The Hidden Man (2 page)

‘It will be terrible to live with such uncertainty – if we can live at all.'

Suddenly the child on her knee twisted around and one of its hands grabbed at the spoon. In surprise Amity let go and it fell, clattering off the edge of the table and bouncing to the floor. Immediately Fidelis stooped to retrieve it.

Before he returned the implement to her he glanced at it. Though damaged, pitted and discoloured, it had once been a fine piece of spoonery – the shank heavy and with the remains of chasing along its length, and a nobbled end, as of some figure now unrecognizable. He turned it over: there were four black pits on the shank, square in shape and black where dirt had compacted in them. Amity held out her hand.

‘Give it back, doctor, if you please. I must feed him quick or he won't take it at all.'

‘Of course. Here.'

He gave her back the spoon and, for the time being, thought no more about it, while they talked of Amity Thorn's hard life, and of what she could do to alleviate it.

‘Remember to go to the church warden as soon as you can,' he said firmly, thinking at last it was time to leave. Then his eye caught sight again of the spoon, which lay in the now empty porringer on the table.

‘And there is one more thing I should mention,' he said, pointing at the bowl. ‘That spoon of yours looks silver. I fancy, if you clean it up, that it will raise a sum of ready cash in town.'

She picked up the spoon and turned it in her hand.

‘This dirty old thing? Adam brought it back a month ago, off the Moor. You don't mean it's worth something?'

‘It might be. Where did he get it?'

She shook her head.

‘As I say, I reckoned he must have picked it up off the Moor, or somewhere about. It were all muddy and stained: just an old spoon, as I thought, though he did say different.'

‘What did he say?'

She gave a short, melancholy laugh.

‘That it was treasure. “Treasure trove, is that,” he said. He's done it before – come home with some brass farthing he'd found on the Moor and said it was treasure trove. He was bitten with this idea that some old soldier had buried a big lot of silver up there a hundred year ago. But he'd got himself killed and the secret died with him, so the silver was never found. Adam even told me he'd gone to Preston to talk to the Recorder to prove it were true.'

‘The Recorder? Mr Thorneley?'

‘I don't know his name. Adam kept on about looking for it but I just said if poor folk ever do find such things they get them taken off them, as sure as the Gospel, so what's the use? He shut up about it after that but I'll give you a warrant that he never gave over looking for it. That was his way.'

Fidelis looked carefully at the underside of the spoon's shaft, and showed it to her.

‘Well, I don't know about any treasure, but I am saying that, if these pits on the underside of the handle are hallmarks, then it really is made of silver – assayed silver. Maybe that's what Adam was trying to tell you when he was saying “rich” and “precious”. He was talking about the spoon you were feeding him his gruel with.'

Her face fell. She had imagined she was the precious one. The doctor gave her back the spoon.

‘So you can exchange it for some silver coin. Do it, Amity. Buy some wholesome food for the little ones, and for Adam too. Marrowbone broth is always recommendable.'

Fidelis got to his feet and returned for a last look into the darkness of Adam Thorn's room. As before nothing there moved, only two tiny winking sparks of light from Adam's eyes, which every few moments were extinguished and immediately reappeared.

Then he returned to where Amity was, bade her good day and ducked out into the drizzle. He put his hat on his head, turned up the collar of his coat and strode off towards town.

*   *   *

You, the reader, might very well suppose, in order to recount all this to you, that I, Titus Cragg, must have been loitering about under the dripping eaves of the Thorn house, peering in through chinks in the window sacking, listening at the door, committing the conversations I heard to memory. In reality, I was not: all that afternoon I was in Preston town, more than a mile distant from the Thorn house, seeing to my practice as an attorney-at-law and my work, which I hold to be equally important, as the town Coroner.

But how, you must ask, can words describing an event in the world seem so convincing – so real – when their author never himself observed the event? It is a question that often bedevils a law court. It doesn't matter how many times witnesses are warned to tell only what they directly saw and heard, they will run on with the gossip of chair-carriers, and chambermaids' tittle-tattle, taking the jury with their story-telling into the realm of speculation, and soon into a state of firm belief. Many poor innocents have gone to the gallows in those realms and states of fantasy, but their necks were not the less truly broken for it. Stories and lies are so knitted together with facts and experience that they can never easily be disentangled – not in a law court, and not in life.

In a book, then? That, you may suppose, is my aim. The events I have just described were long ago and nobody's neck depends on whether or not you believe my writing. Nevertheless, let me reassure you: every word of what I have written about Dr Fidelis's visit to the Thorns is true, for I had it on the following evening detail by detail from the lips of the doctor himself, and assiduously committed it to my journal before going to bed.

And the reason I set it down here will be clear in due course.

 

Chapter Two

E
ARLIER IN THE
same day I had been in my lawyer's office, adjoining my house on Cheapside at the very heart of Preston, when a note arrived by hand of a messenger. It came from the merchant Phillip Pimbo of Fisher Gate, one of Preston's leading sellers of gold and silver, and was written in the hand of Pimbo himself.

‘
Dear Cragg
,' he wrote, ‘
I would be extremely obliged if you would attend me tomorrow morning at your earliest convenience. A matter of wrong-doing has arisen which taxes my understanding, and I am very much hoping you can provide me with some legal assistance in the matter. I am &c. Phillip Pimbo
.'

Pimbo was a bachelor who lived with his mother at Cadley, and was noted for large ears that stood at right angles to his head. I had last spoken with him at any length about three or four months earlier, when we had met at the postal office in the Shambles. We were waiting to take our turn at the clerk's window, and he was talking volubly about his partnership with a scrivener from Liverpool called Zadok Moon, and of their plans to provide Preston, for the first time, with something like a bank.

Looking back across the span of more than thirty years, it seems incredible that we in the country had managed affairs for so long without our own local banks. We still relied on strongboxes to keep our money safe, if not on secret holes in the ground, or sliding panels in the wainscot. Goldsmiths had long accepted plate and other valuables on pawn, and some also took in cash on account for safe keeping, or on security, which they could then use to finance their pawnbroking advances. In my grandfather's day it was done by the age old tallystick method: the amount of the deposit would be marked by a certain number of notches on the stick, which would be split along its length, one half to be kept by each side of the bargain.

Beside these moneylending goldsmiths, here and there a scrivening lawyer could also be found (Moon of Liverpool was, I assumed, one of them) whose specialty was the investment of money on behalf of clients in interest-bearing Exchequer Bills and Debentures, or in the profits from voyages, toll-roads or waterways. But so far no one in the County had taken the next step. No one had put these two services together and formed a bank that took in deposits at interest and issued notes to the public.

Pimbo had brought with him to the post office a brown and white spaniel pup, and as he talked – which he did a great deal – he repeatedly called it to attention – ‘Suez! Sit! Good boy!' – in order to treat it to little balls of bacon fat, of which he kept a supply in the pocket of his coat. Between treats Suez persistently attacked the buckle of my shoe making it hard to concentrate on what its master was saying.

But his burden was the tale of how he, Pimbo, had persuaded the Corporation, a couple of years back, to place in his keeping the entire fund of money built up and laid aside to pay for the Preston Guild, the grand civic celebrations which were held every twenty years, and which as he spoke would be coming round again in six months. Pimbo puffed out his chest like a cock pigeon.

‘It is a great amount, very great, for the Guild is no cheap undertaking.'

‘I hope your strong room is safe, then,' I said in a jocular tone.

‘Safe?' he boomed. ‘Yes, my friend, it is indeed safe. Imagine the Bastille of Paris lodged inside the Tower of London. That would not be safer. My strong room's door has inside it a gate made from thick bars of iron, closed by a pair of strong locks of the latest design. Safe? I should just like to see the man who can dig or break his way into there. But no matter, because the large part of a bank's money is not in the strong room.'

‘Oh? Where is it?' I asked, shaking the dog off by waggling my foot.

‘Circulating, Titus. Money is like blood, the town's blood, and if it does not circulate, corruption and death must follow. So we cannot let it rot in some locked hutch in the Moot Hall, or even in my strong room, merely waiting to be expended. We must put it to work and let it engender more of itself.'

‘You told the Corporation this?'

‘Certainly, and they were so well convinced, you might say they were converted. They saw the light.'

‘And agreed to your proposal?'

‘Yes. It was an excellent stroke of business, was that.'

‘So what do you do with this money?'

‘That is my partner's concern. He places it at a profit in money-making enterprises – the importing of sugar, spices, or tea from China.'

At this point a stranger waiting just ahead of us, a prosperous looking farmer from somewhere towards Clitheroe, turned and tapped Pimbo on the shoulder to get his attention.

‘And what, Sir, if the enterprise breaks and the town wants its money?' he wanted to know.

Pimbo looked flustered for a moment, but quickly recovered his confidence.

‘No, no, that cannot be, not at all,' he said wagging his finger. ‘You would sooner break the Rock of Gibraltar. At all events, we furnish promissory notes. Each is redeemable by the depositors on demand for a particular sum of money. The total of promissory notes is the total of money they have entrusted to us – which in this case, as I say, is a tidy amount. They shall also, of course, be in receipt of interest at 4 per cent.'

The farmer leaned back a little, with eyes half closed, assessing the proposition as he might a ram at market.

‘I'll allow it's a clever scheme, to use another man's money for your own profit. But I won't say I approve it. Suppose you send me fifty head of sheep for pasturing out, like. Well, you may allow me the shearing but you'll want the animals still picking grass in my field when you come back for 'em. You'll have a good deal to say to me if I've sent 'em off to breed in Yorkshire, never mind China.'

Pimbo's upper body deflated, as boasting gave way to earnestness. He appealed to me.

‘Our friend doesn't understand. Money is not sheep. What a banker does is to follow the Bank of England in London: takes in money –
nota bene
, not sheep – pays interest and meanwhile puts the money to work by lending it at a greater rate of interest. If he can get the better rate, there's nothing wrong in that.'

‘But,' I replied, ‘is not the Bank of England something of a special case? Firstly it lends to the government, which is rather a safe transaction, and secondly it issues notes payable on the spot “to bearer”. To call yourself a bank you will have to lend your money to general enterprises and issue notes on the same basis. Can you stand the risk?'

‘Oh! Of course, of course! I have no doubt.'

Pimbo puffed out his chest and protruded his lips.

‘If there be a Bank of England in London, and a Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh, I can see no reason why not a Bank of Lancashire, you know, or even a Bank of Preston. Moon, for one, believes we can safely issue bank notes redeemable by the bearer.'

He turned back to the farmer, who was puzzled.

‘When the notes are payable “to bearer”, Sir, it means anyone who happens to have such a note in his hand can go to the bank, you see, and on presenting it receive full value in gold and silver there and then. In that way, paper can be used in place of coin.'

The farmer considered this proposition for a moment, then said:

‘And why would any man want to do such a thing?'

‘Because the note is so much lighter on the pocket, man, so much easier to transport than the coin.' Pimbo rubbed his hands with glee. ‘It is a very safe scheme, depending on the issuer's confidence, and Mr Moon is very strong in confidence. Very strong indeed. There is demand for this, I am certain of it, and the day is coming when my partner and I shall establish Preston's first dedicated banking office.'

His remarkable ears, the twin beacons of his fervour, had begun to glow red. The farmer, however, shook his head in grizzled scepticism.

‘No,' he declared with emphasis. ‘Folk like their gold and silver too much. Change it for paper? They'll like as change a clog for a cloud.'

*   *   *

I recalled this conversation on the morning of our appointment as I walked the short distance to Pimbo's Fisher Gate premises. These were yet far from resembling what we now think of as a bank: in fact, the place was still a working goldsmith's shop, with two counters, running away from the door to the right and left – the left hand counter being reserved for valuing, buying and pawning, while the right was for selling items in precious metals. At the far end of the shop, facing the street door, there was a cashier's desk protected by bars. Here sat Robert Hazelbury, the Chief Cashier, with writing stand, cash box and brass scales on the desk before him. In the wall at his back, a bookcase sagged under a load of thick ledgers, and there were doors to the right and left, one of which led to the smithing workshop and the other to Phillip Pimbo's private business room.