Would Jukes risk a direct approach in such a place? Would he take me quietly aside, and put some proposal to me for the maintenance of his silence? I could not feel in the least physically threatened by him – a stunted, weaselly fellow – and was, in any case, well prepared for that eventuality. I would take the initiative, and suggest a civilized discussion of the matter, gentleman to gentleman. He would be appreciative of my consideration; no need for unpleasantness, no need at all. Simply a little matter of business. A stroll, perhaps, towards the Chapel, and a further meeting arranged – at some mutually convenient place and time in Town – in order to conclude matters. Then I would secure my advantage, complete and final.
Thus I imagined as I continued to stroll slowly up and down the path, as if in sober contemplation of my surroundings. I took out my watch. A few moments later the church clock tolled three.
I turned back towards the gates to see a hearse pulled by four horses – ostrich-plumed and richly caparisoned – enter the grounds, followed by two mourning coaches, and a number of smaller carriages swathed in rich black velvet. I counted four mutes in their gowns, and a little group of perhaps half a dozen pages. A moderately expensive affair, I reflected, in spite of Mr Trendle’s plain theology.
A small knot of villagers, not of the family party, followed the procession a little way behind. I scanned this group closely, moving nearer, and as quickly as I dared, to try to make out my man.
The cortege entered through one of the arches of the Chapel; the coffin was removed by the bearers and taken inside; the mourners descended and followed the doleful burden.
I had stationed myself a short distance off. His mother – there – for sure; a slight figure holding for support the arm of a tall younger gentleman, perhaps his brother. I did not detect a wife or children, for which I was grateful. But the sight of his poor mother unnerved me momentarily, as I saw again in memory the rictus smile that her son had given me as I had withdrawn the knife from his neck.
As the members of the family party took their places in the Chapel, I surveyed the accompanying group for a second time. Jukes must surely be amongst them, though his distinctive squat figure was not apparent to me. Then the thought struck me that he might have sent an agent; unlikely as it seemed, I swept my eye once more over the onlookers, and moved closer, until I became a part of the little crowd.
‘Were you acquainted with Mr Trendle, sir?’
The plaintive enquirer was a little person of some rotundity, who gazed up at me through pale grey-green eyes from behind a pair of gold spectacles.
‘Slightly, ma’am,’ I replied.
My companion shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘Such a wonderful man – wonderful. So good and generous, so adoring of his mamma. You know Mrs Trendle, I dare say?’
‘Slightly.’
‘But perhaps not her late husband?’
‘No, indeed.’
I did not wish to keep up the conversation, but she came back again.
‘You are of the Chapel, perhaps?’
I replied that I had known the deceased only through business.
‘Ah, business. I do not understand business. But Mr Trendle did. Such a clever man! What the dear people in Africa will do without him, I cannot think.’
She continued her lament for some time, expounding in particular, with a curious kind of wistful relish, upon the wickedness and certain damnation of the person who had thus deprived the Africans of their great champion.
Eventually, unencouraged by any response from me, she smiled faintly and waddled away, her fluttering mourning clothes making her seem like a great aggregated ball of soot that had escaped from the prison of fog that still lay in a dark looming bar across the murmuring city at our back, pressing down on the poor souls beneath like the weight of sin itself.
No sign. Nothing. I moved about the crowd, anxious to be part of it, but wary of any individual contact. When would he come?
In due course, the Chapel bell tolled out, and the coffin, followed by the mourners and their attendants, was carried back out to the awaiting hearse. Slowly, the procession wound its way to the place that had been prepared.
The ceremony of interment was duly performed by an elderly white-haired clergyman, accompanied by the usual displays of grief. I found myself unwillingly regarding the coffin as it was lowered gently into the receiving earth, the last mortal home of the unfortunate Lucas Trendle, late of the Bank of England. For I had put him there, and for nothing he had done to me.
The party began to disperse. I looked once more at his mother, and at the gentleman I had seen accompanying her earlier. From beneath the rim of his hat peeked a narrow curtain of red hair.
Eventually, I was left alone at the graveside with the diggers and their assistants. Of Fordyce Jukes there was not a trace.
I waited for nearly an hour, and then made my way back towards the Egyptian portals, with darkness coming on. The gatekeeper tipped his hat as he let me through a smaller side entrance. I took a deep breath. The wretched Jukes had played me for a fool, sending me all the way out here as a prank, for which he would pay dearly when the moment of reckoning came.
But then, just as I was passing beneath the deeply shadowed arch into the outer world, I felt a tap on my shoulder as a person – a man – pushed past me. I had instinctively swung to the left, towards the shoulder on which I had received the tap; but he had gone to the right, quickly becoming absorbed in a remaining group of mourners standing just outside the gates, and disappearing into the deepening gloom.
It had not been Jukes. He was taller, broader, quick on his feet.
I returned to Temple-street, dejected and confused. As I passed through the stair-case entrance, the door of the ground-floor chamber opened.
