however, when I told him where I was going.
“I cannot pretend I like this plan, Tom,” he said, “though of course it is no concern of mine. But the children will miss you sorely on Saturday. Is Mr Bransby happy to see you go?”
“He is disposed to consider that on the whole the advantages outweigh the drawbacks.”
Rowsell nodded. “There are financial considerations, no doubt, and he would be fully alive to their importance. How long do you stay?”
As I was answering him, there was a knock at the door and Atkins ushered in the boy with the tray. The clerk glanced at me with tiny eyes like specks of mud and averted his round, pale face. Rowsell sat in silence until we were alone. I knew him well enough to apprehend that he was not easy in his mind. I thought his solicitude as misplaced as Dansey’s.
He poured the coffee and handed me a cup. “You remember we were discussing Mr Carswall and Mr Frant’s conduct in the late war with America?”
“Why, yes, sir.”
“I was in the City the other day and I heard another story about Wavenhoe’s that I did not altogether like. In fairness, it may be no more than a story. But it came from more than one source, so I suspect there may be some truth in it.” He tasted his coffee and screwed up his face. “It concerns what precipitated this entire ugly affair – the collapse of the bank, that is, the discovery of Mr Frant’s criminal dealings and his eventual murder. It appears that the bank was liable for certain bills, amounting together to a considerable sum, that became due at the end of October. Most of them concerned building speculations in which the bank had invested.”
I nodded, for Miss Carswall had told me something of this when she waylaid me in Stoke Newington. “There was no money to pay them?”
“That was not in itself the difficulty. In the normal run of things, Frant could quite reasonably expect to negotiate extensions to the terms of the bills. However, it appears that a few weeks before the debts became due, a number of the bills changed hands. They were purchased by a commercial house which often acts as a go-between in transactions where the principal does not wish to have his name known. At the end of the month, these bills were presented for payment, and Frant found he could not negotiate extensions to any of them.”
“So you believe that an enemy of Mr Frant’s may have contrived his ruin?”
“Not contrived, not exactly – that’s putting it too strong. Frant’s corrupt dealings made the bank’s eventual downfall inevitable. No, if true, what this circumstance suggests to me is that the collapse of the bank may have been brought forward, perhaps by several weeks, or even months.”
Rowsell paused to pour us more coffee.
“What would be the advantage in that?” I asked.
“At this point we cannot tell. But in order to put into effect such a scheme, a man would need to have the command of considerable wealth, and also to regard Mr Frant with inveterate malignancy. Why else would one buy control of the debts of a failing concern? On the face of it, the scheme’s success would involve its perpetrator in considerable financial loss. Since Wavenhoe’s closed its doors, those bills are hardly worth the paper they are written on.”
“Aye,” I said. “I see what you are driving at, sir.”
“Not what,” Mr Rowsell said, spreading out his arms so vigorously that a few drops of coffee flew out of his cup and splattered in an arc of black spots on the floor. “Who.”
“Oh. You – you cannot mean Mr Carswall?”
Demure as a maiden, he looked at me over the brim of the tiny cup. His big pink face was empty of guile, empty of all emotions except a generalised benevolence and a mild curiosity.
In the freezing, fog-bound evening, Edgar and I boarded the Gloucester Mail. I was grateful that Mr Allan had indulged us in the luxury of inside seats. As we inched our way down Piccadilly, I stared at the throngs of people on the pavement, their faces lit by the unhealthy glare of the street lights. Edgar sat very still, his eyes huge in his face, watching and listening, yet deaf to my attempts at conversation; he was like one under an enchantment.
Slowly we picked up speed. By and by the motion and the monotony set the boy’s head nodding to and fro on his shoulders, bouncing between me and a grocer’s wife, between sleep and wakefulness. One by one, our fellow passengers followed his example. I wished I might do the same. A journey is full of excitement when one leaves or arrives, but the intervening period is commonly characterised by discomfort and boredom.
The coach whirled through the darkness. A dwarfish clergyman snored on the seat opposite mine. The windows were tightly closed, at the request of the grocer’s wife, who slumbered steadily, rousing herself when she heard the screech of the horn at turnpike gates and recruiting her strength from a bottle in her reticule. The interior of the coach filled with the fumes of Jamaica rum and water. The clergyman had a nightmare; his limbs twitched helplessly; and his tiny feet pushed their way out of the blanket that covered him and kicked my shins.
The only moments of interest came as we clattered through the silent country towns along the road. I raised the blind, rubbed the glass and looked out at empty streets. Here and there a light would burn in an upper window. There is something mysterious about a sleeping town; like a ship abandoned by its crew, it becomes an entirely different entity when bereft of human purpose and human animation.
Then the coach would swing under an archway into the inn yard, and suddenly all would be light and bustle, the shouting of ostlers and tap-boys, the changing of horses, passengers climbing down and climbing up, voices rising and falling with jokes, curses, advice and farewells. So perverse is the human mind that within seconds of entering an inn yard I would begin to hunger for the darkness and the solitude of the countryside.
Once the horses were changed, we were on our way, mile after mile. All the inside passengers were going to Gloucester or further still to Hereford or Carmarthen. At some point in the dark hours before dawn I fell into a deep slumber, from which I was rudely awakened, along with the other passengers, when the coachman misjudged the turn into an inn yard and jarred the nearside rear wheel against the jamb of the arch.
After that I did not go back to sleep. The night slowly gave way to the long grey twilight of a winter dawn. One by one, my travelling companions woke to face the day. All the excitement of the previous evening had gone. We were unwashed, unshaven, unfed and unrested. Our bodies ached from the hardness of the seats.
We reached Gloucester before midday and were set down with our luggage at the Bell Inn in Southgate-street. Mr Carswall’s carriage had already arrived. The horses were baiting and the groom was anxious to leave. We snatched a late breakfast in the coffee room. Afterwards I risked the groom’s displeasure and found a barber to shave me. Curiosity moved me as much as vanity; barbers know everything.
“By the way,” I said as the man was stropping his razor, “I believe the late Mr Wavenhoe owned property in this city.”
“Wavenhoe? Oh yes, sir. Though the old gentleman lived in London mostly. He died last month.”
I jingled the coins in my pocket. “What was the property?”
“Oxbody-lane,
