The Poisoned Island (44 page)

But why did Nott write the notes? How could Hopkins possibly have compelled him? Without an answer to that, all Horton has as evidence is some rudimentary analysis of handwriting, a scrap of red cloth and the word of a Clapham tailor.

But there is more information waiting for him in Wapping.

*  *  *

A familiar carriage has drawn up outside the River Police Office: Aaron Graham’s, its horses breathing heavily as if it had just arrived after a fast ride.

He finds Harriott seated at his desk, with Graham standing by the fire, looking into the flames. The Bow Street magistrate looks up at Horton as he enters and nods almost imperceptibly. Some might say rudely. Horton nods back, and Harriott greets him from the desk.

“Have you found Nott?” he asks, with some urgency.

“No, sir. There is no sign of him at all.”

“Then I fear he is lost.”

“Lost, sir?”

“Lost, Horton. Mr. Nott left a note at Graham’s residence in Covent Garden. I have just read it. Graham, can I assume you are comfortable with Horton reading the letter?”

“By all means.”
Not very jaunty tonight, Mr. Graham
, thinks Horton as Harriott hands him the letter. It is in the same hand as the note he had read this morning.

There is no date on the letter, none of the formal addressing of place or recipient. It just begins.

I have made two terrible Mistakes. One has hurt only Myself. The other has led to the Deaths of many Men. The first Mistake was to come to England to find my true Father, only to learn that to Him I am as Nothing, as insignificant as a Gull shot from a Pinnace. The second Mistake was to put my Trust—indeed, my very Soul—into the hands of a man such as Captain Hopkins.

For it is Hopkins who has killed these Men, but not without an Accomplice. I helped him. ’Twas I who spied on the men for him, ’twas I who led him to them. Hopkins promised me he would help me find my father and this he did, leading me to you, Mr. Graham. In return, I promised I would reveal what it was Critchley and his fellows had discovered on Tahiti.

Critchley it was who made the acquaintance of a young chieftain of Tahiti, a young man I knew well. It was this prince who showed Critchley one of the great Secrets of the Island. There is a
marae
at the top of the island, a secret place, and there the prince showed Critchley the thing which the islanders had long concealed: a leaf, which when consumed as tea sparks intense dreams, blasphemous visions that consume men’s souls.

Gradually, others discovered this secret: Ransome, Attlee, Arnott, Potter, Frost. They all consumed the leaf, and at the last they all took a portion of it with them back to England. I offered Hopkins this information on the island—though I did not reveal the men’s names. I also gave him the details of where more leaf could be found, in return for a passage back to England.

Hopkins consumed the leaf for the first time on the island, after I revealed its existence to him. It had the expected effect. He was enthralled by it, its delights possessed him. From that moment we entered a terrible dance. He demanded to know which of his men possessed the leaf, while I dangled this information before him as a means of ensuring his assistance when we reached London. He dealt out his knowledge in the same way, telling me nothing of use about my father, buying my loyalty and my silence with promises of help. We were tied together in terrible mistrust, all through the weeks of that trip home. The thirst was strong within him, but he showed nothing of it to the crew, and I saw the horrible capacity of the man, his ability to suppress his deepest desires. He did not touch the leaf again on the journey home, knowing as he did it would have incapacitated him, and I do believe the man’s will is so strong that he has not yet taken it again since our arrival in London. He must finish his business first, and he has collected even more of the leaf, in the darkest way imaginable.

When we docked in London, I gave him Ransome’s name, may God forgive me. When it came to it, I would do anything. In any case, none of the men in that crew ever showed me any kindness, months on the water with not a kind word or a warm glance from anyone. So who was I to stand in the captain’s way? He told me that there was a magistrate
in London who had helped my father and who would know who he was and how to find him. I was desperate to know this man’s name, but in return Hopkins demanded more names, so I gave him Attlee and Arnott. How easily I gave up these men to their doom! Then remorse overcame me, and I rushed to warn them, but I was too late, too late, he had already discovered them, and in his diabolical way he managed to kill them even while I was outside that terrible house. Finally he visited me in Coldbath Fields, in that awful prison, and warned me I would spend the rest of my days in such a place if he were to tell anyone of my involvement, that I was an instrument of death as much as he, that he would remain silent as to my crimes—and give me the name of the magistrate—if I would give him the last names. And so I did, and then he demanded I write that terrible note, his final extraordinary lie.

And I did it. One can only understand Eternity if one is a missionary’s son, Mr. Graham. But my shame is eternal. I did all he asked me to. And I found you, and you found my father, and only despair awaited me.

You cannot know how my sadness and my shame wrap themselves around me like dark smoke. I feel the heat of Hell beneath my feet, and I know that Satan awaits me—as a murderer, as a liar, as a cheat, and worst of all as a man who has abandoned the good name of his father. For Henry Nott is my father, my true father. A good man. A Christian man. A man whose name I have been given and have besmirched. I must travel back to him, and seek his Forgiveness.

The carriage conveying Brown and Banks from town arrives at the gates of Kew, and the gigantic form of Sir Joseph is eased down to the ground by the offices of Brown and the driver. One of the soldiers in the gatehouse comes out and helps as well, and they lift Banks into his chair.

“We are going to the Stove,” Banks tells the soldier. “And we are not to be disturbed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I mean it, Sergeant. No one is to come close to the hothouse, whatever may occur.”

The soldier frowns in puzzlement. What on earth could happen in a hothouse?

“Yes, Sir Joseph. I understand completely.”

“We will make our own way there. Please remain here. Come, Brown.”

And the librarian pushes the President through the grounds
of Kew, marveling at how the old man can apparently command an army.

“How are you now, Brown?”

The question is asked as they pass almost underneath an enormous willow, its contours English and familiar, its leaves and branches silent. Brown takes a second or two to register this question. A precise answer is expected, he knows.

“I feel an enormous longing, Sir Joseph.”

“Longing for the leaf?”

“Yes, sir.”

The need burns within him. The Stove is now before them, and it is almost full dark. The hothouse is an enormous glass-and-brick container full of a thrusting, urgent life. The tree is inside, and it has consumed the place.

That girlish giggling again. Brown no longer looks for young women playing in the trees. He only looks at the Stove. Inside it, in front of him, is the source of all that he craves. Banks is looking at him with real concern.

“Can you do this, Brown?”

His father, shouting from a staircase.

“I believe so, Sir Joseph.”

“Then fetch an axe. Two, if you can find them.”

“Trim,” says John Harriott as the carriage pulls up before Captain Hopkins’s house. A good sailing term, thinks Charles Horton. Indeed the house is even trimmer than it had seemed when he’d visited on the way back from Kew and Mrs. Hopkins had welcomed him with chatter and tea. It is set back from the road just a little way, and half a dozen plane trees line the drive, like a mansion in miniature. Horton notices the top right window of the house is open, and when he steps down from the carriage and looks up at the window, a piece of net or muslin flutters in the evening breeze, and a whiff of something pungent, acrid and yet sweet floats down to them through the darkness. There is an enormous stillness about the place, and Horton knows they are already too late.

Graham knocks on the door, taking charge, just as he has taken on a heavy personal responsibility for whatever has happened to Peter Nott. He has been quiet, almost silent, during the ride to Putney, and there is something funereal about the
way he walks up to the door and bangs, carefully but loudly, on its shipshape brass knocker. The percussive racket echoes on the trees beside the house, and for a moment there is no response, but after half a minute they hear a scratching at the door, and Mrs. Hopkins opens it.

She looks carefully around the edge of the door, as if expecting highwaymen grown bold at this time of night. When she sees the well-dressed Aaron Graham her mouth makes a little “o” and Horton can see her brain beginning to whirr in a different direction, seeking to triangulate the appearance of three apparently well-to-do men on her doorstep at this hour of the night.

“Mrs. Hopkins?” asks Graham, softly so as not to startle her. His manners remain immaculate, even in his current state of emotional extremity.

“Why, yes, sir, Mrs. Hopkins it is. But . . .” Then she recognizes Horton and her eyes do a strange thing, relaxing at the sight of a familiar face but widening at the same time because Horton’s reappearance here must mean something grand and perhaps terrible.

“Mrs. Hopkins, my name is Graham. I am the magistrate at the Bow Street Police Office. With me is John Harriott, magistrate of the River Police Office, and his officer Charles Horton, whom I believe you have already encountered. Mrs. Hopkins, we are here to see your husband.”

“Why, sir, of course, but I . . .”

Graham is smoothly insistent.

“May we come in? Is he inside?”

“Why, yes, I think . . .” Even as she speaks she backs into the hall and Graham follows her, then Harriott and finally Horton, who closes the door behind him.

They stand in the hall, and the house is silent.
Why has he
not come down?
thinks Horton.
He must surely have heard us.
He prepares himself, though for
what
he does not know.

Mrs. Hopkins is fluttering, her eyes hopping from one man to another, her evening turned upside down. Three strangers in her hallway! Graham seizes her attention again.

“Mrs. Hopkins, it is imperative we speak to your husband immediately. Can you please go and tell him we are here? Perhaps Harriott and I will wait in the drawing room—Horton, please wait here.” Graham looks at the door, and Horton nods.
Watch the way out.

“Of course, sir, through there, through there,” says Mrs. Hopkins, making her way to the stairs. “I will go and get him, of course, but he is resting, he asked not to be disturbed, please be patient, by all means be seated, sirs.”

She is halfway up the stairs now.

“You, sir, look particularly uncomfortable on that poor leg, do please take a seat.”

Harriott scowls at her as she reaches the top.

“I shall just be a moment, do please wait.”

She disappears onto the landing. Harriott makes his way down the hallway, looking to see if there is another way out, and they can hear her knocking on a door upstairs and then opening it, and then they hear her saying something quietly but urgently, and then there is a silence for a while, and then she screams.

Graham is the first up the stairs, and Horton is about to follow him, but then remembers his own lame magistrate. Harriott shouts at him as he limps back up the hallway.

“Go, man. Go!”

Horton chases Graham up the stairs, onto the landing and through the only open door he sees. Within, Graham is already standing over the figure of Captain Hopkins, who is lying on
the bed on his back. That sweet acrid smell he’d detected outside fills the room. Hopkins is dressed in trousers and a white shirt, open at the collar, and his hand lies across his chest. In it is a pipe, now almost burned out, but sitting on the naked flesh of his chest, where it has burned a deep purple scar, the smell of which mixes with whatever was in the pipe to create a rich, sickly, awful odor which Horton will never forget.