Andrew Taylor - The American Boy

"We must summon help," I whispered. "The other men may still be here."

She shook her head.

"They have gone back to town?"

She nodded.

I thought quickly. I dared not send for a constable. One look at us, and at Mr Carswall lying in the hearth, would be enough to prejudice him against us.

I put a hand on Mary Ann's arm and felt her start. "That letter I threw down to you yesterday, when you were in the yard at Mr Iversen's, were you able to pick it up?"

She nodded vigorously, then mimed a frown, pointed first at Iversen, then at herself, and finally drew a finger across her own throat.

"You were discovered? That is the reason you were brought here? To be murdered?"

"Her wits are disordered, Mr Shield," Iversen said. "You cannot trust a word she – that is to say, what the poor girl implies."

I ignored him. "The letter was to an American gentleman residing in Brewer-street. If I gave you money, could you take another letter to him?"

Mary Ann moved away from me and crouched by the hearth. She extended the forefinger of her right hand and wrote the word NOAK in the ashes.

"Good God! You read the note! You can read and write?"

She nodded and unexpectedly grinned at me. Then she smoothed away Noak's name and wrote instead: GIG IN YARD. I DRIVE.

"You could take a letter directly to him yourself? You can manage a horse?"

She nodded and rubbed out the words. Next she wrote: WRITE LETTER SERVANT ON ERRAND.

This exchange between us was slow and awkward, not merely because of the medium she used to express herself but also because of the necessity to keep an eye on Mr Iversen in his corner. Before we went any further, I decided to move him into the cellar which had so lately served as my own prison. Mr Iversen seemed happy to oblige. First I held the pistol to his head while Mary Ann patted him to ensure he did not have another weapon concealed about his person. Then, at my signal, he preceded us out of the room, his hands raised in the air, moving slowly, just as I had requested.

"Well, well," said he as he descended the steps down from the kitchen. "So the girl is a scholar. Who would have thought it? She has been with us these six months and no one had the remotest idea. You will leave me a candle, will you not? No? Well, I suppose I should not be surprised."

"Where are we? What is the easiest way for the girl to take to town?"

"Left out of the yard, right at the crossroads, and in less than a mile you come to the high road through Kilburn to London itself."

"Whose is the gig?"

"Mr Carswall hired it from an inn – you will find the bill in his pocketbook, I believe. He drove himself, of course. If he had travelled in one of his own carriages, the whole world would have known what he was up to, and where. There are two horses in the stable, by the way – the brown mare is mine."

"You are very obliging."

"And why not, pray? You may trust my advice entirely, Mr Shield – after all, I have no reason to lie to you, not now, and everything to gain from obliging you in any way that lies within my power. Besides, I am hoping you will allow me a candle. I truly dislike the darkness."

Iversen was so determined, it seemed, to bear his misfortunes philosophically that I nearly acceded to his request. But Mary Ann spat neatly on his head as he reached the foot of the stairs, slammed the trap-door down with great force and laughed as she rammed home the bolt.

We conducted a rapid search of the premises. These consisted of a large cottage with a yard on one side containing several barns and a stable and the usual offices, most of them in a dilapidated condition. It had never been an establishment of any size, to judge by the buildings; and now the buildings were all that was left, apart from the remains of a small garden at the front, with a paddock and an overgrown orchard beyond. The land round about was used principally for rough grazing while it waited for the contractors to sow bricks and raise their crop of houses.

The kitchen and the parlour were the only partly habitable rooms. The remainder of the cottage was in a parlous state, with rotting boards spattered with bird-droppings, the plaster crumbling from the walls and, in the largest room upstairs, a place where the ceiling and part of the roof above had collapsed, giving a view of a blue sky. There were three coffins stacked up in one of the barns. Another contained the gig, and the horses were in the stable beside it.

Carswall was too heavy to move very far. Between us, Mary Ann and I dragged him away from the hearth. I loosened his breeches and his neckcloth, tied his thumbs together in case he was shamming, and covered him with a horse blanket from the stable. Among his possessions was a pocketbook and a pencil. Mary Ann tore out several leaves and put them and the pencil in the pocket of her dress.

Even then I realised she had become quite a different person – which was evident not merely from the way she behaved, but also from the way I behaved towards her. When she could express herself only in bird-like trills and primitive sign language, I had unconsciously treated her as little better than an idiot: as if her inability to talk was due to a wider intellectual deficiency. Now she had found her voice, and I realised that the deficiency had been mine rather than hers.

I sat at the table in the kitchen and dashed off a note to Mr Noak, explaining as concisely as I could the situation we were in and begging his assistance and his discretion. I helped Mary Ann harness the horse to the gig and watched her drive out of the yard.

I went back to the parlour and threw another log on the fire. Carswall was breathing heavily. His eyes were still open. Every now and then his lips would tremble, but no words emerged. His cigar case was among the heap of his possessions. I took a cigar and lit it with an ember from the grate.

I bent down and uncurled the fingers of the old man's right hand, for they were still folded round the open Breguet watch, as if time itself were the last thing he would let go. His eyes followed every movement. I put the watch to his ear and pressed the repeater button. The tiny chimes rang out.

"Ayez peur," I said aloud. I stared at the old man's fleshy and decayed face. "Can you hear me, sir?" I asked. "Can you hear the chime of the repeater?"

There was no response. His intelligence was imprisoned, as Mary Ann's had been, but unlike her he could not even write in the ashes. I closed the watch and pushed it into his waistcoat pocket. I left him to count the minutes, the hours, the days, and went back to the kitchen, where I knocked on the trap-door.

"Mr Iversen? Are you there?"

"I am indeed, my dear sir, though I cannot hear you as clearly as I would like. If you were to be so good as to open the trap-door a trifle-"

"I think not," I said.

"There has been a good deal of misunderstanding in this sad business," Mr Iversen said plaintively. "Misunderstanding piled upon misunderstanding, one might say, heaping Pelion upon Ossa as Homer so-"

"You would oblige me extremely if you would explain the misunderstandings."

"Ah, yes, Mr Shield – but would I oblige myself? In a perfect society, all men would be honest, all men would be open: but alas, we do not live in Utopia. Nevertheless, I will do my utmost. I am the soul of candour."

"You gave that parrot to Mr Carswall, I collect?"

"Indeed I did. The boy was mad for a bird, Mr Carswall said, a bird that talked, and as it happened I was able to oblige. I like to oblige, when possible."

I blew out a plume of smoke. It was at that moment that a dazzling light broke over me. As a child, I remembered, I would sometimes puzzle for minutes, even for hours, at a passage my master had set me to translate: then, with a similar shock of revelation, I would see the thread of meaning that ran through it and, following it, I would have the sense in a trice. Just so, now: the clue that resolved this whole confusing matter was this, that it was only a little leap between a parrot that talked French and a rare specimen of digitus mortuus praecisus. Did it not follow from this simple observation that Mr Iversen had been obliging not only to Mr Carswall but also to Mr Frant?