Half-crouched in the mud, Jinkinson’s corpse at his feet, Adam heard the sound of movement behind him. He swung round and was in time to see a dark figure, twenty yards away, silhouetted against the wall of one of the riverside houses.
‘You there,’ he shouted. ‘Stop, I say, stop!’
The figure turned briefly in his direction. There was something disconcertingly familiar about it, but before Adam could think what it might be, the man moved into the darkness between two buildings and disappeared. Adam briefly contemplated the idea of pursuit but he decided against it. He turned back to the dead body in the Thames mud. He wondered how long it would be before others joined him on the riverbank. At present it was as if he was stranded on the shore of Crusoe’s desert island but appearances, he knew, were deceptive. There were doubtless a dozen dives and pubs within a few hundred yards of here. And out on the river, even amidst the darkness, there would be boatmen and scavengers. Plenty of people would have heard the shots fired. The sound of shots, however, might not be so uncommon in the neighbourhood that they would attract immediate attention. And curiosity, in the circumstances, might prove dangerous. Minding one’s own business in the worst areas of Wapping was probably thought conducive to a longer life. On reflection, Adam decided that he had time to search the body before anyone joined him.
It was not a pleasant job. Jinkinson’s body was warm and fleshy. Stifling his nausea, Adam felt hurriedly through the pockets of the enquiry agent’s mud-stained and bloody clothes. It took him but a short time. Whatever possessions Jinkinson had owned, he had not been keeping many of them about his person. Trouser pockets surrendered only a cambric handkerchief and the stub of a pencil. The lower pockets of the plaid waistcoat held nothing. Inserting his fingers into the waistcoat’s top pocket, Adam could feel something in it. Whatever it was, it proved difficult to grasp and his thumb and forefinger pursued it vainly around the recesses of the pocket for a while before they closed on it. Finally, he pulled it out. It was a visiting card. Adam took a box of matches from his pocket and struck one. The card was battered but largely dry and, in the wavering light of the match, he could make out the name ‘Lewis Garland’ printed on it in a bold and simple font. Adam turned the card over. At first, he thought the reverse was plain, but holding it nearer the light, he could see that one word had been written on it in pencil. The word, in English capitals, was ‘EUPHORION’.
It was the same word or name that had appeared in Creech’s journal. Now, more than ever, it seemed to Adam to lie at the heart of the mystery that had led him to this dismal stretch of the Thames. The mystery that had cost both Creech and now Jinkinson their lives. The enquiry agent had denied all knowledge of Euphorion. So for that matter had the Reverend Dwight. But Ada, poor girl, had recognised the name, even if she had transliterated it as ‘Yew Ferrion’. She had spoken of Jinkinson’s belief that it held the key to riches. Now here were those same nine letters on a card belonging to Lewis Garland, whom Quint had observed meeting the enquiry agent in the pub yard near Fountain Court. And Garland, along with Sir Willoughby Oughtred and James Abercrombie, had been mentioned in Creech’s journal.
Adam struggled to make sense of it all, his thoughts twisting and turning in search of a theory that might explain the few facts he had. His speculations were interrupted, however, first by the match burning out and then by a sound from behind him. He spun round quickly. For all he knew, Jinkinson’s killer might have returned. A man was standing a few feet away in the mud of the footpath. He was holding a bull’s eye lantern in his hand and appeared to be swinging it aimlessly from side to side. As it swung, its light flashed back and forth, first blinding Adam as he stood over the body and then illuminating the man who held it. It was Toby, the barman from the Cat and Salutation.
‘Mr Brindle. He ain’t going to like this,’ he said.
‘No, well, I doubt Mr Jinkinson is entirely delighted by the turn events have taken.’ Adam swiftly pocketed the card with its enigmatic message. ‘Come over here. We need to get the body out of this filth. We’ll have to carry it to the pub.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Seems to be some kind of attraction between you and those what have passed over to the other side, don’t there, Mr Carver?’
Despite the gloom of both the surroundings and circumstances, Inspector Pulverbatch was in a jovial mood.
‘Some kind of fatal attraction, you might almost say.’
‘Our paths do seem destined to cross, Inspector, do they not?’
Adam was bone weary and still covered in the mud of the river. He had rather liked Jinkinson and had been distressed to stumble across him, dying in the river’s filth. Now Pulverbatch’s cheerfulness was the latest in the series of misfortunes the evening had inflicted on him.
‘Does Scotland Yard,’ Adam asked, ‘have no one other than your self to investigate murders?’
The two men were sitting in the bar of the Cat and Salutation. Apart from a constable standing guard at the door and the corpse of Jinkinson lying beneath a sheet on the billiards table, they were alone. Complaining bitterly, Brindle and his cronies had been ushered out into the courtyard where another constable was watching them.
‘Oh, dearie me, yes,’ Pulverbatch replied. ‘Plenty of detectives at the Yard capable of looking into a murder or two.’
Before despatching Toby to join his employer and his customers outside, Pulverbatch had instructed the barman to pour him a half-pint of stout. He now picked it up and examined it against the light, as if looking for flaws in the glass.
‘But only me what’s got an interest in the Cat and Salutation already,’ the policeman continued. ‘So when word reaches me that someone’s gone and found a dead body outside that very same public house, I’m all ears. And then I further hears that that someone is none other than your good self. A man as has come across another body in Herne Hill nary a fortnight ago. A man as has friends in high places. Very high places, judging by what Dolly Williamson himself tells me. Well, you can imagine how interested I was.’
Pulverbatch raised his stout to his lips.
‘If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll just put this where the flies won’t get at it.’
For twenty seconds, nothing was heard but the sound of beer being emptied down Pulverbatch’s throat. Then, with a sigh of appreciation, the inspector finished his drink and slammed the glass on the pub table with sufficient force to make Adam start.
‘Well, that slipped down like soapsuds down a gully hole.’
‘I’m delighted you enjoyed it, Inspector.’
Puverbatch ignored Adam’s sarcasm.
‘So, you’ve been a-drinking and a-gassing with Jabez Brindle and his pals, have you?’ he remarked. ‘Well, they’re a bad lot, as the devil said of the Ten Commandments.’
‘You make our meeting sound like a social occasion, Inspector. I wouldn’t describe it like that.’
‘How would you describe it, sir?’
‘I received information that a gentleman whom I was anxious to meet might be staying here at the tavern. When I entered the place, Mr Brindle introduced himself to me.’
Pulverbatch nodded slowly. He seemed to be turning over in his mind the veracity or otherwise of Adam’s tale.
‘This man Brindle is known to you, is he?’ the young man asked.
‘Oh, yes, we know Jabez Brindle down the Yard.’ The inspector paused and picked up his glass from the table once again. He tilted it slightly and examined it as if there might be more beer in it that he had somehow missed. Satisfied at last that there was no more drink to be had, he replaced it on the bar table. ‘Want to know what we know of him, Mr Carver? I’m supposed to tell you all I know, now ain’t I?’