Beneath London (44 page)

“I like your idea, Finn,” Beaumont said. “It’ll work. You trust the ostler, then, at the George?”

“He’s a friend. I’ve known him from old.”

“It seems bad luck to travel in a hearse before one’s time,” Miss Bracken said.

“Worse luck to be caught on the bridge by Mr. Shadwell or one of his men,” Beaumont told her. “They’ll be quaking like a baby, thinking of Mr. Klingheimer asking for a reckoning, and they’ll cop it for sure if we don’t cop it first.”

“I don’t know the man Shadwell. Is he worse than Mr. Smythe?” Miss Bracken asked.

“Smythe is royalty compared to Shadwell. But Shadwell won’t look twice at a hearse, and he don’t know your mule. We’ll fox him yet.”

The boat bumped up against the stairs, and Finn tied it up tightly. He didn’t hold with theft, but he held even less with being caught for theft. The boat was brightly painted, an odd green color that couldn’t be mistaken, and was easily visible by anyone crossing the bridge in daylight. They climbed the steps, walking amidst the crowds crossing London Bridge. Beaumont went on ahead of them, being the most visible even though he was small. Finn and Clara followed, and Miss Bracken walked along behind, carrying Beaumont’s hat as if it were a large purse.

Beaumont angled into the shadows alongside the darkened interior of the Borough Market now. Finn followed, looking back over his shoulder to see that Miss Bracken was still in sight. All were aware of their destination, although Miss Bracken, being new to London, knew it only by description, and Clara was blind, except for her sighted elbow, which was as useful in the dark as in full daylight. Still and all, Finn would rather die than drop her hand. There was St. Thomas Street opposite, and Beaumont crossing the High Street now, the George Inn just ahead. Finn listened for the shouting and the rush of feet that would herald their end, but there were none. He glanced back again, surprised to see Miss Bracken directly behind them now.

He put his arm through Clara’s, holding tightly. They walked around into the courtyard – its galleries lit, the fire burning in the center of the yard within its stone enclosure, and, to his vast relief, Arwyn holding a pair of black horses steady while two people climbed into the coach that the horses would pull.

Finn waved at him, Arwyn nodded, and within minutes they were within the shelter of the stables, Finn laying out his plan.

* * *

T
he Half Toad was quiet but for the sounds of supper preparations in the kitchen. The late afternoon lay gloomy and prematurely dark beyond the bullseye glass of the windows, where quavering images passed up and down the Fingal Street pavement. “I can’t
stand
the waiting,” Bill Kraken said to Hasbro and Mother Laswell, the three of them sitting at their customary table, talking low so as not to be overheard. “I say we go a-looking for Tubby or go on to Peavy’s without him.”

“And two minutes after you’d gone out looking, he’d walk in through the door, and then someone would have to go out looking for
you
,” Mother Laswell told him. “We’ve agreed to wait until the clock strikes four, twenty minutes from now.”

Henrietta Billson came out of the kitchen just then with the dinner they’d put off because of Tubby’s absence. She laid it out on the table next to Finn’s Christmas pudding message. Dinner was a four-decker sea pie, with strata of mushrooms, onions, peas, carrots, and sage smothered with pork and chicken in gravy, each layer laid over with a crust of flour, steam ascending from blow-holes in the crusty brown top. There were no fish in the pie, despite its oceanic name.

Kraken squinted at the food. “My guts is pinched shut,” he said. “I can’t eat. The Professor’s late by nigh on to two hours. Never was there a man more timely than the Professor. He said he’d send word if he weren’t coming, but there
ain’t been no word
, which there
would
be could he have sent it. Did they take the Professor, too, is what I’m asking.”

“Just you try this pie, Mr. Kraken,” Henrietta said. “You’ll be happy for it an hour from now, and I’ll hear nothing to the contrary. Food in the stomach is foundational. There can be no life without it.” She took a vast wide spoon out of her apron and heaped pie onto their several plates.

In the middle of the heaping, the inn door opened and Tubby strode in, nodding at his companions and looking around at the other patrons, of which there were three – a man and a woman near the fire and an old gentleman nodding over his newspaper.

Mother Laswell looked hard at Tubby, who was in a state of advanced gore. “God help us,” she said when he arrived at the table.

“Sound as a bell, my friends,” he said, patting his bowler gingerly. “My apologies for my tardiness. Give me a moment to wash up, and I’m your man.”

“But what news, Tubby?” Kraken asked him.

“Good news, Bill,” he said. “Finn and Clara and their lot are free of Klingheimer’s house. A knot of villains was chasing them, but I put paid to their capers. Two notches on my stick, and a third man sent packing. A good afternoon’s work, although I learned nothing of Klingheimer, nothing at all. It was dumb luck that I came along when I did.”

With that, Tubby turned away and mounted the stairs, keeping his head judiciously turned away from the patrons, who in fact paid him no mind.

In the silence that followed, Hasbro considered what Kraken and Mother Laswell had told him about the dead house, about Shadwell driving the cart away with a coffin in the back, about the man nailed into what might be his own coffin if he weren’t set free, and his freedom dependent upon his honesty. “We must assume that they
have
taken St. Ives,” he said, looking at Kraken, who still hadn’t touched his food.

“Or maybe this Klingheimer means to draw all of us into his web now that we know enough to be a danger to him,” Mother put in.

“Possibly,” Hasbro said to her, “but we must find out in any event. There is no choice. What do you know of Wimpole Street, Bill? I can picture the surgeries and the general lay of things. Most of the buildings are fenced – a broad, open street, as I recall.”

He watched as Kraken rubbed his chin with his fingers and stared into his ale glass. Bill Kraken had lived on the streets of London for years, and he knew every inch of it. He fairly loathed the city, however, for what it had done to him – driven him mad for a time.

“Posh houses out that way,” he said after thinking for a moment, “and the medicos, like you spoke. There’s an alley runs along behind it, the back way into doctors’ houses, deliveries and such. All sorts coming and going, early and late. Corpses in and out, greengrocers and fishmongers….”

Tubby reappeared wearing a fresh shirt and vest, his face washed clean. His hat still stood atop his head, pulled down tightly. “By God this is food to set a person up,” he said, plunging his fork into his portion of pie and hacking up the crust. In a lower voice, he said, “Here’s the way of it: Finn and his lot came out of a door in Klingheimer’s house and made away toward the river. Miss Bracken was with them, along with a dwarf in a beaver hat.”

“Lord have mercy,” Mother Laswell said. “I saw the Bracken woman through a high window, and I knew it was no good that she was there – a prisoner, I thought. It’s a blessing she’s out.”

“What manner of dwarf?” Kraken asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Smallish,” Tubby told him, “but a game dwarf. He gave me a fierce look as he passed me. If Finn had not called out my name, I’m certain the dwarf would have savaged me. Pardon me if I don’t remove my bowler, Mother. It’s currently holding my head together.”

“You’ll want a doctor,” Mother Laswell said.

“To the contrary, I want nothing more than my share of this capital pie, two glasses of ale, and to know what’s up. Where are Alice and St. Ives?”

“Missing,” said Hasbro. “The both of them.”

“
Neither returned?
”

“No, sir,” Kraken said.

While they ate, making a job of it but wasting no time, they caught each other up. Kraken told what happened to Alice, and Mother showed Tubby the missive from Finn – welcome evidence that they might yet find a way into the underworld to search for Gilbert.

“Now that we’re all assembled,” Hasbro said, “I can think of no better plan than to proceed to Wimpole Street, Bill leading the way. Tubby and I will approach from the street, and Mother and Bill from the alley – front and back, and no hullabaloo. Whoever succeeds first will let the others in. And mark me, the asylum is full of innocents. We cannot be careless.”

“And yet we must assume that no one is innocent,” Tubby said. “Klingheimer’s house is full of cutthroats. The same must be true of Peavy’s.”

“I’ll attend to the boarders,” Mother Laswell said. “Hereafter Farm has seen its share of those who have been touched. It’s them who first called me mother, aside from my own sons. I have a way with them.”

“Well then,” Tubby said. “Death or glory, I say. More notches for my stick, if my luck is in.”

“I counsel a quiet glory,” Hasbro said. “Our friends are in a precarious way. These men mustn’t know of our existence until we’re upon them.”

“Agreed,” Tubby said, “but they’ll know of it then, by God.”

THIRTY-FIVE

S
o this is how it ends
, St. Ives thought, and it came into his mind that he had never in his life done anything more suicidally foolish than he had today – looking into the asylum alone, betting his life on the kindly demeanor of the old gatekeeper. When Pule had locked the gate, trapping him inside, the tale had been told, all but the epilogue.

But was that true, or was there a larger, more damning truth? He thought about the murder of Sarah Wright and his saying that he would “look into it.” He had visited Pullman and learned the details of the woman’s death. He had visited the icehouse and had his suspicions verified, or something near to that. He had passed the false policemen on the road, and he had known that there was something wrong with them. He had been happy with the notion that Clara’s problem could be solved by whisking her away to Yorkshire, and had left for London without a backward glance in order to take a scientific ramble that had come to nothing beyond ruination. Klingheimer was forthright in his self-regard and his contemptible undertakings, but St. Ives had believed in himself no less – in his own rationalizations – and not in the apparent truth.

The squeaking of wheels interrupted his thinking. He could see nothing of what was transpiring behind him, although he knew that the door was still open – could smell the fresh air blowing in. He was unable to turn his head, however. Then a rolling table came into view, followed by Shadwell, who was pushing it, Klingheimer following. On top of the table lay a simple wooden coffin.

St. Ives’s mind went dark with fear. He had no doubt, no doubt at all, that Alice lay in the coffin, but whether alive or dead…

“Your face tells the tale, Professor,” Klingheimer said. “You assume correctly. I told you that you would soon be reunited with Alice, and I have kept my promise. She is perfectly well, however. I am told that chloroform often makes the head ache when the effects of the drug diminish, but the pain passes away quickly.”

“Open it,” St. Ives said in a voice that cracked.

“In the fullness of time, sir. We will open it when she stirs. I am told that she was very gallant in her efforts on your behalf, Professor. She put the wind up our man Lewis at the Board of Works. She brazenly accused him of blowing up the entrance to the sink-hole in an attempt to murder you and Mr. Frobisher, which was near enough to the mark to paralyze Mr. Lewis with fear. I can assure you that Mr. Lewis was guilty of stupidity, however, rather than attempted murder. I care nothing for Gilbert Frobisher, dead or alive, but I was positively elated when you appeared here at the asylum today, demanding to see Dr. Peavy. If
you
had died in the explosion, I would have been compelled to dispose of Mr. Lewis. But the man has redeemed himself by contriving to send Alice to me.”

There was a rustling in the coffin now and a knocking against the side. Klingheimer nodded to Shadwell, who prised off the lid with a crowbar and then carried it out of sight.