Langdon St. Ives: Beneath London Part 16

"Ah, yes. Two nights ago. Just upriver of the sink-hole, I believe. We heard about the tragedy, of course, the Board of Works being in a position of some responsibility for the condition of the embankment."

"A police sergeant at Bow Street Station led me to believe that you would have some knowledge of the particular dead house to which his body had been taken."

"Yes, of course. As I recall there was no way of identifying the man at the time, although we now believe him to be James Harrow. It is conceivable that he was robbed and his pocket-book taken. I merely speculate. That is, of course, a police matter. I am told that he had a curious dead bird with him, a bird thought to be extinct but entirely preserved, although what that means I cannot say pickled in refined brandy, perhaps. It would make a nice roast, I dare say."

He paused to laugh at this quip, but fell silent when he saw that Alice was not amused. "In any event, the body would almost certainly have been conveyed to the outhouse behind the Savoy Chapel. The Board has contracted with the Chapel to use the out-building as a morgue for the unidentified dead awaiting transportation to the Brookwood Cemetery. It's virtually certain that his body is still there, and perhaps the bird with it, although I advise you to proceed to the chapel without delay if you have any interest in either of the two."

He stopped now, removed his spectacles, and looked hard at her. "Mrs. St. Ives, did you say?"

"I did, sir."

"Not the wife of Professor Langdon St. Ives?"

"Indeed."

"Oh, my," he said, looking stricken now. For a moment he was apparently mute. "Yes, Mrs. St. Ives, almost certainly the Savoy Chapel, in the yard behind. The chapel has but the one very plain entrance at the front, and the new hotel dwarfs the place, but one can walk along an old carriageway to get to the back where the outhouse sits among the graves. It's not a pretty place, a morgue, but... May I be particularly candid, Mrs. St. Ives?"

"Please do be candid," she said.

He glanced around with the look of a conspirator before going on. "Work on the sink-hole all this hurry, hurry, hurry has progressed very much against my wishes. I want you to know that."

"I'm happy to hear it. It progresses against my wishes also."

"I myself flew in the face of it, and I'm happy to be able to reveal that fact to you at last. I gave an immediate order to dig away the rubble in an attempt to locate your husband and Mr. Frobisher despite the considered opinion of the Corp of Engineers, who unfortunately acted entirely against my wishes. I would like for you to know that the Board did not abandon your husband and Mr. Frobisher to their fate at least Percival Lewis did not."

Alice was certain that the man was lying. He did not possess a talent for it, unlike many such men in positions of petty authority whose only authentic motivation was personal gain. There must have been something in her face that made her distrust plain, for Lewis turned his eyes and then his face away and shouted, "You there!" at a gawky boy who was just then coming into the room through a door to a hallway. "You, Jenkins!" The boy looked up sullenly. "Pardon me for a moment, ma'am," Mr. Lewis said to Alice. "This will take a short time, but I beg you to be patient."

He stepped away, waving the boy Jenkins over to his desk, where he scribbled a note onto a piece of foolscap and put it into an envelope. Alice watched as he spoke to the boy under his breath and then nodded toward the door. The boy set out at an unhurried pace, and Mr. Lewis shouted, "Be quick about it, Mr. Jenkins!" and the boy glanced back, giving Alice a quizzical look a look that seemed to mean something, although what it meant she couldn't say. He glanced at Mr. Lewis in the next moment, and Mr. Lewis pointed at the door, through which Jenkins disappeared.

Mr. Lewis busied himself at the desk then, searching through drawers and moving objects about the surface. Alice had no patience with the man at all, despite his plea. He looked up at her finally and shook his head in a gesture of failure, and then hurried toward her, dusting his hands. "I seemed to recall having seen something regarding Harrow's death after all had hoped to find confirmation of the whereabouts of Mr. Harrow's... remains... but I'm afraid, alas..."

When Alice saw that he was played out, she said, "You appear to be in a position of some responsibility, Mr. Lewis."

"It is one of my charges to keep the employees busy, ma'am. The boy Jenkins is as lazy as a hog if he's allowed to be. Thinks it's his duty to support the walls with the weight of his shoulders, for the most part, but I've got the measure of him."

"Thank you for being candid with me earlier, Mr. Lewis. I'll not mention what you've revealed to me about your efforts on behalf of my husband. As you are probably aware, he did not survive his ordeal, nor did Mr. Frobisher."

"I was not aware of that, ma'am. I'll admit that I've held onto a modic.u.m of hope."

"A modic.u.m of hope is as good as a feast, Mr. Lewis, and often just as transitory. There is one other thing you can be candid about, if you please."

"Your humble servant," he said, bowing to her.

"Just moments before the collapse that took the life of my husband, I witnessed a man who looked uncannily like you hiding among the boulders that made up the edge of the sink-hole."

"Hiding, ma'am? I deny it."

"So it appeared to me, Mr. Lewis. In fact, the word skulking comes to mind. I was no great distance away, you see, watching you through a pair of opera gla.s.ses from the deck of Mr. Frobisher's boat, which was anch.o.r.ed on the river. You don't deny having been there on the sh.o.r.e?"

He looked at her now, blinking his eyes rapidly and breathing hard, as if he had just climbed a flight of stairs. "No, indeed," he managed to say. "I deny only that I was hiding. It was my duty to be there, upon my honor."

"You're a man of duty and honor, to be sure, Mr. Lewis. I'm baffled, however. I have no knowledge of explosives, but it appeared to me that you bent over to perform some action that was coincidental with the explosion."

"You are no doubt correct, ma'am, as far as it goes. I recall that I tied my shoelace. I'm at a loss to... Are you implying that...?"

"That you are lying to me, Mr. Lewis? I wonder about it, a.s.suredly."

"I protest, ma'am."

"Do you see that strange-looking man sitting by the door?" Alice asked him. "The very lanky man wearing the b.l.o.o.d.y bandage."

"I do, however..."

"His name is Kraken, sir, and a very appropriate name it is. He is my late husband's brother. Two years ago he tore a piece of a man's scalp from his head and compelled the man to eat it. He was adjudged mad, and my husband persuaded the court to allow him to live with us on our farm in Aylesford. My husband functioned as his keeper, and now I've got charge of him. Mr. Kraken is devoted to me, sir. If I discover that you're lying, I'll set him upon you. I guarantee that you will not enjoy it."

TWENTY-NINE.

IN AT THE WINDOW.

When Finn had fled from Klingheimer and found Beaumont's quarters unlocked, he had gone out through the window onto the roof, hearing the window latch behind him when it banged into place. The fog hung heavy over the rooftops and for most of an hour he was well hidden by it. But the sun and the wind dispersed the fog and for a time he was visible everywhere on the wretched roof. He had crouched in the shadow of a chimney for an age, feeling as if his life had come to a dead stop, and hoping that no one pa.s.sing on the pavement below would see him and shout "thief." When at last he had seen Beaumont turn up the byway from the direction of the river, the dwarf looked very much like salvation.

"They told me you'd scarpered," Beaumont said to him after letting him in, "but I knew you wouldn't have without your Clara. Good that they think you've gone, howsomever."

"Even so," Finn said, setting down his creel, "I mean to take Clara out today, while they don't know that's what I'm about."

"How do you mean to do it?" Beaumont asked.

"I don't know. Can you help me?" Finn watched his face. He still didn't know the man, not really, and what he was asking was more than a mere favor Beaumont's life, perhaps, if things went badly.

"Aye," Beaumont said easily. "I'm sick of this house, and the house is sick of me. The room in the cellar, did you leave it as you found it?"

Finn shook his head slowly. "The bed was slept in and food left lying about that I took from the storeroom. They'll know I was there."

"Then they'll wonder whether Beaumont knew you was there. Indeed they will." He studied the problem for a moment. "I'll play the fool, of course. It's true enough that I keep to my station and that you was hid."

There was the sound of a woman screaming just then, m.u.f.fled by walls and floors rather than by distance. "Can that be Clara?" Finn asked with a rising horror.

"No," Beaumont said. "Someone's brought a woman to the house and the woman don't like it."

Finn looked away and shook his head tiredly. "What will happen to her?" he asked.

"This new woman? Like as not when they're done with her they'll give her to Peavy and he'll open her head. I was out to Peavy's second day I was here, and he had the headpiece off a lunatic as lived in his hospital, the man's eyes wide open and looking about and Peavy going after his brain with an electric wire. Smelt like roast pig."

Finn stared at Beaumont, trying to make sense of this, but then Clara returned to his mind and shut the rest out.

"Mr. Klingheimer thinks you're gone, Finn," Beaumont said. "There's a general search. But you can't stay in this here room. If they find out, they'll scrag the both of us."

"Can you put me into Clara's room, then? They won't expect that."

Beaumont seemed to be considering it. "Aye," he said, "but then there's two of you locked in."

"And you with a key."

Beaumont nodded. "For the nonce it'll work," he said. "But when it's time to run, we must run hard and not look back."

"Might we run east, to Aylesford? Clara's people will be..."

"When we get clear, we'll run where you please, Finn," the dwarf said, settling his hat atop his head and fixing the chinstrap. "It might be nip and tuck with Klingheimer, though. Word has it that he wants Clara to wed, and when he finds her gone, he'll come after her hard and fast. He has the second sight, has Mr. Klingheimer, and it'll be hot work getting out of London on the open road, for he'll have his eyeb.a.l.l.s peeled inside and out, you can lay to that."

"Then how will we get out?" Finn asked.

"We'll go underground all the way to Margate, if we must, to the Vortigern Caves. That'll fox him. I know the way, better than him should he try to follow. You tell the girl Clara straightaway. She must be ready to follow, and no waiting to stuff a bag."

"I will, sir. And thank you."

Beaumont acknowledged the thanks with a curt nod of the head, and then said, "I'll just take a squint below to see what's what."

He went out directly, leaving the door ajar, but he was back within moments, tipping Finn a wink and beckoning for him to follow, the two of them creeping down the narrow stairs to the landing. Finn's heart was strangely light, he found, and he felt almost giddy by the time they reached Clara's door.

"If you hear the key in the lock, it'll likely be them," Beaumont said. "If it's me, I'll whistle like you heard before. So stow yourself and your gear out of sight. Give a knock on the ceiling if you need me, and if I'm in, I'll hear it and come." He produced a key from his pocket then and unlocked the door.

Finn slipped into the room, hearing the door close behind him and the key turn, and knowing at the same moment that Clara was gone from the house. Her things were there her bag sat on a low table, and there was a garment spread neatly out on the bed. He saw that there was a stoneware pitcher on a dresser alongside a tumbler. He poured the tumbler full, drank it down, and then poured it full again, hefting the empty pitcher now. It was heavy, with a thick bottom so that it wouldn't easily overturn. He set it down and thought of the woman's screaming. He had spent enough time around bad men to know what they were capable of if they were given a chance. He didn't mean to give them a chance.

He listened to footfalls on the floor above Beaumont returning to his own room and then the sound of his door closing and the dwarf's footfalls again on the planks. Good, he thought. At least he would know whether Beaumont was in his room or had gone out. But it dawned on him that someone in a room below might know the same of him, and so he removed his shoes and laid them out of sight under the far side of the bed, which was high enough off the floor for him to slide beneath if he heard someone approach. They would see him as soon as they looked beneath, but perhaps they wouldn't look. He put his jacket underneath with his shoes, made sure that there was s.p.a.ce for him along with the rest, and then sat at the desk to wait, setting his creel down in front of him, his mind turning.

He wondered what Beaumont had meant by saying that they would "go underground" to Margate and the Vortigern Caves. The phrase conveyed no meaning to his mind, although he had seen the caves once, five years or so back. Margate was known for amus.e.m.e.nts, and Duffy's Circus had set up near what was called Dreamland, a manufactured, fabulous, mechanical world. There was little of a dream in it, however a salt marsh, really, that was recently drained and on a hot day still stank of dead things in the mud. There were small boats fastened atop rails that one could sit in and be tossed about against the backdrop of a painted, stormy sea. People enjoyed them well enough, or at least pretended to after paying tuppence for the pleasure, but Finn preferred real boats, which he'd learned to sail when he had fished for oysters with Square Davey, a long time ago now...

He stood up, too restless to sit. If Beaumont knew a way to escape underground to Margate, then Finn was game. He heartily wished that he could get a message to the Professor and Alice at the Half Toad, if only to tell them where he and Beaumont and Clara were bound, once they escaped. When the time came to run it would be too late. He opened a tall cas.e.m.e.nt window and looked down to the ground a sheer drop of thirty feet.

The street was busy with people now, the day well underway, the wind blowing up leaves and bits of paper, white clouds moving swiftly in the sky. The tobacco shop sat cater-corner across the street, and the chemist's next to that. A man came out of the tobacconist's now and stood on the pavement loading a pipe. An old shawly woman issued from the chemist's, walking with a stick, and the man with the pipe bowed to her and lifted his hat as she moved slowly along, looking up toward the window where Finn stood. After a long moment she looked down again, her face half hidden by a large bonnet.

Finn was strongly reminded of Mother Laswell, this woman being much the same age and size, it seemed to him, although stooped and slow. He watched, however, as she stepped off the pavement at the corner of the building and moved into the shadows cast by an overhanging tree that grew in a bit of garden. She looked up at him again, standing up to reveal her full height this time and removing her bonnet, from which fell a voluminous quant.i.ty of red hair. It was Mother Laswell, sure enough, and the sight of her stopped his breath for a moment. A tide of relief flowed through him as he waved at her and quickly turned back to the desk. He opened his creel, which smelled of trout and waterweeds, and took out the two Christmas puddings that he'd stowed there earlier. He removed his notebook and pencil and began to write.

Mother Laswell had only the faintest sense of Clara's presence. She was gone from the house, no doubt. Seeing Finn, however, gave her hope that Clara would return. She stood along the wall of a tobacco shop in the shadow of the building and half hidden by a stand of shrubbery. Finn had just turned back into the room, in haste, it seemed to her. She held her bonnet against the very persuasive wind, listening to a bell toll the hour. She had already missed the first meeting at the Temple Church with Bill and Alice, but she would at least bear some variety of news when she found them again.

A curtain was pulled back from an open window some distance down the wall from Finn's window, but apparently on the same floor. Mother Laswell watched as a woman looked out of it. She was dressed in a peignoir, and Mother Laswell, utterly surprised, recognized her from earlier that morning at the Half Toad the woman with the crow affixed to her hat. A man appeared beside her, looking briefly down at the street before raising his palm as if to slap her, while forcibly turning her away from the window. There was a shout, the woman's voice angry, it seemed, from this distance, but unintelligible. The man looked out through the window again before pulling it shut.

Finn reappeared at his window, waved once again, stepped back a pace, and flung out a missile of some sort. It flew toward Mother Laswell with great speed and accuracy, and she ducked away just as it hit the wall and exploded, spraying her and the pavement with what turned out to be Christmas pudding, chunks of it glued to the paper wrapper that had enclosed it. A lump with a slip of paper thrust into it lay on the ground, and Mother picked it up, extricated the note, and read it: "Beaumont the Dwarf means for us to run underground to Margate, to the Vortigern caves if we must. The Professor knows Beaumont. Tell him it's the dwarf who played the organ in the Cathedral. Beaumont is a good friend, who has saved me twice, and together we are going to save Clara, who is held prisoner in this room. The three of us mean to run at the first chance, through the tunnel behind Narbondo's old house near the river. Soon. Finn Conrad." The "if we must" and the "soon" were heavily underlined.

"The three of us," she muttered, studying the note. So Clara was safe, at least for the moment.

Finn still stood at the window watching her, and Mother Laswell nodded and held up the note to show him that she had it. A richly attired carriage, its gold paint aglow, pa.s.sed close by just then, cutting off her view, and she stepped back two paces to be less conspicuous. The driver took no notice of Mother Laswell. There was another man inside the coach, however, who took particular notice the villain Shadwell, whose mouth was agape as he apparently grappled with the strange business of seeing her there on the pavement.

Clara Wright sat across from him, and Mother Laswell was certain that she swiveled her head to look in her direction through the dark lenses of her spectacles when Shadwell's head was turned. Her elbow was raised in front of her. The girl looked forward again immediately, and it came to Mother Laswell joyfully that they were still convinced that she was utterly blind. Abruptly she realized that her bonnet was in her hand and that she was making no effort to disguise herself.

The coach was past now, slowing down and stopping before the broad gates of the house. It wasn't going in apparently, although the gate was swinging open. Mother Laswell turned and walked back past the tobacco shop and the chemist's. At the end of the block she looked back to see that Shadwell was handing Clara down from the coach, the driver holding the gate open just far enough for Clara and Shadwell to step through.

In that moment a boy dressed as if for the office dashed past Mother Laswell along the middle of the street, running like a deer. He gave a shrill whistle, and Shadwell looked back, waiting as the boy ran up alongside, disappearing from Mother Laswell's view. In the next moment she saw Shadwell climb onto the driver's seat, setting out toward the distant corner at a good clip. The driver led Clara out of sight, and the boy slouched back along the pavement, in no hurry now.

THIRTY.

AT THE DEAD HOUSE.

The Savoy Chapel, adjacent to Waterloo Bridge, was no great distance from the Board of Works. As Alice and Kraken made their way toward it along the Strand, Alice considered the curious Mr. Lewis. Her brazen threat to set Bill Kraken upon him had drained the blood from his face. The depth of her anger had surprised her as well, even as it was coming out of her mouth, although in some sense she meant just what she'd said. If Lewis had played them false, she would pin his ears back for him.

She wondered at his "apology," such as it was, on behalf of himself and of the Board of Works. Had he meant to curry favor with her? To what end? Surely not to persuade her to take a more favorable att.i.tude toward the Board, which scarcely required Mr. Lewis's good word. His insistence that he was tying his shoe rather than lighting a fuse sounded like a lie to her, but in a court of law it would sound perfectly sensible. Alice was no threat to the Board of Works or to Mr. Lewis. And of course if he had been tying his shoe, then she had condemned him unfairly, which was regrettable.

"It's nigh onto the top of the hour," Kraken said, holding out his pocket watch. "We'd best look in on Temple Church, ma'am. We missed our tide the first time, but if we hurry we can be in port for the second meeting."

"It's not far, I believe," Alice said.

"No ma'am, though we'll have to hurry."

"You run on ahead, Bill, and bring Mother back with you. I might spend a moment alone in the chapel. I'll wait for you there and we all can walk back to the Half Toad together."

Kraken nodded. Spending a moment alone in the chapel was apparently something he understood. "You won't take no chances, ma'am? Same as you told me at Bow Street, I ain't got the fort.i.tude to stand it if you come to harm. I couldn't face the Professor and tell him of it, not after all he's done for me."

"There's nothing to it, Bill. If they brought Harrow's body here, so be it. If they did not, they did not."

"Then I'm off," he said, and without another word he loped away up the Strand in the direction of Fleet Street and Temple Church.

Ahead of Alice lay the new Savoy Hotel, an immense structure, although only partly built, on the site where the old Savoy Hospital used to stand before it was demolished. The area had suffered great indignity in the years between, but the new hotel with its advertised electric lights and lifts and water closets in every room seemed gaudy to Alice, of little benefit, certainly, to the poor people who lived in the area, except that it might employ a few of them to wait on the well-to-do.