As the echoes of the shot subsided, another sound forced its way down from the house above them: the pounding of the knocker on the front door.
Fanmole raised his head. His nostrils flared.
“The police,” Robbie said. “They’ve come for you.”
Fanmole ran up the steps to the garden at the back of the house. Robbie snatched up Sir John’s weighted stick and set off after him. With surprising agility, the little clergyman darted down the garden. The distant hammering continued. Fanmole unbolted a gate and slipped into the cobbled alley beyond. Robbie followed the running footsteps. Once, when they passed the lighted windows of a tavern, Fanmole looked back. His pale features were contorted with pain and effort, the face reduced to something slimy and inhuman, a creature of nightmare.
They ran through Sion Place and burst into the open. On the crest of the Downs, the Observatory was a black stump against the paler darkness of the night sky. Fanmole veered to the left, towards the edge of the Avon Gorge.
“Stop!” Robbie cried, but the wind snatched away his words.
The clergyman ran towards Brunel’s unbuilt bridge. Within a stone’s throw of the Clifton tower, he stopped. His breath came in ragged gasps.
“Leave me.” He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and pulled out something that glittered faintly. “Take this, Sir John’s Breguet watch. Sell it or claim the reward. Just go. Say I gave you the slip in the dark.”
Robbie did not reply. The memory of Mary filled his mind, and the bloody stain spreading over the yellow silk dress. He moved slowly towards the clergyman. Fanmole clambered on the low wall around the abutment on which the tower stood, intending to drop down to the little footpath beneath. But Robbie’s advance made him change his mind and retreat along the parapet of the wall.
“No,” he said, flapping his hand as though waving Robbie away. “Pray leave me. I have valuables concealed in a place nearby. I shall tell you where to find them.”
He held out the watch. Robbie stepped forward and snatched it. But Fanmole jerked backwards immediately afterwards. By now he was on the corner of the wall, where it swung through ninety degrees to run parallel with the river more than 200 feet below.
“Watch out,” Robbie shouted.
But the clergyman’s hunched figure was still moving backwards. His left leg stepped into nothing.
Nothing begets nothing, as my mother used to say, Robbie thought.
Fanmole toppled out of sight. Branches snapped and crackled as he tumbled down the steep slope. He cried out only once. Then came a moment’s utter silence.
At last there was a thud: and another, longer silence, this time as long as the century.
6: Postscriptum
Clearland Court
Lydmouth
23rd January
My Dear Brunel,
You will have heard from my solicitor that I have decided to accede to your request: I hope it will not be too many years before the Great Western Railway will bring you to Lydmouth.
As to that other business, I cannot tell you how glad I am that the girl, Mary Linnet, is no longer at death’s door. Without her intervention in Rodney Place, I might not have survived to write this letter. Both she and her mother are now on the road to recovery and I shall find them respectable employment when their health is restored.
It was fortunate that, with the obstinacy of his breed, my hackney driver chose to pound on the door to demand his fare. Trevine tells me that Fanmole believed the knocking heralded the arrival of the constabulary, and that this precipitated his fatal decision to flee.
I am informed that goods worth several thousand pounds were found in the shed which Fanmole rented by the Gorge. It appears that the work of his so-called Missionary Society among the poor allowed him to recruit weak-minded young people, such as Mary Linnet, and set them to thieving and other mischief on his behalf in Bristol and neighbouring towns. (So you see, my dear sir, the railway is not an unmitigated blessing!)
But Fanmole’s desire to have revenge on me proved his undoing. When he saw my arrival in Bristol announced in the newspapers, he sent the girl to discover where I was staying; she was then to take hold of me when I returned to the room, ring the bell, and complain vigorously that I had assaulted her! His design was to destroy my reputation as, he believed, I had destroyed his.
As you know, the matter turned out very differently: and this was in great part due to the young man Robert Trevine, who returned my late brother’s watch to me. He appears honest; he can even read and write. I offered to find him a situation on one of my estates-but no! the fellow wants nothing better than to stay in Bristol or its environs and work for you in some capacity on the Great Western Railway! It is true he shows some mechanical aptitude, but I fancy that the presence in the city of a certain young woman may have something to do with it. In any event, I should be very grateful if you could find him a position.
I am, sir, yours very truly,
J. Ruispidge
PRICE CONFEDERATE by Andrew Martin
Peter the librarian held up a thin file of papers. He didn’t need to say anything, just grinned, and Anthony recognized the handwriting immediately.
“Where d’you turn these up?” he said.
“They were mis-filed,” said Peter. “They weren’t under “Price” but “Prince” – not that there’s any signature here.”
Anthony nodded.
“Price went through phases of wanting to be known as ‘Prince’,” he said.
“Why?” asked Peter.
“To ally himself with the Prince of Darkness,” said Anthony.
“Oh,” said Peter in his camp way. “Sorry I asked.”
“… So really it’s his own fault that his books and papers have been wrongly catalogued ever since,” said Anthony. “He has nobody but himself to blame.”
Peter the librarian passed over the papers and adjusted his tie as if to say “Anything else I can do for you?” He was a good librarian. He also dressed very well indeed. Anthony admired the way he could wear, say, a yellow and brown silk tie with a blue and white checked shirt, but he was at the same time aggrieved that a librarian should be better dressed than he himself.
“I haven’t a clue what it is,” said Peter, nodding again at the manuscript.
This might well have been a lie, but the librarians at the Mayfair Institute would not be so crass as to spoil your day by flagging up the contents of a book or document in advance. The readers were there to read, after all.
“… I mean, it’s not topped and tailed,” Peter continued. “It’s a fragment.”
He was coming dangerously near to admitting that he’d read it, and Anthony always wanted Price to himself, so he said:
“I shall enjoy this Peter, thanks very much,” and turned away.
Anthony took the file and pushed open the door of the Main Reading Room. He was hoping that one of the four red leather armchairs arranged before the fireplace would be free. In fact, all four were, and he didn’t know which one to choose. There was only one other man in the reading room, at a far desk. He seemed very magnanimous, spurning the fireplace, and what was more, he didn’t sniff or cough as he worked.
The fire of course was unlit. Books and real fires didn’t go together. It was lit once a year, on Christmas Eve, when the Trustees of the Institute gave a sherry party. Anthony wasn’t eminent enough to have been asked, but that would come. Price would see to that. Anyhow, it was a fine Spring afternoon with no need of a fire. White blossom floated about above the trees of the Square beyond the windows, unwinding out from them like a benign, slow explosion. Mayfair was a good mix of old buildings and trees. It was like an American’s dream of London: the red buses were redder in Mayfair, the black taxis blacker, and you felt that a bowler-hatted man might be just around the next corner.