The Meaning of Night

items: miniatures from the Tudor period (a Hilliard?), little painted boxes of the highest-quality workmanship, Chinese ivory carvings of the greatest delicacy, Delftware, Bohemian goblets; a dazzling miscellany of objects linked only by the refinement of taste – and sufficiency of income – that had assembled them. On the walls, carefully mounted and displayed, were equally startling indications of the unexpected character of Fordyce Jukes’s interests. Works by Altdorfer, Durer, Hollar, and Baldung. Books, too, which drew my especial attention. I gazed in wonderment at the first edition of Thomas Netter’s Sacramentalia (folio, Paris, Francois Regnault, 1523),^* which I had long wished to own, and at other sweetly choice items that stood arranged in glowing ranks in another locked cabinet beside the desk.

My amazement was complete. That such a man as Jukes could have assembled this collection of rarities, beneath my very nose, as it were, seemed inconceivable. How had he come by it all? Where had he acquired the taste and knowledge? And where the money to dispose on these treasures?

I began to consider the idea that blackmail and extortion might be Jukes’s real trade, his secret profession, slyly exercised away from the workaday light of his duties at Tredgolds, though with a success that I could hardly credit. Taste and knowledge can be acquired; money, if it be not naturally to hand, demands other skills to amass. Perhaps his talent, for which his employment at Tredgolds would place him in a helpful position, was to extort money from clients of the firm who had something to hide from the world at large.

It seemed fanciful at first, but the more I thought on it, the more it seemed to constitute a sort of possibility, an explanation for what I had found in this treasure cave that had lain, unremarked, for so long beneath my feet. Was I, then, merely the most recent of his victims? Did he suppose that I had the means to satisfy his demands, and so enable him to acquire one more rare and beautiful item for his walls and cabinets? But I would be no victim of Fordyce Jukes’s, or of any man’s. From these thoughts, I recalled myself to my present task and turned towards the desk, which, like mine three floors above, stood before the window looking out into the street.

The polished surface bore nothing except a fine silver inkstand. The drawers were fast locked. I looked about me. Another locked cupboard in the corner. No papers. No note-books. Nothing to show me the character of Jukes’s hand for comparison with the notes Bella and I had received. Another sign, I thought, that my renewed suspicions were well founded. A man who had acquired so much through extortion would not be so careless as to leave such evidence easily open to view.

Then, on a small side table by the fireplace, I noticed an open book. Approaching nearer, I saw that it was an octavo Bible of the seventeenth century, though of no especial beauty or rarity. The title-words of the opened recto met my astonished gaze: ‘The Book of the Prophet EZEKIEL.’

I had found no evidence of the creature’s handwriting, but this seemed to provide the proof I needed that Jukes was the blackmailer.

I turned to leave, standing at the half-open door for a moment to see whether he was returning; but the street was clear, so I stepped out, and headed down towards Temple Pier.

^*[‘He calls’. The significance of the title of this section is not altogether clear. Ed.]

^*[The line is from In Memoriam (1850), cxx: ‘Let him, the wiser man who springs / Hereafter, up from childhood shape / His action like the greater ape, / But I was born to other things’. Ed.]

^*[Thomas Netter (c.1375–1430), born in Saffron Walden in Essex (thus known in religion as Thomas Waldensis), was a Carmelite theologian and controversialist, and confessor to Henry V. He played a prominent part in the prosecution of Wycliffites and Lollards. The Sacramentalia is the third volume of the author’s Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei ecclesiae catholicae, a complete apologia of Catholic dogma and ritual intended to counter the attacks of Wycliff and others. On the face of it, it is a strange work for the narrator to covet. Ed.]

7

In dubio^*

I found Le Grice waiting for me, lounging against a wall, cheroot in mouth, in the feeble but welcome sun.

‘God damn you, G,’ he cursed, good-humouredly, as I approached. ‘Been waitin’ for you for fifteen minutes or more. Where the devil have you been? The tide will be out before we get off.’

We pulled the skiff down to the water, stowed our coats in the stern, rolled up our sleeves, and pushed off into the inky-brown water.

Behind us were the myriad masts of the Docks, London Bridge, dense with its morning traffic, and the looming dome of St Paul’s; before us, the distant line of Waterloo Bridge, and the slow curve of the broad stream down towards Hungerford Market. All around were vessels of every type and size, plying up and down, and on each bank the city bristled in silhouette against the pearly-grey light, brushed over with the always present haze that the metropolis exuded. Past vistas of dark lanes opening out towards the river’s edge we went, past the crazy lines of chimney pots and jagged tenements etched against the sky, and the nobler outlines of spires and battlements, past watermen’s stairs and landing stages, warehouses and gardens. All about us gulls wheeled and circled, their raucous cries mingling with the river sounds of waves slapping against moored hulls, the flap of sails and pennants, the distant toot of a steam-tug.

We rowed on steadily, saying nothing, each enjoying the sensation of pulling against the mighty stream, glad to be out on the open water – even foul Thames water on a November day. For my part, I felt sweet release from the many nights that I had spent staring at the skylight above my bed. In front of me, the muscles of Le Grice’s great back wrenched and stretched the oyster-coloured silk of his waistcoat almost to bursting, and for a moment my mind started back to my former dream of rowing down a hot summer river behind the muffled form of Lucas Trendle. But the image passed, and I pulled on.

Just below Essex Wharf, a woman dressed in tattered and filthy clothes, a hamper suspended by her side from a leather strap about her shoulders, the remnant of a ragged bonnet on her head, was prodding and poking along the shore, serenely seeking objects of value in the ooze and foetid slime of the river’s margin. She looked up and, ankle-deep in the mud, stood watching us, her hand shielding her eyes against the strengthening sun, as we rowed past.

After tying up below Hungerford Stairs, I reached into the stern to retrieve our coats. On doing so I noticed, some way behind us, a single figure in a small rowing boat, oars down in the water. He had clearly been proceeding upstream on a similar course to ours, but now, like us, he had come to a rest, though he remained some distance out from the shore.

‘Did you not see him?’ asked Le Grice, twisting his great neck back towards me and looking over at the solitary figure. ‘He joined us soon after we saw the woman at Essex Wharf. Friend of yours?’

No friend of mine, I thought. He presented a threatening silhouette, his tall hat standing up starkly black against the light that was now breaking westwards down the channel of the river.