‘Exactly, old chap.’
CHAPTER NINE
Stop here, cabbie.’ Adam rapped on the roof of the hansom with his cane and the driver drew up at the kerbstones. They had just turned into High Holborn. Adam, who had hailed the cab outside the Marco Polo, now decided to leave it and walk the remainder of the journey to Poulter’s Court. He was about to climb down when he became aware of sounds of disturbance further along the street. Shouts and cries and the noise of dispute could be heard amidst the usual, unending hubbub of the traffic. Up ahead, an omnibus had also come to a halt at the side of the road and the driver was engaged in a vigorous discussion with a passing pedestrian.
The debate involved much arm-waving by both men. Was the driver touting for business? Adam wondered. It was a common enough practice amongst the busmen who were rarely willing just to wait passively for passengers to present themselves. Yet this seemed a more personal argument. Customers already aboard the omnibus were beginning to get restless. Voices demanding that the bus get underway again could be heard. Up on the roof, half a dozen young men sitting back to back on the knifeboard bench were all shouting down to the driver.
The pedestrian, Adam realised as he peered from his cab, was Jinkinson. Still shouting and gesticulating at the omnibus, the enquiry agent now turned away from the altercation and began to walk back down the street. He saw the cab by the kerbstones and waved at it. His walk turned into something between a trot and a waddle as he approached. So eager was he to get into the cab that he stumbled as he hauled himself in. With a yelp of anguish, he fell into its interior, nearly landing in Adam’s lap. He cried out in surprise.
‘I beg your pardon most profoundly, sir. I had no notion that the cab was taken. I was so anxious to remove myself from a vulgar scene.’
‘There is no need to apologise, Mr Jinkinson. I am happy to share a cab with an old acquaintance.’
‘Do I know you, sir?’ Jinkinson, settling himself on the well-cushioned cab seat, peered short-sightedly at the man he had joined.
‘My name is Carver. I called upon you in Poulter’s Court a few days since.’
There was a momentary silence and then Jinkinson spoke again, warily. ‘Mr Carver, of course. I recognise you now. I must apologise again. I cannot think how I did not see you.’ He took out a large polka-dotted handkerchief and mopped his brow with it. He was sweating profusely. ‘My excuse must be my distress at the behaviour of those scoundrels in the omnibus.’
‘The driver seemed angry with you, Mr Jinkinson.’
‘His anger is as nothing compared to my own.’ The enquiry agent’s outrage overcame his wariness. ‘The villain attempted to run his vehicle over me. Had I not moved quickly, I would have been beneath the wheels.’ Jinkinson returned his handkerchief to his pocket. A trickle of sweat continued to run down his left cheek. ‘When I attempted to remonstrate, I was met with nothing but vulgar abuse.’
‘The average jarvey is certainly one of the most dangerous men in London. And one of the swiftest to indulge in invective.’
‘They drive their chariots with all the fury of Jehu,’ Jinkinson agreed, warming to his theme. ‘The unhappy pedestrian is less than the dust beneath their wheels.’ The enquiry agent caught Adam’s eye and then swiftly looked away.
‘However, I must not detain you with my complaints about these rogues of the highways. I shall leave you with apologies for disturbing you and seek out another cab. It has been a pleasure to renew our acquaintance, however briefly.’ He began to shift his bulk across the seat and prepare to disembark.
‘But our meeting is most fortuitous, Mr Jinkinson.’ Adam placed a restraining hand on the investigator’s arm. ‘I was on my way to see you. I have one or two new questions to put to you. Ones which did not occur to me when I saw you in your offices last week.’
‘I will answer them if I can, sir.’ Jinkinson stopped his shuffling across the seat. He looked uncomfortable. Although a cool breeze was blowing through the hansom, he was still perspiring freely. ‘However, I doubt if I can help. As I said when we met before, I know little of the unfortunate Mr Creech beyond what I told you.’
‘My new questions do not necessarily concern Mr Creech. They involve a gentleman named Oughtred and a gentleman named Garland.’
Once again Jinkinson’s inability to mask his initial response to Adam’s words let him down. He struggled to replace immediate dismay with a semblance of bewilderment.
‘I do not think I know the gentlemen in question.’
‘Ah, but I think you do, Mr Jinkinson. I think that you have met with them both in the last week. I also think that it is time that cards were placed more openly on the table. Otherwise a police inspector at Scotland Yard by the name of Pulverbatch might well come to hear of you and your recent activities.’
There was a long pause during which Jinkinson twice appeared to be about to speak before thinking better of it. He drew several deep breaths and noisily exhaled them.
‘Let us not be too hasty, Mr Carver,’ he said at last. ‘I must confess that I have not been entirely frank with you.’
‘I had suspected as much.’
‘I was not employed by Creech to locate his relative’s watch.’
‘It seemed to me unlikely that you had been.’
‘My business with him was not as trifling as I may have given the impression it was.’
‘I did not believe it could have been.’
Jinkinson began to pat his pockets, as if looking for something. Adam waited for him to speak again. After a few moments, the enquiry agent appeared to lose interest in his search. His hands dropped to his sides and he stared glumly out of the cab window at the passing traffic.
‘You may not credit it, Mr Carver, but I have been a prodigious toper in the past.’ Jinkinson now swerved in a new conversational direction. ‘Rivers and lakes of liquor have flowed down my unregenerate gullet.’
‘Many a man enjoys a drink, Mr Jinkinson.’ Adam was surprised by the new turn the enquiry agent’s confession had taken. He did not know quite what to say but this did not seem to matter greatly since Jinkinson ignored his remark anyway.
‘I would be embarrassed to admit to you, sir, how many of the nights of my youth I have wasted at idle bacchanals. And the drink that was at those gatherings…’ There was a look of the deepest nostalgia in Jinkinson’s watery eye. ‘You might have swum in it. If you’d a mind to do so.’
‘We have all of us overindulged in our time, I am sure.’
‘But those days are now gone.’ The fading dandy appeared to have forgotten that the days of which he spoke included one from the previous week. ‘I am now a man of sobriety and self-possession.’
‘I congratulate you on your new status, sir.’
‘Like prodigious topers, however, men of sobriety and self-possession need to live.’
‘Undoubtedly.’ Adam was still puzzled by the direction in which the conversation was moving. Jinkinson had now taken hold of the lapels of his lurid yellow jacket and had adopted the position of a courtroom lawyer about to embark on a particularly incisive address to the jury.
‘To live, a man must earn money. In the sweat of his face shall he eat bread until he return unto the ground. There is no shirking honest labour simply because he has sobered up.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘There is more need of it. And so, when Mr Creech — God rest his soul — crossed my threshold in Poulter’s Court and offered me money to follow certain gentlemen, how could I turn him away?’
‘How indeed? And these gentlemen were—’
Jinkinson held up his palm to interrupt. He had not yet finished his little speech, the outstretched hand clearly said.