Carver's Quest (7 page)

The room was long and, because the rays of the sun fell only on the first few feet of its length, it was dark. Creech seemed to have used the place as a library, and two massive tables with
heavy, claw-foot legs sat in its centre. Bookshelves stretched from window to far wall along both sides. The sombre leather bindings of the volumes which sat on them added to the sense of gloom and
claustrophobia. The smell of the books pervaded the room. A book was open, face up on the furthest end of the second table. A chair had been pulled up to the table and someone was sitting in it.
But this person was not bowed over the book as if reading it. Instead, his head was thrown back at an awkward angle. As Adam and Quint approached him, he made no movement.

Samuel Creech was dead. Of that there could be no doubt. Two bullets, probably from a pocket pistol, Adam judged, had entered his forehead. One had exited through the back of his skull and
looked to have lodged itself in a walnut secretaire and bookcase behind the chair in which he was sitting. The other was presumably still inside the skull. Creech was slumped leftwards in the
chair, with blood and brain matter covering the back of it. The metallic smell of blood mingled with the sweet aroma of some pomade that he must have been using on what remained of his hair. It
seemed unlikely that he would be answering any of Adam’s questions now.

‘There is little we can do for Creech, poor devil.’ Adam looked down at the slouched and bloody figure of the man he had met at the Speke dinner. He reached out and briefly touched
its upper arm. ‘We need to contact the police. I shall walk down to the road and look for assistance.’

‘You leaving me here with ’im?’ Quint gestured at the corpse. He sounded unhappy at the idea.

‘The man’s dead, Quint. He can do you no harm. And whoever killed him is long gone.’

‘’Ow can you be so sure of that?’

‘Feel the arm. Creech has clearly been dead for hours. Rigor mortis has already begun to set in. Who would stay for hours having killed him?’ Confident in his conclusion, Adam turned
the pages of the book on the table in front of the dead man. It was Henry Tozer’s
Researches in the Highlands of Turkey
. Adam had read it himself earlier in the year. Tozer, he
recalled, had described his own travels in the same Macedonian hills that had interested Creech so much. Creech had been pursuing his peculiar researches to the very end. On the table beside the
book was a pair of binoculars, which Adam picked up. He turned them over in his hands, looking for the maker’s name.

‘Negretti and Zambra,’ he said after a moment. ‘They have an establishment in Cornhill. Creech wanted the best for himself. They have a great reputation, I believe. I have long
been intending to make a journey to Cornhill myself to inspect their cameras.’

Quint, standing beside the bookshelves, continued to look unhappy at the prospect of being left alone with a dead man. Adam remained unmoved. His servant must stay in the house.

‘There is no help for it, Quint. You must hold the fort while I look for reinforcements. Perhaps you should take the time to look around. Who knows what you might find? Creech is going
nowhere and he is in no position to object to the invasion of his privacy.’

The manservant looked as if he was still disposed to dispute his instructions but eventually he moved towards the door which led out of the library. He cast a single reproachful look over his
shoulder as he went, but Adam did not see it. He was striding back towards the window they had broken, and the distant sunshine.

* * * * *

‘Every Englishman’s home is his castle, eh? Isn’t that what they say, sir?’ The voice was as cheery as if its owner and Adam were conducting a friendly
conversation over a glass of port. ‘Well, this here dead gentleman’s had his castle well and truly stormed, ain’t he? By you, sir, if no one else.’

‘Look here, Inspector. You’re surely not suggesting
I
broke in and murdered Creech, are you? Why would I loiter around like a damn fool and answer your questions if I were a
murderer? I’d be back in town and strolling down Piccadilly by now rather than standing here exchanging pleasantries with you.’

The man to whom Adam spoke was, like him, tall and well built. He had the kind of rosy red face that suggested long exposure to the elements and a greying moustache that bloomed and burgeoned
luxuriantly around the lower part of his face. He was dressed in chequered trousers and a black jacket that seemed just one size too small for him. In other circumstances, he might have been
mistaken for a country farmer on a visit to town, but there was sharpness in his eye that spoke of wide knowledge of the ways of the city. When he had arrived at Herne Hill Villa, accompanied by
two constables, he had strolled around the downstairs rooms with the air of a man visiting an auction room before a sale, examining Creech’s possessions with a critical eye as if trying to
decide whether or not to place a bid on them. On reaching the body in the library chair, he had raised his hat as a token of respect and then peered closely at the wounds to the head. He had walked
around the corpse, looking at it from all angles before bending to examine the bullet lodged in the secretaire. Only then had he bothered to introduce himself to the watching Adam. His name, he
said, was Pulverbatch and he was an inspector in the Detective Branch of the Metropolitan Police. He wanted a little chat with the gentleman that had found the body. The little chat had gone on for
some time, interrupted by occasional conferences between the inspector and his constables.

Now, as Adam was making his protestations, Pulverbatch was waving his plump hands in the air as if attempting to swat them like troublesome flies.

‘Oh, no suggestion of murdering was meant to pass my lips, sir. None at all. But a body can’t help a-wondering what you
was
doing here. Inside a house you probably ought to
have been outside of.’

‘I’ve told you once already, Inspector. I had an arrangement to see Mr Creech. I arrived at the appointed time but the place was deserted.’

‘It seems the gentleman had sent his servants away for the day. One of ’em come back only a few minutes ago.’

‘Does he know anything of what might have happened?’

‘Constable Smithers has been a-talking to him. Says that the man looks about as comfy as a billy goat in stays but that ain’t to say he’s a-feeling guilty. That’s the
effect us gentlemen in blue and white has.’

Pulverbatch picked up
Researches in the Highlands of Turkey
, examined its spine, grunted and put the book back on the table.

‘I’ll be speaking to him myself in a little while. And he’ll look even less happy when that happens. But, at present, I’m a-listening to you, sir. If you would be so good
as to go on.’

‘I looked through a window on the ground floor.’ Adam ran his fingers through his hair as he continued. ‘I could see that something was amiss. I could see someone sitting in a
chair at the far end. He was not moving and his head was awry. I decided to break a window and climb in. It was Creech and he was dead.’

‘As a doornail,’ Pulverbatch said. ‘Sitting in his library with his legs under his own mahogany when someone bursts in and strews his brains all around the room. So what did
you do next, sir? When you realised he was dead.’

‘I walked back to the road and stopped a gentleman in a fly who was passing. I asked him to send word immediately to the police that they were needed. Then I came back to the house and
Quint and I waited here until you and your men arrived.’

‘Ah, Quint. That would be
your
man, sir, would it? And whereabouts might he be while we’re here chatting so amiably?’

‘Quint is upstairs, I believe.’

‘And what might he be a-doing upstairs?’

‘I have no idea.’

Pulverbatch took a red cotton handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead with it. He returned it to the innermost recesses of his jacket and sighed. ‘Perhaps we should call him
and ask him,’ he said.

‘By all means, Inspector.’

Pulverbatch ambled out of the room and made his way to the foot of the main staircase. He lifted his head and bellowed. ‘You, sir, upstairs.’

The sudden roar echoed around the house. Quint would have had to be as dead to the world as Creech not to hear him, but there was no sound from the first floor.

The inspector bellowed again. ‘Get yourself downstairs.’

* * * * *

Up on the first floor of Herne Hill Villa, Quint had heard Adam return. He had called down to him and had been given instructions to continue looking around the rooms upstairs.
Twenty minutes later, he had heard the arrival of Inspector Pulverbatch and his constables. Long familiarity with officers of the law meant that he had had little difficulty interpreting the sound
of the voices drifting up the staircase; they had the characteristic tone of policemen wanting to know what was going on. Quint had spent the hour since Adam had left him to summon the police
roaming the upstairs rooms. He had found nothing that he would not have expected to find in the house of a man like Creech. On several occasions he had come across items of value – a gold
watch, a silver cigarette case engraved with the initials ‘SC’ – which he had seriously considered pocketing. Quint had no objections in principle to petty larceny but he had
finally decided that any monetary benefit from what he might filch would be more than outweighed by the aggravation that would follow if the filching was discovered. He had left the items where
they were.

Now, listening to the voices from below, Quint had already decided that his only option was to join Adam and the policemen on the ground floor. The roars from Pulverbatch merely confirmed him in
his decision. He took one last look around what was clearly Creech’s bedroom before leaving it. He caught his own reflection in a large cheval glass which stood in the corner. Then, as his
eyes continued to scan the room, they fell on a small table to the left of the bed. On it was an octavo-sized book bound in morocco. Seized by a sudden impulse, Quint crossed swiftly to the table
and picked the book up. Opening it, he riffled briskly through its pages.

Quint had but the vaguest memories of his schooldays. This was unsurprising since they dated only to his seventh year and had lasted less than six months. He could just about recall a dark room
in Holborn where two dozen grubby boys sat unwillingly at the feet of an elderly dame deputed by the foundling hospital to teach them how to read and write. The elderly dame in question was usually
drunk, and drink made her either so tired that she fell asleep in front of them or so furious that she belaboured any boy who ventured within striking distance with her walking stick. Somehow,
Quint had emerged from his schooling not only with a grudging respect for elderly dames in their cups, but with a basic knowledge of his letters. He could read. And what little he was able to read
in this small leather-bound book suggested to him that further reading of it would be interesting. Here were Samuel Creech’s own words. Here was his journal. Quint wasted no time in stuffing
the volume into the depths of his coat pocket before making his way down the stairs and joining Adam to face the guardians of the law.

I
do believe that that was not the first time you have encountered the inspector, Quint.’ Back in Doughty Street, Adam was stretched out in a
chair by the fireside. His feet rested comfortably on the fender and his hands were clasped behind his head. Quint was pouring whisky from a crystal decanter. The two men had been back in the rooms
but a few minutes. The inspector had not kept them long once Quint had joined Adam downstairs. Policeman and manservant had eyed one another suspiciously as Quint had sidled into Creech’s
library but the interview between them had been brief. Quint had done little more than confirm what his master had said. When Pulverbatch had asked what the devil he meant by roaming around a house
that was the scene of bloody murder, he had muttered about looking for signs of the murderer. The inspector had grunted as if he had heard likelier tales in his time but had said no more. Once
names and address had been noted, he and Adam had been dismissed from the policeman’s presence, and apparently from his mind, almost immediately. Their return from Herne Hill had been free of
much conversation, both men sobered into silence by thoughts of Creech and mortality. Now, sitting once again by his own hearth, Adam had recovered his spirits.

‘Oh, I knows Pulverbatch all right.’ Quint handed his master the drink.

‘I thought as much. You circled one another in that room like two prizefighters about to climb into the ring. And what do you know of him?’

Quint paused to consider the question.

‘Well, he’s what you might call a chickaleary cove is Jem Pulverbatch.’ Seeing Adam’s raised eyebrow, his manservant decided to expand his description. ‘In other
words, putting it pretty plainly, you’d have to get up
very
early in the morning to catch
him
on the hop.’

‘But you have done so, Quint. I can deduce from the wicked glint in your eye that you have done so. You have the demeanour of a man who has bested a chickaleary cove.’

With something approaching a flourish, Quint brought the little leather-bound book from his pocket. ‘I don’t reckon Pulverbatch’ll miss this. I found it up in Creech’s
bedroom.’

Adam took the journal from Quint’s hand and began to flick through its pages.

‘I should condemn your shameless thievery unequivocally, Quint.’

‘You prob’ly should.’

‘I should chastise you for stealing what might be evidence from under the eye of the law.’

‘But you ain’t going to.’

‘No, you are right. I’m not. Despite the terrible death of the man Creech, I remain curious about the secrets he claimed to know. Perhaps it is
because
of his death that I
remain so curious.’ Adam had stopped at one page and was looking at it closely. ‘This journal may hold the key to Creech’s interest in those barbarous villages we visited in
sixty-seven. So I propose to read it from cover to cover.’