‘I have debts,’ he acknowledged. ‘But none which is pressing. What will happen to yours at the end of the week?’
‘They will remain unpaid. And, as a result, I assume that I will be visited here in my sanctuary by nasty little fellows threatening all sorts of dire consequences if I do not immediately sell my furniture.’
‘You have little enough furniture to sell,’ Adam remarked, looking around Jardine’s spartan studio.
‘I suppose the matter would eventually come before a court.’ The artist ignored his friend’s comment. ‘And I would be inevitably convicted and sent off to Botany Bay, or wherever it is they now send those who put their names to bills which they shouldn’t.’
‘I cannot promise to pay you a visit there.’
‘I would not expect one. The climate, I am told, is atrocious and so, too, are the food and drink. The company is even worse. But enough of my troubles. You must tell me of yours. There is no better way of relieving one’s own pains than by listening to the tale of someone else’s.’
‘I am not certain that I have any, Cosmo.’
‘You stumble over a fresh corpse in some distant part of the metropolis and yet you claim to be free of troubles. I find that difficult to believe. Were you not called upon at the inquest? There was an inquest, I suppose?’
‘There was. Two days after I found the body. Did I not speak to you of it?’
Jardine shook his head. He continued to peer at his canvas from a distance of a few inches, occasionally making the smallest of strokes with his brush.
‘Well, I stood up and told my story. Quint told his. The police inspector, Pulverbatch, stood up and hummed and hahed about investigating this and ascertaining that. And the jury retired for about five minutes before returning a verdict of wilful murder by person or persons unknown.’
‘So there was no suggestion that it might be felo de se? That Creech might deserve to have his body carried off to the crossroads? Is that what they still do to suicides? Off to the meeting of four roads and a stake through the heart to discourage the ghost from travelling?’
There was an awkward pause. Jardine suddenly realised that he had spoken lightly on a subject in which his friend might struggle to find any humour.
‘I am truly sorry, Adam,’ he said. ‘I had forgotten for the moment… I have allowed my tongue to run away with me… Your father… ’
‘It is of no matter, Cosmo,’ Adam said, turning away and looking out of the studio window. He was aware that he was not speaking the truth. Such casual mention of self-murder could still stir unpleasant memories. ‘I cannot spend my entire life avoiding all talk of such things. It is years since my father’s demise.’
‘Nonetheless, I apologise.’
‘Apologies accepted, old fellow.’ Adam turned back to his friend. ‘In truth, I am not certain what happens to suicides in these enlightened times. But there is no possibility that the man killed himself. I saw the body. The wounds were such that they could not have been self-inflicted.’
‘What of this tippling private investigator you visited? Jenkins, was it?’
‘Jinkinson.’
‘Jinkinson, then. I stand corrected. Did he put in an appearance?’
‘No, he did not. I am by no means certain that the police are aware of his existence.’
‘Should you not alert them to his role in the drama?’
‘I am not at all sure what his role is, Cosmo.’ Adam lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. He blew out a series of smoke rings and watched them drift towards the ceiling. ‘I am inclined to believe that he knows nothing of the killing and that he could have made no useful contribution to proceedings at the inquest. However, the curious thing is that he seems to have disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’
‘Quint and I followed him for several days after my first encounter with him. He was, in his own way, a man of regular habits. But we have not seen him in any of his usual haunts for nearly a week.’
‘There you have the proof, then.’ Jardine turned from King Pellinore and wiped his hand on his paint-smeared smock. ‘Jinkinson was known to Creech. He was employed by him to engage in nefarious activity. Creech is murdered. Jinkinson disappears. Ergo, Creech was killed by Jinkinson. Quod erat demonstrandum.’ The artist waved his brush in a triumphant conclusion to his reasoning and small flecks of paint flew into the air.
Adam shook his head. ‘It is not as simple as that, Cosmo. Logic points in the direction of your argument, I allow. Perhaps I should just go to Scotland Yard and tell Pulverbatch what I have not so far told him. Yet there is something more to the story, I am sure of it.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I ain’t seen him, I tell yer.’ The boy’s voice quavered with indignation. ‘How many more times I got to say it? I ain’t seen the old fool in days.’
‘But you have been coming to the office each day and opening up?’
‘He give me the key last Michaelmas. I’ve been using it to let myself in. Old Jinks’d expect me to. Anyways, I got me own work to do, you know.’ Simpkins spoke with a sense of his own virtue in insisting on coming in to the office.
Quint snorted contemptuously. Adam glanced sceptically at the copy of Varney the Vampire or The Beast of Blood which lay face upwards on the boy’s desk.
‘Can’t work all the time, can I?’ Simpkins said, noticing where Adam was looking. ‘A man’s got to have a bit of recreation, ain’t he?’
A fly was buzzing around the room. The boy watched it move from desk to window frame and window frame back to desk. He rolled up his copy of Varney the Vampire and, as the fly settled on the desk for the second time, he swatted it. The rolled-up penny dreadful descended on the insect with a tremendous thwack. The buzzing was heard no more.
‘Got the little bugger,’ the boy said, with a leer of satisfaction. He inspected the remains of the fly, splattered across an illustration of a befanged Varney threatening a cowering female, before flicking them to the floor. ‘Don’t want you gents troubled by that bleeding buzzing.’
‘Very thoughtful of you, Mr Simpkins. Where do you suppose Mr Jinkinson has been these few days past?’
After the chance encounter with the private investigator in the cab in High Holborn, Adam had thought it expedient to continue his efforts to learn more of Jinkinson and what he knew about the three MPs whose names had appeared in Creech’s notebook. For this reason, either he or Quint had again been stationed at the entrance to Poulter’s Court for several hours of every day. His own curiosity and his friend Sunman’s suggestion that he should pursue his inquiries into Creech’s murder combined to make it seem time well spent. They had watched Simpkins and the other clerks who spent most of their daylight hours in the offices surrounding the court as they came and went. Of Jinkinson there had been no sign. As Adam had told Cosmo Jardine the previous afternoon, the fat enquiry agent had disappeared. Eventually, the young man had decided that the time had come to confront the boy who guarded the entrance to Jinkinson’s lair, and ask him what he knew of his master’s whereabouts.
‘How should I know?’ Simpkins said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘He don’t tell me everything about his life any more’n I tell him everything about mine. Maybe he’s gone off with that tart of his.’
‘That tart? What tart?’
‘The woman he’s so spooney about. Ada, her name is.’
‘And what can you tell me about Ada?’
‘She’s an obliging girl, Ada is.’ Simpkins winked horribly. ‘Ask her to sit down and she’ll lie down. If you gets my meaning.’