Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

Mrs. Berningham sighed most profoundly and handled her fur tippet as if, like a Catholic rosary, it might afford her some spiritual guidance in forming her resolution. “What must I do?” she whispered, quite distracted. “What? What?”

“All that is possible to do for your husband, Doctor Newton’s influence may effect,” I told her, and gently took her hand in mine. “It would be vain to suppose there are any other ways of helping him now. You must unburden yourself of all you know of this matter, madam.”

“It’s not much that I know, except that John has been a fool.”

“Unquestionably. But tell us about your assailants,” said Newton. “What words were spoken?”

“He said that if John should peach, then I should get worse than the beating was coming to me now. That the next time they would kill me.”

“And that was all he said?”

“Yes sir.”

“But you knew what it was to which he referred?”

“Yes sir.”

“Then it’s plain you did recognise them after all.”

“Yes sir. My husband was sometimes in their company, but he told me not their names.”

“Where was this?”

“At a mum house in Leadenhall Street,” she said. “The Fleece. Or sometimes they were at The Sun.”

“I know both of those places,” said I.

“But in truth,” she continued, “they were ruffians and he paid them little heed. There were others with whom he seemed better acquainted. Gentlemen from the Exchange, or so I thought them.”

“The Royal Exchange?”

“That was my own apprehension, but now I am not so sure. John was to use false guineas to pay some merchants, which I was much against, thinking he would be caught. But when he showed me the guineas I could not conceive of anyone thinking them to be anything other than genuine, which, I am ashamed to confess, made me quite leave off my objections. Indeed, sir, I am still at a loss to know how the ridge was culled, since it was my husband’s practice to mix good and bad coin.”

“He is not much of a dissembler, this husband of yours. In his gin cups Mister Berningham boasted that the ridge with which his garnish had been paid was false.”

Mrs. Berningham sighed and shook her head. “He never did have a head for strong waters.”

“These other men you thought were from the Exchange. What were their names?”

Mrs. Berningham was silent for a moment as she tried to remember. “John told me, only...” She shook her head. “Perhaps I will remember tomorrow.”

“Mrs. Berningham,” Newton said crossly, “you say much, but you tell us very little of consequence.”

“It has been,” she sighed, “a most vexatious evening.”

“’Tis true,” I said in her defence. “Look here, the lady is encrusted with distress.”

“In time, Mister Ellis, you will learn that the licence of invention some people take is most egregious indeed. For all we do know, this woman is as culpable as her husband.”

Whereupon Mrs. Berningham appeared mightily grieved and began to cry, which only served to make Newton more impatient, for he did tut and look up at the ceiling of the coach and moan as one with the stomach-ache and then yell out to the coachman to make haste or else he would go mad. And all the while I held Mrs. Berningham’s hand and tried to comfort her so that finally she once again composed herself sufficient to comprehend what Newton next had to say to her.

“The man we are looking for, madam,” he said carefully. “The man who did forge the guinea which your husband was foolish enough to pass off. He is very likely French. He is perhaps a man with teeth à la Chinoise, which is to say that they are black and quite rotten and, had he ever spoken with you, his breath would have seemed most foul. Perhaps you would also have noticed his hands, which might have trembled like a milk pudding, and to which you may even have attributed his great thirst for ale or beer, but never wine, for the man I am looking for drinks not for enjoyment but from necessity, wanting moisture as much as doth the parched ground in summer.”

To my surprise, for I had never heard this description before Newton gave it utterance, Mrs. Berningham started to nod, even before my master had finished speaking.

“But, Doctor Newton,” she exclaimed. “Surely you have met my husband.”

“I have not yet had that pleasure,” said Newton.

Mrs. Berningham looked at me. “Then you must have described him to the Doctor.”

“No, madam,” said I.

“Then how do you seem to describe him so well? For ’tis true, he has not been well of late.”

“It is no matter for now,” said Newton.

Newton’s coach drew up at Mrs. Berningham’s address in Milk Street and we set her down, whereupon my master cautioned her to return to the Whit only in daylight when her safety might be better assured.

“But how did you know Berningham’s appearance?” I asked, when she had gone up to the door of her house. “A man you have never seen nor heard of before. And yet Mrs. Berningham recognised him from your description.”

And upon my asking, Newton smiled a quiet little smile so that I thought how he seemed rather pleased with himself. “‘He giveth wisdom unto the wise and knowledge to them that know understanding. He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness and the light dwelleth with him.’ The Book of Daniel, chapter two, verses twenty-one to twenty-two.”

I confess that I was a little piqued at Newton’s enigmatic resort to the scriptures, for it seemed to confirm in my mind that he enjoyed confounding me, which made me feel and no doubt look mighty ill-humoured, so that my master patted my knee, like a spaniel methought, although his speech was full of much warmth and good intent toward me.

“Oh come, sir, this will not do. I would know if I am to improve myself.”

“Rest assured, my dear young friend, that you who have saved my life shall know my complete confidence. The description was furnished easily enough. Whoever forged that guinea has had a prolonged acquaintance with mercury, which produces in a man all the ill effects that were described: the blackened teeth, the tremulous hands, the great thirst. I might also have mentioned the unsoundness of mind. These effects are not generally known. I only discovered them myself as a result of a great distemper with which I was afflicted during the year of 1693, when I almost lost my mind through much experimentation in my laboratory.

“All of which leads me to suppose that the lady tells us much less than she knows.”

“How is that?”

“She told us that her husband was merely passing off the bad coin as good, when the substance of the matter is that he did forge them himself. Berningham is almost certainly the man who has perfected the d’orure moulu process for making fake gold. But it may be that she still hopes to save him from the gallows, although I have always thought that hanging and marriage go very much together as a fate.”

Newton instructed his coachman to drive to the Tower and from thence back to Jermyn Street.

“I have a favour to ask of you: that Miss Barton shall be told nothing of tonight’s adventure. She is a sensitive child, prey to all sorts of imaginings, and it would greatly inconvenience me if every time I went abroad, she were to detain me with questions regarding the safety of my person. My duties on behalf of the Mint are the only matters on which I am happy for my niece to remain in complete ignorance.”

“Depend upon it, sir. I shall be the very model of discretion where that young lady is concerned.”

Newton bowed his head to me.

“But,” I said, “since I now dare to enjoy your complete confidence, sir, I would take advantage of that to remind you of a matter in which my own continuing ignorance is an affront to me. I would ask if you have had any further thoughts regarding the death of George Macey, of whose murder you bade me to remain silent. And, if you have, I would be grateful if you would share them with me, for I do confess that my own predecessor’s death still much occupies my thoughts.”