“So the baronetcy passed to his father, James?”
“Quite so-until, seven days later, Sir James dropped dead from heart failure. Our prodigal was now the new baronet, entitled to all the wealth and estates of the Tichbornes. Rather eagerly, I imagine, he hopped aboard a ship- La Bella -to make his way home. On the 20th of April, 1854, it sank without a trace, and the third baronet in less than a fortnight was lost. His young brother, Alfred, inherited the estate instead, and would have bankrupted it in no time at all had his mother not sent her friend Colonel Lushington to Tichborne House to take him in hand.”
Henry Arundell paused to sip his wine and to nod a greeting to an acquaintance seated at a nearby table.
Burton asked: “If Sir Alfred is such a liability, why are the Arundell and Doughty families so concerned that his elder brother has shown up alive and well? Why contest Roger Tichborne's claims to the baronetcy?”
The older man blew out an exasperated breath and said in a sharp tone: “Simply because the man currently in Paris is most definitely not Roger Tichborne.”
The king's agent looked surprised. “He isn't? That's not what Lady Henriette-Felicite says. Surely you don't doubt a mother's recognition of her own son?”
“I do, absolutely!”
“On what grounds?”
“On grounds that the dowager is on death's doorstep and is desperate for her lost son's return; on grounds that she's almost entirely deaf and blind; on grounds that Roger Tichborne always, without exception, wrote to his mother in French, yet the man currently posing as him wrote to her in English-and very, very bad English to boot-and on grounds that his handwriting is entirely different.”
“A man's handwriting can change over the course of a decade.”
“Can a man forget how to spell?”
“Hmm,” Burton grunted.
The waiter arrived with their food and for a few minutes the men ate in silence.
“So Sir Roger Tichborne-” Burton began.
“The Claimant,” Arundell snapped. “I'll not honour him with the name Tichborne until he's demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is who he says he is.”
“Very well then, the Claimant-he's still in Paris?”
“Yes. Apparently he has a scalp infection and is being treated by a doctor, though he's expected at Tichborne House during the course of the coming week. I fear he means to eject Colonel Lushington.”
“I would like to be there when he arrives. Could you arrange it?”
Arundell looked Burton in the eye. “If you go as representative of the Arundell and Doughty families, yes. My question is: can I depend on you to act in our interests? You and I don't have a good history, Burton, and my wife would have a hysterical fit if she found out I'd drawn you into the affair.”
“It was the prime minister who drew me into the affair, sir, and what you can depend on is that I will do my utmost to get to the truth of the matter, whatever it may be.”
Arundell pushed the food on his plate around with his fork, then sighed and said: “Fair enough. I'll get a message to Lushington. He's a dependable sort, if a little long-winded in manner, and will give you whatever assistance you need. When do you intend to go?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
“Good. You'll definitely be there before the Claimant arrives. In addition to the colonel and Sir Alfred, there are a couple of other people at the house you should be aware of. The first is Doctor Jankyn, the family physician. He belongs to an unbroken line of medical practitioners who've been associated with the Tichbornes since the year dot, and he's currently nursing Sir Alfred through some sort of nervous complaint.”
“Related to his brother's return?”
“I don't know. The second person is Andrew Bogle, an old Jamaican who served as butler to Sir Edward Doughty and who now works in that same capacity for Sir Alfred. Both men knew Roger Tichborne before he left for South America.”
With that, Henry Arundell had little more to tell Burton, so the two men finished their meal and Isabel's father took his leave.
The king's agent retired to the smoking room and there fell in with Samuel Baker and John Petherick from the Royal Geographical Society. They were bluff, hearty, bushy-bearded men, whose plan to go in search of Henry Morton Stanley by following the course of the Nile from Cairo to its source struck Burton as naive and overly ambitious. The warring tribes around the upper reaches of the great river had so far prevented any such penetration into the heart of Africa.
“It can't be done,” he told them.
“We'll see, Sir Richard. We'll see!” Baker replied, with a smile and a slap to Burton's shoulder.
The three of them discussed the matter for an hour or so before the two would-be rescuers took their leave of the more experienced man. Burton shook his head.
“The bloody fools are going to their deaths,” he muttered.
He swallowed his drink and turned to leave only to find himself facing another member of the RGS. It was Richard Spruce, a botanist, author of The Hepaticae of the Amazon and the Andes of Peru and Ecuador; a man who knew South America extremely well.
“Ah, Spruce!” the king's agent enthused. “Just the man! Would you allow me to buy you a tipple? I have an ulterior motive, mind-I want to grill you about Brazil and Chile.”
Spruce acceded, and, for half an hour, Burton questioned him about black diamonds and the mythical Cherufe. Spruce just shrugged and declared that there were no diamonds in that part of the world and he'd never heard of any prehistoric reptilian civilisation. He then turned the subject to his ongoing work with the Eugenicists to solve the great Irish famine, and talked with such obsessive zeal that Burton began to feel uncomfortable, sensing that he was in the presence of a fanatic.
“The seeds my fellows and I have developed are already growing!” Spruce raved. “You should see them! They've sprouted into massive plants! Huge, Burton, huge! And they're pollinating far earlier than we'd anticipated!”
He banged a fist onto the bar, causing glasses to rattle along its length.
“It's just the beginning! Soon we'll be cultivating plants that'll perform specific functions in society in much the same way as machines do! Imagine a factory that was actually a plant! Imagine if we could grow our industrial infrastructure from seeds!”
Burton, whose encounters with Charles Darwin and Francis Galton, and, more recently, with Sir Charles Babbage, had made him extremely wary of such propositions, gave an excuse and departed in haste. There was, he reflected, something quite unnerving about Richard Spruce.
T he next morning, Algernon Swinburne called at 14 Montagu Place and was ushered through the house by Mrs. Angell, into the yard, and to the garage beyond. Inside, he found Sir Richard Francis Burton, who was applying oil to his rotorchair's many moving parts.
“I say! What happened to your beard?” the diminutive poet enquired.
“Vanity happened,” Burton admitted. “I got tired of seeing that forked bird's nest in the mirror.”
“You look younger, but no less barbaric. Are you feeling better? You're still skinny and yellowish.”
“I'm through the worst of it, Algy, and feeling stronger by the day. What have you been up to? Here, hold this.”
“What is it?”
“The flywheel. I want to lubricate the bearings.”
“Ah.” Swinburne sighed. “I know a rather fetching young doxy who does something similar. You'd like her.”
Burton clicked his tongue disapprovingly and said: “Then my question is answered. It's quite apparent what you've been up to.”
The poet adopted a wounded expression and objected: “I've been writing, too! As a matter of fact, my latest efforts have caused quite a stir.”
“So I read. The Empire is calling you a genius.”
“Yes, but the Times is calling me a deviant.”
“It's hardly surprising. Your poetry is somewhat-shall we say- florid? Here, give me that back.”
Swinburne handed over the flywheel and watched as his friend fitted it into its housing.
“ Filthy was the word the Times used. Are you preparing it for a flight or just tinkering?”