The Tiger in the Well (2 page)

Mr. Adcock was all smooth affability. This is a purely professional relationship, she reminded herself; he's a solicitor, he's trained in the law, never mind his manner.

She went through the facts as clearly as she could, starting with Harriet. Mr. Adcock listened, his expression becoming graver by the minute. Occasionally he made a note.

"May I see the petition.?" he said when she'd finished.

He read it through while she sat, composed, upright, trembling.

"These are very serious allegations," he said when he'd reached the end. "He alleges desertion, misuse of funds, drunkenness even. . . . Miss Lockhart, may I ask you if you drink.?"

"Do I drink? Intake a glass of sherry sometimes, but what on earth does that matter.?"

"We have to be sure of our ground. These servants, for instance, whose dismissal is complained of—if we could establish precisely what happened, we could construct a sound defense."

Sally felt a shiver of dismay. "Mr. Adcock, there weren't any servants. There never was a household in what-is-it, Telegraph Road, Clapham. I never was married to this Mr. Parrish. The whole thing is a fabrication. He's made it all up. It's a huge lie."

He looked at her in a manner she recognized: quizzical, indulgent, knowledgeable. It was Mr. Temple's expression, but in that old gentleman it had been backed by real humor and deep knowledge.

"I think you must allow your professional adviser to judge what's relevant and what isn't," he said, smiling. "Of course the heart of your case will be that this marriage did not take place. But we have to cover all eventualities, do we not.? It would be unfortunate if we left any part of the case vulnerable. We shall have to go through these particulars point by point and be able to satisfy the judge that there is a complete explanation for all of them. Now, in the first place ..."

He took a sheet of paper out of a drawer and flipped up the lid of a silver inkwell. His desk was bare except for the blotter and an inkstand. Sally liked desks covered in books and papers and pencils and sealing wax and all the impedi-

menta of a job being done, as hers was; No, she told herself, stop comparing.

Mr. Adcock dipped the pen in the ink and fastidiously dabbed it on the edge of the pot to avoid taking up too much.

"Now, then," he said. "When did you first meet Mr. Parrish.?"

Sally took a deep breath. "I have never met Mr. Parrish. Until this morning I'd never heard of him. Mr. Adcock, with the greatest respect, I think that all those absurd allegations aren't worth wasting time on. The only important thing is whether or not I'm married to him, and I'm not."

"Of course, of course," said Mr. Adcock. "That is the central point in your defense. Make no mistake about that. He will have to prove that a marriage took place, and if as you say it didn't, there will be no marriage certificate, no entry in the register of . . . St. Thomas's Church at Southam in Hampshire. But you see the tendency of these allegations is to demonstrate that you are not a fit person to have charge of the child, and you wouldn't wish that implication to rest unchallenged, would you.'*"

"I suppose not. But I'd reject his right to suggest it."

"It has been suggested. That is precisely why we must counter it as fully as possible. You must conceal nothing, Miss Lockhart."

"There's nothing to conceal!"

"You concealed the birth of your child," he said, his big eyes reproachful.

She didn't answer. Then she sighed heavily.

"Very well," she said, and, with an effort, made herself sit perfectly upright. "As you say, Mr. Adcock. Where shall we start.^"

An hour and a half later, Sally wearily left him tidying the papers he'd covered with his delicate writing and went to say good-bye to the clerk.

"Mr. Bywater, what does a commission agent do.'"' she said.

"Is that what Parrish claims he is?" said Mr. Bywater. "Say there's a feller in the Indian civil service. Calcutta. He wants to send some luggage home, make sure it gets to his old ma in Littlehampton. Complicated job. Lots of parcels. Commission agent looks after it. Or someone's going out east for the first time. Business. Needs to make sure his samples, his left-handed screw-flange triple-expansion steam-powered soda water bottle opener that weighs a ton and a half gets to Shanghai so's he can show the local panjandrum how it works. Commission agent sees to it. Fixes up shipping, insurance, storage, packing, the lot. Gets a commission. Hence the name. Marriage brokers, some of 'em. Round up a bunch of unclaimed lovelies, pack 'em in a boat, herd 'em ashore at Bombay. Take a cut from the husbands later, probably. Slice of wedding cake. Negotiate contracts, buy for you, sell for you, exchange your money, get you a passport, arrange your train tickets to Siberia with a box at the Vladivostok Music Hall thrown in, fix an introduction to the Dalai Lama, cut you in on a Mississippi riverboat poker game, do anything at all. Nice life. Variety. Your man's got an office in Blackmoor Street, by the way. Just off Drury Lane."

"Has he.-*" said Sally. "Perhaps I'll go there now. He won't be expecting that."

"Mr. Adcock would find himself defending a murder case," said the old clerk. "Keep away, I should. Have nothing to do with him. The best line is, you're not married to him, you never heard of him, you don't know what he's talking about. Don't be provoked. He'll be anxious, you know."

"Will he.?"

"Course he will. He's telling a barefaced lie. Whether the court believes it or not depends on how we react to it. Who's Mr. Adcock engaging.?"

"What, to appear in court.? A Mr. Coleman. Apparently he's very good."

"Well, they all are, silks. Have to be, otherwise the whole edifice of the law would come crashing down around our ears, wouldn't it.? Couldn't have that."

A silk was a Queen's Counsel: an eminent barrister. Mr. Adcock, as a solicitor, couldn't appear himself in the High Court, so he had to brief this Mr. Coleman to argue Sally's case. She trusted he'd do it well; she had to.

With Jim Taylor away in South America (his last letter had been dated from Manaos, and they'd been about to leave with a guide for the jungle), Sally had no means of inquiring into this Mr. Parrish's affairs without calling in a professional agent. Parrish was clearly very familiar indeed with her life, and it chilled her to think of how long and how closely someone must have been burrowing into her past. They'd got everything right: they'd chosen to strike when she was alone, with her friends away so that they couldn't testify on her behalf; they'd picked a time for this fake marriage when Sally had been almost entirely occupied with a dangerous adventure involving an arms manufacturer, and when she'd left few traces—nothing to prove she hadn't been at that church on that date. And they'd got the address of her business right, and Harriet's birthday, and they knew how much money she had invested in which stocks.

The biggest question was one she hadn't confronted yet. But as she walked away from her lawyer's office and headed up the Strand toward Drury Lane, it began to ask itself more and more insistently: Why? Why's he doing itP WhyP

The brass plate beside the door in Blackmoor Street didn't tell her anything, except that Arthur Parrish, Commission Agent, shared the building with G. Simonides, Ltd., the Anglo-Levantine Trading Company, and T. and S. Williamson, Spice Importers. Better not to linger: Parrish was bound to know what she looked like, and—

Well, what if he did see her.'^ She was thinking like a criminal. She had no need to skulk about, feeling guilty. This craziness was infecting her already.

She left and went back down to the Strand. At number 223 there was a gunsmith's.

"I want to buy a pistol," she said to the lugubriously mus-tached assistant.

"Target pistol, miss?"

"A revolver."

Target pistols were light, single-shot weapons which were often used indoors; their effective range was about ten yards. Sally had two of those already, but she had something more substantial in mind now. She looked at a Webley Pryse, a Tranter, and hesitated over a Colt, but she settled in the end for a British Bulldog: a nickel-plated five-shot pistol which was not only powerful but also small enough to fit in a pocket.

"It's got a strong recoil, that one, miss," said the assistant. "Painful to shoot if you're not used to it. Aim a good way below the target, else you'll miss it entirely."

"I'd like the Colt," she told him, "but it's too big. This is just right. I'll get used to it; I've done a lot of shooting. And a box of fifty cartridges, please."

It cost her a little under four pounds. She had the gun and the cartridges wrapped and then took them with her, rather to the assistant's surprise; ladies and gentlemen out shopping almost invariably had their purchases delivered rather than walk through the streets carrying a package. Sally felt a little beyond gentility by now and carried the parcel without a qualm.

She had, as she'd said, done a good deal of shooting. Her father had taught her, and given her a light Belgian pistol for her fourteenth birthday. She naturally didn't tell the shop assistant, but she'd twice shot to kill. The first time was when she was sixteen and in deadly danger from Ah Ling, the leader of a Chinese secret society, who was the man who'd killed her father. He was half Dutch, and under the name of Hendrik Van Eeden he had been smuggling opium in Mr. Lockhart's ships without Sally's father's knowledge. Sally had shot him in a cab near the East India Docks, to save herself from death at his hands. Whether she'd killed him or not she didn't know, for she had fled in horror at what she'd done.

and no body was ever found. She supposed he'd escaped and gone back to the East.

The second time had been revenge for the death of Frederick Garland. She'd fired a bullet into the mechanism of the Steam Gun, the appalling weapon invented by the arms manufacturer Axel Bellmann, intending to kill him and to die herself. She, plainly, was still alive, and profoundly glad of it now. Axel Bellmann was not. She wasn't comfortable with the side of herself that carried guns and shot to kill; after the destruction of the Steam Gun she'd tried her best to become gentle, motherly, pacific.

Well, it hadn't worked. She would have a lot of traveling, a lot of digging, a lot of finding out to do before this case came to court; she didn't want to be unprepared if there was to be fighting as well.

But again: Whyf What's he after? What have I done to him? Why? And who is he?

The Journalist

Much farther down the river than Twickenham lay the London Docks, where at about the same time that Sally was going to bed, a steamer called the Haarlem was tying up. She was carrying passengers from Rotterdam. A customs officer had come aboard at Gravesend, as was the rule, but these passengers had little to declare. It had been a rough crossing. All of them were poor, and many of them were hungry, and a few were ill.

The gangway was lowered, and those huddled on the deck began to gather their possessions and stumble down onto the wet stones of the dockside. Women with scarves around their heads, bearded men with peaked caps or—one or two—^shabby hats of fur, patched trousers, worn-out boots; and their belongings—a cardboard box tied up with string, a rolled-up mattress, a shapeless bundle in a blanket, a basket full of clothes, a saucepan, a kettle. ... As one by one they left the ship and moved uncertainly along the dark dockside toward the gaslight flaring over the gate, a dockworker turned to his mate and said, "What's that lingo, Bert.?"

"What they're talking.? Yiddish, Sam."

"Yiddish.? Where'd they speak that.?"

"In Cable Street, for a start. They're Jews, mate. They just come from Russia or somewhere. Don't you know noth-ing.?"

The first man turned back and looked at the stream of refugees. They were still coming off the ship—how many had they got packed in there.?—a hundred or more of them.

and they were still coming. There was a child of about five struggling along with a heavy basket in one hand, tugging at the hand of a sleepy toddler with the other, while their shawled mother clutched a baby to her and dragged along a bundle of possessions clumsily wrapped in canvas. There was an old man with a swollen leg, hobbling along painfully on a crutch. There was an old woman, too ill even to move, carried by two middle-aged men who might have been her sons. Individual faces stood out: a young woman of startling dark-eyed beauty; a thin man with an expression of surpassing craftiness; a child hollow-eyed with illness; a stout woman so cheerful she was infecting all those near her with laughter; a young man, red-bearded, blazing-eyed, with the marks of consumption in his cheeks; an old man in a torn coat and a greasy fur hat, with a long white beard and white corkscrew ringlets framing the face of a learned, gentle saint; a sharp-eyed opportunist, more or less clean-shaven, with a black cap and a fur-collared coat.

The workmen watched them shuffle along to the gate, where a uniformed official stood in the gaslight, barring the way. He was trying to explain something to those in front.

"Addresses.'* You—got—^addresses to go to.^* You got to have an address. Piece—of—paper. Name—and—^address. Somewhere to go to. Sawy.-^"

A gaunt man in a tattered overcoat, whose pale wife was clutching one small child and trying to control another, eventually found a scrap of paper.

"Fashion Street," the officer read. "All right. Straight on up Dock Street under the railway bridge and carry on going, then it's about half a mile up on the right. Next!*'

After a quick glance at the addresses they showed, he let them through and out into the city. A dozen or so people— relatives or friends—were waiting outside the gate, peering eagerly or anxiously in at the arrivals. Those who hadn't got a piece of paper with a recognizable address on it were directed to the Jewish Shelter in Leman Street, not far away.

Among the passengers were two girls traveling alone, and

their nervousness attracted the attention of a middle-aged woman in a fur coat. As they walked uncertainly through the gate, watched by the young man with the red beard, she beckoned them, laid a friendly hand on their sleeves, and spoke to them in Yiddish. Little by little the line of immigrants filtered through the dock gate and trickled into the vast pool of humanity in the East End.