The Scent of Death

Once inside, the sergeant of the guard told us to wait in the hall. Townley chafed at the delay.

‘At least it is cool and pleasant in here,’ I said.

‘The walls are immensely thick, sir. And there are few windows, as you see. The place was built to store sugar in good condition and safe from thieves. But it keeps people in as well as it keeps people out.’

A door at the back of the hall opened and Mr Noak came through.

Townley stared at him. ‘What? You? Here already?’

Noak bobbed his head to us, more like a bird pecking at a worm than a mark of respect. ‘Yes, sir. I made myself known to Major Marryot and showed him your letter. If you would care to step this way.’

As soon as we left the hall, the atmosphere changed. Sights and smells assaulted the senses. But I was first aware of the noise: a chaotic concerto of voices, groans, cries, and restless movements, all of them bouncing off the high, barrel-vaulted ceiling and setting off rolling echoes.

On the other side of the door to the hall was a table at which three soldiers were playing cards, apparently oblivious of what was going on around them. They glanced up incuriously and nodded us through.

Noak led us down a long, stone-flagged corridor lined with doors on either side. Along the centre of the passage was a drainage gulley apparently used as a sewer. Both Townley and I covered our noses with handkerchiefs.

A barred opening was set high in each door, and each opening framed a man’s face; his hands clung to the bars; and behind him was a multitude of other faces, packed together in one heaving, shouting, stinking mass of humanity.

‘For the love of Christ, your honours,’ a man called to us, ‘for the love of Christ, I can’t stop the bleeding.’

We walked faster and faster to a door at the far end. A guard let us into a lobby at the foot of a flight of stairs.

‘Dear God,’ I said. ‘It’s a perfect Bedlam in there. Worse than Bedlam – a foretaste of hell itself.’

‘They have only themselves to thank, sir,’ Townley said. ‘If they take up arms against their lawful government, they must expect to pay the price. The problem is that we have so many rebels to cope with. We are obliged to pack them in the best we can, wherever we find room.’

We mounted the stairs first to an anteroom guarded by a sentry and then to an inner apartment. A narrow window looked out across a neatly tended churchyard at the blackened ruins of Trinity Church.

Marryot was sitting at a long oak table, his lame leg resting on a footstool. He was leafing through a pile of papers. ‘Good morning, sirs,’ he said, looking up. ‘Pray sit down, now you are come at last. I was about to start without you.’ He nodded to Noak. ‘Tell the man outside to pass the word for the prisoner.’

We took chairs on either side of the Major. When he returned, Noak sat at the end nearer the window, with pen, ink and paper set out before him.

‘How fortunate that an informer came forward, sir,’ Townley said.

‘Fortunate?’ Marryot sniffed. ‘Fortune has nothing to do with it, sir. The army pays for its information. There are always men in want of gold.’

‘Can you be sure that the information is accurate, sir?’ I asked.

‘Little is certain in this world, sir, but the fellow we have in custody is certainly a rogue.’

We heard the stamp of marching feet outside. There was a knock on the door. At Marryot’s word, two soldiers entered with a small negro between them. He was cuffed at the wrists and swaying from side to side. When the soldiers came smartly to attention in front of the table, he collapsed on the floor in a huddle of limbs and filthy clothes.

‘Pull him up,’ Marryot ordered.

The soldiers hooked their arms under the prisoner’s shoulders and lifted him back to his feet.

‘Master, I didn’t do it, I swear on—’

‘Hold your tongue,’ Marryot roared. He turned to Noak. ‘You may write this down under today’s date, the fifth of August. And the place and time, of course. That this is the interrogation of a negro slave, a runaway, name of Virgil, property of the heirs of the late George Selden, esquire, of Queens County.’

The man whimpered. His cheeks glistened with tears. He wore filthy canvas breeches, loose at the knee, and a torn shirt. The feet were bare and the toes widely splayed. I wanted to look away but found I could not.

Townley took a silver toothpick from his waistcoat pocket and began to clean his teeth.

‘You are a vagabond, are you not?’ Marryot demanded. ‘Don’t speak unless I tell you – just nod.’

Virgil’s head drooped.

‘You absconded from your master when he was in Brooklyn the summer before last. And you’ve been living in Canvas Town with the rest of the rogues and knaves ever since.’ Marryot glanced down the table. ‘Have you noted that, Mr Noak?’

‘Master, for pity’s sake, I never saw—’

‘Hold your peace – I didn’t tell you to speak to me. You will have your chance later. And for God’s sake, stop snivelling or I’ll have you whipped.’

Noak scribbled.

‘Strike those last words out, Mr Noak,’ Marryot snapped. ‘They are not part of the record.’

Townley leaned back in his chair. ‘What evidence is against the man?’

‘All in good time, sir.’ Marryot put his elbows on the table and leaned towards the prisoner. ‘Tell me where you were last Sunday. Tell me what you did, what you saw.’

‘I was in Canvas Town, your honour. And I walked about the city looking for work. And then I went back to Canvas Town and fell asleep with nothing in my belly.’

‘Your belly looks plump enough to me,’ Townley observed, fanning himself with his handkerchief.

Marryot ignored the interruption. ‘That may be where you were but it’s not what you did. You’re a thief, a damned pickpocket. There were two empty purses in your bundle. And those shoes you had on your feet – well, they tell their own story, don’t they?’

‘Eh?’ Townley said. ‘What shoes? Nobody mentioned any shoes.’

‘Mr Noak,’ Marryot said. ‘Have the goodness to open the press and bring us what you find on the third shelf down.’

The press was a tall cupboard in an alcove by the empty fireplace. Noak took out a pair of black round-toed shoes with plain steel buckles on the flaps. He set them down on the table. The prisoner moaned softly at the sight of them. Marryot stretched out a hand and removed a small leather bag from one of the shoes.

‘So,’ he said. ‘When they brought you in last night, these shoes were on your feet.’

I picked up one of the shoes. The uppers were scuffed and creased. The sole needed reheeling. But the leather was good.

‘We had information that these shoes belonged to Mr Pickett,’ Marryot said. ‘I had them sent over to Beekman Street this morning. The kitchen boy who cleans the shoes is sure that these were Pickett’s.’

‘Information?’ I said. ‘From whom, sir?’

‘It don’t signify, sir. All that signifies is that the information is good. You’ll grant me that, I hope?’

Virgil lifted his head and, for the first time, looked directly at me.

‘You need not enter Mr Savill’s questions into the record either, Noak,’ Marryot said.