CHAPTER 38

TWO CROOKED HOUSES

Mr Sharp did not seem surprised when Hodge and The Smith appeared at his shoulder in the dripping shadows of the alley in which he was sheltering from fine drizzle while observing Templebane’s house. He had heard the creak and clatter of Hodge’s dog cart drawing up at the rear of the alley behind him, and he knew that Hodge was able to talk to the Raven over long distances. It was an unusual ability which he took quite as much for granted as he did his own capacity to turn people’s minds or move exceptionally fast and unnoticed through the world. He was relieved to hear the noise because he wanted, more than anything, to get back to Wellclose Square and see how things lay with Sara. The double shock of losing her hand and having strangers force their way into the Safe House under cover of Law was insupportable, and he felt a cold mixture of anger and concern in his gut that he was wholly unused to.

“You took your time,” he said shortly. “How is Sara Falk?”

“As well as one could hope, considering,” said The Smith. “Whose house is this?”

“A lawyer,” said Mr Sharp. “The man who came into the house with the magistrate came here directly, and then, after a short interview, left in a hurry. The Raven followed him. I stayed here.”

“The Raven is outside a large house in Chandos Place,” said Hodge. “The man has gone in and not emerged. The windows are shuttered and barred.”

“Then you find out who he is and watch him,” said Mr Sharp. “I must go back to the house. I do not like the idea of leaving Sara and Cook undefended.”

“Cook is never undefended,” said The Smith. “And you’d do well not to ever let her suspect you think that you’re defending her. Who is the lawyer?”

“I was just going to find out,” said Mr Sharp, “before leaving.”

“I will do it,” said The Smith. “I can see you wish to be elsewhere.”

Mr Sharp nodded and turned to Hodge.

“You went to The Three Cripples?”

Hodge nodded.

“And Ketch?” said Mr Sharp.

“From what I gathered from the tapster, he’s a regular and a sot–and here’s where it gets strange–never had a child or a woman, not like he said he had.”

Mr Sharp looked at The Smith.

“The man Ketch—” he began.

“I was told all about him,” said The Smith. “If Sluagh were abroad in the city, who’s to say that his mind had not been worked on?”

“So the girl was planted on us,” said Mr Sharp. “So there is a plot.”

“There’s a something,” said The Smith. “My eels are disturbed. As I said to Sara and Cook, the wolves are circling.”

He looked across the street.

“Lawyers are kin to wolves, I hear. You go back to Sara. I think I shall go and see who we have here. Hodge—”

“Chandos Place,” said Hodge. “I’m on my way.”

Mr Sharp nodded at them both once more and sped off towards the river.

“I do not envy whoever is responsible for injuring Sara,” said The Smith. “But I do not like the heat in his eyes. He has a capacity for violence which he has always kept strongly under control. Keeping it under control, indeed, is what has made him a valuable member of The Oversight. Were he to unlatch that control, I do not know if he would be able to come back to us. Nor whether we should want him.”

“I’d trust him with my life, and Jed’s,” said Hodge. “Cold and haughty as he can seem when he’s preoccupied-like. Trust him with any of our lives, come to that.”

“Yes,” said The Smith. “But can we trust him with his own?”

Hodge shrugged, whistled Jed to his heels and jumped back in the dog cart.

“Too deep for me, Wayland,” he said, cracking the whip lightly and jolting into motion. “You fathom it if you can.”

Coram heard the knocking on the main door of the building, and hurried to answer it before it became so loud and persistent that it woke his Night Father.

He opened the door to find The Smith standing there, a somewhat unexpectedly rural figure in the midst of the city in his caped oilskin coat and high, heavy boots. A farmer, perhaps, thought Coram, and then found himself stepping back reflexively to avoid being barged to the floor as The Smith stepped out of the rain inside the shelter of the hall without being asked. Definitely a farmer or some species of rustic, for he had outdoor manners, Coram concluded.

“Help you, sir?” he said with a superficially engaging smile.

“Sorry to trouble, but I understand this is a lawyer’s office,” said The Smith in an uncharacteristically querulous voice, as if unsure of his status and right to be knocking on so fine a front door. “I am in need of a man of legal knowledge.”

“Ah,” said Coram, his smile impregnable. “I’m afraid my fathers do not take approaches from prospective clients at this time, being more than oversubscribed.”

“But I had been assured that this was the office of Mr George Chapman Esquire, Attorney at Law, and that he was highly amenable,” said The Smith in confusion.

“Ah,” said Coram, looking distastefully at the small pools of rainwater collecting on the hall floor as The Smith’s oilskin shed the share of the external deluge that it had brought in with it. He would get Amos to mop it up, he thought, and then remembered Amos was still abroad. His smile curdled into a scowl. He would have to get the mop himself. “And therein lies the hinge on which the misunderstanding turns, my dear sir. These premises are not Mr Chapman’s house, nor have they ever been.”

“But I assure you it is,” spluttered The Smith. “The driver of the Hackney that brought me here was quite definite on the matter.”

“I am afraid you have been worked on,” said Coram, drawing himself a prideful inch taller. “This is the house of Templebane & Templebane.”

A sharp eye would have seen The Smith drop his bumbling look for an instant as the name hit him, but Coram was reaching past him to open the street door and so missed it.

“Who and who?” said The Smith.

“Mr Issachar and Mr Zebulon Templebane, Attorneys at Law,” said Coram with a hint of pride. “My fathers.”

“Templebane,” said The Smith. “An interesting name.”

“But not the one you were seeking, I am afraid,” said Coram, pushing him politely back out into the street.

“I have one question,” said The Smith, putting his foot in the door as Coram tried to close it.

Coram rolled his eyes.

“I am sorry,” he said, the smile wearing thin now. “I do not know where Chapman’s chambers are. I have never heard of him.”

“That wasn’t my question,” said The Smith, who suddenly, to Coram’s surprise, did not look so bucolic and doddery as he had seemed a moment ago.

“My question is: are you expecting sunshine?”

And he looked up into the drizzle.

“Sorry?” said Coram.

The Smith pointed to the smoked glass pince-nez hanging from the ribbon around his neck.

“I think you’re not going to need those today, are you?”

Coram fumbled his fingers towards the glasses, and then let them fall limply to his side as The Smith’s eyes bored into his.

“I am The Smith. You will forget that when I am gone, but if anyone should come to you and say that The Smith sent them, you will accommodate them. And if you happen to be wearing those glasses when they come, you will take them off and look directly into their eyes, do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said Coram, looking slightly puzzled.

“Good,” said The Smith. “And as a last parting gift, would you be so kind as to tell me the name of the man who came here in a black coach earlier, and left looking a little exercised?”

“Viscount Mountfellon?” said Coram dully. “You mean him?”

“I didn’t,” said The Smith. “But now I do.” And hearing footsteps approaching from behind Coram, he turned and walked off into the passing crowd.

Coram sneezed three times and then jumped as Issachar tapped him on the shoulder.

“Who was that, boy?” he said, peering into the street.

“Just someone, no one, Father,” said Coram, shaking his head to clear it. “Wrong address.”

“Well, stop standing there in a dwam and close the door. We don’t need the weather inside,” said Templebane. “And mop that up.”

The Raven was still perched patiently on the roof overlooking the house at the end of Chandos Place. Its black and lively eyes were fixed on the contrastingly opaque milk-glass windows opposite, windows that kept whatever happened within the building entirely invisible from the outside. It was a peculiar arrangement: when seen in conjunction with the main door which was offset and not in the centre of the façade, as might have been expected from the otherwise symmetrical Georgian proportions, it gave the building a wall-eyed, crippled look, as if it were blind and tilting to one side.

If the Raven had been a fanciful bird, it might have thought it an unlucky building.

“A crooked man in a crooked house,” said Hodge, five floors below in the dog cart. “Have a closer look, shall we?”

Jed trotted across the street and began to sniff his way around the perimeter of Mountfellon’s house as if in search of rats.

The rain squalled into a greater fury, and Hodge pulled his coat tighter round his neck as big drops spattered the street around him.

The Raven fluttered over the road, somehow unbothered by the water pouring out of the sky at right angles to its slow trajectory. It landed on the top of the portico and tapped at the glazing bars which divided each sash into six panes of glass.

“Iron,” said Hodge in surprise. “Now that’s something you don’t see.”

The raven dropped to the front step and hopped up to the door, rapping its beak against it once.

“And an iron door,” said Hodge. “Well. Someone’s protecting himself.”

The Raven curved round the side of the house to where Jed had smelled a rat and was forcing his head down a drain-hole in order to smell it better. Jed and the Raven had an unspoken agreement. Whenever Jed killed a rat, which he did on strict principle and not out of any desire to eat them, the Raven got to pick at the squishy bits, which he particularly enjoyed.

Hodge looked up at the milky-eyed house.

“I don’t like this,” he said. “Not much at all I don’t like it.”

It wasn’t just the blank and well-protected face of the building. It was the rain-slick roof tiles above it. They pricked his memory like a twinge from a bad conscience and made him think of other roofs recently visited, and coops full of dead birds.

In the teeth of this new crisis, he was aware that he was perhaps dangerously ignoring the day-to-day duties of The Oversight entirely.