AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jem stalked through the silent lobby, his dot-and-carry-one tread echoing off the high ceiling. He hung up his coat and hat, approached his place on the long bench among the clerks, and readMurdererscrawled in black ink across the blotter. The ink had spread faster than it could dry, leaving the letters thick and blurry. That word always spread quickly.
He carefully detached the sheet from the blotter and took it through to MrLeighton’s office. He was hanging up his coat when Jem walked in, and swung round, affronted at the breach of etiquette. ‘MrKite?—’
Jem dropped the blotting-paper on his desk. ‘I see you told everyone.’
Betraying colour swept across MrLeighton’s face. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’
‘It saysMurderer. I had that from a lot of people after Toby died. Letters, whispers, people saying it to my face. I had to leave Oxford, and then I had to leave my home town because people were saying things to my parents in the streets, and now it’s followed me here. And it’s always the same. It’s one person who hears about it and says,Did you know,with no harm intended, and within half a dozen repetitions it reaches the ears of someone who doesthis.’ He stabbed a finger at the scrawled word. ‘Could you not have spared me that? Could you not have kept your mouth shut?’
‘You forget yourself, Kite!’
‘That is what I have been trying to do,’ Jem said. ‘For ten years I have been trying to forget, but one spiteful letter by a lunatic, and you decide to ignore my years of service in the joy of spreading gossip about theintellectual challengeof my best friend’s murder! How did I deserve such treatment at your hands, MrLeighton?’
MrLeighton was scarlet. ‘I might as well ask how you deserved the accusation in the first place.’
‘Have a care, MrLeighton.’ Jem heard the shake in his voice. ‘There is such a thing as slander.’
‘It is not slanderous to wonder why someone felt it necessary to advise me of your history.’ MrLeighton drew himself up. ‘And whatever justification you feel you have, sir, I am your superior in this office, and I will not have you question my conduct.’
‘Whereas this, I suppose, is an entirely acceptable questioning of mine.’ Jem’s hands were shaking with anger and tension. ‘Will you pursue whoever is behind this piece of malice?’
‘I hardly think that would be possible. And if you put yourself in a position where you are vulnerable to accusation?—’
‘I did not put myself in this position!’
‘It is your responsibility to uphold the good name of the Bureau, as is clearly stated in your contract of employment. Did you advise the Bureau of your situation when you applied for the post?’
‘What situation?’ Jem said furiously. ‘I have never been charged with any crime in my life, let alone convicted.’
‘The shadow of guilt…’ MrLeighton began, and Jem stopped listening. He’d been in this damned job three years; all he’d wanted was to be left alone to do it. Now notoriety had been forced on him again, and it didn’t really matter whether his superior sympathised or was the sort who believed there was no smoke without fire, because everyone in the building would have their own opinion, and most of them would tell him what it was.
You can put your head down, wait it out. Nine days’ wonder, said the dreary voice in his head, the one that drove him back and forth between his desk and his little cheerless room, and, quite suddenly, Jem knew he couldn’t.
MrLeighton was still talking about the Bureau’s need to be Caesar’s wife, free from even the shadow of suspicion. Jem broke in the second he paused for breath. ‘I quite agree the situation is untenable. I believe the notice period is a week.’
MrLeighton looked startled but recovered quickly. ‘I think we may waive that under the circumstances. You may leave at once and be paid the week.’
‘I was halfway through a task, sir, which I should like to conclude, as it would be difficult for another to take up. Perhaps I might finish that first.’
‘Very well. Today, please.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Jem said, and got out of there.
He limped back to his desk, feeling an unfamiliar crackle of energy, driven by an anger that was equally unfamiliar because it was focused.
He was sick of this. Sick of the letters, the spite, the corrosivenot knowing, the arid wasteland of memory and misery. Sick of all of it, and, in particular, sick of the bastards hunting him down. Why would they even bother? He wasn’t a public figure. He wasn’t Hugo Morley-Adams, up-and-coming Liberal politician, engaged to the daughter of a duke.
Had Hugo received letters? Had the others?
He looked down at the surface of his desk, the blotter and the pointless papers pushed to its side, then he got up again and headed for the indexes of public records. By the time he reached them, he had an intention, hardening into a mission. He did not spend the day finishing off the task in hand; he had better things to do.
By three that afternoon, he had achieved all he could. He collected his week’s pay, went out onto the Strand, and headed for the British Library. On the way he bought a notebook.
Hugo proved easy to look up. The Liberal seat, backed by his father’s money, the meteoric rise, the magnificent marriage planned to the Duke of Breighford’s daughter: it was easy to see why he was causing a political stir. None of the articles Jem read made any reference to the events at StAnselm’s. Perhaps Hugo had managed to put the sordid business behind him, or perhaps having an extremely rich father helped discourage malicious speculation, at least in public.
Ella’s activities were equally easily found. She’d sat the Examination of Women with her brother still unburied, and gained first-class honours, though of course, as a woman, she had not been awarded a degree. Now she worked in the University of London’s chemistry department. Her name was on a number of papers whose titles left Jem baffled. He could find no indication of her home address.
Aaron was a doctor, partner in a practice off Harley Street. Prue had married, and that was astonishing in itself because the date was the third of August 1895. Two and a half months after Toby’s murder. It seemed impossible; he’d sat staring at the record in the green leather index book, barely crediting what he read, but there it was. Prudence Matilda Lenster, spinster of the parish of Aldbury in Hertfordshire, marrying MrJohn Alan Warren.
