Adam was obliged to acknowledge to himself that the man was right. And there seemed to be no possibility that Jinkinson was about to admit to anything more.
‘You are correct, of course, sir. I should leave all these matters to the authorities. And yet I was the man who found Creech. It was I who was told of secrets that needed revealing. I feel compelled to investigate further.’
‘I can see the logic of your remarks, Mr Carver, but if I were you, I would allow the police to do their work unaided.’ The fat enquiry agent hesitated briefly. ‘I would stand aside and watch the professionals go about their work. No need to confuse their investigations with irrelevant details. Such as my insignificant business with the deceased.’
Jinkinson caught Adam’s eye and held his gaze for a moment. The younger man smiled to himself, amused by the obviousness of the decaying dandy’s concern that his name should not be mentioned to the police. Then he inclined his head briefly in acknowledgement that he had understood.
‘You are correct again, Mr Jinkinson. The police will no doubt find the murderer without my assistance. And why should I muddy the waters of their enquiries with unnecessary information?’
The fat investigator breathed an audible sigh of relief. He swivelled his body sideways and, aiming his bulk in the direction of the door, set off towards it. When he reached it, after a brief and involuntary diversion towards the window overlooking Poulter’s Court, he turned to Adam.
‘Nothing would delight me more than to throw some light on this dark and terrible mystery, Mr Carver. But I fear I cannot.’
Jinkinson reached out and threw open his door. He called into the outer office. ‘Simpkins, please show this gentleman out.’
The boy was still sitting behind his rickety desk. He had not yet finished reading his penny dreadful and seemed disinclined to pay much attention to his master.
‘Simpkins, the size of your great flapping ears makes it impossible for me to believe that they have failed to catch my instruction. Mr Carver here requires to be shown to the street.’
‘Gent showed hisself in. Would have thought the gent could have showed hisself out.’
‘I want none of your impertinence, you young devil.’
‘No, you wants none of it cos you’ve got enough of your own already, you old rogue.’
Simpkins, coolly defiant, did not even bother to raise his eyes from the page he was reading. Jinkinson made as if to move into the outer office and assert his authority more forcefully, but the sudden effort appeared to disorient him. He clutched at the door jamb and brought his hand melodramatically to his brow. He turned back into his own office to address Adam.
‘This miserable boy will be the death of me, Mr Carver. I took him on only at the request of his poor mother, to whom I owed a trifling obligation. And hear the impudence with which he repays me.’
Simpkins snorted contemptuously.
‘And he has as little wit about him as the pump at Aldgate.’
There was another grunt from the target of Jinkinson’s wrath.
‘There is no need to trouble the boy,’ replied Adam. ‘I can make my own way out, as he says. And it seems you can throw no further light on Mr Creech’s death.’
‘Alas, no!’
‘Perhaps I can leave this.’ Adam had squeezed past the elderly dandy and now, back in the shabby ante-room, he held out his card. ‘If anything occurs to you, I can always be contacted in Doughty Street.’
‘Of course, of course.’ Jinkinson took the card Adam offered him and slipped it into a pocket in his waistcoat without looking at it. ‘But I fear I will be unable to tell you any more. At any time in the future. I must say goodbye to you, Mr Carver. Business, with all its stern demands, requires my attention.’ He pointed back into his office, as if to indicate the mountains of paperwork that awaited him.
Unable to tell me more or unwilling? Adam wondered. It seemed pointless to linger any longer in Poulter’s Court. Or to ask any more about Garland and Abercrombie and Oughtred and Euphorion. The enquiry agent very obviously wished him gone and was intent on telling him nothing but half-truths and lies. Indeed, with a flourish of his fingers and a bow of his head as a farewell, Jinkinson had returned to his office and closed the door. Adam was suddenly left with only Simpkins and his penny dreadful for company. He moved towards the door to the stairs, pausing briefly at the boy’s desk. Simpkins’s eyes had come to rest on a page of advertisements. One had attracted his particular attention and his finger was tracing its words down the page. Adam could see that it was for a competition with a prize of half a guinea a week for life.
‘Will you enter it?’ Adam asked.
‘Won’t I just,’ the boy replied, looking up for the first time since Jinkinson had interrupted his reading with the request that he show Adam out.
‘And what would you do with such money, if you won?’
‘I’d get myself as far away from that old wretch as I could.’ Simpkins thumbed his nose scornfully in the direction of the door behind which Jinkinson had just retired. ‘And then I’d eat pies every day, mister. Pies and sausage rolls. Wouldn’t that be prime?’ The boy’s eyes misted over as he contemplated a future filled with such feasts. Adam left him to his dreams.
‘Mr Jinkinson was a curious gentleman, Quint.’ Back in his rooms, Adam was reclining in a chair. He had slipped so deeply into it that he seemed to be experimenting with the possibility of sitting comfortably on his shoulder blades. ‘Terrible toper, obviously. His offices stank of liquor and he could barely stand upright. But a man of some education.’
‘The best eddicated gents are often the worst lushingtons of all,’ Quint said.
‘True enough.’ Adam spoke from the depths of the armchair. ‘Cambridge was full of the most dreadful drunkards. You could scarcely walk down Trinity Street of a Saturday night without tripping over a dozen men in liquor, sprawled in the gutter. Most of them quoting Virgil at you.’
‘What did this Jinkinson cove quote at you?’
‘Nothing from the Georgics or the Aeneid, I regret to say. He told me that he’d had dealings with Creech in the past but they were finished. That he had no idea why his name featured so prominently in that notebook you swiped. He was lying, of course.’
‘Ain’t no surprise about that. Anybody’d lie if they thought they was being linked to a man with a pair of bullets in his napper. This Jinkinson cove’d be worrying about the gentlemen in blue and white coming calling.’
‘I think he’s safe enough from the attentions of the police,’ Adam said. ‘I doubt very much if there is anything to connect Jinkinson to Creech other than the notebook and we have that.’
‘Ain’t we telling Pulverbatch about it?’
‘No, Quint, we are not.’ Adam had hauled himself into a more conventionally upright position in his chair. ‘I have thought long and hard about this and I have decided that we shall continue to pursue investigations of our own into Creech’s death. In parallel with those of the police, but quite separate.’
Quint stared at his master with an unreadable expression. ‘Well, don’t ask me to be the one to give Jem Pulverbatch the news we’ve been ’olding back on ’im,’ he said, after a short silence.
‘The responsibility is all mine, Quint. You are merely a humble manservant obedient to his master’s every wish.’
Quint grunted.
‘Yes, I know,’ Adam went on. ‘The idea of obedience to any of my wishes is an alien concept to you. But how is Pulverbatch — or any other policeman — to know of the extent of your habitual recalcitrance?’