‘You have no time for evangelists, Quint?’
Quint snorted dismissively. ‘I ain’t one for all that gospel-gab,’ he agreed. ‘Most of these tub-thumpers have less sense than a coster’s jackass. This one seems harmless enough. Although he’s got eyes like cod in a Billingsgate basket.’
‘Show him into the sanctum sanctorum, then.’
The visitor was, as Adam had already guessed, Elisha Dwight. The reverend entered the room warily, as if he half expected it to be filled with unrepentant sinners intent on tempting him from the path of righteousness. When Adam gestured towards the only chair he could offer visitors, Dwight wasted no time in plumping himself down in it. His smooth, round face was flushed and he looked acutely uncomfortable. He had a white cravat wrapped round his throat, which Adam thought must be intended to denote his clerical status. It was so tight that any attempt Dwight might make to move his head to the left or to the right was fraught with the danger of strangulation. He could only stare fixedly ahead of him.
‘I am delighted to see you again so soon, Reverend,’ Adam said amiably. ‘How can I help you?’
‘I have been wrestling with the minions of Satan, Mr Carver.’ Dwight spoke as if this was one of his regular pastimes.
‘Which minions would those be, Reverend Dwight?’
‘The imps of temptation.’ The clergyman, rubbing his hands and gazing at the books on Adam’s shelves, sounded very unhappy. ‘The demons that demand lies. Lies in the service of the Father of Lies.’
‘I am sorry, Reverend, I do not quite follow you.’
‘I did not tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth when you came to see me the other day. The minions of Satan wish me to persist in my deceit but I have fought them and won.’
‘I am glad to hear it.’ Adam was beginning to tire of his visitor’s orotund sanctimony. He wished the clergyman would say what he had to say without further ado. Dwight had travelled halfway across London to tell him something. Why did he not just go ahead and do so?
‘I know more of Jinkinson than I admitted.’ Dwight pulled at his cravat like a man awaiting a hanging with a noose round his neck. ‘I have decided that I should tell you the more that I know.’
‘I am all ears.’
‘Jinkinson is a sinful man.’ Dwight returned to rubbing his hands together, as if washing them with soap and water from a bowl set down in his ample lap. ‘He has long been a drinker and a degenerate. His home has more often been the low tavern and the penny gaff than the Tabernacle of righteousness.’ The clergyman spat out his words like oaths. ‘He is a slug in the Lord’s vineyard, Mr Carver.’
‘You are surely too harsh on him, Reverend Dwight.’ Adam began to wonder whether this pompous young minister really did have much to reveal about Jinkinson’s whereabouts. Perhaps he had walked from his Tabernacle all the way to Doughty Street merely to insult the plump enquiry agent a little more than he had done the previous Sunday. ‘There is no harm in the occasional indulgence in alcohol. And the penny gaffs do no more than bring colour and excitement into lives that have little of either.’
This, Adam realised immediately, was the wrong thing to say.
‘Filthy songs. Filthy dances.’ Dwight was suddenly overwrought. His Adam’s apple wobbled furiously behind the tightly tied cravat. ‘And filthy men and women watching them. That’s your penny gaffs for you, sir. They disgust me. They should disgust every Christian soul in the realm.’
Taken aback by the minister’s sudden wrath, Adam hurried to placate him.
‘I know little of them, Reverend Dwight. I am sure you are correct and that the virtuous should avoid them. In any case, it is unlikely that Jinkinson has taken refuge in a penny gaff.’
‘No, but I believe I know where he will have gone.’ Dwight had regained control of himself as rapidly as he had lost it. His hand reached up to his throat to adjust his cravat.
‘Mr Jinkinson has spent many years pursuing that will of the wisp, Pleasure, through the giddying labyrinth of Dissipation,’ Dwight said, sternly. The minister’s voice, Adam thought to himself, possessed the ability to add invisible capital letters to so many of the nouns he used. ‘He has struggled with the Demon Drink throughout the time he has attended the Tabernacle. When he falls from grace and returns to his wine-bibbing, there is one sink of iniquity he frequents. He may well be there now. It is a public house in Wapping called the Cat and Salutation. He pays the landlord for a room and there he drinks his immortal soul towards the pit.’
The street in Wapping was almost deserted. Adam watched the yellow light from the side lanterns on the cab which had dropped him there flicker briefly in the evening gloom and then disappear. Two men, standing a dozen yards away beneath the street’s solitary gas lamp, were conducting some mysterious business of their own. They glanced briefly at Adam and then turned their backs to him. Closer to hand, a woman was making her unsteady way along the pavement ahead of him. She was wearing a shapeless black bonnet that even her grandmother might have considered somewhat dowdy,
and was reeling with drink. As Adam watched, she pitched forwards and sideways, only recovering her balance at the last minute. Her black bonnet fell into the gutter but she did not seem to notice it had gone. Following behind her, he stooped briefly to pick it up. It was the work of a moment to overtake the woman and hand it back to her. She took the hat and gazed bleary-eyed at him. She attempted to say something but drink defeated her. Frustrated, she turned and staggered into the wall of one of the soot-blackened houses that lined the street. Adam moved forward as if to help her but she waved him away and sat down in the doorway. Within seconds, she appeared to be asleep. Adam left her to her stupor and walked on. There was almost a spring in his step. He felt, he realised, oddly enlivened by venturing so far off the paths he usually trod in London.
The Cat and Salutation was at the end of an alleyway running off the street that opened out into a small, cobbled court. Another solitary gas lamp stood at one end of the cobbles and cast its light on the pub sign. The tavern looked an uninviting refuge for even the most desperate of drinkers. Adam approached the entrance, his heels clicking on the cobblestones.
An old woman was sitting on a wooden bench outside the pub. She was fat and dirty. A faded green rag was tied beneath her jaw and over her head, and a short pipe was clamped in the corner of her mouth. She glared at the young man.
‘Sing you a song for a glass of the blue, sonny,’ she offered, truculently.
‘That’s very kind of you, ma’am, but I cannot linger to hear you at present.’
‘You could jest get me the gin.’
‘Alas, I have no time to do that either.’
‘Pox on you, then.’
The old woman removed the pipe from her mouth and spat a great gob of phlegm on the cobbles at Adam’s feet. He picked his way around it and made his way into the Cat and Salutation. The alehouse was small and gloomy, little more than a square box with dingy, red-curtained windows. It seemed to lack most of the amenities usually associated with a good pub. A few tables and benches were scattered around it. A bar ran along most of the left side of the room. At each of its ends stood an earthenware spittoon filled with sawdust. Behind it were a row of bottles on a shelf, a couple of barrels of beer resting on wooden supports and a torn poster advertising the merits of Reid’s Matchless Stout. The Cat and Salutation also seemed to lack any of the jolly atmosphere traditionally associated with alehouses. In fact, it was very nearly empty. A long-faced man with a squint was sitting at one of the tables, drinking from a pint tankard and eating bread and cheese. With one arm he created an encircling barrier around his food, as if expecting a thief to snatch it away from him at any moment. With the other he tore at the bread and cheese and stuffed lumps of both into his mouth. Adam was astonished by the ravenous relish with which he ate. The man looked up briefly as Adam entered and then returned to his food. Next to him was a younger man, little more than a boy, with untidy, straw-coloured hair and a look of distraction. This youth had wrapped a small comb in tissue paper and was blowing through it. Adam could just about make out the tune of ‘Lilliburlero’. As he looked in his direction, the boy stopped blowing and dropped the comb and paper into his lap. He grinned at Adam, revealing stained and blackened teeth.