Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [58]
‘If it is a fashion, it cannot be so wild,’ Wolpert said drily. ‘And Sarah, with what eyes does she look at him?’
‘It is bound to make an impression on a young girl to be the object of so much attention. She is very much aware of him.’ Mrs Wolpert paused for a short while, though without looking at her husband. ‘I think she is rather frightened of the young man,’ she said at last, ‘though she would laugh at the notion.’
‘Frightened, you say? She is not easily daunted.’ Wolpert considered for a moment, then he said, ‘If she is frightened, she cannot have much tenderness for him.’
Upon this his wife favoured him with a look of pity for his understanding; and as usual, in response, he showed himself aggrieved. ‘Why are these things kept from me?’ he demanded. ‘Why am I always the last to learn of a thing? I wager old Andrew knows more of the business than I do. A fine thing for a man’s wife and daughter to plot together to keep him in the dark.’
But he kept wife and daughter and everyone else in the dark concerning the step he took next in the matter. He might or might not be obtuse, he told himself, regarding matters of the heart; but he was certainly not so where material interest was concerned, and his suspicions had been roused by Kemp’s alacrity. The following afternoon he called on a man named Partridge, whom he had used once before, some years previously, on a delicate investigation into the extent of a client’s credit, and whose thoroughness and discretion he had not forgotten.
Partridge was accustomed to describe himself as an attorney. He had a close and cluttered office on the upper floor of a house in Limekiln Lane, invaded by the fumes of a nearby tannery; but most of his business was conducted elsewhere: in registry offices, counting-houses, copying-rooms, the taverns and taphouses frequented by clerks and warehousemen and the small functionaries of business houses. He belied the associations of his name, being lantern-jawed, gimlet-eyed and scrawny, dressed in rusty black, with an ancient, dishevelled goat’s-hair wig.
‘Remember,’ Wolpert said, ‘the most absolute discretion is essential, not only as concerns the dealings between the two of us but in all that affects Mr Kemp. I do not want anything noised about, no suspicion attaching anywhere – people are always ready to say that when there is smoke there must be fire. Mr Kemp is an acquaintance of many years, for whom I have considerable regard. There must be no damage to him or to his interests. All I want is the facts of his present situation.’
‘You shall have them. Have no worry on that score, my dear sir.’ Patridge nodded and glanced aside through his small, smeared window at the tannery yard below, as if witnesses lay out there, among the malodorous hides. ‘Joshua Partridge is the soul of discretion,’ he said. ‘Discretion is his strong suit. He is noted for it, famous for it.’
‘Famous for discretion?’
‘That is not the contradiction it seems, sir. I mean of course among those who have honoured me with their commissions. Without that reputation I could not continue in employment one day longer. In short,’ Partridge added with one of the sudden bursts of frankness which characterized his speech, ‘I should be on the rubbish heap in no time.’ He paused for a moment to investigate an ear for wax. Then he said, ‘I shall require, in addition to the fifty per cent advance of fee we have agreed on, a sum of ten shillings a day while enquiries last. This is to cover all necessary expenses I may incur in the furtherance of my enquiries. In short, sir –’
Wolpert was ready to pay but it was against his engrained habit to pay without discussion. ‘That is considerably more than I remember paying