The only other person in this first room was the man behind the bar but, through a door at the back, Adam could see another room. In it was a billiards table and two men were moving around it, cues in hand. One settled to play his shot. He was tall and so fat that he had great difficulty bending over the table. His opponent had noticed Adam enter the bar and he muttered something in his companion’s ear. The fat man heaved his bulk off the baize and looked back into the bar room. Wagging his finger at the man who had whispered in his ear, he left the table. A small white, strikingly ugly terrier trotted after him as he exited the billiard room and approached the bar.
Several of his chins wobbling with the effort of moving, he was smiling a ghastly smile of greeting. ‘Six penn’orth of hot brandy and water here, Toby. And whatever this gentleman is having.’ He looked questioningly at Adam.
‘That is kind of you, sir, but—’
‘No buts, guv’nor. I insist on standing you a drink. The least I can do for a young gent what comes down Wapping way.’
‘Thank you. I’ll take a half pint of your…’ Adam looked again at the poster behind the bar. ‘Your matchless stout.’
‘That’s more like it,’ the fat man said, flicking his fingers at Toby the barman, who began to pour the drinks. ‘Not often we get visitors down the Cat. Not visitors like yourself at any rate.’
‘Like myself?’ The ugly terrier was nipping at the bottoms of Adam’s trousers and he was struggling to concentrate on what was being said.
‘Down, Billy. Leave it, sir, leave it.’ The dog barked once and then retreated. The fat man moved closer, bringing a strong smell of corduroy, sweat and cheap pomade with him. ‘Of a gentlemanly nature. Of a not-usually-seen-in-this-neck-of-the-woods nature.’
‘I’m looking for someone, Mr…?’
‘Brindle, guv. Jabez Brindle. At your service.’
Jabez Brindle looked, Adam thought, as if he was never at anyone’s service but his own. He was not an attractive man. Even had he shed several stones and thus returned himself to the average weight of a London publican, he would have attracted no admiring glances from the ladies. His head was shaven and his nose was flatter than noses are meant to be. He had the look of a man for whom violence was a first resort, not a last.
‘And who would you be looking for, I wonder?’ Brindle’s voice was quiet but carried the hint of a threat. ‘Ain’t very likely to be any others of a gentlemanly nature in the Cat. No gents here, Toby, eh?’
The barman guffawed at the very notion.
‘I’m looking for—’
But Adam had no chance or need to reveal who he was looking for. At just that moment, a door from the street opened into the billiard room and a familiar figure lumbered into the pub. It was Jinkinson, looking very much the worse for wear. His shoulders slumped, his yellow silk cravat twisted into a knot beneath one ear and his plaid waistcoat spotted with the stains of drink and dirt, he was a picture of unrelieved misery. He took off his hat and was about to place it on the billiard table when he glanced through the connecting door towards the bar and saw Adam. His reaction was immediate. A look of mingled surprise and fear appeared on his face and he turned to flee.
Adam moved swiftly to follow him but, surprisingly, Brindle was even swifter. He stuck out his leg and sent the young man tumbling. As Adam fell, his head struck a glancing blow on the rim of one of the tables. Briefly stunned, he was unable to rise. He could only rest on all fours and endeavour to gather his briefly scattered wits. The great full moon of Brindle’s face suddenly appeared, sideways, in his field of vision. The fat man was leaning over him.
‘Very clumsy for a handsome gent, ain’t you? You really should mind where you’re going. Or you’ll be doing yourself a severe mischief, you will.’
Adam pushed Brindle away and struggled to his feet. Having allowed Jinkinson his escape, the fat man seemed uninterested in stopping Adam from following him. Instead he began to laugh, great heaving waves of laughter rising from the pits of his stomach. Adam staggered from the bar room into the billiard room. He reached a hand to his head. He could feel blood on his fingers. He must have grazed his brow on the table as he fell. It was nothing serious, he decided, but he did feel decidedly dizzy. Shaking his head to clear it, he exited through the door Jinkinson had used and nearly found himself in the river. At the back, the pub was propped on thick wooden pillars which rose directly out of the Thames mud. Only the narrowest of footpaths ran between the back wall of the Cat and Salutation and the ooze of the river.
There was no sign of Jinkinson. Rackety wooden railings stretched along the water for twenty yards. There was a gap in the middle of them where the rotting wood had given way. Holding a handkerchief to his nose, Adam glanced into the filth below. Had Jinkinson, he wondered, fallen into the Thames as he came dashing out of the pub’s rear door? There was no evidence that he had. Masses of green weed floated on the surface of what was, to judge by the smell, a potent mix of water and human effluvia. What looked unpleasantly like a dead dog, swollen with putrefaction, had washed up against the post which marked one end of the railings. Adam could hear squeals and the splashing of water as rats, alerted to his presence, made off into the darkness.
He began to walk warily along the pathway, his feet squelching in mud and possibly worse as he did so. Suddenly, there was a sound which could only be a pistol shot. It reverberated from building to building and along the riverbank. It was followed almost immediately by several more and by a long cry of pain. Adam stopped and listened. Did the noise come from close to hand or much further away? He could not be certain. He set off in the direction from which the shots seemed to have sounded. He had gone about fifty yards when, in the half-light, he stumbled over something. It was something large and soft. Something that was lying half in and half out of the water. It was a body.
Gingerly, Adam reached down and took hold of the shoulder. He rolled the body onto its back. Grunting with the effort, he pulled it out of the mud into which it was sinking and hauled it towards the top of the bank. In the faint light from the distant gas lamp, he could just make out the features. It was Jinkinson. The enquiry agent was alive but only just. Blood oozed through his waistcoat and onto Adam’s hands. He was struggling to say something. His mouth opened and closed but no sounds emerged. His eyes were fixed on a point behind Adam’s left shoulder. He looked as if he was concentrating intently on some object that was slipping out of focus and out of view. His legs were twitching and splashing in the murky Thames water. As Adam battled to haul him further out of the riverside filth, the light left the enquiry agent’s eyes and he died. Adam was left to clutch the substantial shell of Jinkinson’s body, but whatever had once animated it had gone. The old dandy, it seemed, had tied his last cravat.