Beneath London (8 page)

The man rose from the desk and walked toward him. He was a stout man, and tall, a second cousin to Father Christmas, with a clipped white beard and lengthy white hair with a curl to it, his tweed trousers held up with braces. His collar was loosened, and there was a spray of ink on his shirt. Beaumont wished that he hadn’t played the fool with the piece of crystal, for there was something about the man that belied the smile – something that made the hair on the back of Beaumont’s head creep, although there was nothing to account for it in the way he looked or spoke, which was pleasant enough.

The man pointed toward a round, upholstered chair of the sort a woman might sit upon to make up her face. “Take a seat, Mr.…?”

“Zounds, your honor, Filby Zounds of Dove Court in the Seven Dials.” He sat down, his feet not reaching the floor. The man before him remained standing, looming over him like a giant. “Do I have the honor of speaking to Mr. Klingheimer?” Beaumont asked.

“Indeed you do, Mr. Zounds. Sit very still for a moment, if you would. I need to have a look at you.” With that the man drew a pair of goggles from his coat pocket – round glass lenses, heavily smoked, with sturdy black rims and a leather band stitched around the rims to keep out the light. He put the goggles on his face and stared fixedly at the lamp on the console table for a long minute, and then he peered at Beaumont, canting his head this way and that before removing the goggles.

“There we have it,” he said. “Do you wonder at all what I saw through these very interesting lenses?”

“Aye,” Beaumont told him. Beaumont wasn’t fond of games, and this was surely a game, although perhaps a deadly serious game.

“I saw into your mind, sir, which occupies the space within your skull, but which is very much like a lamp. These ingenious goggles allow me to perceive the glow of that lamp. What I saw before me was a man who tells what he believes to be true – such as he understands it to be, I mean to say, which can be a dangerous business for the truth teller, to be sure. But turnabout is fair play, as they say. Take a squint through them, Mr. Zounds, and tell me what you see of
me
, after first gazing at the lamp here on the table for the count of sixty.”

He handed Beaumont the goggles, and Beaumont put them on, not altogether happily. Through the lenses the room glowed in shades of purple and violet, although those parts of it that were not directly illuminated were now in deep shadow. He stared at the Argand lamp and then regarded Mr. Klingheimer through the lenses, seeing a shadowy ring form around the man’s head like a ring around the moon, except dark as coal dust, so that it was very much like looking into a black pit with a head staring out of it. Beaumont removed the spectacles and handed them back to Mr. Klingheimer, happy to be rid of them.

“What did you see, Mr. Zounds?” Mr. Klingheimer asked.

“Naught but shadow, your honor. Perhaps I haven’t the knack of it.”

Mr. Klingheimer regarded him for a long moment and then smiled more broadly. “Perhaps,” he said, and he returned the goggles to his pocket. “Now, sir, I’m told that you were employed by the man named Narbondo, who is known to be a bloody-minded villain.”

“That’s the honest truth, your honor, both them things. I was in his service, so to say, for a year, roundaboutly speaking. I drove his Landau coach.”

Mr. Klingheimer squinted at him in a new way for a moment, canting his head. “
Of course
,” he said. “I
know
you! I do indeed. Narbondo’s coachman! Tell me, sir, as a test – where in London did he dwell at the time that you drove his coach? It was there that I got a glimpse of you, although I’m reasonably certain that you did not see me.”

“Angel Alley, your honor, the rooms atop the wall. Roundabout Flower and Dean Street.”

“Right you are. Tell me, then, under what circumstances did you lose your situation? For pocketing the odd bauble, perhaps?”

“No, sir,” Beaumont said. “We parted company when the Doctor pitched into a hole in the ground and went out of the world, or better to say into it.”

“
Pitched
into a hole, do you say? Within the lamented Cathedral, was it?”

“I seen him depart, sire, head-foremost, sir, through the crack in the floor right before the walls began to come down in earnest.”

“You’re not certain he’s dead, then? You didn’t see his corpse?”

“No, your honor,” Beaumont said, truthfully enough. “He had the lives of a cat, did the Doctor, which perhaps he hadn’t used up. For aught I know he’s alive as you or me, mayhaps having come up topside again and starting fresh, and everyone thinking he’s copped it. He weren’t well liked.” He watched Mr. Klingheimer’s face, wondering whether he’d seen through the lie – half a lie, really.

But Mr. Klingheimer nodded and stroked his beard with a long-fingered hand. “How might he do that, Mr. Zounds?
Come up topside
, as you put it? That implies you have some knowledge of an
underside
, shall we say? A world beneath.”

“We might say it, sir, and not give it the lie. The Doctor was up and down both from time to time, and me along with him. He wanted a guide, do you see, and I know of some places that are right difficult to find.”

“In the underworld?”

“Aye, sir, so to say. The land beneath.”

“And how did you find your way there? It’s not well known, I believe.”

“My old dad showed me when I was a boy. He went down a-hunting of wild pigs and took me along often enough. There was good shooting in them days.”

“How far did you travel underground, you and your father?”

“Only after pigs and what other game we could find. If you mean me alone, then to the Margate Caves, your honor, although mayhaps I dreamt it. Clear under the Thames, howsomever, and that often enough.” Beaumont saw a faint look of surprise come over Mr. Klingheimer’s face, and just as quickly disappear.

“And you acquainted Narbondo with this
route
, shall we say? Your father’s route beneath the Thames or out Margate way?”

“Some of it, when he asked it of me, but not so far as Margate nor so deep as the lower reaches. He had no real notion of what lies beneath, do you see, nor had my old dad in his day. I found such places in my own way.”

It came to Beaumont that he was saying too much. There was something in Mr. Klingheimer that drew it out of a person. “I forgot half of what I knew in the years since my old dad went to the knackery,” he said for good measure, although it rang false as soon as it was out of his mouth. He looked at Mr. Klingheimer’s round face, but couldn’t read anything into it, much like looking into the face of the clock on the wall.

“I see,” Mr. Klingheimer said. “Well, well. You’re a fortunate man, both to be rid of the likes of Dr. Narbondo and for coming to me. I’m told you have a copy of the handbill drawn up by the printer.”

Beaumont took it from his coat and held it out, and at that same moment Mr. Klingheimer drew two ten-pound Bank of England notes from his pocket and handed them to Beaumont. “You’ve convinced me, Mr. Zounds,” he said, “although it would be of more use to us if you knew whether Narbondo was dead or alive.”

“Alas, sir. If I knew for certain I would say it. I heartily wish him dead, but wishes don’t fill an empty belly, as my old dad used to say when he was a-hunting pigs.” He slipped the banknotes into his coat. Mr. Klingheimer wanted something more from him, of that Beaumont was certain. But did he mean to get it by main force, or to pay for it? There was something bent in the man, as false as a weeping crocodile. He wore a mask upon his face, so to speak, and Beaumont thought of the black orb that he had seen through the goggles. He had seen such men before – men like Narbondo, with darkness in them – and had a fear of them.

“Perhaps we can do further business, Mr. Zounds,” Mr. Klingheimer said finally, looking hard all the while into Beaumont’s eyes. “I would very much like to know more specifically the routes that your father traveled when he went a-hunting for pig. Where did he enter? On Hampstead Heath? Along where the Westbourne rises near Highgate Ponds, perhaps, near the old manse? Is that where you would enter if you were to lead my men to where Narbondo had fallen into the pit?”

Beaumont considered the question for a long moment before he spoke. Mr. Klingheimer knew a thing or two, and no doubt about it. A lie wouldn’t do. “I won’t say no, sire, but Hampstead Heath ain’t sensible-like for the descent, being at a considerable distance. There’s a more likely passage in Deans Court, tolerable close to where the Doctor was swallowed up. His corpse is either a-moldering down there this very moment or it ain’t, and if it ain’t then he ain’t dead, unless the pigs have ate him. They’re a brazen lot, the pigs. The gate in Deans Court is locked tight, howsomever.”

“It happens that I know the gatekeeper, Mr. Zounds. Locked gates flee before us, I am happy to say.”

“Still and all,” Beaumont said, “a man’s finding the way once he’s in the Fleet tunnel is a puzzler, sir, without a guide. There’s iron ladders and stone chimneys to navigate, like going down a well, with skulls and dry bones lying thick in places – lost travelers, so to say. There ain’t no map of them reaches – none that I know but that what’s in my head.”

“I’m fully persuaded of it, Mr. Zounds.”

“And then, you see, if the Doctor is found and we must bring him out, it’ll be on the Heath or not at all, and only after dark when nosey parker’s abed, for there’s no returning by Deans Court hauling a burden, not with them shafts and ladders to climb.”

“Quite so. The Heath it is on the return trip. Capital plan. Let me ask you one last thing, Mr. Zounds, another test, you might say, so consider your answer carefully. Now… it must be precious dark below the ground.”

“Parts of it is.”

“You brought lanterns along, then, you and your old dad?”

“That we did, for when we had need of them. Torches, mainly.”

“But you did not always have need? Why not, then?”

“Because of the toads, sir. The witch-light toads. We hunted by toad light, your honor, for lantern light would warn the pigs we was nigh.”

“You call them toads, but you mean fungus, no doubt. Toadstools, if you will. Describe them, please.”

“Aye, fungus-moss, toadstools, pookies. Like vast great blood suckers, they are, if they get hold of you. Bigger’n the likes of me, some of them, when you’re deep beneath the world.”

Mr. Klingheimer nodded and stroked his beard again. “Have you seen them bigger than the likes of
me
as well, the toads, as you call them?”

“Oh, aye, maybe just, if you know where to look, now and then a right forest of them. Fat stalks with round lids on top that a man might sit upon, if they didn’t smell like horse-shit, begging your honor’s pardon.”

“You amaze me, Mr. Zounds. You’re a small man with an outsized knowledge of some tolerably arcane things. Did you inform your previous employer about the great fungi?”

“No, your honor. He didn’t ask.”

“Ah! Well then I’m glad that I
did
ask, and I’m pleased to make you an offer that I believe you’ll not despise. There’s another twenty pounds for you if you show us a ‘right forest of these toads,’ as you put it so poetically – paid down tomorrow morning at dawn when we set out. Twenty more if we find Narbondo’s corpse. Forty if we find the living man. That’s a mort of money, Mr. Zounds, all in a heap. I can’t say fairer than that. If you serve me well on the morrow, then you will have passed the third test and will have found another situation into the bargain. You can fetch your belongings from your quarters in the Seven Dials and be quit of that neighborhood forever. I very much hope that suits you.”

Beaumont put two fingers to his hat and bowed at the waist. “It suits me down to the ground, your honor,” he said.

His luck was in, just as he had hoped not an hour past when the potato boy had given him the handbill. He could disappear out of Mr. Klingheimer’s world when he chose to, he told himself, whenever the man played him false, and he could shut the gate behind him with a peck of gunpowder.

SEVEN

T
he old ragstone house, which had stood at the center of Hereafter Farm for over a century, had a blue-gray cast to the stone. The traces of blue heightened in wet weather until they were very like the color of a robin’s egg. The red tiles of the roof were stained a deep, autumnal brown. St. Ives, Alice, and Mother Laswell sat in the parlor on upholstered chairs, looking out through a French window at a glasshouse some distance away, the shadow of vegetation visible within. The fine weather had quite disappeared, and the sky was dark with clouds.