Now, without benefit of a candle, I made my careful way down the stairs, wondering all the while if Carmichael would rejoin me or if he had somehow managed to slip out without my noticing. There was no sign of him, however, and once on the ground floor, I studied the premises through a window until I felt certain I could leave undetected. It was then a matter of another half an hour of snaking through shadows to avoid the watchmen and make my departure. I arrived home in time to sleep an hour before rising once more to greet the day and the terrible news it would bring.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BECAUSE I WAS TIRED AND SULLEN FROM MY DIFFICULT AND ultimately unproductive night, I did not notice the dour mood when I arrived at the warehouses in the East India yard-at least not at first. It took me a few minutes to see that the watchmen and warehouse workers all were equally sullen and gloomy.
“What’s happening?” I asked one of them.
“There’s been an accident,” he told me. “In the early morning. No one knows what he was doing there; he had no business. Aadil thinks he was stealing, but Carmichael was in the west warehouse-where all the teas are kept, you know. And there was an accident.”
“Was he hurt?” I demanded.
“Aye,” the fellow told me. “He was hurt unto death. Crushed like a rat under the teas he was aiming to steal.”
TEAS.
A clever enough cover, I supposed, since whatever Forester and Aadil were up to, it had nothing to do with teas. And as there could be no defensible reason why Carmichael would have been moving crates in a tea warehouse in the small hours of the night, the only available conclusion was that he had been guilty of that most common of crimes, pilfering from the warehouses to augment his meager income.
These transgressions were an open secret and were allowed so long as no one grew too greedy. Indeed, the watchmen and warehouse workers were paid poorly because it was understood that they would augment their income with a judicious amount of socking. If their remuneration was increased, the logic went, they would sock no less, so there could hardly be anything to gain by paying them a living wage.
I remained stunned for long moments, standing still while men rushed about me. I broke out of my malaise when I saw Aadil pass by: I reached out and grabbed his sleeve.
“Tell me what happened,” I said.
He met my gaze and let out a laugh. How ugly his already unpleasant face grew when he wore a mask of cruel mirth! “Maybe you tell me. You overseer of watch.”
“Pray, don’t be petty. Tell me.”
He shrugged. “Why Carmichael here last night, I wonder? He where he not supposed to be. He doing what he not supposed to do, taking tea for himself. Maybe in hurry, afraid he get caught. Take chances. Get crushed.” He shrugged again. “Better than be hanged, yes?”
“Let me see the body.”
He looked at me quizzically. “Why for you want see it?”
“Because I do. Tell me where they’ve taken it.”
“Already carried away,” he said. “I know nothing where. Coroner, maybe. Family? No one tell me. I no ask.”
It was only with the greatest restraint that I was able to have this conversation. I had no doubt that Aadil had killed Carmichael, with Forester’s implicit or explicit approbation. Yet these were suspicions, conjectures I could not prove, and in the end they mattered little. All I knew was that Carmichael had acted for me and had died for his trouble, and I was powerless to see justice served on his behalf.
Lest I betray my emotions or reveal that I knew more of the matter, I walked away, heading for the interior of Craven House.
Did Aadil suspect my involvement? He kept secrets from me, but that was to be expected. Still, Carmichael had violated the sanctum of the secret warehouse only after I had come to work there. Forester knew I was working for Ellershaw and he mistrusted Ellershaw. Why did they not come after me? There was certainly no good reason to believe they would not, simply because they had not yet done so.
It was now more urgent than ever that I find out what Forester was keeping in that warehouse or, since we had discovered the banality of the room’s contents, why he was keeping it. Thus, with no useful outlet for my rage, I pursued the matter the only way I could imagine doing so-I went to speak to the accounts keeper, Mr. Blackburn.
He was in his office, scratching away at a piece of paper, hunched over it as his ink-stained hand whipped pen along page. He looked up after a moment. “Ah, Weaver. I presume you are come to inquire as to the means of replacing your lost worker.”
I shut the door behind me. “I had nothing so mercenary in mind. Carmichael was my friend, and I am not so eager to see his place filled.”
He looked at me with his puzzled expression, the one he always wore when not busy with his documents. It seemed to me that he could not imagine anything as uncomfortable or messy as friendship.
“Yes, well,” he managed, after a moment, “even so, schedules have to be ordered, hmm? The yards must be watched. It would be a foolish thing to let sentiment interfere with what must be done.”
“I suppose it would,” I said, taking a seat without being invited to do so.
It was clear to me, painfully clear, that Blackburn wanted nothing so much as for me to leave, that he might go back to whatever banal task absorbed him, but I would not have it. Indeed, his discomfort might only serve to make him speak in a less circumspect manner than was, perhaps, his wont.
“May I speak to you in confidence?” I inquired. “It is of a delicate matter, and one that involves a particularly unorthodox use of Company grounds and Company resources.”
“Of course, of course,” he said. He had set down his pen and was absently blotting the page while he looked at me. I had as near his full attention as I could reasonably expect.
“I hope I might have your confidence, sir. I should hate if my interest in righting something sloppy should be visited upon me with something so unfair as losing my post. You understand, sir, I trust. I want to do the right thing and make sure there is nothing amiss in the warehouses. Still, when there are powerful men involved, it is not always easy to be sure the right thing is in one’s best interest.”
He leaned forward, stretching his narrow frame across the desk like a turtle stretching its neck out of its shell. “You need not worry on that score, Mr. Weaver, not at all. You may speak in the strictest confidence, and you have my word that I shall not speak of what you say to anyone, not without your leave. I trust that is sufficient.”
It almost was. “I should very much like it to be,” I said, with some uncertainty. “Still, there is a great risk to me. Perhaps it would be wise if I came back when I knew more. Yes, that would be better.” I began to rise.
“No!” The word was not an order but a plea. “If you know something, we must resolve it. I cannot endure that there should be something amiss, some wound left untended, rotting upon the body of the Company. You do right, sir, in wanting to address it. I promise you, I shall do nothing you do not wish me to do. Only you must tell me what it is you know.”
It was so very odd, I thought. Here this clerk doted upon the Company as thought it were a favored lapdog, or even a lover or a child. Had I not told him, he would have been driven mad by the unreachable itch, and yet he had nothing personal to gain from the intelligence, nothing personal to gain from correcting whatever impropriety to which I might allude. He was merely a man who liked to see geegaws aligned, be they his geegaws or a stranger’s, and would stop at nothing to correct an aberration.