Beneath London (13 page)

* * *

S
t. Ives was still considering his duty to Mother Laswell, when, halfway along the lane to the farm, he heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire. Moments later a brougham passed, necessarily close by and clipping along. One man sat inside, the other drove, both of them dressed in police uniforms, which, given the nearby gunfire, was a curious business, or so it seemed to St. Ives. The man within the brougham looked hard at St. Ives, as they passed, his face in shadow, but he glanced away when he perceived that St. Ives was returning his gaze.

TEN

“
M
other informed me when I visited this morning,” Alice said, “that Bill is ready to take Clara into the marshes if the two men return today. He won’t give the girl up, nor will Mother.” Alice tilted a cheval glass and looked into it, pinning up her hair.

St. Ives nodded. “Quite right, too, for Bill’s own sake as well as Clara’s. That caper with the rifle was unwise, although it was effective. I hope they consider my suggestion that they spend a quiet month or two in the north.” He had a small pile of clothing laid out on the bed, and his large portmanteau open next to it. Sunlight shone through the windows, and the weather was fair again, but could no longer be mistaken for summer. “Two shirts should do the trick, I believe.”

“
Two
shirts?” she said. “We’ll be in London the better part of a week, Langdon. You’re descending into a pit in the earth that’s filthy with Thames mud.
Four
shirts is more to the point, and put in your sack coat and a topcoat.”

“Of course,” St. Ives said. “Sack coat and topcoat it is, and the Monticello boots, I think. I’ve scarcely worn them since Tubby brought them back from Connecticut. Their soles are made of vulcanized rubber, a wonderful purchase on slick pavement.” He sat thinking for a moment and then said, “I honor Bill Kraken immensely, you know, for his tenacity, but he’s on thin ice here, Alice – if in fact the two men in the brougham were on the up and up.”

“Indeed. But
were
they? I wondered at the time how they knew that Clara Wright had
fits
, as they put it. They had just come down from London, after all. I wonder how did this doubtful band of murderers determine that Clemson Wright was Sarah Wright’s husband? Wright is a common name.”

“Perhaps Clemson Wright’s involvement is a mere invention.”

“I’m inclined to believe that it might be,” Alice said, “although we mustn’t make unwarranted assumptions about Shadwell and Bingham, especially if Bill Kraken is in the room. He’s easily provoked.”

“Invariably against provocative people, however, which is certainly a virtue of some variety, as well as a great danger.”

“In any event, Bill and Mother have decided to do as you suggest,” Alice said. “She has a friend in Yorkshire, a very secluded residence in the West Riding, where they can remain hidden from all and sundry. The sooner they leave the better, I told them, and they agreed to leave this very day.”

“Was there no hint of an accent in the taller of the two men – this man Shadwell? Fringe whiskers, perhaps? A pince-nez? A Mediterranean cast to him? Spoke foreign, perhaps?”

“Not a bit of it.”

“I saw him briefly when we passed on the road, although he was in shadow. It was obvious that he looked very intently at me, as if taking particular notice, almost as if he knew me, although I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen the man in my life.”

“Bill revealed that you were looking into the murder, I’m afraid, and that your return was imminent. That must have attracted his attention, and he wanted to know what sort of interloper you appeared to be.”

“Conceivably,” St. Ives said, moving toward the window. “Look here, Alice. Here’s Finn Conrad coming along atop Dr. Johnson, reading a book. I believe he’s returning from Hereafter Farm, or that Johnson is returning from Hereafter Farm, bearing Finn. He told me that he meant to offer his condolences to Clara today.”

Alice stood up and joined him, the two of them watching as Finn swung along, gnawing on a cylinder of Dr. Johnson’s sugar cane. “Finn is a highly romantic lad, you know,” Alice said, “and I don’t refer to his literary tastes.”

“
Finn?
He’s rough and ready, perhaps, and can do anything he sets his mind to, but
romantic
? Why do you say so?”

“Women have an eye for that sort of thing. He’s been across to see Clara more than once, you know; any makeshift errand will provide him with an excuse.”

“To see
Clara
? I’m astonished, Alice. No, I put that wrongly. But one wouldn’t have thought… I mean to say that I simply had no idea of it. A woman has an eye for such things, do you say? What does your woman’s eye say about me? Am
I
romantic, then?”

“Certainly you are, dear, when your mind isn’t taken up with sink-holes and Paleolithic avifauna. Just yesterday you complimented me by saying that I looked like a frog. That’s worthy of a sonnet, surely. Finn is almost certainly sweet on Clara. He’s
sensitive
, or so Mother Laswell tells me – uncommonly so. He might easily perceive that Clara is fond of him, that she sees things within him that aren’t visible on the surface. You’ll admit that we often love the creatures that love us, human beings included. It’s no great mystery. Mother told me that Clara can see evidence of it in Finn’s ‘golden halo,’ as she calls it.”

“The boy sports a golden halo? I’m baffled by this sort of talk, Alice. It conveys very little meaning to my mind. But if Mother Laswell says that it’s true, then so be it, golden halo or no golden halo. I’ve doubted her before and I’ve turned out to be a fool. I now possess what might be called a variegated skepticism.”

“It’s mother’s belief that we all have such a thing – an aura, she calls it.”

“Does she now? An ‘aura’? What else did she have to say about it?”

“Only that Clara can see them, as could her mother, although the rest of us cannot.”

“Is that so?” St. Ives asked, as they watched Finn ride out of sight, heading toward the barn. A boy on horseback appeared now, trotting up from the road along the pleached wisteria alley, clearly visible beneath the leafless vines. He was a telegraph messenger from the look of his coat and cap.

“Hasbro will receive the message,” St. Ives said. “I’d best see to my packing before you accuse me of being a slow-belly.”

Very shortly a bell chimed, and St. Ives stepped to a speaking tube on the wall and listened at it for a moment. “Ten minutes,” he said into the mouthpiece. “I’ll fetch it down.” To Alice he said, “We haven’t a moment to lose. Gilbert will meet us at Cannon Street Station at six o’clock, along with James Harrow, who will bring the celebrated great auk for us to see. Apparently Gilbert has his own jolly surprise for us.”

“My bags are already on the veranda, Mr. Slow-belly,” Alice told him, looking into the mirror one last time in order to arrange a black straw bonnet on her head. There was a spray of dried flowers sewn to the band of her bonnet, pinned with the spring dun fly that she had tied yesterday. “Finn’s bag is there, too. I told him that we would take it along with us so that he was unencumbered when he followed along tomorrow.” After a moment she said, “You seem pensive. Are you worried that we’re shirking an obligation to Mother Laswell and Bill by rushing off to London?”

“Perhaps, although I very much hope not,” St. Ives said. “And by staying at home we would shirk an obligation to Gilbert and to science, although those are perhaps obligations of a lower order. I’m persuaded, however, that Mother Laswell and Bill will do what’s best for Clara, and in any event we’ll be back from our little London journey many weeks before they return from Yorkshire.”

* * *

F
inn Conrad, holding Hodge the cat, cheerfully waved the chaise down the wisteria alley, mud flying from under the wheels. He put Hodge onto the ground, and the two of them set out toward the barn in order to feed and water Dr. Johnson, and to muck out his pen, which Finn did daily. Johnson, a very particular sort of elephant, liked clean quarters, as did Finn, who neatened up his own cottage every morning, shaking out the rugs and sweeping the floor. Hodge disappeared once they were in the barn – looking for mice, no doubt – and Finn set about hauling the dung and dirty straw out in a barrow to the heap fifty yards distant, running the barrow along over the path as quickly as he dared. Three weeks ago he had overturned the barrow, gone straight over the handles, and landed in the muck, and the accident was still fresh in his memory, although he had managed to wash it out of his clothing.

It was just past two o’clock, and the fish in Hampton Brook would be growing hungry in another hour or so. Alice had taught him to tie his own flies, and he had invented three new varieties and was anxious to give them a trial. In the barn he filled the five-hundred-gallon tank from a standing pipe, and then shoveled apples, carrots, cabbages, sugar canes, and dried hops into the enormous food bin while Johnson watched him with a keen eye, snuffling at the back of Finn’s neck with his trunk. The elephant was deeply greedy, and mustn’t be allowed to grow hungry. A hungry elephant was an unhappy elephant.

He filled a second, smaller bin with buns and loaves – yesterday’s wares from the baker in town. Johnson dearly loved a bun. The baker’s lad made daily deliveries, as did the greengrocer, who obtained the sugar cane from London once a week, shipped in from the West Indies, and bales of peanuts when he could get them. The carrots, apples, cabbages, and other fruits and vegetables were grown right there on the farm by Mr. Binger, a brilliant gardener, who had taught Finn about irrigation, fertilizer, and how to prune the roses and apple and cherry trees in late winter. Mr. Binger had gone into Aylesford to dine with his sister today, as he did every Sunday afternoon, and wouldn’t be home until some time in the evening.

“All laid along, as you can see,” Finn said to Johnson, handing him an apple, which Johnson took delicately with his trunk. Hodge came out of the shadows with a rat in his teeth now, and Finn left them to their respective dinners, heading back across the lawn toward his cottage to fetch his fishing pole and creel and his copy of
Black Bess
, the story of Dick Turpin the highwayman and his gallant horse. Finn dearly loved a horse story, and to his mind Black Bess was the true hero of the tale. It was no mystery that the book’s title was the name of the horse. He took a pocket-sized notebook out of the drawer in his desk, and a piece of sharpened pencil some four inches long, just in case he found it necessary to write something down.

It wouldn’t be a bad thing, he thought, to fish his way to Hereafter Farm, arriving in time to see the family off, which would give him an opportunity to say goodbye to Clara again. He sat down on the side of his bed and thought about not seeing Clara during the time she’d be away. He was surprised at the degree of longing that welled up within him, and he wished that he had a gift for her – something to remember him by. She had given him the copy of
Black Bess
, had put it in his hands herself. It was plain bad luck that he had finally come to know Clara just when she was going away.

It came into his mind that he could make her a gift of an owl that he had carved with his oyster knife, and he fetched it now and put it into the creel, along with the two sandwiches and the bottle of ginger beer that were already stowed there. It was a middling good copy of the screech owl that lived in the hollow tree behind his cottage, and was the sort of thing that Clara could see with her hands, so to say. When she returned they could take a ride together atop Johnson and visit the owl in his tree. He pictured it: Clara perhaps allowing him to hold her hand, her happiness with the gift, the owl in the tree looking down at them, screeching once or twice in order to amuse her.

Eating a sandwich and reading his book as he went along, the creel hanging around his neck and arm, he followed the path that he had traveled just an hour ago on Dr. Johnson’s back. He veered off the path toward the wood that stretched along the south edge of Hereafter Farm and made up a good deal of its acreage. The brook ran through the middle of the wood, falling for a time through a wide ravine that was rocky and sometimes steep, but with shady pools and broad shallows that were often full of trout. It meandered out over the sheep’s meadow, where there was a gate through the hedge and a path that led to the farm’s oast house. He could easily fish his way to the farm’s back door before Clara was off to catch the eight o’clock train, and with time to spare.