The Luminaries

‘The second shot was mine,’ Gascoigne said, speaking with ill-concealed annoyance; he did not like to be detained against his will. ‘I fired the piece experimentally, once I could see that the first shot had fouled.’

‘What was the shouting on account of?’ asked the hotelier.

‘That situation is now resolved.’

‘Jo Pritchard—laying into her?’

‘Sounded like that from here,’ said the valet.

Gascoigne shot the valet a poisonous look, and then turned back to Clinch. ‘There was no violence done to the whore,’ he said. ‘She is perfectly sound, and the situation is now resolved, as I have already told you.’

Clinch narrowed his eyes. ‘Strange how many guns go off while being cleaned,’ he said. ‘Strange how many whores get it into their heads to clean their guns, when there’s gentlemen about. Strange how many times that’s happened, in my hotel.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t offer an opinion on that subject,’ Gascoigne said.

‘I think you can,’ said Edgar Clinch. He planted his feet a little wider apart, and folded his arms across his chest.

Gascoigne sighed. He was in no mood for bullish displays of proprietorship.

‘What happened?’ Clinch said. ‘Did something happen to Anna?’

‘I suggest you ask her yourself,’ Gascoigne said, ‘and save us both some time. You can do that very easily, you know: she’s right upstairs.’

‘I don’t appreciate being made a fool in my own hotel.’

‘I wasn’t aware that I was making you a fool.’

Clinch’s moustache twitched dangerously. ‘What’s your quarrel?’

‘I’m not sure that I have one,’ said Gascoigne. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Pritchard.’ He spat out the name.

‘You needn’t bring that to me,’ Gascoigne said. ‘Pritchard’s not my man.’ He felt trapped. It was useless pretending to reason with a man whose mind was already fixed, and Edgar Clinch, by the looks of things, was spoiling for a fight.

‘That’s a true fact,’ put in the valet, coming to Gascoigne’s rescue. He had also observed that his employer was out of sorts. The hotelier’s face was very red, and his trouser leg was twitching, as though he were bouncing his weight up and down upon his heel—a sure sign that he was angry. The valet explained, in soothing tones, that Gascoigne had only interrupted the argument between Pritchard and Anna; he had not been present for its origin.

Clinch did not cut a terribly intimidating figure, even when poised in fighting stance, as he currently was: he seemed fretful rather than fearsome. His anger, though palpable, seemed to render him somehow powerless. He was occupied by his emotion; he was its servant, not its liege. Watching him, Gascoigne was put more in mind of a child preparing for a tantrum than a fighter preparing for a brawl—though of course the former was no less dangerous, when the provocation was the same. Clinch was still blocking the door. It was clear that he would not be rational—but perhaps, Gascoigne thought, he could be calmed.

‘What has Pritchard done to you, Mr. Clinch?’ he said—thinking that if he gave the man a chance to speak, his anger might run its course, and he might calm himself that way.

Clinch’s reply was strangled and inarticulate. ‘To Anna!’ he cried. ‘Feeds her the very drug that’s killing her—sells it!’

This was hardly explanation enough: there must be more. To coax him, Gascoigne said, lightly, ‘Yes—but when a man’s a drunk, do you blame the publican?’

Clinch ignored this piece of rhetoric. ‘Joseph Pritchard,’ he said. ‘He’d feed it to her if he could, like a babe at suck; he’d do that. You agree with me, Mr. Gascoigne.’

‘Ah—you know me!’ said Gascoigne, in a tone of relief, and then, ‘I do?’

‘Your sermon in yesterday’s Times. A d—n fine sentiment, by the bye; a d—n fine piece,’ said Clinch. (Paying a compliment appeared to soothe him—but then his features darkened again.) ‘He might have done well to read it. Do you know where he gets it from? That filthy muck? The resin? Do you know? Francis Carver, that’s who!’

Gascoigne shrugged; the name meant nothing to him.

‘Francis bloody Carver, who kicked her—kicked her, beat her—and it was his baby! His baby in her belly! Killed his own spawn!’

Clinch was almost shouting—and Gascoigne was suddenly very interested. ‘What’s that you’re saying?’ he said, stepping forward. Anna had confided to him that her unborn baby had been killed by its own father—and now it appeared that this same man was connected to the opium by which she herself had nearly perished!

But Clinch had rounded on his valet. ‘You,’ he said. ‘If Pritchard comes by again, and I’m not here, it’s you I’m counting on to turn him back. Do you hear me?’

He was very upset.

‘Who is Francis Carver?’ said Gascoigne.

Clinch hawked and spat on the floor. ‘Piece of filth,’ he said. ‘Piece of murderous filth. Jo Pritchard— he’s just a reprobate. Carver—he’s the devil himself; he’s the one.’

‘They are friends?’

‘Not friends,’ said Clinch. ‘Not friends.’ He jabbed his finger at the valet. ‘Did you hear me? If Jo Pritchard sets foot on that staircase—the bottom stair—you’re out on your own!’

Evidently the hotelier no longer regarded Gascoigne as a threat—for he moved from the doorway, snatching his hat from his head; Gascoigne was now free to exit, as he pleased. He did not move, however; instead he waited for the hotelier to elaborate, which, after slicking his hair back with the palm of his hand, and hanging his hat upon the hatstand, he did.

‘Francis Carver’s a trafficker,’ he said. ‘Godspeed—that’s his ship; you might have seen her at anchor. A barque—three-masted.’

‘What’s his connexion to Pritchard?’

‘Opium, of course!’ said Edgar Clinch, with impatience. He evidently did not take well to being questioned; he frowned anew at Gascoigne, and it seemed that a new wave of suspicion came over him. ‘What were you doing in Anna’s room?’

Gascoigne said, in a tone of polite surprise, ‘I was not aware that Anna Wetherell is in your employ, Mr. Clinch.’

‘She’s in my care,’ said Clinch. He slicked back his hair a second time. ‘She lodges here—it’s part of the arrangement—and I have a right to know her business, if it happens on my province, and there are pistols involved. You can go: you’ve got ten minutes’—this last to the valet, who scuttled off to the dining room, to take his lunch.

Gascoigne took hold of his lapels. ‘I suppose you think she’s lucky, living here, with you to watch over her,’ he said.

‘You’re wrong,’ said Clinch. ‘I don’t think that.’

Gascoigne paused, surprised. Then he said, delicately, ‘Do you care for many girls like her?’

‘Only three right now,’ Clinch said. ‘Dick—he’s got an eye for them. Only the class acts—and he doesn’t drop his standard; he holds to it. You want a shilling whore, you go down to Clap Alley, and see what you catch. There’s no spending your loose change with him. It’s pounds or nothing. Dick, he put you on to Anna?’

This must be Dick Mannering, Anna Wetherell’s employer. Gascoigne made a vague murmur instead of answering. He did not care to narrate the story of how he and Anna had come to meet.

‘Well, you ought to go to him, if you want a poke at one of the others,’ Clinch went on. ‘Kate, the plump one; Sal, with the curly hair; Lizzie, with the freckles. It’s no use asking me. I don’t do all of that—the bookings and whatnot. They just sleep here.’ He saw that his choice of verb had provoked some disbelief in the other, and so he added, ‘Sleep is what I mean, you know: I wasn’t mincing. I can’t have night-callers. I’d lose my licence. You want the whole night, you take it on your own head—in your own room.’

‘This is a fine establishment,’ said Gascoigne politely, with a sweep of his hand.