The Devil in Amber Read online

  ‘Yes?’

  The girl’s head appeared around the jamb. ‘I have them,’ she said solemnly.

  I jumped from the bed and relieved her of a pile of clothes, shaking them out and holding them up to the dim light. A cable-knit sweater, moleskin trousers, thick socks and stout boots comprised my friend’s booty yet I fell on them as though they were treasure. I swore a secret vow never again to be so damned fussy about my appearance, knowing that I would recant on such a promise at the first sight of a decent bit of Jermyn Street.

  Without a thought to my modesty, I stripped off the wretched vest and culottes and shrugged on the new clothes.

  Aggie cast her gaze at the floor, blushing.

  ‘You’re a miracle worker, Aggie,’ I enthused, pulling the sweater onto my bare torso.

  ‘You must not say such things,’ she muttered.

  ‘It’s the exact and literal truth.’

  ‘No, no,’ she cried, earnestly. ‘I am only a foolish girl and miracles are not performed by the likes of me.’

  I stopped in the process of putting on my new boots. ‘What a queer thing to say. Did someone tell you that?’

  Aggie looked at me searchingly for a moment, then cleared her throat. ‘It was not too hard to find the clothes. There is much clobber’–she said the word with utmost care–‘aboard the Stiffkey. They will not be missed.’

  She cleared her throat again, lifted off her woollen cap and scratched her head.

  I caught her meaning, nodded and reached into my money belt. As I handed over some dollar bills I saw Aggie’s gaze stray to the belt. Hurriedly, I pulled down the jersey. We might be getting on well but I could hardly trust her. I might yet wake in the night to find her pretty face looming over me and a dagger in my ribs.

  She put away the money in her back pocket. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Why not stay awhile? Have a drink.’ I gestured to the small bottle of Scotch I’d liberated from the blonde’s suitcase.

  She shook her head. ‘I must get back. The captain says there is a storm brewing.’

  As though to emphasize the point, the vessel gave a great roll and Aggie and I almost toppled to the floor. She fell into my arms and I laughed, but the girl looked confused and hastily got to her feet.

  ‘I can only apologize,’ she said quietly.

  ‘For what?’ I cried. ‘I’m not an ogre, you know, my dear.’

  ‘This I know.’

  ‘Well, then. What say you and I become better acquainted?’

  Aggie looked shocked. I had meant what it sounded like I meant, naturally, but I quickly converted my statement into something far more innocuous. ‘Tell me your story.’

  ‘No, no. I must go. I shall…I shall see you tomorrow.’

  She averted her eyes again and slipped out into the corridor, closing the door behind her with a soft click.

  I’d discovered from the girl that the Stiffkey was heading for Norfolk, swinging round the south coast of England and putting in at one or other of the tiny harbours that pepper that haunted coastline. The thought of home, however straitened my circumstances, was like a balm. Flarge would ensure I was a wanted man but I felt that the reassurance of British soil would do me the power of good.

  But what exactly was I to do when I got there? Continue with my mission to investigate Mons? Plead my case with the frankly unsympathetic Joshua Reynolds? Or piece together whatever strange clues linked the silken relic (presumably the ‘lamb’ of which Volatile had spoken) and the dead man’s reference to the Convent of St Bede?

  I lay back on the bunk, luxuriating in the relative freshness of my linen. The old divine’s name, of course, suggested some northern locale, possibly as far as Northumberland, but I had a vague intuition that the Stiffkey had been chosen for a reason. After all, Volatile was desperate to find safety. It wasn’t in his interests to go tramping across half of England when he felt sure his life was in peril.

  But all that could wait until I was on terra firma. For now, I had the Stiffkey to investigate. The ship was apparently carrying dry goods–a description that might cover a multitude of sins. I knew Mons had some interest in the old bucket, but what? He and Corpusty had been thick as thieves when I’d seen them on the quayside what seemed like weeks before. A spot of rooting about was definitely in order.

  I waited until the ship had settled down for the night before slipping out of my cabin.

  Keeping snug to the stained woodwork of the corridor, I crept into the old tub’s bowels, passing the captain’s door–no sign of life–and the galley. I peered into the gloom. Bullfrog the cook lay in a stained hammock that creaked back and forth with the motion of the ship. But he wasn’t alone. His good arm was draped over, of all things, a salted pig. It nestled alongside him in the hammock, glazed eyes seeming to watch me as I slipped past the door. These voyages do get awful lonely, don’t you know?

  There was even less light down here but I knew I was getting close to the engine rooms. Sea water sloshed about my ankles and there came the constant tattoo of shifting cargo, banging about in the hold.

  I chose the closest door and stole inside. The hold was foetid and in total darkness so I lit a match, trusting that Captain Corpusty’s ‘dry goods’ were not sticks of dynamite. In the brief flare of light, I saw that I was surrounded by about a dozen crates, each branded with what looked like a Maltese cross. I used the remaining light to position myself by the nearest crate and then, as the match spent itself, began to wrench at the lid in the darkness.

  The wood protested as I managed to force my ruined fingernails between the slats and then, with an astonishingly loud crack, the lid broke open. I felt about inside the crate and was answered by a curious dry, stirring sound. I fumbled in my trouser pocket and drew out the matchbox, lit another lucifer and stared down at the treasure. I laughed lightly. Of the things I thought I might see…

  The crate was full of Communion wafers.

  ‘Hosts of them,’ I grunted to myself.

  I turned in shock as the door to the hold swung open and a figure was revealed, silhouetted against the dim light from the corridor.

  ‘Mr Volatile?’

  It was Aggie. I breathed a sigh of relief, got to my feet and stepped back into the corridor. Taking the girl by the arm, I flashed her my most endearing smile. ‘Best not say anything about this, my dear. I lost my way, you see, and was so damned curious about what this old wreck might be carrying—’

  But Aggie had a puzzled look on her face as if my sneaking about was of no consequence. ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ she said with her accustomed gravitas, ‘but the captain asks if you would be so good as to join him for a nightcap.’

  I straightened up in surprise. ‘Eh?’

  Aggie nodded. ‘You are privileged, Mr Volatile. Captain Corpusty does not usually find time for such pleasantries.’

  That was what worried me.

  Nevertheless, I closed the door to the hold and dutifully followed Aggie out into the listing corridor. Another set of steps and we were at the captain’s door.

  A barked ‘Come!’ was the response to Aggie’s knock and I was ushered in.

  The cabin was a riot of disorder; charts and books lay everywhere, drawings and photographs had been tacked to the wooden walls and there were grotesquely carved African masks and a guitar made from alligator-hide slung lazily from the ceiling.

  Captain Corpusty was of a piece with his room. He looked up from his contemplation of a book and the lamplight flashed in his yellowish eyes.

  ‘Ah, yes. Mr…Volatile.’

  I shook his hand. ‘At your service, Captain.’

  ‘No, no. No indeed. It is I who should be at yours, sir. I’m heartily sorry not to have properly extended my hospitality earlier in the voyage but I’m a busy man, as you can see.’

  He gestured about at the disarray and gave a helpless shrug. His gaze flicked over my shoulder. ‘That will be all, Aggie.’

  The girl flashed me
a worried look and slipped out, the door clicking behind her. Something about the captain’s manner and the memory of those eyes boring into my back made me extremely jumpy all of a sudden. Why had the previously unresponsive Corpusty suddenly turned so friendly?

  ‘Drink?’

  I accepted gratefully and relished the grog, though the captain knocked back his own measure of brandy in one go. I cradled the chipped custard glass and smiled warmly at him.

  ‘I’m very grateful for your expert seamanship, sir,’ I began. ‘I know the Atlantic can be treacherous and—’

  ‘Now, then,’ he cut across me abruptly, ‘let’s not waste time.’

  ‘How’s that?’ I queried.

  Corpusty glanced idly down at his book and I caught sight of the lurid, hand-coloured illustrations. ‘It’s a rum old life out here on the seas,’ he grumbled, like some old-world pirate, ‘but we’re more up to date than you might expect. The Stiffkey’s got many of the modern conveniences.’

  I found this very hard to believe. ‘Really? Don’t tell me that cook of yours is a maestro trained at Delmonico’s?’

  He gave a throaty laugh and his grey skin puckered unpleasantly about the eyes. ‘No, sir. But we do have wireless. And we picks up all kinds of chatter on a lonely night. All kinds of chatter…Mr Box.’

  I felt suddenly cold. As cold as though I’d been standing on the prow of the rusty old vessel and Atlantic spray had covered me head to foot. ‘Aha,’ I said at last.

  Corpusty rubbed at his chin and it made a sound like sandpaper. ‘Fact is, there’s all hell broken loose. The Yanks are after you and have put out a description and a mighty big reward. All I have to do is wire them and the British coppers’ll be ready with a nice welcoming party when we pitch up in Norfolk.’

  I looked levelly at him. ‘So why haven’t you?’

  ‘P’raps I’ve got a natural sympathy for those a little outside the law.’

  Oh, Lor, I thought. It can’t be my body he’s after, can it? Bullfrog’s porcine pal showed how lonesome these jack tars could get but surely there were nicer sprats to be landed? And, if like me, he travelled on the number 38 bus as well as the 19 (you get my drift) then a comely little piece like Aggie was surely more in the grizzled old fellow’s line? Perhaps it was the novelty he craved. Able to take his pick of the fresh-faced young’uns, Corpusty had long ago tired of feeling the hot, quick breath of the cabin girl as she slipped onto his grimy mattress.

  An extremely unpleasant vision leapt into my mind and I hastily banished it. Corpusty seemed to read my thoughts and slammed his meaty fist onto his desk. ‘I’m not a savage, sir!’ he barked. Then he gestured around the squalid cabin. ‘As you can see.’

  For the first time, I looked in some detail at the pictures that had been tacked to the walls. To my utter astonishment, I now saw that they were, to a man, photographic representations of Old Masters. Here was Velázquez sharing a warped beam with a Venetian Madonna. An unfinished Romney overlapped the capacious bosom of a flabby Rubens. And dotted between them, Sargents, Whistlers and…me! I recognized in quick succession the portrait I’d done of Lloyd George just after the end of the last show that the House of Commons had commissioned, then refused to hang, and an earlier picture of a lovely girl with cornflowers in her hair, which had first brought me to the world’s attention.

  Captain Corpusty nodded solemnly. ‘As I say, Mr Box, I am not a savage. If fate had conspired otherwise, I might have made a living from the canvas and the brush as you have done, but I wasn’t so lucky. But I’ve a brain in my head and a keen eye for beauty. And I should deem it an honour, an honour, sir, if you would consent to cast an eye over my humble scribblings.’

  I blinked in absolute astonishment.

  ‘Good God,’ I breathed at last. ‘You’re a fan!’

  11

  A Whiff Of Brimstone

  I have known, in my time, many species of praise. The charming art mistress who initiated me into the ways of the world–and of, incidentally, oil pastel–was very fond of the little hollow at the base of my throat just below the Adam’s apple. Many a lazy summer afternoon was passed with waxen fruit un-rendered and her pretty, heart-shaped face nestled there, beads of sweat rolling like pearls from her brow.

  Then there was the renowned critic with morbidly unruly chest hair who, seeking to make up for his withering of my doodles, chased me around a slipper bath with his tumescent member poking from his pinstripes.

  And then there was the boy with the very blue eyes who smelled of honey and stayed by my side for almost ten years until…ah, well. C’est la vie. C’est la guerre.

  Captain Corpusty’s effulgent response to my presence, however, counted amongst the best.

  ‘I don’t care what you’ve done or not done, sir,’ he announced. ‘Far as I’m concerned you’re a genius of the first water and that’s’–emphasized with slap on corduroyed knee–‘that.’ I had been starved of appreciation for so long I almost wept.

  Thus passed the next few days of the voyage, yours truly casting a practised eye over the smelly old pirate’s artwork in return for a faithful promise to set me ashore at some unknown spot where the peelers wouldn’t find me.

  My habit was to rise early and then make my way down to Corpusty’s chaotic diggings, where he’d be waiting with a pot of stewed Darjeeling and another of his rather ropey canvases in which the sea, would you credit it, featured heavily. So heavily, in fact, that I began to grow weary of its crudely executed form, ladled onto Norfolk landscapes or Atlantic storm-scapes in thick grey impasto resembling sea-gull excrement.

  The routine was enlivened by the captain’s occasional foray into portraiture, mostly wretched, though he’d caught something of friend Aggie’s impish charm in a pencil sketch that appeared to have been executed during a typhoon.

  ‘Don’t spare my blushes, Mr Box,’ Corpusty would cackle. ‘I can take criticism.’

  He couldn’t, of course. Who can? So I was extremely careful to lard him with praise for his amateurish efforts lest he think twice and ditch me into the rollers.

  Of course, I could see where all this was leading, and the fatal moment arrived one evening after dinner when Corpusty was treating me to a not-indifferent Amontillado. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he said, screwing up one eye as he lit a cigar from the candle, ‘you’d ever consent to making a picture…of me?’

  The old fellow asked it as shyly as a school-girl. Eager to please, I pooh-poohed my talents once more, made a show of resistance but then grudgingly consented. A portrait in oils was completely out of the question given the incessant pitch and roll of the Stiffkey, but I would just about be able to manage a creditable pencil sketch.

  Mon Capitaine said little during these sittings but simply sat and smoked, occasionally outlining his plans for my disembarkation, which consisted of plonking me in a rowing boat just off the coast whilst the Stiffkey herself steamed onwards to Cromer. According to the wireless, all the main ports were being watched, but Corpusty was confident the route he’d dreamt up would put me out of harm’s way.

  Once or twice I gently probed him as to the nature of his business, hoping that Olympus Mons’s name might pop up, but the leathery sailor seemed to be keeping those particular cards very close to his tattooed chest.

  As we churned through the leaden Atlantic towards England I actually found a measure of peace in my scribblings. Corpusty’s ravaged countenance with its heavy lids and ragged, gin-blossomed nostrils provided real inspiration. Of one thing I was extremely conscious, though: the Stiffkey was possessed of a most peculiar atmosphere that hung about it like a noxious cloud. It wasn’t just the hissing and chuffing of the ancient engines, nor yet the stifling fug of the airless passageways. There was about the ship a sort of dread, drear gloom, a feeling that something malign lay at its very heart, like the shuttered door to a secret room in some Gothic romance.

  I am not a superstitious man. The closest I had ever come to encountering the other side was during the lurid
business of the Cardinal’s Windpipe. I dare say you read about it in the picture papers. A decrepit Stuart pile (a house, you understand, not a person) was being ‘haunted’ by a ghastly apparition in a tricorne hat. Turned out to be a doe-eyed youth trying to frighten a hated cousin out of her inheritance. After much kerfuffle, I’d done the decent thing and well, laid the ghost.

  So, naturally, I shrugged off the curious atmosphere aboard the creaking old tub until an incident occurred that could not be so easily dismissed.

  During an afternoon sitting for Corpusty’s portrait, I ventured to enquire how he’d managed to come by such a lovely creature as Aggie for a crew member.

  He pulled at his pipe and gave a throaty chuckle. ‘Wondered when you’d get round to that. Quite the peach, ain’t she?’

  ‘Indian?’ I asked, coyly, rubbing at the paper with my lead-darkened fingers.

  ‘Yar. With a dash of Swiss, so I’m told.’

  ‘My ears pricked up at this mention of the land of cantons and holed cheese. ‘How exotic.’

  Corpusty’s addled eyes twinkled naughtily. ‘You fancying a bit of a Swiss roll, eh, Mr Box?’

  I laughed lightly. ‘What can you mean, Captain?’

  Corpusty settled himself more comfortably in his chair. ‘Can’t say as I blame you. But you’ll get nowhere. Aggie Daye’s as pure as the driven. On account of her upbringing.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Yar. Nuns,’ he said, pointedly, coughing up a ball of phlegm and spitting it against the cabin wall.

  My ears pricked so far they practically grazed the tobacco-glazed ceiling. ‘Nuns?’ I watched the phlegm roll over the Madonna of the Rocks and Whistler’s mother before disappearing behind a cracked lampshade. ‘This was in Switzerland, yes?’

  Corpusty shook his head, jabbing his pipe in my direction as though scoring a point. ‘No! You’d never believe it, but she’s local to Norfolk. Settled in my neck of the woods when she weren’t no more than a mawther.’