Lempriere's Dictionary (53 page)

Peppard stared at Lemprière and when he spoke his words were measured. ‘This time there will be no mistakes,’ he said. He paused and thought. ‘I will gather the evidence patiently, I will watch, wait. We will need the records of the ship, everything.’

‘But how will we….’

‘There is someone who owes me a very great favour, a very great recompense. He will help.’

‘Who?’ asked Lemprière, but Peppard was already out of his chair, out of the door.

‘I will send word this very minute,’ he heard Peppard shout from the front door. A minute or so later, he returned with a ginger-haired boy who was engaged to carry a message. Lemprière watched as Peppard scrawled a few lines.

‘You know where this is?’ he asked the boy. The boy nodded and was dispatched. Peppard scrawled a few more lines. ‘The when and where,’ he said. ‘If you could come, it would be a great help. My friend will not be easy to convince.’ Lemprière folded the message in his pocket.

‘But who are we meeting?’ he asked again.

‘Someone I have not laid eyes on in over twenty years, but you will find out.’

‘You might not recognise him,’ Lemprière probed.

‘Oh, I believe I will,’ Peppard returned with a broad smile. But he would not be drawn further on the man’s identity. They talked on, and Lemprière could see already that Peppard was thinking of the widow.

‘You might have told her about Neagle’s lie, the whales and so on,’ he ventured.

‘To ingratiate myself with her?’ Peppard drew the implication.

‘I suppose he was right after all,’ said Lemprière, taking a different tack.

‘Mmm.’

Peppard was sprawled in his chair, the image of contentment.

‘No! Not at all!’ he burst out. ‘I do not believe the affair is anything to do with cargoes or insurance. It is the ship they need. It is so plain. I wager you the
Sophie
disappeared without trace, just as the
Falmouth
did, or
Vendragon
, whichever name you prefer. They are using that ship for something, some purpose which must be linked to the Company, and they have been doing so for two decades at the least, perhaps much longer. What are they using that ship for?’

‘Captain Guardian said it was moored below his house. We could simply go and look, although I do not know his house….’

‘We could find it,’ said Peppard. ‘But we will talk more on this in a
week’s time.’ Lemprière nodded his assent. It was late and the excitement had tired him without his realising it. Peppard seemed just as animated as before. He rose to leave, straightening his coat. Peppard rose too and his face became pensive.

‘I am sorry I could not help you with your agreement,’ he said.

‘Oh, no matter.’ Lemprière dismissed it airily, then looked more closely at Peppard. ‘What? What is it?’ he asked.

‘Nothing, probably,’ Peppard said. Lemprière waited. ‘It is just…. Since the courtcase, I have posed a threat, a very slight threat to the Company, what I know, you see? Over the years, there have been various scandals, crises, attacks on the Company. The point is they have not forgotten me. In times of the Company’s troubles I have been watched. That is why I ran and hid the night we met.’

‘Watched? By whom?’

‘The Company’s agents. A precaution I believe.’ Lemprière grasped the point. ‘You are worried they will try to silence you, about the ship. Never fear,’ he reassured the little man. ‘My lips are sealed. Not one word.’ He grinned.

‘No, no-one could know about the ship. Only the two of us are privy to that. It is your agreement, John. You see, the past few weeks, I believe I have been followed again. I am not certain yet….’

‘Followed by whom?’

‘There are two of them; one I have encountered before, the other is new. He wears a peculiar hat.’ Peppard extended his arms. ‘Very wide. I may yet be wrong.’

‘But the Company is suffering no crisis now. Why should they watch you?’

‘None that has come to light. Unless….’

‘Unless what?’ Peppard hesitated for a moment.

‘Unless the crisis is you.’

‘Me?’

‘The agreement, John. Skewer knows, Annabel, Alice de Vere, her son, myself, anyone else?’

‘Septimus.’

‘Of course. And yourself. Seven people cannot keep a secret. I cannot see the value of the thing myself, but it begs awkward questions, John. The answers might exceed all our speculations. Then again, I might be wrong. All I say is this; if they are watching me, then they will know of you. I will have led them to you. Be careful, John.’

‘I will,’ Lemprière reassured him. ‘Until next week.’

‘Next week!’ Peppard saluted him and Lemprière turned to clatter down the stairs.

Once in the street, Lemprière looked about him in experimental suspicion. The gusting wind had died down, much to his relief. That the Company might be undergoing some upheaval from his agreement, a mere piece of paper, seemed too unlikely. He dug his hands in his hip pockets against the cold and wriggled his fingers. The street was deserted as Lemprière walked quickly towards Golden Lane. His hands clenched and unclenched in the pockets of his coat. They were empty. Lemprière stopped in his tracks. He patted the other pockets. Nothing. He looked back along the road to Peppard’s house where, he now remembered, he had left the miniature of his mother lying open on the table.

Wedding bells which might have tolled two decades before, but had not, tolled now for Peppard. The future rose up, vast and static for him: an Ephesian temple of columns placed by kings and carved with the tokens of his long-nurtured love. Hail Lemprière, Ctesiphon of his new hopes. He was elated. A staircase sixty feet high carved from a single vine tree broached the dripping roof of his wants and drained a stream of years from the sky above it. The decades were moments and the moments were motes of dust circling slowly in the far sunlight of a country he had left years before. His ship, he laughed silently to himself, had come in. From the table, Marianne’s painted eyes watched him sprawl carelessly in his chair.

‘Annabel,’ said Peppard to himself, then ‘Lemprière,’ as he noticed the miniature. His friend was not two minutes gone. Peppard rose from his chair and picked up the miniature, thinking to run after its owner. But as he moved to the door, he heard light footsteps move up the staircase outside. He had been saved the trouble. A knock sounded.

‘John!’ George Peppard called out. He threw back the bolt to open the door.

Two shapes had emerged as the door to the house in Blue Anchor Lane was closed. Nazim hovered about his station fifty yards from the entrance into which the spectacled youth had disappeared. Fifty yards beyond that, he sensed the disturbance of shadows that was Le Mara. An hour idled by, and the earlier flow of people ebbed to a trickle of souls who wandered past alone or in pairs on obscure errands. The street was empty except for a small gang of children, whose presence further up the street pricked him into watchfulness. Nazim remembered the earlier encounter, the sound the boy’s nose had made as the cartilage crunched against his hand. They shouted and ran about, six or seven of them. As their noisy game went on, it seemed to Nazim that they should be part of a more populous and more animated scene. But for them, the street was dead.

The north-easterly gusted, then died with the passing minutes. Apart from the thin cries of the children and Le Mara’s agitation, imagined by
Nazim from his station, the drab peace was undisturbed. His adversary went unseen and unheard, a dark fluttering of suspicions.

A door opened further up the street. The little man had emerged. He was standing on the short flight of steps which led to the door of the tenement. Nazim watched as he gestured up the street, towards the children. One of them trotted over, a gangling boy with a shock of ginger hair. After a short exchange they disappeared into the building. The other children went on with their game. A minute or two elapsed, then the boy emerged again. He turned and began walking towards Nazim. He was clutching a letter. Nazim moved from the concealment of the shadows into his path. The boy’s feet stuttered to a halt. The two of them faced each other. A simple demand, and the exchange was made.

“Theo, twenty years is too long. Meet with me at eight in the evening Friday next at the
Ship in Distress
. A matter of urgency. Geo.”

Nazim read the note then folded it and handed it back. The boy continued on his way. Geo. to Theo. Nazim moved back out of sight. Le Mara was still up there, still waiting.

More time: the slow accumulation of seconds into minutes. Inside the building the two of them would be talking, or thinking in silence, arguing or resolving their differences, mapping out their plans, drawing lines between disparate points.

The minutes ticked slowly by and Le Mara’s presence gathered in the near distance. The door opened again and the tall youth came out. He too was walking towards Nazim, looking about nervously. He was a matter of yards away. Nazim rocked back on his heels. Suddenly the youth stopped, blinking behind his eye-glasses. He was patting his pockets. Nazim stayed motionless in the shadows. He had lost something. He was hesitating, should he go back or go on? Still undecided. Nazim watched, and then saw him walk on, away from the house to the end of the street where he turned the corner and was lost from view.

Nazim turned his attention back to the house. For one moment it seemed nothing had changed. Then he saw the shadow moving down the street. Le Mara was running silently towards the house. Dressed in black from head to toe, he was barely visible as he flitted across the street. Then Nazim saw a flicker of silver and knew that he had miscalculated the meeting he had witnessed. Whatever had been discussed had altered the values of the players. The spectacled one’s departure had brought a last visitor to the little man. Le Mara had entered the house. Now it would not take long. He had assumed the little man was an incidental player. He had been wrong.

A minute or two later the door opened again and a shadow ran away down the street. Le Mara’s work was done. Le Mara had fled. It was quite quiet. Nazim moved in turn towards the door. It had been forced. He
moved up the stairs. Nazim heard the Nawab’s words echo in his memory and the name which would lead him to them. The door was unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped inside.

Nazim saw a table, chairs, books and, lying on the bed, a body. Bahadur had taught him how to do this.
Take the man from behind. Hold him about the head
. His uncle’s eyes were calm as he spoke.
Drive the knife in at the side of the neck. Lower rather than higher. Hold the knife still. Pull back the head. Push the knife away from you
. There were reasons.
The knife will block the windpipe and silence your man. The first gout of blood will spray away from you. It is very powerful
.

Red dripped down the far wall. The body was on the bed, oddly hunched as though about to rise. Nazim saw that one of the hands was clenched tight about something. An object. He prised the fingers open and discovered that the little man’s last talisman was a miniature. Nazim opened it and read the inscription. He sat heavily on the bed. He had come too late. The miniature showed him a woman with fine features, a wide mouth, grey-blue eyes. The inscription read ‘Marianne Lemprière’. Nazim stood staring down at the name. He slipped the object in his pocket and made for the door. Lemprière, he thought and berated himself. His task would be far more difficult now. The name for which Bahadur had given everything, was nothing. The Lemprière was dead.

On the bed, the dead man leaned slowly, then toppled to one side. The bedstead creaked under the slow impact. Below the mattress, held in place by the wire-lattice, the letter which earlier he had read for the last time, finally fell apart, diamond shaped fragments fluttered to the floor like confetti, scraps of an earlier message. “My dearest George, my only”, “for when our time comes, and it shall”, “with all my love, Annabel”. Nazim turned and closed the door. Blood soaked through the mattress and dripped down steadily onto the fragments of the letter.

It was past seven and his destination lay almost an hour away by foot. Lemprière strode briskly south then east along the Strand. Somerset House was a white hulk to his right. He moved through and around the crowd. Observing Peppard’s advice, he looked about him to left and right at regular intervals. He had done this all week. His vigilance had become an obscure point of pride. The
Falmouth
had sailed into their lives, which would be different now, and Theo, the note’s recipient, whoever he was, would be the agent of that change. Past the courts at Temple Bar and the
arcades of Fleet Market with the stench of the Fleet Ditch bubbling up from beneath the flagstones, up the short climb to Ludgate, around Saint Paul’s and into Cheapside, Lemprière hurried through the evening traffic to Milk Street. The tavern was up ahead, where his friend and the mysterious Theo awaited him.

Being situated almost a mile from navigable water, any vessel which may have occasioned the naming of the
Ship in Distress
must have been subject to a very great distress indeed. If the provenance of its title was obscure, so too was its design for the building seemed almost wholly made up from eaves. Successive narrow storeys overhung one another in the manner of a staircase seen from the inside and the whole construction impended over Milk Street like a monument to the final drunken lurch before its own collapse. Despite this, Lemprière regarded the tavern without apprehension. Muddle rather than menace was its keynote. The tenements to either side fed it with a steady stream of patrons whose custom this night was augmented by a meeting of the silk-weavers’ guild. Lemprière saw them to his left as he entered the door, a quarrelsome bunch set apart from the main body of clients who stood about drinking and exuding faint disgruntlement at the invasion.