Part 2 (2/2)
”Can you believe that?” His own detective story had fallen by the wayside, rather. Between the Storm and Josephine, he'd spared few thoughts for Dr Syme in recent weeks. Still, he couldn't deny feeling a certain small pang of jealousy.
Borel glanced at the headline. ”I can believe anything, Mr Shaw.”
”Well now! Dr Doyle! If that isn't desperation, I hardly know what is.”
Borel said nothing.
Arthur returned the paper to the window. ”What do you think, Mr Borel?”
Borel removed his spectacles and studied them, sighing, as if examining their lenses for imperfections. ”Mr Shaw, I have suffered considerable expenses in the storm.”
”I dare say.”
”I have borrowed money to make repairs. I did not like to do that. The sum of money that you owe me is now considerable. I do not like to have to remind you.”
”I know, Mr Borel. I know. But the fact of the matter is I find myself hard up at the moment. The Mammoth owes me money-and the rent must be paid before all else.”
”We must all pay rent to someone, Mr Shaw. I am sorry.”
Borel put his spectacles back on and blinked at Arthur as if he were surprised to see him still in the shop. Arthur took this to mean that their conversation about money was over. Borel was a decent enough fellow. He didn't like to rub it in.
Arthur gestured at the newspaper. ”What do you think, Mr Borel? Foul play, yes or no?”
”How could I know, Mr Shaw?”
”No smoke without fire. One hopes they'll catch the villain responsible soon; put things back in order.”
”One hopes. I think there will be trouble.”
There'd already been trouble. In Whitechapel, Jewish windows that had survived the storm were broken by stones. A German bookshop near the Museum was burned, and a Russian businessman was found dead in Notting Hill. The Daily Telegraph hinted that Afghan agents were at work in London, and the Omnibus suspected Indian malcontents. The police raided Limehouse. A lot of Indians and Frenchmen and Irish and sailors and gypsies and fortune-tellers and radicals of various sorts were rounded up and arrested for various petty crimes, but no murderers were discovered by those methods. Astrologers said that the stars promised discord, and that the coming year was a bad one for engagements, business ventures, and childbirth. Mr Borel had forbidden his wife and daughter to go outside.
Josephine and Arthur were oblivious to most of this. London's bad mood didn't infect them. They were suddenly out of step with their times: blissfully, almost sinfully so. They spent the winter walking, and writing long letters, and exchanging cards, flowers, gifts, poems, love-notes. Dearest love. My own darling heart, my only, my fondest, my soul. They compared notes on their dreams, and attended lectures. They made plans to move to the seaside, to Brighton perhaps, where Josephine would write poetry in a room looking out on the sea, and Arthur would take the train into London twice weekly to meet with newspaper editors ... They kissed in Regent's Park by the lake, in the spot where the rotunda had been, under the disapproving glare of police officers.
Arthur proposed towards the end of February, at the edge of a half-frozen pond in the park, the words turning crystalline in the cold air as he spoke them. A mere formality by that point; an inevitability. The main impediment to their engagement was that it took Arthur two weeks to get his foster-father to send him his late mother's ring down from Edinburgh-the old sod dragged his feet, counselling against marrying a clever woman.
In fact, the winter would have been entirely blissful, and quite dream-like, if not for one fly in the ointment; the usual: money.
Several of Josephine's clients, being highly strung types, had fled London after the storm. Meanwhile, the Mammoth had gone silent. A lightning-struck warehouse and flooded printing press had put it out of commission. It hadn't paid Arthur in a month; then two months; then three.
”I should acquaint you,” Arthur said, ”with the system of my debts.”
Josephine frowned. ”You have a system?”
”One may regret the necessity but be proud of the engineering. First the Mammoth-a notoriously forgetful beast-pays me late. A tradition of long standing, but my landlord and the grocer, not being literary folk, don't see the charm of it; so to pay them I borrow from Borel, or from Waugh-who has a good inheritance, and, besides, will one day be a doctor. To pay Waugh and Borel I borrow from Uncle George-who is something of a big man in publis.h.i.+ng and makes a very good living off comic stories about chaps messing about in boats, and is forgiving of debts, but only up to a point. And so in extremis I borrow from my foster-father in Edinburgh to pay George. The old man is not forgiving. It is for G.o.d to forgive, he says, as if that were the most baffling and ineffable of all His attributes. And then because of the money I send to Edinburgh, the rent is late. And so on.”
”A well-oiled mechanism.”
”Except that the storm has played hob with it. Sand in the gears. Old Borel has windows to mend, and George has a roof to mend, and Waugh-same boat, Waugh says, same b.l.o.o.d.y boat, old chap. And I wonder if the Mammoth hasn't absconded entirely.”
He didn't mention that he had received that morning a letter from his foster-father, expressing disappointment at Arthur's impecuniousness and f.e.c.klessness, and scolding him for his refusal to apply himself to any manly profession. The old man himself had lost a 500 investment in the Annapolis, wrecked in harbour at St. Katharine's, and expected no pity for this, but nor did he plan to throw good money after bad. He said that it was madness for Arthur to think of marriage, his prospects being so utterly, disgracefully bleak.
”Well, then,” Josephine said, taking his arm. ”We shall simply have to find a new system.”
At the end of March, Arthur went to pay one last visit to the Mammoth's offices. He found the door locked and the windows shuttered. n.o.body answered his knocking. n.o.body had answered his letters for weeks. He pried open the letter-box and shouted into the void.
It was drizzling, and he still had no umbrella. He stumbled for refuge into the closest pub, the Moon & Star. Inside it was empty and dark, low-ceilinged. There was a terrible reek of stale tobacco. The man at the bar nodded to him in vague recognition. Arthur couldn't remember his name-big fellow, bald, Tom or John or something of the sort. No doubt Arthur was the last of the Mammoth folk who would ever enter the man's establishment. The storm had been a bad business all round, and it kept getting worse.
They shared a gloomy drink. There was an old newspaper on the bar, and Arthur pored in silence over the employment advertis.e.m.e.nts-G.o.d, could he contemplate teaching? Would Josephine be a teacher's wife, out in the country? The thought of a roomful of schoolboys made him order another drink.
”Impossible,” he said.
”Hmm?”
”Oh-nothing.”
”As you like, sir.”
He pushed the newspaper away. The landlord picked it up.
A story about the late Duke's funeral caught the landlord's attention. A photograph showed the stately procession: the long thin coffin on the great black gun-carriage, the cavalry in their snow-white plumes, and Her Majesty's black and windowless coach.
”Empty, of course.” The landlord pointed with a stubby finger at the coffin.
”Empty?”
”You haven't heard? Being a journalist, sir, I would have thought you'd have heard. Everyone says-there was a few fellows in here saying it just the other day; said they heard it from His Lords.h.i.+p's own servant-there never was a body, sir. He burned, poor sod.”
”Burned?”
”Oh, it happens, sir! It happens more than you'd think. Spontaneous combustion, they call it. Sometimes a fellow's just minding his own business and whoosh, or he takes a lady's hand or puts on his hat too fast, and up in flames he goes. It's been proved by science. Could happen to any of us, just like that, one day-who knows. Like lightning, if you get my meaning, sir.”
”Whoosh. Well. Certainly a theory.”
”They say”-the landlord warmed to his theme-”it happens more often these days. Sunspots, or the influence of the stars-”
Bells interrupted. It was five o'clock, and Arthur had an appointment. ”G.o.d,” he said. ”Sorry. Stars, eh? Must run.” He drained his drink and hurried out into the rain.
THE.
SECOND.
DEGREE.
<script>