Will Thomas: Fatal Enquiry

“Something like that.”

“Just sit down, then. We need to talk.”

With a good deal of reluctance, I sat. Normally I prefer bars or glass between myself and a viper. On the other hand, there was a kind of exhilaration at being this close to a man Barker considered his nemesis.

“Well? You want to talk? Let’s talk.”

“I’m making a fresh start,” he said. “I’m tired of my old ways and trying to rehabilitate myself. I’ve got several friends willing to overlook my past and to help me put my best foot forward. I could convince a lot of people to give me a second chance, but not your employer. Never him. There’s been too much water over that bridge.”

“Why the change of heart?”

“I’m not getting any younger, and I don’t intend to lead a hand-to-mouth existence for the rest of my life. I’ve got plans.”

“Plans involving diplomatic status.”

“As usual, I see Cyrus is well informed. Yes, plans that would go a good deal more smoothly if he were not trailing me about trying to stop them. He gets excitable, you see. Once he gets an idea in his head, there’s no letting up on his part.”

“You mean ideas such as you’re a professional criminal?”

Nightwine was not angered by my words, but he waved a finger in my face.

“Now, now, Mr. Llewelyn. Be careful. You’re awfully close to slander and I have an excellent solicitor. All you have is hearsay and much of it based upon the word of a man who is permanently prejudiced against me.”

“And why shouldn’t he be?” I demanded.

“I know you highly regard your employer, but the truth is he has carried the insane notion in his head for twenty years that I killed his brother.”

My jaw must have dropped. Certainly I had no rejoinder at hand for that remark. Barker had not even intimated in the two years I had known him that he had a brother.

“I can see he hasn’t told you,” Nightwine went on. “He’s always been tight-lipped. I suppose he hasn’t mentioned we were in the army together, either, or that we were the closest of friends. Oh, dear, he has been holding out on you, hasn’t he? He really doesn’t trust anyone, your boss.”

“You’re lying,” I told him, but even as I said it, I realized I was on shaky ground.

After all, I’d just caught the Guv hiding something from me. What kind of a working relationship can one have with a man who carries so many secrets?

“Am I? Ask him how we met, then. The one thing I can say in Cyrus’s favor is that he never lies.”

At this point a waiter interrupted us. Nightwine drank only water and I nothing so far, and they needed the table for paying customers. I ordered coffee. If Nightwine poisoned it, perhaps I wouldn’t have to go back and confront my employer.

“No bread?” Nightwine asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Not at present, thank you. Do you have a message you want me to give him when I return, or is the fact that I’ve been waylaid here these few minutes talking with you enough of a threat?”

“Bravo. You really are coming along. I must admit I wasn’t impressed at our first meeting.”

“I’d known Mr. Barker all of about forty-eight hours then. The message?”

“Tell him we should meet. Let bygones be bygones, shake hands, and settle our differences and all that. He can name the place. I’m staying at the Army Navy Club. You see? I’m all aboveboard. Unlike him, I have no secrets.”

“I’m not the one you have to convince.”

The coffee arrived. I pulled it away from his reach and drained it in one pull, though it scalded my tongue. Bravado, I believe the Italians call it. I threw some coins onto the table.

“I must get back,” I said, standing.

“He’s got you working on the Sabbath? You know, you really need to put your foot down or he’ll take all your time.”

“When I want advice, I’ll ask my father.”

“Fair enough, then. I’ll be waiting for his decision. What’s it to be, do you think? Olive branches or arrows?”

“I’d say, keep the quiver handy.”

I walked away then, leaving him alone at the table, proceeding calmly and sedately until I reached Whitehall, where I made a mad dash to Craig’s Court and threw open the door. Barker’s chamber was full of pipe smoke but no visitor.

“Nightwine,” I cried, out of breath, pointing behind me. He came around the desk and we both ran to the Northumberland Arms. Of course, the table was empty. Without a word, Barker turned and surveyed the streets in every direction, searching for his adversary but not finding him.

“Tell me everything,” he ordered.

You first, I said to myself.

I recounted every word Nightwine had said; every nuance and inflection, as we made our way back to our chambers. My employer walked with his hands clasped behind his back and his head sunken on his breast. I was determined to get it all out before he spoke.

“Obviously, he was trying to drive a wedge between us.”

“And has he succeeded?” he asked. That’s Barker for you. No need for a hundred words when four will do.

I raised my hands. “I understand how you work. If you wish to remain silent about your private life, that is your own affair. I suppose if I believe a piece of information you hold is required, I shall ask for it.”

We entered the office, the door of which had been thrown open in our haste to leave, and took our chairs again.

“Do you think my past with Nightwine is such a piece of information?” he asked.

“You would be better placed to answer that question than I would, sir.”

“You do realize,” he said, “that sometimes information can just as easily get you killed as save your life.”

“I understand that, yes.”

He exhaled half a barrel full of air and then sat back in his green chair. I sat up. He was finally going to tell me something of his past.

“I suppose the first thing you should know is that I did have an elder brother. Caleb was two years older than I, and while my parents were missionaries in Foochow, dressing in Chinese clothing to make the Western religion more palatable for the natives, Caleb was sent to a proper English boarding school in Shanghai.

“You must understand there is a major tragedy in China every couple of years: a flood, an invasion, an earthquake. In this case, it happened to be cholera. It swept through Foochow and my parents set up a makeshift hospital to care for the sick and dying. Before I knew it, both my parents had contracted the disease, leaving me, at twelve years old, to fend for myself in a strange country.

“I was small and quick and could steal from market stalls and vegetable gardens, but by the time I was sixteen, I was nearly six feet tall. I had to work to eat and there was precious little chance of work while the country was at war. I dug ditches, worked on boats, harvested in the rice paddies, and carried palanquins, but mostly I starved. By my calculation, I had been starving for four years.

“I hardly even remember the time when my parents were alive, except for a party my mother had thrown the night before Caleb had gone off to school. She had contrived to serve roast mutton and had assembled a cake from local ingredients. I thought of that cake for years. It was an inconceivable time. People were dying by the millions. A foreign boy on his own in China would have found an early grave, and so I became one of them, simply to survive.

“China had become a nation of refugees. The Taiping Rebellion was blowing north, consuming as it came, and soon overtook Foochow. It was rumored that Shanghai was the only safe place to go, but the boats were full and the prices exorbitant. I realized my only chance of survival was to find my brother, and in desperation, I set out to find him. Over the course of six months, I walked four hundred miles barefoot. Shanghai was in chaos when I arrived, choked with panicked refugees, both Chinese and European. At least I knew where I was going, to the St. Francis Xavier College northeast of the Bund, the European quarter of the city. When I arrived, the English guards had no use for a ragged scarecrow and refused me entry, but I was determined to find my brother, my only living relative for almost six thousand miles. Caleb would know what to do, I told myself. I climbed a fence one night in the midst of a rainstorm, timing my entrance with the metronomic pace of the guards’ beat, and made my way to the college, but when I arrived, I found it boarded up and abandoned. I have to admit I broke down, convinced my brother was on a ship halfway to Perth and the comfort of distant relatives who no doubt believed me buried with our parents.