The Skull and the Nightingale. Michael Irwin

looked forward to discussing these issues with Matt Cullen. The warning from my godfather I would of course disregard: given the delicacy – or indelicacy – of our compact I could see why he would not wish me to have a confidant with connections in the county. I had no such concern, and was in urgent need of a sympathetic ear.

      Such solace, however, was to be denied me. Waiting in Cathcart Street was a letter:

       Dear Dick,

       We may be about to pass one another on a country road in our respective stage coaches. I have been summoned to Malvern by my father, who has been laid low by the gout. Knowing that condition to be a painful one I am not unsympathetic; but I suspect that my presence will afford him little relief.

       I hope that my visit to the country will prove a brief one, and that I will be conversing with you again in the near future. Meanwhile pray offer such succour as you can to my kinsman the Duke, who will be all but inconsolable at my absence.

       Yours, &c.

       P.S. I recently fell in with a quiet fellow named Gow who proved to work for the diamond merchant of whom we have spoken. It seems Mr Ogden conducts his business from premises in Duke Street, near the coffee-house. You may wish to stroll there to appraise your rival.

      I scarcely took in the postscript at the time in my disappointment at Matt’s absence. But I was cheered by a second note, delivered only hours before my arrival:

       If you should be free to pay him a visit around noon tomorrow Tom Crocker would be pleased to see you.

       My dear Godfather,

       I was pleased to find at my lodgings an invitation to visit Thomas Crocker, although surprised to see that the address given was not that of the house he had formerly occupied. He is now to be found in Wyvern Street.

       There were to be further surprises. Assuming that the occasion would be a formal one I dressed accordingly. When I arrived, however, I was admitted to a large house, in which were to be seen no guests and very little furniture. I was left to wait in a high drawing-room, containing no more than a single table and a few chairs. The walls were bare and the windows uncurtained. To increase my confusion my host shuffled in wearing no wig and clad in a loose coat and slippers. However, he greeted me with a smile.

       ‘Mr Fenwick, I must apologize: you will think my invitation misleading. It was sent on impulse, without sufficient thought. I hoped to welcome you informally and get to know you better. I should have made my purpose clearer.’

       It was curious to see Mr Crocker in this altered guise, like an actor who has stripped off the trappings of the dramatic role you have just seen him playing. He had shambled in inelegantly, but was serene in his own domain. Even his gestures and facial expressions were altered: he could almost have been a huge schoolboy. I infer that his public appearances require contrivance. The large legs must be constrained by tight stockings, the loose bulk strapped into a corset, so that he can preside and move with a show of dignity.

       Crocker sent for some coffee.

       ‘You see the place three-quarters empty.’ he said. ‘I am at present moving house. Here – let me show you something that may amuse you.’

       He led me to the far side of the great room. Leaning against a shuttered window were a number of paintings, loosely wrapped with paper, and apparently to be hung on the bare walls. Crocker tore the paper from one of the smaller ones.

       ‘Thanks to my excessive wealth,’ said he, ‘I have been enabled to have my features recorded by the ingenious Mr Hogarth.’

       It was a fine portrait of Crocker’s face, full of wit and intelligence.

       ‘Would you not say, Mr Fenwick, that here is a handsome man?’

       ‘I would indeed,’ I replied, surprised by the self-regarding question.

       ‘Then what say you to this?’

       He ripped the paper from a larger work, over six foot in height. Looking out from it, all but identically, was the same face, but in this case providing merely a summit to a bulging pyramid that filled the frame – Crocker’s body, finely dressed, but grotesquely abundant.

       ‘I fancy Mr Hogarth enjoyed the joke of this double commission,’ said he, ‘though he was too courteous to say as much. Which of the pictures would you call the truer?’

       I hesitated. ‘They are equally true. But they tell different truths.’

       ‘That is justly said. I know which of those truths I find the more flattering, but I am obliged to inhabit both of them. I had it in mind to hang these pictures here side by side, by way of a satire; but I think the gesture might make my visitors uncomfortable.’

       Coffee being brought, we sat down to it – or in Crocker’s case sprawled back at ease in an over-sized chair. He launched companionably into conversation: ‘This year I decided to re-arrange my life. I came to London and looked about for a large property. You see me in the course of migration.’

       ‘And your country estate?’

       Crocker blew out his cheeks and then drank some coffee. ‘I think to sell it. Lately I found that the countryside lowered my spirits. I would trudge round my land and return to the house despondent. The sheep and the cattle, grazing the fields year after year after year filled me with melancholy. I am glad to be away from them.’

       ‘Was that a sufficient reason for migration to the capital?’

       ‘It was but part of the reason. The chief motive was a desire for diversion.’

       ‘Diversion from what?’

       ‘From monotony. From cows and sheep. From thought. From myself.’

       ‘Does the remedy work?’

       ‘It has kept my mind busy. Here is a mansion with many rooms. I am having it painted, and have chosen the colours to be used. I have brought in some furnishings and carpets and curtains and ordered many more. When all is in place I must host a great party to declare the house open. But there is also work to be done outside. Let me show you.’

       He drained his cup and led me to a great window at the rear of the room.

       ‘As you can see,’ he said, ‘we have hardly begun.’

       Here was a large space, apparently a courtyard. What chiefly took my eye was a broken wall at the far end, where some workmen were busy.

       ‘Surely,’ said I, ‘that was the wall we pushed down the other week?’

       ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘Thomas Crocker is a gentleman, and would push down no wall but his own. As you see, it is being re-built with a wide gateway, to admit carriages.’

       ‘Might not your workmen have taken it down more efficiently?’

       ‘Much more efficiently. But I had read that a wall could be demolished by the method we attempted, and it tickled me to try the experiment by moonlight.’

       ‘Another exercise in diversion?’

       ‘It was.’ He was suddenly rueful. ‘But such pleasures are short-lived. I felt a pang of glee as the wall began to yield; then in the morning all I had for our pains was a mound of dirt and broken