Untitled (28 page)

   He puts down the pen. "Well?"

   "No, sir," Jane says unsteadily.

   "Nothing? Nothing at all?"

   "No, sir."

   He leans forward, elbows propped on the desk. "Think carefully now. You brought wine up here earlier today."

   "Yes, sir."

   "Did you notice anything?"

   She noticed that he had a visitor, that he spoke excitedly, that it was odd for her to be called on to bring in wine when by rights that was a task for Mr. Cartwright or Sarah. She noticed, too, that the conversation paused while she was in the room—but it rarely failed to, unless it was about something of little interest.

   "Sir, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary." She keeps her face blank.

   He runs his hands through his hair. "I thought you were an observant girl."

   "I'm not sure what you want me to have noticed, sir."

   "My visitor, Jane. Surely he looked familiar?"

   "No, sir. I've never seen him before, as far as I know."

   "This is important; very important, in fact. I want you to be absolutely sure."

   "I am, sir."

   "You didn't see him soon after you arrived? In this house?"

   "You and Mrs. Robert haven't had many visitors, sir."

   "Very true. But we had one unexpected and rather unwelcome visitor."

   "The burglar, sir?"

   He nods. "The burglar who seemed to take nothing. The burglar who brazened his way into this house by impersonating me."

   So this, she thinks, is what it is all about. "But sir, your visitor was a different man."

   "Think, Jane—it is possible to drastically alter one's appearance. Picture that burglar in your mind, then imagine him without his beard but in spectacles and with his hair grey."

   She looks past him to the fog outside the window. A street lamp appears then, ghostly, the roofs of the houses opposite. In a few seconds they are gone again. Does she look as though she's imagining the burglar? She hopes so. She purses her lips, she tilts her head, waits for a few more seconds to pass. She'd know that fleshy face with its small, peering eyes anywhere. "It wasn't him, sir. I'm certain. The other gentleman had different eyes and a bigger face. Those aren't things a person could change."

   "You're absolutely sure? It's easy to be mistaken."

   "Yes, sir, I'm sure."

   When he sits back he looks deflated. "Very well. Thank you, Jane."

   "Sir? If I saw him I'd let you know. Even if I saw him in the house, I'd find a way to tell you."

   "Thank you, Jane," he says, but already he has looked away.

   So she turns on her heel and leaves him sitting there.

   After all, there are the back stairs to finish scrubbing.

Chapter 21

A
s he follows Danforth down the hallway Robert Bentley feels a sense of unease. Behind him the porter is huffing under the weight of his boxes, his instruments clanging as the man knocks them about. "Steady on there," he tells him, but already the man's face is red from the effort of keeping up.

   "We'll be in the Spencer Room," Danforth tells the porter. "And watch what you're about—those are delicate scientific instruments."

   The porter struggles away, and Danforth turns on his heel. He leads Robert past a lounge of leather armchairs where men doze before a fire with newspapers spread over their bellies, past huge potted plants that half disguise the entrance to the dining room.

   A table of men is waiting for them. Introductions are made all round: Thomas Richardson, Thomas Bennett, Harold Duplessy, John Clive, an American called Homer Schmidt, Francis Underwood, Cuthbert Whalen, and, of course, Whalen's acquaintance, Arturo Vilaseca. Vilaseca is a young man with slick black hair and glasses perched so far towards the end of his nose that they seem in danger of sliding off altogether. His nose is long and thin, and beneath it he wears a curved blade of a moustache that gives his face a rather villainous look.

   Dinner is a fancy affair with plenty of wine. Danforth knows these men well, and inevitably the eddies of the conversation spin over their end of the table, while Robert Bentley and Vilaseca sit in near silence over their plates. Vilaseca peers at his food as though boiled potatoes and trout are entirely new to him. He has little to say, even in answer to Robert's queries. Yes, he has recently arrived in Britain to embark on a trip around Europe. No, he has never visited London before. No, he has not yet found time to view the museums, but he hopes to. As for his life in Argentina, Robert learns only that he was recently bereaved and is now heir to a fortune sufficient to enable him to travel at his leisure. He delivers all of this in perfect English with only a touch of an accent that makes his voice land too hard on some syllables.

   As for Danforth, Robert has plenty of time to observe him when Vilaseca turns his attention back to his dinner. He speaks loudly in trimmed-down sentences, and pauses every now and again to look intently at the men around him. His face is creased, his spectacles flash in the glare of the lights, and Robert can't help wondering if the girl was wrong after all. There is something he doesn't quite trust about this man. Is he about to be made a fool of ? he wonders. Was the girl so mistaken that she couldn't recognize Danforth through whatever disguise he used to gain entry to the house? Or was she somehow involved in that whole affair? The inspector who came to investigate certainly had his doubts about her honesty. She is a clever young thing, noticing so much about the burglar—but what better way to deflect suspicions? And after all, she was the one to let him in.

   He takes a mouthful of wine and lets it pool under his tongue as he looks across the table. Danforth is certainly a man well-practiced in persuasion; he has convinced these men that Bentley and he are well acquainted, that it is possible, even with so small a number of men, to put both anthropometry and dactylography to the test. A ridiculous conceit. He has to remind himself that this is of no importance, for all they need is to measure Vilaseca, and to keep him from suspecting the ulterior purpose of the evening.

   Slowly one course succeeds another, more wine is poured, and he is pulled into the circle of the conversation. He explains his years in Paris with Bertillon, he admits that yes, he did make a presentation before a government committee—the Troup Committee—only a fortnight ago.

   "But look here, that is quite the coincidence," says Francis Underwood. He is a young man with a high, pale forehead and a way of lounging in his chair. "My cousin is serving on that committee— Alistair Renfrew, of the Home Office. He should be here tonight. I'll have him paged."

   Before Robert can protest—a member of the Troup Committee sitting in on their "experiment"?—Underwood has called over a waiter, and the waiter has taken off across the dining room. It would have looked odd to have stopped him, would have appeared as though he lacked confidence in his method, yet as he pushes away his plate his hands feel large and unwieldy. He knots his fingers together on the tablecloth, then unknots them because he suspects it makes him look nervous. He takes a long gulp of wine. If he does well—if he shows beyond doubt that measurement is accurate, and enables a record to be easily retrieved and matched against its subject—then, he tells himself, this evening may accomplish more than his presentation before the committee.

   The room hums with the conversations of more than a dozen tables. It's a low hum, for all the diners are male. It makes for a dull sight, he thinks: all those black jackets against the red of the wallpaper and the carpet, as though somewhere nearby is a drawing room full of women waiting for them to be finished with their port and cigars. Of course, the women
are w
aiting—in houses throughout London, sitting at dinner tables with a butler or a maid to attend to them, but perhaps no one to talk to. Back in Cursitor Road Mina will be sitting across the table from the young widow. For all he knows she has used those questions of hers, asked so gently, so persistently, to pull the woman's secrets out of her. Maybe he'll return home to find the widow has fled—he imagines the door open, Henry's room empty, the house free of her presence.

   The conversation has turned down a new avenue. Danforth is saying, "To spend a lifetime simply waiting, it quite staggers me."

   Clive dabs at his mouth with his napkin. He has a high-cheeked

face like a horse's, and through his greying hair his scalp shines. "The alternative would hardly have been a pleasant one. Now there's talk that he'll be passed over entirely."

   Danforth chews at his moustache. "Not without protest." He has a way of darting looks towards Vilaseca, but the young man has been so slow with his dinner that even now he is still slicing up a piece of tart and feeding the neat triangles into his mouth. He doesn't seem to realize that Danforth has been paying him such close attention.

   Underwood has been shifting in his seat, glancing around the dining room. Now he smiles broadly at a stout man who is approaching. "Ah," he calls out. "There you are at last, Renfrew. I was beginning to suspect that maybe for a change you were eating dinner with Alice."

   Renfrew offers his hand. Danforth's mouth is tight, and he glances over at Robert as though to say,
Can you believe it? Renfrew
right here to witness this.
Out loud he says, "Shall we start, then, gentlemen? I've requested a private room for our demonstration. By now everything should be ready."

   He leads them away from the table, through the dining room and down a narrow passage lined with portraits and a mounted stag's head. Then he swings open the door and waits while they file in.

   The room, notices Robert, is windowless. Chairs have been arranged in a semicircle, and two tables set up. On one sits his measuring equipment and his cabinet of cards; on the other, two boxes and a basin of water with soap and a towel. He takes a chair at the end, and looks at Vilaseca. If he suspects anything he is disguising it well, for he merely crosses one leg over the other.

   Danforth does not sit down—there is no chair for him, anyway, with Renfrew added to their number. Instead he stands between the tables with his hands clasped behind his back, giving the impression that he is about to duck forward. "Gentlemen," he starts, "you have all expressed interest in the problem of identification, as we might call it. My dear friend Mr. Bentley has agreed to put on a demonstration this evening that will show the strengths and—admittedly—the weaknesses of the methods being considered by the Troup Committee." He smiles towards Renfrew, who merely nods. "We beg your patience and your cooperation—we will take you as our subjects. Mr. Bentley will measure you, and I will take your fingerprints. We will each make a duplicate set of records. Then"—with a flourish that surprises Robert, he indicates the cases standing on the tables—"we will insert one set in with the hundreds that we have collected in our research. From the other, you will select those of two individuals, and our task will be to retrieve their match from amongst the many records in our collections."

   Even now Vilaseca shows little sign of alarm. His raised foot swings a little, and one end of his moustache is lifted. In derision? Robert is not sure. This could be the man who murdered one of his colleagues in cold blood, and made off with tens of thousands of pounds. Why would such a demonstration as tonight's cause him any alarm? If he understands its purpose, he surely also understands that he has adequate time to escape from England before Danforth can confirm his identity.

   The men wait their turn good-naturedly. Naturally, Danforth is finished with the men before Robert; he has only to roll each man's fingers onto his inked pad, and to roll them again on the cards he has devised with a box for each finger. The men wash their hands and light cigars as they wait to be measured. They call for brandy, all except for Vilaseca, who asks instead for a glass of water. For tonight, Robert has simplified his measurements, though it will mean taking a little longer to retrieve the records. He will not ask them to remove their shoes and socks; he will only measure the length and width of their heads, the length of their left middle fingers and left forearms, and the length and width of their right ears. Still, there is soon restlessness amongst them as he slowly brings his callipers down to measure a head, then again, then again to make sure that he has measured accurately. Renfrew sits with his legs stretched out, and tugs his watch from his pocket. However, Robert cannot go more quickly, so he is pleased when Danforth, his work done, sits on the edge of the table and starts into an explanation of a famous case in which fingerprints were used to confirm the identity of a man who murdered his cousin and her two children.

   It is not until Danforth explains how the evidence convinced the jury and led to a conviction that it strikes Robert: Vilaseca will surely understand the implications! He bends to note the length of Duplessy's ear and lets himself steal a glance at the Argentinean. He is paring his nails, the light of the lamps gleaming from his pomaded hair. The very picture of nonchalance—but is he acting?

   When Robert has finished with Duplessy there is only Vilaseca left, and he finds himself hesitating before getting close enough to touch him. Ridiculous, he tells himself. He has measured men who have done far worse. Men who have cut the throats of their own wives; men who have thrown children into the sea, who have burned down houses full of people and stood by to watch. Those men were brutes, though. They would never have risen above the low nature of their lives. This man, this Vilaseca—he is a different creature altogether, sitting in front of him in his tailored jacket and gleaming hair, every inch the gentleman. His glasses give him the look of a thoughtful man, though if one looked closely, one might find evidence that those thoughts are of an unsettling nature—that narrowness of the eyes, that pinched look of the nose, that line of moustache like a sneer.