Will Thomas: Fatal Enquiry

The meeting lasted longer than the minute promised by Brother Andrew. I had grown bored with the bag and donned my jacket again before they finally returned. Normally they did not discuss a topic so sensitive that it required closeting themselves in McClain’s chambers. My employer patted my shoulder as he walked by.

“Practicing on the heavy bag is a good use of your time, lad,” he said.

I was no longer breathing heavily from the bag, which had come to a standstill behind me. How did he know that I had been practicing? It took me a moment to notice the small dents where my fists had been. Cyrus Barker has trained himself to observe everything in a room, either in connection with a murder or as a potential weapon to be used. He would not enter a room that had no sure exit, and he preferred to keep his back to the wall to avoid being attacked from behind. Would I ever learn the skills needed to be the kind of private enquiry agent he was, or was I fooling myself?

“Good-bye, Thomas,” Brother Andrew said. “Come by sometime when this one isn’t leading you about by the nose.”

“Yes, sir, I will,” I promised.

Barker and I walked to Commercial Road and eventually found a hansom cab heading west. The Guv didn’t say a word. In the distance, I heard the Bow Bells peal the twelfth hour. Technically, the rest of the day and the Sabbath were my own. All I had to do was get him to acknowledge the fact.

“Sir, it is noon.” It doesn’t pay to be subtle with Cyrus Barker.

“Is it?” he asked vaguely, as if half of his brain were engaged upon something else.

“Yes, sir, unless you’ve got something else you need me to do.”

“Could you do one thing for me? Go to the Public Records Office and copy down the passenger list for a ship called the SS Rangoon .”

“Would this be a ship arriving from Calcutta tomorrow?” I asked.

“It might.”

“How did you get the name, since Inspector Poole refused to give it to you?”

“Oh, come now, Thomas. You know all incoming vessels are listed in The Times. ”

“What are you planning to do with the information?”

“I intend to board the Rangoon, of course. What odd ideas you get into your head sometimes.”

“But he warned you off, and I have a police record, as you recall.”

“Legally, I am free to enter the vessel so long as I do not molest Nightwine in any way or keep Poole and his men from performing their duties. My defense will be iron-clad if I can find someone aboard ship with whom I am acquainted and will vouch for my attendance there.”

“Hence the passenger list.”

“Ah, light breaketh.”

I sighed. One does that a lot when working for Barker.

“I don’t believe Inspector Poole will split hairs the way you do. He’d be more inclined to tear a clump out of my scalp.”

“We’ll play the cards as they come, I suppose,” he said.

“I thought Baptists didn’t play cards.”

“Touché,” he replied. “I’ll see you back at our chambers within the hour, then.”

“Yes, sir.”

There is nothing more scalding than doing work beyond the time one is being paid, but then I am salaried, so technically all my time was his. It is a mercy that he allows me to sleep at night, but then I could recall on both hands times when I was awakened over some matter involving a case.

The sooner I shinned out to the Public Records Office, the sooner I’d get my freedom under way, so I let Barker take the cab back to Whitehall and took one of my own. The PRO is not the most entertaining place to spend a Saturday afternoon, but the queue moved swiftly and the information was readily accessible. There were close to eighty names on the list, and of course, Sebastian Nightwine was one of them. If I needed any proof that he was really coming, there it was in black-and-white.

Once I was back in the office, I set my notebook in front of Barker. He picked it up and began reading it carefully, name by name, rather than scanning it as I had supposed. What was he looking for? I wondered. Accomplices or past adversaries? He was at the bottom of the second page when he stopped and pointed a thick finger at a name there.

“Sir Alan Garrick,” he said. “He’ll do, I think. I did some work for him a few years ago involving a stolen racehorse. He’s also a Mason. He should get me close enough to Nightwine.”

“Close enough to do what, precisely?”

“To inform him that we are aware he is in town. That shall be enough for now.”

And so my time had come. Having ascertained that Barker had no real plans beyond working in his garden and ruminating about Nightwine, I was free to do all the things I had planned to do. I went book shopping in Charing Cross, where I found a complete set of the works of George Meredith for one pound ten, and then took a prolonged stroll through Trafalgar Square in the vain hope that beautiful strangers might be in need of directions. Alas, the fox-eyed vision was nowhere to be found, and so I took Juno out for her gallop in Battersea Park, which we both enjoyed very much.

Saturday evenings, I often ended up at the Barbados Coffee House off Cornhill Street, in St. Michael’s Alley, where the bean was first imported to London and Englishmen first tasted the West India Company’s viable alternative to tea. There I was one of a coterie of assorted wags and geniuses who called themselves the Wanderers of Kilburn, although, come to think of it, no one recalls why. The leader of our group was my closest friend, Israel Zangwill. Generally, we spend the evening holding court, drinking Voltairean amounts of coffee, arguing about whatever happened to be in the newspaper, and assuring each other that eventually our abilities would be noted by those in authority and the reins of government (or literature, or philosophy, et cetera) would eventually be placed in our capable hands.

“What is Mr. Barker up to these days?” Israel asked. He is always interested in the doings of my employer, though we have an agreement that he, a reporter for The Jewish Chronicle, will not publish anything I tell him without asking me first.

“He’s been out of sorts all day. An old adversary of his is coming to town. Have I ever mentioned Sebastian Nightwine?”

“No, but I’ve heard the name. You’re sure he’s returning? It isn’t just a rumor?”

“I’ve seen it in print with my own eyes. Why?”

“As I recall, he left London owing a lot of money to the Jewish moneylenders. Does Mr. Barker intend to confront the fellow?”

“He’s been warned off by Scotland Yard, but that’s never stopped him before.”

“Why should Scotland Yard protect a gonif like Nightwine? This I would very much like to know.”

“You and me both,” I responded. Since knowing Israel, my English has been permanently riddled with Jewish phrases.

“Should I tell them?”

“Hold off, if you would, until I speak to Barker.”

Zangwill shrugged his bony shoulders. “They have waited this long. Another day or two shouldn’t matter. I would like to tell them myself, if possible. It never hurts to have bankers looking favorably upon you.”

A few hours later, I went home and climbed the stairs to my employer’s aerie at the top of the house. He was in his silk Asian dressing gown, reading a biography of Bunyan. Beside his chair was a small table containing an earthenware teapot with a bamboo handle and some small matching cups. Only in Barker could such disparate subjects as Chinese pottery and the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, the solidly English Baptist John Bunyan, find their nexus.

“Was your time profitable?” he asked, laying the book in his lap.