Beneath London (37 page)

“
M
r.
Lewis
, is it?” Alice asked him.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, smiling obsequiously at her. “You inquired about a Mr. Harris, I believe?”

“Harrow, actually. James Harrow, of the British Museum. He died in an accident on the Embankment when his wagon overturned very near the Swan Pier.”

“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 modicum of hope.”

“A modicum 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 glasses from the deck of Mr. Frobisher’s boat, which was anchored on the river. You don’t deny having been there on the shore?”

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, assuredly.”

“I protest, ma’am.”

“Do you see that strange-looking man sitting by the door?” Alice asked him. “The very lanky man wearing the bloody 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

W
hen 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 passing 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, muffled 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 eyeballs 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.