The Detective and the Devil (31 page)

‘So deep behind us,’ said Seale. ‘The anchor is not . . . Ah, there it is.’

The cable stiffened as the anchor gripped onto whatever lay below them, and Seale began to haul them out. Looking up into the mouth of the cave, Horton imagined an opening below them. They may
have been suspended above a gigantic opening in the side of the island, the top of it just visible above the water’s surface as a cave. He looked down at the water, expecting to see nothing
but utter, desolate darkness, but instead he saw a bottom, where he least expected there to be one. It looked loose, not compacted like a sea bed or hard like rock, like a rockfall beneath the
water, and it fell away steeply into the depths where Seale had nearly lost his anchor.

The idea of the boat hanging above that opening was vivid and terrifying. Where did those sea-lions come from? Were there colonies of creatures down there, waiting for a visitor, hungry and
aware and somehow capable of sight in the pitch-blackness?

The current was strong, and Seale made little headway at first, so they remained suspended over that odd rockfall. Is this where Halley had descended in his underwater suit, a stargazer in
Neptune’s realm? The idea seemed preposterous.

The sea-cow returned, anxious to see its visitors.

Abigail and the devil stood on the windswept point, watching the little boat below bob in the waves. She could see the heads of two creatures swimming in the sea around
Seale’s boat – perhaps they were seals, too. The boat had emerged from beneath them as if exiting the island itself.

‘The brave constable puts himself about, does he not?’ said Burroughs, beside her. He turned away from the cliff, pulling her arm gently but with nonetheless indecent force.
‘Shall we take some tea at my residence?’

They walked away from the cliff top. The abandoned Dutch fort was above them and to their right. They walked away from it, down a hill and up another, until they came to what looked like a farm
on the point opposite the fort. But there were no animals to be seen and nothing was being grown, as far as Abigail could make out. The house itself was well tended, and behind it stood a barn
which looked just as cared-for.

Burroughs walked them past the buildings, and after another five minutes’ walking they came to another simple dwelling, on its own, in a sort of garden enclosed by a stone wall. Several
huge green plants dominated this space, and the smell of them and their morphology led Abigail directly to identification.

‘
Cannabis sativa
, Mr Burroughs?’ she asked. ‘Have you been intoxicating yourself?’

‘I am impressed, Abigail,’ he replied, opening the front door of the little house as he spoke. There seemed to be about a dozen different locks and keys. ‘Yes, those are indeed
cannabis plants. The stuff grows like weeds here. My father told me about it. He also introduced me to a delicious way of consuming it. The Indians call it
bhang
– one adds it to
milk. It is quite intense.’

The door opened at last.

‘Now, if you please.’

She hesitated at the entrance. She felt as if she were going into a mouth. His smile was fixed and devoid of anything. She went inside.

She was very scared, but had, she thought, a clear view of the situation. Burroughs wanted something from her husband. That odd remark about Charles ‘discovering secrets’ had stayed
with her. She was, she supposed, a kind of hostage, but she was only worth anything to Burroughs unharmed. She was in danger, certainly, but perhaps not of an immediate nature.

The house was of a similar size to Seale’s – a simple parlour with a kitchen off it, stairs leading up to an upper floor. There was some decoration, most of it appearing to come from
India. There were also a great many books.

‘What now?’ she asked.

He sat down in a chair, crossed his legs and watched her.

‘Now, I would like to talk,’ he said.

‘Perhaps I could make us some tea?’ she said, and she saw that he was surprised and pleased. ‘The tea here on the island is quite magnificent.’

‘Ah yes,’ said Burroughs. ‘I’m sure Major Seale has an excellent supply. He keeps the stores, after all.’

Again, he had disturbed her. He knew so much about their movements and about their home. He seemed determined that she realise it.

‘Your tea is in the kitchen?’ she asked.

‘Yes. In a jar with a Hindoo motif. I can see it from here.’ He pointed into the kitchen, and smiled.

‘And the kettle?’

‘In the sink. I shall light a fire.’

While he lit the fire, she heard him whistling something tuneless and mildly irritating. Her botanising satchel was still over her shoulder, such that she could reach into it easily enough. She
put some leaves into Seale’s little kettle, added water, and took it through to the parlour. The fire was already blazing.

‘Thank you, Abigail,’ he said. He placed the kettle on the fire.

‘Do you add milk?’ she asked.

‘Milk?’ he replied. ‘In tea? Hmm. I do keep milk, but usually for
bhang
. Well, Abigail, I believe in experiencing new things. I will fetch some milk, and some
cups.’

He went into the kitchen, and returned with two cups and a jug of milk, which he set down on a table by the fire.

‘Now. Do sit.’

He pointed to a chair, and she sat down. She looked at the kettle, and wondered how long it would take to boil, and whether there would be an odour.

‘What will happen now?’ she asked.

‘What will happen? Nothing will happen. We will wait for your husband.’

‘How will he know where to come?’

‘He is an
investigator
, is he not? Think of this as a little test for him. The latest of many such tests.’

She did not know what he meant by that.

‘May I read a book?’ she asked.

‘By all means,’ he said, waving at the bookshelves in his hand. ‘I know how much Abigail Horton relies on her books.’

She shivered as she stood and walked over to the bookcase. The man’s knowledge of her was obscene. Her mind raced with anxiety as she pretended to look at the books, their spines blurring
into one leather-bound miasma, until a few came into focus.

The selection of books seemed odd. It featured ancient philosophers and mathematicians – Aristotle, Plato, Euclid – but also more esoteric stuff she had not seen before: Roger Bacon,
Trimethius, Ramon Gull, Pico della Mirandola – these names tugged at her mind and her memory. And there, another name: Cornelius Agrippa, the man whose name John Dee had evoked.

The kettle boiled, and Burroughs stood up to pour two cups, while she froze with her hands outstretched, frantically sniffing the air for any odd odour. She thought she could smell something.
But could he? She heard the sound of liquid going into cups – first the tea, then the milk. Then, the sound of him sitting back down and sipping, carefully, from the hot drink.

On the next shelf, she found a set of works by John Dee: the
Propaedeumata Aphoristica
; the
Monas Hieroglyphica
; the
Mathematicall Preface
. And the rarest of all, the
one she had never seen – the
Libri Mysteriorum.

‘This milk idea is excellent,’ he said from behind her. ‘The goat’s milk of the island works wondrously well in
bhang,
too. Will you not sit and
drink?’

‘I am just perusing your books.’

‘Ah, yes. Interesting, are they not?’

‘You have some marvellous editions of John Dee’s works.’

‘Dee! Ha! Yes, indeed.’

She did not understand this strange exclamation. She took a book from the shelf – the
Libri Mysteriorum
– and affected to read it with her back to him, her heart so loud in
her chest that she was sure he must be able to hear her tell-tale anxiety. But he said nothing. After a few minutes, he made a small grunting noise, and then there was a crash as he fell sideways
onto a table.

She put down the book, and stood and walked over to him. She picked up her satchel from beside the sink and looked at the leaves inside, the remains of the ones she had added to the
devil’s tea.

‘Hmm. Cherry laurel
,
after all.’

She went to find some rope.

He’d expected to find a cave, an entrance into the island’s innards. He’d expected to find a way up inside the hill, a passage which ended, perhaps, at a
bolted door inside an abandoned Dutch fort. That was the picture he had constructed in his mind; an internal construction, a repository of secrets and perhaps something more.

He remembered the sight of that loose rock and stone beneath the surface. It had not been the sea bed; it had consisted of larger rocks piled up unknowingly high. A place for sea-lions to
scamper in, a place for Royal Society astronomers to lose their footing.

He helped Seale prepare the boat for their return, and they lifted the anchor and stowed it in the stern. Seale turned the bow away from the wind, and raised the sail, and they ran before the
south-easterly back around the island. The old abandoned fort slipped away behind one of the island’s steep headlands.

He needed to think of another way. That old locked door within the fort had taken on a symbolic weight. Behind it, he had begun to think, was the essential secret of this whole mystery: the
reason for the deaths of the Johnsons, and before them the deaths of St Helena’s assistant treasurers. It was the motivation he had been unable to uncover. He had sailed halfway around the
world, only to stand before a door he could not open.

It seemed to take no time at all to sail back to James Town, and as he helped Seale tie up his boat Horton looked up into the island, up the valley to the peaks beyond. Somewhere in there lurked
the new assistant treasurer, the elusive Edgar Burroughs. What was he about? Why did the island have need of this secretive post of assistant treasurer? And why did the holders of the post have to
die?

Because they held a secret, he thought. A secret that Emma Johnson discovered. A secret valuable enough to blackmail Captain Suttle with. A secret deep enough to kill her for.

Their rope work finished, they walked back to Seale’s house, nodding to the guards at the drawbridge like old friends. He had not been stopped in his investigations by the Governor or any
of his militia. For now, his story of investigating the island’s flora seemed to be holding. It might hold for some weeks, or a ship from London could arrive this very day with letters from
the Company which proved his tale false. He had an unknown schedule to unlock an unseen mystery.

Abigail was not at the Castle when they arrived, and this brought the inevitable stab of fear. Where was she? The afternoon was drawing on, and the shadows of whatever trees Abigail walked
within must be lengthening on the ground. Why would she not stay in one place?

Seale made them tea, adding the delicious goat’s milk. Horton stood staring at Seale’s map, calculating vectors of visibility and distances between dwellings, trying not to think of
Abigail.

She appeared after an hour of this, coming through the door in a hurry, her bonnet dishevelled and her face reddened. Wherever she had walked from she had done so at an incredible clip.

‘Husband,’ she said. ‘I have met your assistant treasurer.’

‘What . . .’

‘Wait, I must rest.’ She sat down in one of Seale’s chairs, and Seale went to fetch her water. She sipped it and sat back with her eyes closed for a few moments, steadying
herself. Horton saw no injury or sign of struggle. He went to sit next to her, taking her hand.

‘I met him up by Halley’s Mount,’ she said, opening her eyes. ‘He took me to a house near the fort, quite a small place near a larger farmhouse.’

‘Did he force you to go with him?’ asked Horton, his voice tight.

‘He did, husband, yes. Oh, he never as much as touched me. But the threat of it was in everything he said.’

He’d known, of course, that this was possible. But now, facing it, he felt a dull helpless anger, and imagined another knife in his hand and Edgar Burroughs laid out on a table before
him.

‘What did he tell you?’

‘He knows all about us, Charles. Where we live. What your work is. He said he had a job for you.’

‘A job?’

‘Yes. He said he wanted you to work for him. For us to make our future here.’

It was puzzling, this, extremely so. Unexpected and, in its own way, interesting.

‘But he let you go?’

She smiled, at that.

‘Ah, not quite. I drugged him with cherry laurel leaves, and tied him up.’

Horton turned to Seale, who was standing with a thunderous face in the door to the kitchen.

‘You are quite the oddest couple I have ever encountered,’ Seale said. ‘And I find myself wondering why a botanist needs to poison our assistant treasurer.’

There followed a difficult conversation, in which Horton was forced to abandon their pretence to Seale and take the risk that the man might expose him. The man’s reaction
surprised him.

‘The fort, you say?’ he said when Horton had finished. ‘I’ve always thought there was something odd about that place. You’ll need a horse.’ And without
another word he left to secure one. Horton silently prayed their host did not go straight to the Governor.

Abigail wanted to come with him, of course, but he insisted that she stay with Seale, arguing that a carriage would be impossible over such ground and it was too far to walk, and securing two
horses would be twice as difficult as securing one. He did not wish to make his way across the island in the gathering dark alone; but he wished to do it with his wife even less.

The horse Seale brought to the door was unimpressive and unimpressed – though he had not had time to visit the Governor, Horton reckoned, and thanked Seale warmly. The horse looked at
Horton as if he were an empty bag of feed. Seale gave him an oil lamp, and he wondered if the oil in it had come from the
Martha
– if he had not in fact witnessed its ocean
harvesting.

It was now full dark. He rode with one hand on the reins, the other holding the lamp. Its whale-oil burned a corridor through the night, and down the corridor he rode.