On the Sunday following the interment of Lucas Trendle, I called at Blithe Lodge, as arranged, and was shown into the back parlour by Charlotte, the Scottish housemaid. I waited for some little time until, at last, I heard the sound of Bella’s distinctive tripping tread on the stairs.
‘How are you, Eddie?’ she asked. She did not take my hand, or kiss me spontaneously, as she might once have done, or even proffer her own cheek to be kissed.
We exchanged the usual pleasantries as she sat down on a chaiselongue by the tall sash window that looked down over the dark garden below.
‘Well, then,’ she said, ‘tell me what you’ve been doing. Things have been so busy here. So much to do, and so many things to think about! And with Mary leaving – you know of course that Captain Patrick Davenport is going to marry her! Such excitement – and so brave of him! But she deserves it, the dear girl, and he does love her so. Kitty has a new girl coming tomorrow, but of course we never know how these things will work out, and then Kitty herself has gone back to France, and so it falls to me to conduct the interview, as well as everything else, and you know that Charlie is to go to Scotland for her sister’s confinement …’
She twittered on in this inconsequential way for some minutes, laughing from time to time, and curling her fingers around in her lap as she spoke. But the old light in her eyes had gone. I saw and felt the change. I did not have to ask the reason. I could see that she had considered, in the cold light of day, what I had told her at the Clarendon Hotel, and had found it wanting – fatally so. A tale told to a child; a demeaning, absurd fantasy of a paste-board villain and his mysterious henchman – one of my mother’s stories, perhaps, dusted down for the purpose. All to hide the truth – whatever hideous truth it was – about Edward Glapthorn, who was not what he seemed. It was only too apparent that she had taken ‘Veritas’ at his word.
Charlotte brought us tea, and Bella continued with her trivial banter – I sitting silently, smiling and nodding from time to time as she went on – until a knocking on the front door announced the arrival of some member of The Academy to whom she had to attend.
We stood up; I shook her unlingering hand and left by the garden door. She had been a dear friend and companion to me; but I had not loved her as she had wished me to do. I had sought, out of deep regard, to protect her from hurt; and, if my fate had been otherwise, would have married her gladly, and been content to give myself to her alone. But my heart was no longer mine to bestow on whom I pleased; it had been ripped from me by a greater power and given to another, against my will, and would now remain in her possession, a poor forgotten prisoner, for all eternity.
The next day, feeling tetchy and out of sorts following the previous evening’s conversation with Bella, I sent a note over to Le Grice proposing a spin in the skiff that I kept at the Temple Pier, to which he immediately agreed. Our plan was to row up to the Hungerford Passenger Bridge, take a little lunch at his Club, and then row back. The morning had broken fair, though with a brisk wind, and I sallied forth to meet him with a lust for exertion.
At the bottom of the stairs, the door to Jukes’s room stood ajar. I stopped, unable to help myself.
Across the street I saw the distinctive figure of my neighbour, his rounded back towards me, disappearing towards the Temple Gardens with his little dog in tow. He had not meant to leave his door open, of that I was sure, a careful, crafty fellow like that. But it was open, and it was an irresistible invitation to me.
The sitting-room was a large, panelled apartment, with a little arched door in the far corner leading to the sleeping area and washroom. It was comfortably furnished, with evidence of taste and discernment that seemed to sit ill with the walking, breathing Fordyce Jukes. I had often wondered, as I gazed down on his comings and goings from my room in the eaves, what mental world the funny little creature inhabited; to see such wholly unsuspected illustrations of that world palpably adorning the walls and shelves momentarily distracted me from my immediate purpose.
Adjacent to the door of his bedchamber stood an elegant glassfronted cabinet containing several exquisite items: miniatures from the Tudor period (a Hilliard?), little painted boxes of the highest-quality workmanship, Chinese ivory carvings of the greatest delicacy, Delftware, Bohemian goblets; a dazzling miscellany of objects linked only by the refinement of taste – and sufficiency of income – that had assembled them. On the walls, carefully mounted and displayed, were equally startling indications of the unexpected character of Fordyce Jukes’s interests. Works by Altdorfer, Dürer, Hollar, and Baldung. Books, too, which drew my especial attention. I gazed in wonderment at the first edition of Thomas Netter’s Sacramentalia (folio, Paris, François Regnault, 1523),* which I had long wished to own, and at other sweetly choice items that stood arranged in glowing ranks in another locked cabinet beside the desk.
My amazement was complete. That such a man as Jukes could have assembled this collection of rarities, beneath my very nose, as it were, seemed inconceivable. How had he come by it all? Where had he acquired the taste and knowledge? And where the money to dispose on these treasures?
I began to consider the idea that blackmail and extortion might be Jukes’s real trade, his secret profession, slyly exercised away from the workaday light of his duties at Tredgolds, though with a success that I could hardly credit. Taste and knowledge can be acquired; money, if it be not naturally to hand, demands other skills to amass. Perhaps his talent, for which his employment at Tredgolds would place him in a helpful position, was to extort money from clients of the firm who had something to hide from the world at large.
It seemed fanciful at first, but the more I thought on it, the more it seemed to constitute a sort of possibility, an explanation for what I had found in this treasure cave that had lain, unremarked, for so long beneath my feet. Was I, then, merely the most recent of his victims? Did he suppose that I had the means to satisfy his demands, and so enable him to acquire one more rare and beautiful item for his walls and cabinets? But I would be no victim of Fordyce Jukes’s, or of any man’s. From these thoughts, I recalled myself to my present task and turned towards the desk, which, like mine three floors above, stood before the window looking out into the street.
The polished surface bore nothing except a fine silver inkstand. The drawers were fast locked. I looked about me. Another locked cupboard in the corner. No papers. No note-books. Nothing to show me the character of Jukes’s hand for comparison with the notes Bella and I had received. Another sign, I thought, that my renewed suspicions were well founded. A man who had acquired so much through extortion would not be so careless as to leave such evidence easily open to view.
Then, on a small side table by the fireplace, I noticed an open book. Approaching nearer, I saw that it was an octavo Bible of the seventeenth century, though of no especial beauty or rarity. The title-words of the opened recto met my astonished gaze: ‘The Book of the Prophet EZEKIEL.’
I had found no evidence of the creature’s handwriting, but this seemed to provide the proof I needed that Jukes was the blackmailer.
I turned to leave, standing at the half-open door for a moment to see whether he was returning; but the street was clear, so I stepped out, and headed down towards Temple Pier.
*[‘He calls’. The significance of the title of this section is not altogether clear. Ed.]
*[The line is from In Memoriam (1850), cxx: ‘Let him, the wiser man who springs / Hereafter, up from childhood shape / His action like the greater ape, / But I was born to other things’. Ed.]