Michael Cox - The Meaning of Night

‘Your friend Mr Pettingale. Of Gray’s-Inn?’

‘Ah, yes. Pettingale. Of course.’

‘Are the injuries extensive?’

I had no idea what the little man was talking about; but my interest had of course been roused by the mention of Pettingale’s name, and so I decided to feign comprehension of the matter.

‘Extensive? Oh, moderately so, I believe.’

‘All the members of the Society have expressed condemnation and concern – an attack upon a member in his chambers is an occurrence that is believed to be without precedent – and naturally my employer, Mr Gillory Piggott, as a near neighbour of Mr Pettingale’s, feels the outrage particularly keenly.’

‘Quite.’

A little subtle probing on my part soon elicited enough information for me to grasp the story in outline.

A few days after my interview with him, Mr Lewis Pettingale had returned to his chambers one evening at about eight o’clock. His neighbour, Mr Gillory Piggott, happening to come into Field-court half an hour later, noticed a large man leaving the stair-case leading to Mr Pettingale’s set. The next morning, as usual, a waiter from the coffee-house near Gray’s-Inn-gate ascended those same stairs carrying Mr Pettingale’s breakfast, but, on knocking at the lawyer’s door, received no answer.

The door was found to be unlocked. On further investigation by the waiter, the body of Mr Pettingale was discovered slumped across the corner of the hearth. He had been beaten, with some violence, about the face and head, but was still alive. A doctor had been called, and that afternoon the injured lawyer had been taken away in a coach to his house in Richmond, there to be attended by his own physician.

We had now reached the corner of Chancery-lane, and Mr Martlemass, insisting that he would not allow me to be taken out of my way, descended from the cab and, after shaking my hand with his customary vigour, marched briskly off towards his lodgings in Red Lion-square.

During the last leg of the journey to Temple-street, I mused on what the attack on Pettingale might signify; but, as so often of late, I felt as if I were groping blindfold in the dark. I could not say for certain that there was a connexion with the lawyer’s former associate, Phoebus Daunt, though instinct strongly urged me to that conclusion. Perhaps Pettingale’s criminal past had simply caught up with him. A trip to Richmond, I decided, might be both pleasant and instructive.

The following morning I rose early, and with small difficulty arrived in Richmond at a little after ten o’clock. I took a late breakfast at the Star and Garter, by the Park gates, where I began to enquire of the waiters whether they knew of a Mr Lewis Pettingale. At my third attempt, I was given the information I sought.

The house was on the Green, in Maids of Honour Row, a pretty terrace of three-storey brick houses. *It stood at the end of the row, fronted by a well-tended garden. I entered through a wrought-iron gate and proceeded down the path to the front door, which was opened to my knock by a whey-faced girl of about twenty.

‘Will you give your master this? I shall wait.’

I handed her a note, but she looked at me blankly and thrust the note back at me.

‘Mr Pettingale is here, is he not, recovering from his injuries?’

‘No, sir,’ she said, looking at me with staring eyes, as if I had come to murder her.

‘Now then, what’s this?’

The question was asked by a grim-looking man with a patch over one eye and a white spade beard.

‘Is Mr Pettingale at home?’ I asked again, in some irritation.

‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ said the man, assuming a protective position in front of the girl.

‘Well then, where may I find him?’ was my next question.

At this the girl began to play somewhat nervously with her pinafore, while casting anxious looks at the man.

‘Phyllis,’ he said, ‘go inside.’

When she had gone, he turned to me, and threw his shoulders back, as if he might be preparing to stand his ground against my assault.

‘Mr Pettingale,’ he said at last, ‘has left the country, which, if you were a true friend to him, you would already know.’

‘I am not a friend of Mr Pettingale’s,’ I replied, ‘but neither do I wish him any harm. I have only recently made his acquaintance, and so of course do not expect to be taken into his confidence. He has gone to the Continent, perhaps?’

‘No, sir,’ said the man, relaxing his stance a little. ‘To Australia.’

Pettingale’s flight, and the reason for the assault on him, raised yet more perplexing questions; he had also robbed me of the means of exposing Phoebus Daunt to Lord Tansor, and to the world, for the thief and fraudster that he was.

I returned gloomily to London. Every way I turned, my progress was blocked by unanswered questions, untested presumptions, and unsubstantiated suspicions. The murder of Mr Carteret held the key to the restitution of my birthright, of that I was certain. But how could that key be discovered? I found that I had not the least idea what to do next. Only one man could bring forth into the full light of understanding the weighty truth that so evidently lay behind Mr Carteret’s letter to Mr Tredgold: the author himself; and the dead cannot speak.

On reaching Temple-street, in this depressed and frustrated state of mind, I took to my bed and immediately fell into a sound slumber, from which I was awoken by a loud knocking at the door.

When I answered the knock, I saw, to my surprise, one of the office boys from Tredgolds on the landing, holding out a brown-paper parcel.

‘Please, sir, this has come for you, to the office. There is a letter as well.’

I perused the letter first, with some curiosity. It was a short note of apology from Dr Daunt’s friend, Professor Lucian Slake, of Barnack:DEAR SIR, —I am sorry to inform you that I have only just been told by the people at the George Hotel that the package I sent for your attention was mislaid, and has only now come to light. I have written a very strong letter of complaint to the manager, for the inconvenience this has caused to all concerned. But as Dr Daunt took the precaution of giving me the address of your employer, I now send you the proofs of his partial translation of Iamblichus, as he requested. It is, in my opinion, a fine piece of work, a most necessary corrective to Taylor’s rendering; but you will know better than I.I am, sir, yours most respectfully,

LUCIN M. SLAKE

This was puzzling. I immediately tore open the package, which did indeed contain the proofs of Dr Daunt’s translation. What, then, was in the other package, the one that had been thrust into my hand by the serving-man from the George Hotel as I was preparing to take the train to Peterborough?

It still lay on my work-table, hidden under several old copies of The Times , and was addressed to ‘E. Glapthorn, Esq., George Hotel’. I then noticed, for the first time, that it was marked ‘Confidential’.

Inside were some thirty or forty sheets of unlined paper, folded like the leaves of a small quarto book, the first leaf being in the form of a title-page laid out in neatly formed capitals. Each of the remaining leaves was covered to the edges with small, close-packed writing – but in a different hand from the one that had inscribed the wrapper.

Intrigued, I put a match to the fire, pulled my chair a little closer to the hearth, and turned up the lamp. Holding the pages close to the light with shaking hands, I began to read. *

*[‘There is danger in delay’ (Livy, Ab urbe condita). Ed.]

†[Celebrated pleasure gardens near Battersea Bridge. Regular entertainments included fireworks, dancing, concerts, and balloon ascents. It was open from three in the afternoon until midnight. After its respectable patrons had departed, it became an infamous haunt of prostitutes. It finally became so great an annoyance to its neighbours that in 1877 it was forced to close. Ed. ]