shock.
A rare specimen of
78
That night the men who had brought me to Queen-street re-enacted the grim charade of the morning, this time under the supervision of Mr Iversen. His presence miraculously sobered them. As they were about to nail the lid, he waved them away from the coffin, and peered down at me.
'Pray do not disturb yourself,' he said. 'It is only for an hour or so. Try to rest, eh? To sleep, Mr Shield: perchance to dream, eh?'
He gave a signal, and the men nailed the coffin lid, the hammer blows pounding through me like artillery fire. They took me down the stairs and loaded the coffin on to the conveyance, presumably the one that had brought me here, waiting in the street. We drove away, moving much more quickly at this time of night, despite the darkness. At first I heard the noise of the streets, albeit very faintly, and once I distinguished the cry of a watchman calling the hour. Gradually these sounds died away, and we picked up speed.
We had two horses, I thought, and to judge by the smoothness of the ride we were travelling on a turnpike road. This suggested they were taking me either north or west because to go east or south would have meant a longer, slower journey through the streets. Sometimes the rumbling of wagons penetrated my wooden prison, and I guessed they formed part of the night-time caravans bringing food and fuel into the ever-hungry belly of the metropolis.
That journey was a form of death, a foretaste of hell. My wrists and knees were still bound; and I had been gagged again and wedged in place with my hat and boots. To be deprived of sight, of movement, of the power of action, even of grounds for hope – all this is to be reduced to a state that is very nearly that of non-existence. As I jolted along in that coffin there were times when I would have given anything, even Sophie, even my own life, to be transformed into an inanimate object like a sack of potatoes or a heap of rocks, to be incapable of feeling and fearing.
My discomfort grew worse when we left the turnpike road and jounced along rutted lanes with many sharp
