The Scent of Death

‘Well, sir? Double or quits?’

‘If you wish, sir.’ I made up my mind that, if I lost, this must be the last game.

I smelled a hint of Mrs Arabella’s perfume in the air, clinging to the maid’s dress or her hands. I looked up at Miriam and saw the whites of her eyes flickering in the shadows behind her master’s chair. She was a comely young woman, in her way. She turned her head away from me.

Wintour set down the last of the counters and sat back. ‘What is it, girl?’

‘If it please your honour, mistress begs the favour of a word with you.’

‘Can’t you see I’m engaged? Tell her I’ll wait on her when I’m at leisure.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Her head still bowed, Miriam glided away.

My fingers slipped as if of their own accord into my waistcoat pocket. I touched the die I had found with Pickett’s body. The practice was on the verge of becoming habitual with me: like touching a rabbit’s foot for luck.

‘They pester me at all hours,’ Wintour complained as the door closed. His consonants were blurring now; the vowels slopped to and fro like water in a pail. ‘My father, my wife, my mother. Can they not understand that I need tranquillity above all if I am ever to recover my health? Your glass, sir – let us have a toast before we play: to the absence of women.’

He drank his glass in one and seemed not to notice that I did not do the same. We played the game, and he lost; so we played another, and another, and a fourth; and each time he lost.

I proposed that we call a halt, but Wintour demanded a chance to make good his losses.

‘I’m a little fatigued, sir. Besides, should we not cast our accounts?’

‘You sound like a damned clerk, man.’ He laughed. ‘But I suppose that’s what you are, sir – no offence, none in the world: I suppose a gentleman may hold a pen in an office, if he wishes, rather than a sword on a battlefield.’

He had kept a note of what he lost, scrawling the figures in pencil. He screwed up his face and blinked rapidly, holding the paper up to the candle. His lips moved silently as he totted up the figures.

‘Seventy guineas or thereabouts,’ he said at last. ‘Good God, how it creeps up on a man. Oblige me, sir – cast your eye over it. I never had much skill at reckoning.’

I glanced at the paper, reading the figures with difficulty. I already knew it must be nearer eighty guineas. ‘Let us call it seventy, sir,’ I said. ‘I prefer round numbers.’

‘Very well,’ he said with a gracious wave of his hand. ‘I’d give you the money this instant, if I could, sir, if it weren’t for those damned tight-purses. Damn them, eh? Let’s drink to their damnation.’

He lifted the bottle, but it was empty.

‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Whose damnation?’

Wintour set down the bottle and picked up the other, which was also empty. ‘Who? Eh? Oh yes – all of them – they’re all tight-purses in this city – you would not believe it, sir, these petty tradesmen, they would not have behaved like this before the war. Why should you wait for your money?’

‘It’s of no consequence to me in the least, sir—’

‘But it is. My dear – dear Savill, of course it is. I know you would take my note of hand. But when a debt of honour is involved, a gentleman feels it here.’ He laid his hand on his heart. ‘A tradesman’s bill can wait until the Last Trump for all I care, but a debt of honour is a very different thing. Besides, why should you wait? You’re my friend. And anyone in this city will tell you: Jack Wintour is a man of his word. Ask anyone, anyone at all. If any man says otherwise, I’ll blow out his brains, do you hear?’

‘Really, sir, you are too kind, but I am in no hurry for the money.’

He hammered his fist on the table, making the counters twitch on the board. ‘Nothing could be more absurd than the situation I’m in, sir. Is it not perfectly ludicrous that a man of my expectations should have to suffer from a shortage of ready money? Does Mount George mean nothing? God damn it, what’s credit for, sir, if not to ease a temporary embarrassment of this nature? And I insist – you shall not wait. There is no need, either. I have a scheme that will settle the matter at once. Pray have the goodness to ring the bell.’

I leaned across from my chair to the bell-pull to the left of the fireplace. ‘I believe I have had enough wine for this evening.’

‘No, no – it’s not for that; though come to think of it, we might as well have them bring up another bottle.’

Josiah came into the room and made his reverence.

‘Tell Miriam to step this way,’ Wintour said.

The old man looked up. ‘Miriam, sir?’

‘Yes, you old fool – Miriam. Are you going deaf? And then bring up another bottle.’

Josiah bowed again and withdrew. A moment later, the maidservant entered the room. She curtsied and waited for Wintour to speak.

‘Step forward, woman – there: stand in the light by the fire.’

She obeyed him. Her face was blank, like a house with the shutters up.

‘Turn round,’ he ordered, raising one of the candles so it shone more on her. ‘No, not like that – slowly. So we may study you at all points.’ He glanced at me. ‘What do you think, sir?’

‘I do not think it proper for me to have an opinion about another man’s servant.’

Wintour laughed. ‘But that’s the point, sir. Don’t you see? She’s not a servant. She’s a slave.’

‘Yes, but the principle—’

‘The principle is the same as if she was my horse. Or my dog. Or my house, for that matter. She’s mine. That is to say, she’s mine to sell.’

He turned back to Miriam, who was no longer revolving. Her face was averted from the light.

‘What would you say? Ninety guineas at auction? A hundred? Trained ladies’ maids don’t grow on trees. Prime of life, too, fine figure.’ His voice roughened. ‘Look at me, girl, and open your mouth.’

Miriam stared down at him. She opened her mouth. I glimpsed her pink, wet tongue.

‘There! I knew it!’ he cried. ‘See? She’s got her own teeth, or most of them. They like that in a house slave, you know. Damned if I know why, but they do. I’ll put her in for auction tomorrow. You won’t have to wait long, I assure you. She’ll be snapped up in a trice.’

‘But Miriam is Mrs Arabella’s maid, sir – wouldn’t the sale inconvenience her? I would not do that for the world.’

Wintour laughed. ‘You won’t do that, I assure you. My wife does not need a maid all the time – she can share my mother’s if she wants one – and anyway she shall have any number of maids when the war’s over.’

‘But Miriam serves Mrs Wintour, too, I believe.’

He sat up very straight in his chair. ‘This is a matter of honour with me, sir.’

At this moment there was a distraction in the form of Josiah and another bottle of madeira. The old man opened and poured the wine. I took a glass to be companionable. Josiah did not withdraw but stood back in the shadows near the door.

‘I wonder, sir, would you oblige me in this?’ I said, holding my wine up to the candle flame.

‘If I could, sir, I would oblige you in anything you care to name but a debt of honour is—’